TR 1-B. Critical Challenges for Research on Writing and
Literacy: 1990-1995, by Anne Haas Dyson and Sarah
Warshauer Freedman. Dyson and Freedman discuss critical
challenges for research on writing and literacy if
educators are to meet the needs of the increasingly
diverse populations that make up the United States. They
selectively review the research that provides a basis for
the mission and strategy of the National Center for the
Study of Writing and, more specifically, for the Center's
research projects. February, 1991; 40 pages; $4.00.
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TR 62. Nested Contexts: A Basic Writing Adjunct Program
and the Challenge of "Educational Equity," by Anne
DiPardo. This study examines one university's efforts to
promote the academic success of underrepresented minority
students through a basic writing adjunct program. DiPardo
considers interactions between selected small-group
leaders and their students in light of the wider
departmental and campus-wide contexts and the tensions and
controversies surrounding the university's efforts to
promote "educational equity." May, 1992; 50 pages; $4.50.
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TR 63. "Whistle for Willie," Lost Puppies, and Cartoon
Dogs: The Sociocultural Dimensions of Young
Children's Composing, or, Toward Unmelting
Pedagogical Pots, by Anne Haas Dyson. Drawing on data
from an urban elementary school, Dyson suggests ways that
the "process" approach to teaching writing, in spite of
many positive features, may be too rigidly implemented to
allow for the needs of young writers in multicultural
classrooms. She argues that teachers need to be sensitive
to social and cultural diversity and respond with a
greater variety of textual models and writing activities
in their classrooms. June, 1992; 30 pages; $4.00.
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TR 67. From Invention to Social Action in Early
Childhood Literacy: A Reconceptualization through
Dialogue about Difference, by Anne Haas Dyson. Drawing
on a recent ethnographic study of child composing in an
urban primary school, Dyson contrasts dominant assumptions
about appropriate developmental practices (i.e., invented
spelling, process writing) with children's interpretations
of those practices, interpretations grounded in children's
social and cultural worlds. She argues that infusing
situatedness and culture into the ways in which educators
observe and make sense of children's written language
should make "normal" a range of possible pathways to
literacy--and "appropriate" a range of ways of teaching.
September, 1993; 17 pages; $3.50.
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TR 70. The Ninjas, the X-Men, and the Ladies: Playing
with Power and Identity in an Urban Primary School,
by Anne Haas Dyson. Based on a qualitative study of
writing in an urban second grade classroom, Dyson analyzes
children's symbolic and social use of superhero stories--
popular media stories that vividly reveal societal beliefs
about power and gender, which are themselves interwoven in
complex ways with race, class, and physical demeanor.
Through the writing and acting of their stories, the
children raised issues about who plays whom in whose
story. The dialogic processes thus enacted allowed rigid
images of gender relations and of glorified power to be
rendered more complex. August, 1994; 20 pages; $3.50.
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TR 72. Nerds, Normal People, and Homeboys: Asian American
Students and the Language of School Success, by Stanford T.
Goto. This study is an attempt to complicate current
explanations of Asian American success in school. Using
ethnographic methods, Goto examines how a group of high-
achieving Chinese American high school freshmen perceive
themselves as learners and group members, and how these
perceptions relate to existing research on Asian American
success. He argues that their behavior in school is directly
influenced by their perceptions of Asian and non-Asian
peers; their awareness of family expectations and status
mobility are related but less direct influences. Winner of
NCTE's Promising Researcher Award. June 1995; 30 pages;
$4.00.
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OP 35. Confronting the Split between "The Child" and
Children: Toward New Curricular Visions of the Child
Writer, by Anne Haas Dyson. Dyson uses everyday school
experiences with children to reconstruct our image of "the
child." She considers dominant ways in which educators
have constructed the concept of "the child writer," and
illustrates one way of reconceiving that child. In the
process, she suggests that rethinking dominant images
might help teachers better meet current curricular
challenges, especially the need to envision the child in
ways that reflect belief in the diversity of children with
whom teachers work. May, 1994; 20 pages; $3.50.
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OP 36. Moving Writing Research into the 21st Century,
by Sarah Warshauer Freedman. Freedman argues that writing
research in the 21st century will benefit by being
inclusive--of a diverse population of learners, taught by
a diverse population of teachers, using approaches that
allow for a diversity of ways of learning--with new
knowledge gathered from diverse sources and with diverse
methods. Using her own research on learning to write in
inner-city schools in the U.S. and Great Britain, Freedman
shows how specific research on the learning of diverse
populations pushes educators to elaborate existing
theories. Finally, she explains the influence of such
theory-building on her continuing research on inner-city
secondary students in the U.S. May, 1994; 14 pages; $3.50.
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OP 41. ... And Justice for All, by Griselle M. Diaz-Gemmati.
In this essay, Diaz-Gemmati, an eighth grade English teacher
and a teacher researcher affiliated with the Center's M-CLASS
project, writes about the surprising friction and division
that occurred when her students began to explore themes of
racism and prejudice through literature and writing. Although
the students were from diverse racial heritages, they had
always gotten along well until the their diverse views of
racism became an explicit part of classroom life. Diaz-Gemmati
describes the process by which her students were able to work
through their differences and come to a new understanding of
one another. June 1995; 24 pages; $4.00.
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