Young children bring rich social, cultural, and political knowledge to school, cultivated in their homes and communities. This knowledge, ranging from household skills to multilingual practices, is often marginalized in schools that value different norms. Drawing from ethnographic studies in Illinois and New York kindergarten classrooms, this…

I investigate here the personal and professional significance of "literate dwelling"--that is, processes whereby individuals learn to acquire and use literacy within initial spaces and times of comfort in order both to move beyond such comfort and to promote productive change in the larger world. Such significance became especially clear…

Nationwide, one-third of children ages 5 and under have at least one parent who speaks a language other than English. These Dual Language Learners (DLLs) are an incredibly diverse and growing group of young children, and with the right support these preschoolers have the potential to develop as multilingual and multiliterate individuals. Yet…

Latino families in America increasingly enjoy access to a dizzying array of content on a variety of electronic devices, from televisions and video games to personal computers and mobile devices. Bruce Fuller, José Ramón Lizárraga, James H. Gray raise pressing questions that face Latino families as they adopt technologies that both have the…

Illinois' youngest children--nearly half-a-million infants and toddlers--are at the leading edge of a demographic transformation. They herald a state, and a nation, more diverse with respect to race/ethnicity, country of origin, language, and family type than at any time in recent history. Yet, this is a generation notable for marked inequities,…

As part of Project IMPACT's efforts to identify and develop procedures for complying with the impact requirements of Public Law 94-482, a case study was made of two Illinois communities and the vocational education programs in those communities. The study examined the relationship between the "good" vocational education programs in…