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Although it is spring, snow blanketsthe schoolyard. Eight-year-oldAshish and his parents, dressed inlayers and shivering from the cold,are not used to this climate, havingarrived in Canada three weeks ear-lier from India. Bypassing theschoolyard, they enter ThornwoodPublic School and report directly tothe main office where Lynda Sliz,one of Thornwood’s English as aSecond Language teachers, is

expecting them. Indeed, she hasarranged for an Urdu interpreter toassist with the reception process.

Ms. Sliz greets the family warmly.She escorts them to the librarian’soffice where they are able to talkquietly. There she initiates a discus-sion on school policies, routines,and expectations—traversing arange of subjects including thegrade-level curriculum,Thornwood’s safe arrival program,

home–school book protocols, andappropriate clothing for gym.Through the interpreter, Ashish’sparents are encouraged to ask ques-tions regarding the new school sys-tem so that they can better supporttheir child at Thornwood. They arealso encouraged to raise anyconcerns they may have. Ashish isfree to listen and join in the discus-sion, to read a dual-language bookin Urdu, or to draw. Throughout the

Community as Curriculum

Jim Cummins, Patricia Chow,

Sandra R. Schecter

Educators work together to develop activities that explicitly

build on the resources and abilities that children bring to school.

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Copyright © 2006 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

interview, Ms. Sliz addresses Ashishon matters about which he mayhave useful first-hand information.

Because the lines of communicationbetween this newcomer family andthe school have been opened, andbecause from the outset the schoolhas proved responsive to theirneeds, Ashish and his parents willlikely feel comfortable in approach-ing Thornwood staff, including Ms.Sliz, with future concerns. Through-out the year, Thornwood willcontinue to communicate with thefamily, using excerpts from theschool’s Newcomers’ Guide toElementary Schools, available inUrdu as well as many otherlanguages. In addition, inThornwood classes, multilingual,multicultural, and multiperspectiveliterature is used to promote a senseof belonging and an understandingand appreciation for people who aredifferent from ourselves and tobroaden teachers’ and students’views of the world. By givingstudents opportunities to read,write, and speak in their firstlanguage, teachers allownon–native-English-speakingstudents such as Ashish to feel suc-cessful at a time of transition andrelocation when they mightotherwise feel inadequate orfrustrated by their inability toexpress their needs, thoughts, andemotions in English.

Thornwood teachers did not alwaysunderstand language to be at thecenter of their focus on issues ofinclusion and equity in the waythey do today. This article describesactivities pursued at Thornwood inthe context of a project that soughtto develop a school climate inwhich the multilingual andmulticultural talents and abilitiesthat children brought to schoolwere explicitly built on and valued.We describe these activities by inte-grating two perspectives: (a) the

perspective of a grade one teacher,Patricia Chow, who, together withher colleagues, initiated and imple-mented a variety of projects aimedat enriching students’ literacy expe-riences and forging stronger home–school connections, and (b) theperspective of two university-basedresearchers, Jim Cummins andSandra Schecter, who bothsupported and critically reflected on these activities in light of their

broader implications forunderstanding children’s literacydevelopment and for developingschool-based language policies.

We begin by situating our approachto school-based language policywithin a language-as-resource ori-entation to language planning. Wecontinue by reviewing the relevantresearch evidence on bilingualism.Then we highlight some innovativeapproaches developed by practition-ers in one local, particularizedschool setting, elaborating on theimmigrant, urban context thatinformed these innovations. Finally,we outline a framework for predict-ing the adequacy of educationalprovision for linguistically and cul-turally diverse students.

ORIENTATIONS TO LANGUAGEPLANNING

Richard Ruiz (1988) has introduced a useful distinction between threeorientations to language planning: (a) language-as-problem, (b) language-as-right, and (c) language-as-resource. The language-as-problemorientation focuses on the resolution

of societal problems associated withlanguage learning or linguistic diver-sity. Provision of ESL programs forstudents who need support inEnglish-language learning is oneexample of this orientation.

