The Elementary Persuasive Letter: Two Cases Of Situated Competence, Strategy, And Agency

Research on persuasive writing by elementary children posits primarily a developmental perspective, claiming that elementary-age children can effectively argue through talk but not through writing. While this view is commonly held, this article presents counterevidence. Drawing on two cases of third and fourth grade children writing persuasive letters gathered during six-month naturalistic studies of literacy practices and social identities in contrastive communities (one urban, one suburban), these data challenge the developmental generalization by showing that children in these settings can write persuasively. Further, this work complicates understandings of children\u27s persuasive writing by showing how assignments and local cultures shape children\u27s writing. Evidence is developed through rich description of the case study settings and instructional tasks, a typology of the children\u27s persuasive strategies, and a critical discourse analysis of the children\u27s persuasive letters. This study suggests that children in both communities are capable of persuasive writing, although they enact different patterns of response, drawing on locally learned discourses. The settings, the hybridity of the persuasive letter as both argument and letter, and the children\u27s habitus may account for some of the differences in how the children address the tasks through ranges of centeredness and agentive strategies. Differing patterns of response suggest new frames for viewing and fostering children\u27s argumentative competence in a range of settings, including understandings of agency. The author encourages a research agenda that accounts for socially situated classroom and community practices, and argues for ongoing research and critique of the power and place of persuasive writing for children in a range of schools

Casting And Recasting Gender: Children Constituting Social Identities Through Literacy Practices

Considers how gender, identity and literacy are entangled and mutually constitutive. Concludes that social experience, desire, proximate others, and the ways in which children can draw upon these in the classroom are aspects of the situated condition that deserve more prominence in literacy and identity research

Toward Digital, Critical, Participatory Action Research: Lessons From The #BarrioEdProj

The Education in our Barrios project, or #BarrioEdProj, is a digital critical participatory action research (D+CPAR) project that examines the interconnected remaking of public education and a New York City Latino core community in an era of racial capitalism. This article is a meditation on the ongoing development of #BarrioEdProj as an example of strategically coupling digital media with the theories and practices of critical participatory action research (CPAR). The author describes the project and the theoretical and political commitments that frame this project as a form of public and participatory science. The author then discusses some of the lessons that have been learned as the research group implemented the project and decided to move to a digital archiving model when our digital media design was initially ineffective. The author argues that rather than dropping digital media, engaged scholars must continue to explore the potentially transformative work that can come from carefully devised D+CPAR

Teacher Leader Administrators: Part 3 Of A Symposium On Teachers As Leaders

In this latest continuation of our multipart symposium on teacher leadership, we examine what happens when self-defined teacher leaders become school administrators. Do teacher leaders who become administrators maintain a teacher identity? Can they remain committed to their vision of teacher leadership when they take on the normative requirements and responsibilities of school administration? Through a conversation with three teachers leaders, we explore the rewards and trials of teaching, the choice to become teacher leaders and then administrators, and the unique challenges that face administrators who deeply value the professional, political, and collaborative work of teachers

Constructing a Model of ppbv of Surface Ozone

The purpose of this activity is to construct a model that will provide students with a visual representation of parts per billion. Students work in teams to construct cubes of different volumes and to compare them to get a feel for parts per million by volume and parts per billion by volume. The intended outcome is that students gain a feeling for the small quantities of gases, such as ozone, present in the Earth's atmosphere. Educational levels: Middle school, High school