Although the Lao People's Democratic Republic has speakers of up to 230 different languages belonging to four ethnolinguistic families, the Lao Government's policy as stated in its Education Law is that Lao is the official language of education at all levels. This creates a challenging situation for teachers in ethnic minority villages throughout…

We consider what it means to be a dialogic teacher as characterized by Paulo Freire and Robin Alexander, and utilizing discourse analysis, we explicate how one elementary teacher's talk reflects these characteristics. We provide context for and analysis of a seven-minute discussion selected as a cumulative achievement the focal nine-year-olds are…

For over a decade, the Department of Education in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has adopted vernacular education as a way of ensuring that the educational experiences of children in schools draw on the cultural and linguistic knowledge they bring to the classroom. In PNG, there are many potential vernaculars--apart from the local languages, there are Tok…

Educational policies and initiatives significantly influence instruction in classrooms across the nation. This article presents data from a larger critical ethnographic study in an urban school in the United States during the school's first year implementing the Common Core State Standards. In this article, the author shares data from three…

The purpose of the present study was to develop an instrument to measure reading during in-school independent reading (ISIR). Procedures to establish validity and reliability of the instrument included videotaping and observing students during ISIR, gathering feedback from literacy experts, establishing interrater reliability, crosschecking…

In recent decades, researchers have indicated that U.S. schools have underexposed elementary grade students to informational text. The increased exposure to this genre should be a top instructional priority. In the present study, we explored 46 third-grade students' attitudes toward and perceptions of informational text. Using three data…

Using elements of the ethnography of globalization and teacher research, two Puerto Rican researchers and educators worked collaboratively with a teacher on a study conducted in a third grade classroom in a public school in an urban community in Puerto Rico. They conceptualized children's curricular engagement with the Spanish television genre of…

Problems in comprehending the language of instruction may contribute to language minority children's difficulties with different educational tasks. In this project the relationship between difficulties in language comprehension and task solutions was explored by studying in depth the concrete interactions and communications in mathematical lessons…