The language-as-right orientation isillustrated in the minority languagerights guaranteed to Canada’sofficial language minorities by theCanadian Charter of Rights and

Freedoms. However, these legalrights are enshrined only for specificgroups in a particular context. Incases where no legal rights areenshrined with respect to language,we are left with the difficultquestion about the ethical rights thatchildren have to maintain anddevelop their home languages. In thepast, many educators activelydiscouraged children and parentsfrom using their home language forcommunication in the home (mostbrutally in the case of First Nationsstudents). To reverse this patterninvolves challenging assimilationistattitudes and practices that havelong been tacitly supported by thesocietal power structure. The realitythat, until recently, issues related toindividual and societal bilingualismand language maintenance rarelycrossed the threshold of teacher edu-cation programs is an illustration ofthis tacit support.

Ruiz suggested that while problemand rights orientations are valid andimportant, they are insufficient as abasis for language planning inlinguistically diverse societiesbecause hostility and divisiveness

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Development of literacy in two or more languages (additive bilingualism) constitutes

a positive force in children’s educational and personal development.

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are often inherent in them. He rec-ommended giving greater emphasisto a language-as-resourceorientation in which linguisticdiversity is seen as a societalresource that should be nurtured forthe benefit of all groups. Thelanguage-as-resource orientationappeals to us because it is moreinclusive than either of the othertwo orientations, and itincorporates the other two in vari-ous respects. It is inclusive insofaras it highlights the interests of theentire society rather than those ofparticular minority groups and, inso doing, transcends the “us versusthem” mentality that characterizesmuch of the debate in this area. Itincorporates many aspects of theother orientations since solving lan-guage problems and eliminatingdiscrimination on the basis of lan-guage can be viewed as strategiesthat will result in better use of soci-ety’s human resources.

The distinctions highlighted by Ruizare relevant to the work of theschool- and university-basededucators who collaborated in thecontext of our action research proj-ect to explore what a language-as-resource orientation might look likein practice in linguistically and cul-turally diverse schools. Although inthis article we focus on the implica-tions of this orientation for classcurriculum, over time collaborators’perspectives evolved well beyondthis dimension to encompass acommunity-as-resource orientationto educational practice.

THE RESEARCH BASIS FOR ACOMMUNITY-AS-RESOURCEPOLICY ORIENTATION

Over the past 20 years, evidence hasaccumulated that linguistic, cogni-tive, and affective advantagesaccrue to students who develop lit-eracy skills in two or more

languages and continue biliteratedevelopment at least throughelementary school (Corson, 1993;Cummins & Danesi, 1990). In short,development of literacy in two ormore languages (additive bilingual-ism) constitutes a positive force inchildren’s educational and personaldevelopment. An obviousimplication is that teachers shouldseek opportunities to encourage stu-dents to develop literacy in theirhome languages and to assistparents in this process. At the levelof policy and practice, however,

attitudes toward heritage languagedevelopment range fromindifference to ambivalence,suggesting that many schools stillhave a long way to go before chil-dren’s mother tongues are viewedas a resource to be cultivated ratherthan as a problem to be overcome.

One of the most consistent findingsin the literature on bilingualism isthat literacy skills in a student’sfirst language (L1) and second lan-guage (L2) are strongly related. Inother words, L1 and L2 literacy areinterdependent or manifestations ofa common underlying proficiency.Thus, in French immersionprograms, a strong relationship isobserved between literacy in Frenchand English. Students whose Frenchliteracy skills are well developedalso tend to show strong

development of English literacy(Cummins, 1984; Hébert, 1976). Inbilingual programs for minority stu-dents around the world, the samepattern of interdependence isobserved. This “interdependenceprinciple” is fundamental to under-standing why less instructional timethrough the majority language doesnot lead to academic retardation inthat language. Instruction throughthe minority language is not onlypromoting proficiency in thatlanguage, but also overallconceptual development and otherforms of academic knowledge thatare transferable across languages.

Overwhelmingly, the research showsthat encouragement of mothertongue development will in no wayimpede the development of Englishacademic skills (Schecter & Bayley,2002). Thus, teachers are in aposition to communicate theseresearch findings to linguistic-minority parents and children andsupport home language developmentwithin the classroom as a learningresource for individual children andfor the classroom community as awhole.

