Dialoguing Across Cultures, Identities, and Learning ─ Crosscurrents and Complexities in Literacy Classrooms

In the complex multicultural/multiethnic/multilingual contexts of education in out of school spaces today, students and teachers are constantly dialoguing across cultures, both internally and externally, and these cultures are in dialogue with each other. This book is designed to engage readers in re-examining how they view different cultures and the roles cultures play in their lives. It troubles one-dimensional views of culture and positions cultures as being subject to context and ever in flux. Introducing Dialogical Self Theory for educational application, the focus is on explaining and illustrating on how cultures, literacies, learning, identity, and agency transact in classrooms. Presenting a new model of social and cultural identity construction in the literacy classroom, it provides a framework for how teachers might adjust their future pedagogy to better support the range of cultural stances present in all classrooms.

Bob Fecho is Professor of Language and Literacy Education, University of Georgia, USA.

Jennifer Clinton is Assistant Professor, Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies, University of Texas at El Paso, USA.