Lessons from Research with Language-Minority Children

Critical Issues: Circles of Kinship, Friendship, Position, and Power: Examining the Community in Community-Based Literacy Research

“…This is troubling because our auricular initiatives therefore tend to be essentia-JLR lized and homogeneous (Luke & Luke, 1999), especially when taken up in Moje large school settings. Finally, as I have mentioned previously, Moll and Gonzalez' (1994) phrase, "circles of kinship and friendship," which they used in reference to important community relationships, jumped out at me as a phrase that was evocative of the kinds of relationships that the word community signifies, but one that was not, perhaps, as loaded with assumptions about the homogeneity and uniformity. Although the phrase maintains a generally positive sense, the plural "circles" allows for the possibility of multiple and overlapping relations within community frameworks.…”

“…1 The inspiration for this title comes from Luis Moll and Norma Gonzalez in their JRB discussion of critical issues in research with language minority children (Moll & Gonzalez, 1994 RECENTLY, WHILE WORKING ON THE RESEARCH DESIGN of a largescale project on engagement, I was asked to talk about what I would like to see happen in the project in terms of research on children's engagement in activities outside of school, activities that would take place in children's J L R communities. After I had talked for several minutes about spending time Moje with kids in their homes, on the playground, in the streets, and in community organizations such as churches, businesses, and clubs, one of my colleagues stopped me and said, "Wait a minute.…”

The White Worsted Thread: Third Space Encounters in English L2 Writing – A Theoretical Framework for Understanding Writing for Publication in English

“…Those studies have focused on hybridity as a theoretical lens for exploring diversity in elementary education (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López and Alvarez 1999); how children cross boundaries between home literacies and school literacies (Heath 1983); how Haitian children use their funds of knowledge (a part of third space theory) to use the argumentation genre in science classrooms (Hudicourt-Barnes 2003); and understanding the discourses of children from minority languages (Moll and Gonzalez 1994), to cite a few.…”

Connecting Home and School Literacy Practices in Classrooms with Diverse Populations

“…However, more research is needed to understand the ways in which students use their home literacy experiences within classroom settings. Inspired by the work of Moll and Gonzalez (1994) and Ladson-Billings (1994) > I wanted to examine how teachers and students connected home and school literacy practices. In this article, I conclude that the classrooms I studied, despite the teachers' first steps to welcome diversity, reinforced middle-class literacy values while inadvertently ignoring or devaluing (mostly through lack of knowledge) literacy practices in non-middle-class homes.…”

“…For example, Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993) have asked teachers to engage in critical reflections about readings linked to larger issues of culture and class. Moll and Gonzalez (1994) have formed partnerships with teachers in their "funds of knowledge" project, resulting in teachers' increased awareness of cultural issues. Clearly, there are no right answers, but there may be several intertwining directions that involve sustained interactions between teachers and researchers that may result in changes in teacher practice and increased learning for all students.…”