CREATING AN INCLUSIVELEARNING CLIMATE ATTHORNWOOD PUBLIC SCHOOL

Thornwood Public School, located inthe densely urban area ofMississauga, Ontario, serves an eth-nically, racially, and linguisticallydiverse student population, many ofwhom are first-generationimmigrants to Canada. Thornwood isa K–5 school, with the student popu-lation ranging in age from 4 to 10years. There are 725 students in theschool, with the majority of the stu-dents in the early grades.

Most recent school statistics indicate143 arrivals from every part of theworld within the past 2 years. The

Schools still have along way to go before

children’s mothertongues are viewed as

a resource to becultivated rather than

as a problem to beovercome.



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majority of the students emigratefrom South Asia, East Asia, and theMiddle East. Recently, there hasbeen an influx of students fromEastern European countries as well.In a recent immigration statisticsreport provided by the Peel DistrictSchool Board, more than 40 differ-ent languages were identified asspoken by members of theThornwood school community.Urdu, Tamil, Arabic, Chinese, Viet-namese, Mandarin, and Korean arethe most common languages spokenby students in the school.

The high mobility of the studentpopulation and the diversity of theschool community have a majorimpact on decisions made by schoolpersonnel on how best to organizethe teaching team to ensureeffective programming andprovision for the many newstudents that arrive throughout theschool year. The staff hasexperimented with a variety ofservice delivery models to betteraddress the needs of ESL students.The currently adopted modelprovides ESL students time with theESL teacher for 40 to 80 minuteseach morning in small instructionalgroups on a withdrawal basis. Inthe afternoon, the ESL teacher isintegrated into the regularclassroom for two or three 40-minute periods in a 10-day cycle.(Every attempt is made to have theESL teachers see the children at thesame time every day.) Although atthe time of implementation, it wasacknowledged that this model lim-ited the amount of time for theintegration of the ESL teacher intothe classroom, it was believed thatit provided the ESL teacher withsufficient opportunity to be in thestudents’ classroom learningenvironment. In this manner, theESL teacher could assist studentswith the application of their Englishskills in content subjects such as

social studies and science, andcould serve as an importantresource in classroom teachers’efforts to accommodate the needs ofESL students in the regularprogram.

Valuing Community Resourcesthrough Multilingual andMulticultural Approaches to Learning

Several action research initiativeswere pursued by a group of Thorn-wood teachers in partnership with

university-based colleagues. Earlyon we identified some core beliefsand goals:

• We are committed to forging astronger home–school connection.

• We believe that reading in any lan-guage develops reading ability.

• We want to engage parents in read-ing with their children at home andto encourage discussion and sharingof experiences between parents andchildren.

In order to pursue these directions,we decided to create book bags sothat the children could bring dual-language books between school andhome. We also hoped to provideaudiocassettes with the storiesrecorded in both English and the L1so that children and parents couldlisten to the stories as well as readthem. As we discussed the project,additional goals and possibilitiesemerged:

• Non-English-speaking parents couldenjoy reading the stories to theirchildren in their own language andexpand on the ideas, values, skills,and concepts they encountered inthe books.

• Through the use of audiocassettes,ESL students and parents would beexposed to basic English vocabulary,common grammatical structures, andconventions of English text.

• The dual-language books would per-mit students to access priorknowledge through their L1, therebyproviding a framework for transfer ofthis knowledge to English.

• By means of the project, the schoolwould be communicating to parentsand students that we value their lan-guage, their prior experiences, theirknowledge, and their culture asimportant resources for the curricu-lum and the community.

• By acknowledging to students thattheir L1 represents a significantaccomplishment, we would encour-age them to express themselves morefully through their L1 in both oraland written communication.

In short, we set out to enhance thestatus of multilingual children bycreating a context within the schoolwhere they would have ampleopportunities to demonstrate theirskills and to share with their peersand teachers aspects of their culture,countries of origin, and personalexperiences. We also wanted to sup-port parents’ efforts to develop theirchildren’s skills in their L1 and tomaintain lines of communicationacross generations. We anticipatedopening up possibilities for greatersocial participation by parents asthey became involved in activitiessuch as translating and recordingbooks, using multilingual wordprocessors, helping out in school,and becoming more active in thecommunity. In addition, we expected

We decided to createbook bags so that thechildren could bringdual-language booksbetween school and

home.


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to expand our own awareness andappreciation of other languages andcultures represented both by thecommunity and by our own uniqueexperiences and backgrounds.

