Affirming Students' Right to Their Own Language
Bridging Language Policies and Pedagogical Practices
- Edited by Jerrie L. Scott, Dolores Y. Straker, Laurie Katz

Price: $44.95add to cart
- Price: $44.95
- Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
- Pages: 456
- Published by: Routledge
- Publication Date: 30th October 2008 (Available for Pre-order)
- ISBN: 978-0-8058-6349-9
About the Book
A Co-publication of the National Council of Teachers of English and Routledge
How can teachers make sound pedagogical decisions and advocate for educational policies that best serve the needs of students in today’s diverse classrooms? What is the pedagogical value of providing culturally and linguistically diverse students greater access to their own language and cultural orientations?
This landmark volume responds to the call to attend to the unfinished pedagogical business of the National Council of Teachers of English 1974 Students’ Right to Their Own Language resolution. Chronicling the interplay between legislated/litigated education policies and language and literacy teaching in diverse classrooms, it presents exemplary research-based practices that maximize students learning by utilizing their home-based cultural, language, and literacy practices to help them meet school expectations.
Pre-service teachers, practicing teachers, and teacher educators need both resources and knowledge, including global perspectives, about language variation in PreK-12 classrooms and hands-on strategies that enable teachers to promote students’ use their own language in the classroom while also addressing mandated content and performance standards. This book meets that need.
Table of Contents
@contents: Selected Contents
Foreword - David Bloome
Preface - Jerrie Scott
Table of Content
- Cross-Currents in Legislated, Litigated Educational Policies
- Conversations with Scholars:
- The Hidden Linguistic Legacies of Brown v. Board and No Child Left Behind by John Baugh and Aaron Welborn
- Portraits, Counterportraits, and the Lives of Children: Language, Culture and Possibilities by Rick Meyer
- Restore My Language and Treat me Justly: Indigenous Students’ Rights to Their Tribal Languages ( 40 pages) by Dorothy Aguilera and Marguerite LeCompte
- Power, Politics, and Pedagogies: Re-Imagining Students’ Right to Their Own Language Through Democratic Engagement by Valerie Kinloch
- Exploring Attitudes Toward Language Differences: Implications for Teacher Education Programs by Laurie Katz, Jerrie Scott, and Xenia Hadjoiannou
- Positionality: Using Self-Discovery to Enhance Pre-Service Teachers’ Understanding of Language Differences by Nancy Rankie Shelton
- Instructional Approaches and Students’ Attitudes: Critical Perspectives on Code-Switching by David E. Kirkland and Austin Jackson
- "We Have Our Own Language As Well As the Language We Bring:" Constructing Opportunities for Learning Through a Language of the Classroom by Beth V. Yeager and Judith L. Green
- "Taylor cat is black" : Code-Switch to Add Standard English to Students’ Linguistic Repertoires by Rebeccas S. Wheeler
- There’s No "1" Way to Tell A Story by Laurie Katz and Tempii Champion
- Culturally Responsive Read-Alouds in First Grade: Drawing Upon Children’s Language and Cultures to Facilitate Literary and Social Understandings by Jeane Copenhaver-Johnson, Joy Bowman, and Angela Johnson
- Developing Culturally Responsive Teacher Practitioners Through Multicultural Literature by Tamara L. Jetton, Emma Savage-Davis, and Marianne Baker
- Teaching the Whole Child: English Language Learners in a Middle School by Mari Haneda
- New Chinese Immigrant Students: Literacy Development from Heritage Language to Bilingualism by Dangling Fu
- High Stakes Testing and the Social Languages of Literature and Literate Achievement in Urban Classrooms by Dorothea Anagnostopoulos
- Possibilities for Non-Standard Dialects in American Classrooms: Lessons from the Greek Cypriot Class by Xenia Hadjioannou
- The Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and Other Community School Practices in Brazil by Ana Christina DaSilva Iddings
- The Social Construction of Literacy in A Mexican Community: Coming Soon to Your School? by Patrick H. Smith, Luz A. Murillo, and Robert T. Jimenez
- Multilingualism in Classrooms: The Paritetci School System of the Ladin Valleys in South Tyrol (Italy) by Videsott Gerda
- Educational Policies and Practices in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case for Indigenous African Languages by Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu
- Meaningful Literacy Learning for Children: Lessons from South Africa by Carole Bloch.
- India’s Multilingualism: Paradigm and Paradox by Zarina Manawwar Hock
Jerrie Scott, Dolores Straker, Laurie Katz
Joel Spring, Issues in Global and Local Language Policies
Geneva Smitherman, An Insider’s Take On African American Language Policies
Cristina M. Rodriguez, The Law of Language in the United States
Mary Carol Combs, What Teachers Need to Kon to Educate English Language Learners
Part I EDUCATIONAL POLICIES, ATTITUDES, AND UNFULFILLED
PROMISES
Part II TOWARDS A PEDAGOGY OF SUCCESS IN CLASSROOMS
Part III GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON LANGAUGE DIVERSITY AND
LEARNING
Afterword
Reflections on Educational Policies and Pedagogical Practices: Talking Back
By Jacqueline Jones Royster, Jerrie Cobb Scott, and D
About the Author(s)
Jerrie Cobb Scott is Professor of Urban Literacy and Director of the Reading is Power Reading Center at the University of Memphis.
Dolores Y. Straker (deceased) was Dean of the Raymond Walters College at the University of Cincinnati.
Laurie Katz is Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at The Ohio State University.
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