Randy Bomer and Beth Maloch take a look at the Common Core Standards and the ways they are presently shaping the curriculum offered to young children in school. They suggest that the Common Core Standards in early literacy and early childhood classrooms represents a restricted image of college or academic literacy. Mainly, the standards' authors…

A professor and students in an undergraduate honors research seminar were inspired to playfully link old and contemporary literacy theories to a 2.0 media artifact, the popular YouTube video Kittens! Inspired by Kittens! (KIbK) starring 6 year-old Maddie. In this article KIbK is theorized drawing on frames of school-based reading instruction,…

This column posits enhancing professional development through uses of digital tools to create professional learning communities (PLCs) designed to support collective inquiry and action research leading to schoolwide improvement. These digital tools include a social networking/discussion forum for teacher collaboration; teachers' individual…

Language arts education has experienced enormous growth and change with the advent of multimodalities in new media, digital literacies, and technologies. In this paper, Hagood uses Deleuze and Guattari's (1980/1987) theoretical work of a rhizome, rhizoanalysis, and rhizomatic cartography to view the field and examine differently converging…

Looking at literacy teaching across classrooms at the urban Mill City Charter School provides an opportunity to explore the importance of coherence within a school. This work was informed by teachers' voices and classroom observations over several months. Findings suggest that when teachers and school leaders share a common theory and vision for…

Explores the potential of teacher research for informing theory. Contends that arguments about the perspectives of researchers and teachers are founded upon positivistic assumptions undergirding particular views of research as well as definitions of researcher and teacher. Encourages collaborative researchers to examine the philosophical bases of…

Describes in storytelling fashion a teacher's reflections on herself, the teaching process, the children as learners and her relationship to them, the course of her reflections, and the growing pleasure she took in them. (SR)

Describes the mutual and interactive growth as reflective professionals of the two authors--one a teacher-researcher and the other a researcher and teacher of teachers. (SR)

Raises the issue of the separation existing between the world of teacher and the world of educational research. Argues that teachers and academic researchers live in two parallel universes, both of which are committed to the improvement of education and the well-being of children, but only one of which is privileged as a source of knowledge about…

This article demonstrates the potential for critical inquiry in twenty-first century primary classrooms. The authors (two university professors and a first grade teacher) present an overview of theory/practice relationships in Mary's (teacher) multiethnic classroom with an emphasis on critical literacy, technology and multimodal learning. Readers…

Argues that good action research carefully utilizes action and reflection because knowledge is acquired through a reciprocity between thought and action. (SRT)

Attempts to strengthen the connection between theory and practice in the inquiry discussion. Presents three curricular perspectives prevalent today and situates inquiry curriculum among these perspectives. Addresses several critiques of inquiry curriculum. Provides scenarios and identifies the beliefs underlying these opposing perspectives in an…

Describes the author's reflections as she tutored three first-graders in writing, focusing on how she and one student both expanded beyond restricting ideas of what they were to do. (SR)

Explicates two opposing conceptions of knowledge. Explores the views of knowledge embedded in three major models of writing and their associated implications for classroom instruction in relation to the two major epistemological positions. Discusses the significance of knowing about knowledge and knowing, particularly with regard to the teaching…

Argues that a democratic, emancipatory research model consisting of collaborative and explicit statements of purpose, design, data collection, analysis, publication, implications for practice and future research is possible and ideal for the educational community. Argues that this model has evolved to overcome the limitations of the rationalistic…