As we discussed the dual-languageinitiative further, however, we real-ized that we knew very little aboutthe home literacy practices andbeliefs of parents in our community.Therefore, we developed a question-naire to explore the literacypractices of the parents and toassess the extent to which theywould support the kinds ofhome–school literacy initiatives wewere discussing. We also asked par-ents if they would be willing to tellsome of their favorite stories tosmall groups of children within theschool setting, either in English ortheir home language.

The Multilingual Reading Survey

The survey was designed to elicitinformation about children’sreading experiences and habits, thesources of children’s literature thatparents had access to, parents’ will-ingness to share their cultural expe-riences and multilingual expertise,and their access to audiotechnology. The survey was also anopportunity to communicate withparents about our attitudes as edu-cators toward the languages andcultures that their children broughtto school. We received 291completed questionnaires. Theresponses were encouraging.Parents expressed an interest in aprogram that would support theirchildren both in acquiring Englishand in maintaining their firstlanguage and culture.

From the survey, we discovered thatthe majority of the school childrenwhose families responded had sto-ries read to them at least three timesa week. Almost half the respondentsreported reading books in English

to their children and almost asmany read both English and L1books. Only a relatively smallpercentage of parents (13%) werereading only L1 books. We wereencouraged to see that a largemajority of parents stated that theytalked about the books/stories withtheir children. A large majority ofparents reported telling stories totheir children, with about equalnumbers using English and the L1.Many expressed a willingness to tellstories to small groups of childrenin the school context.

We had initially thought that therewere about 15 different languagesspoken in the children’s homes.From the questionnaire, we came torealize that more than 40 languageswere represented. After English,spoken by 93 respondents, the mostcommon languages were Arabic (33respondents), Urdu (30), Tamil (28),and Hindi (21). We also learned thatthe majority of families would wel-come the opportunity to read andlisten to dual-language books, andwe got information on how feasibleit might be for families to listen toaudio recordings that would accom-pany the printed texts. We becameaware of a small number ofbookstores and heritage languageschools that might be usefulsources. We also discovered from

the survey that many families hadL1 books that they would considersharing with small groups ofstudents.

However, more valuable thanspecific information about familyreading and writing practices wasthe message that this initiative con-veyed to the community concerningthe framework in which practitionersat Thornwood were thinking abouttheir teaching of literacy. In fact,many parents expressed delight thattheir children’s teachers were inter-ested in learning more about theirstudents’ backgrounds and the expe-riences that shaped their lives. Fam-ily members saw the reading surveyas an indication of Thornwoodteachers’ convictions that acquiringknowledge of the interests, culturalidentities, and linguistic resources oftheir students would help them toteach effectively. The survey alsoreinforced for parents the sincerityof teachers’ interest in integratingcommunity resources into the classcurriculum.

The Dual-Language Books and Stories Project

After we had identified some booksuppliers that focused onmulticultural/multilingual books, wewere faced with the challenge ofwhat to order. Many factors wentinto the selection of our dual-language books. Although we couldnot assess the quality of translationbefore purchasing the books, we didtake into consideration the culturalsensitivity of various subjectmatters. For example, Charlotte’sWeb (White, 1952), where the centralcharacter is a pig, was clearly not agood choice for our school becauseof our Muslim population.

We were mindful of Viv Edwards’s(1998) comment that repetition,rhythm, and rhyme will helpchildren to internalize the

Many parentsexpressed delight that

their children’s teacherswere interested in

learning more abouttheir students’

backgrounds and theexperiences that

shaped their lives.



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vocabulary and structures ofEnglish as well as to predict whatcomes next. This consideration wasinfluential in leading us to chooseThe Very Hungry Caterpillar by EricCarle (1969) and It’s Mine! by RodCampbell (1988). The repetitive lan-guage of these books, the appealingvisual support, and the embeddedmathematical and scientificconcepts made them perfectchoices.

We believed that it was importantto provide our students withpositive role models from a varietyof cultures. Babu’s Day by MiraKapur (1997), about the life of aTamil boy in Bombay, is excellentfor initiating discussions about lifein another country. A Baby JustLike Me by Susan Winter (1994)features a young girl of Africandescent who is coming to termswith the addition of a new babyinto her family. This book isespecially worthwhile because itdeals with an issue that ispotentially relevant to manystudents. We felt that students couldrelate to Anna Goes to School byKati Teague (1991), a story about ayoung girl who learns to adjust to anew school environment and over-comes her reluctance to attendschool.

