Discourse, Learning, and Schooling explores theoretical and methodological relationships between childrens' discourse--or socially used language--and their learning in educational settings. Authors in this volume address a range of issues, including literacy, authorship, the construction of self, and classroom interaction. The chapters range from research studies of classroom discourse to essays reflecting on discourse and literacies. Collectively these chapters reflect both sociocognitive perspectives on relations among discourse, learning, and schooling, and sociocultural perspectives on discourse and literacies among diverse cultural groups.
Deborah Hicks was raised in North Carolina, in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Educated in public schools, she later earned a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has been a teacher and writer for over two decades, focusing on the lives of children in poor and working-class America. The author of two previous books about literacy education, including Reading Lives, she has written for magazines such as The Progressive and DoubleTake/Point of Entry and for education journals. Deborah is the founding director of PAGE, a partnership supporting educational opportunity for girls and young women in Appalachia. She lives in Chapel Hill and, for part of each year, in Spring Creek – a rural mountain community in Madison County, North Carolina.