As we waited impatiently for thedual-language books that weordered to arrive, we decided tomake our own original dual-language stories. Patricia Chowwent to the Mississauga CentralLibrary to check out dual-languagebooks for her class to serve as mod-els for our own books. Her studentswere fascinated with them andenthusiastically took up thechallenge to make their own.

The stories were written in Englishby Patricia’s grade one students andtranslated by their parents or byolder bilingual students in the

school (see Figure 1a and b). Bycreating these books with the helpof teachers, friends, and family, thestudents had the opportunity toexplore their language and Englishin a developmentally appropriateway. Care was taken to ensure thatthe layout of the books allowed thetwo languages to enjoy equalprominence. On each double-pagespread, the illustration is set abovetwo columns of text—the English onthe left, and the first language onthe right. Duplicates were made sothat the children could have a keep-sake, and the school could keep acopy for its dual-language book bagcollection.

One parent, Mrs. Ismail, acted as theArabic word processor expert forsome of the students in Patricia’sclass. Other parents solicitedextended family members to trans-late, handwrite the words, or audio-record the story. This was truly acollaborative effort—a pooling ofexpertise!

To celebrate the students’accomplishments, all bookspublished by the class during themonth of May—both dual-languageand English-only—were displayed inthe school’s showcase outside themain office. They served as visibleevidence of the value thatThornwood placed on the diversityof the school’s student population.We hoped that they were a welcomesight for new registrants to theschool during June and September.

Another exciting development tookplace in June. A newly immigratedKorean student joined Patricia’sclass. Chang Woo was sociable andimmediately well liked. Day afterday, he listened politely during storytime and independently did worksupplied by his ESL teacher, BrendaWong. After a week, it occurred toPatricia that he might enjoylistening to a story in Korean. Shewas aware that Zube Patel, acolleague who taught grade five, hadencouraged a Korean student to do

Figure 1a. Excerpt from Britina’s bilingual Korean-English story


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some creative writing in his nativelanguage. Another Korean studentwith a basic mastery of English hadacted as his translator.

In preparing her students for thesurprise, Patricia highlighted howattentive Chang Woo had been onthe carpet even though he did notunderstand English. Now it wastheir turn to experience listening toa story in a language that theymight not understand. Patriciaencouraged them to observe ChangWoo’s reaction to the language ofthe story. On cue, the boys came inand the author started to read. Ittook a few seconds for Chang Wooto register that he was hearing astory in his own native languageand the smile that crept across hisface thrilled his classmates. Thenthe translator read the story in En-glish. Out of curiosity, Patriciaasked Chang Woo if he could readthe Korean story. He took it and, tothe class’ amazement, began to readconfidently and fluently. His class-mates gasped in admiration. Later,he readily wrote a story in Korean.We arranged for this story to betranslated into English by anotherKorean bilingual student in gradefive. We learned that Chang Woo

was highly literate in his firstlanguage.

In order to extend the audience forour student-authored dual-language stories, Patricia and hercolleague James Wilson created aWeb site (http://thornwood.peelschools.org) on which thestories could reside for a prolongedperiod of time. In this manner,teachers could access the stories toteach and inspire their ESL studentsor to showcase student-made mul-tilingual stories.

The commercially produced dual-language books finally did arrive—to an enthusiastic welcome byparents and students. By then, how-ever, participants in our project haddeveloped a sense of text asdynamic entities that could beenhanced, morphed, and appropri-ated according to the needs and dis-positions of readers. Immediately,participating teachers began work-ing with parents in the communityto audio-record the books. Commu-nity members found creative waysto enliven the recordings. Forexample, Mrs. Ding, a Mandarin-speaking parent, played a recordingof the Moonlight Sonata in thebackground to set the mood for her

reading of Peace at Last by Jill Mur-phy (1995).

Dual-Language Storytelling

At the end of the school year, weplanned a half-day storytelling ses-sion to celebrate multicultural booksand the diversity of languages in theschool. One teacher, Brenda Wong,volunteered to do storytelling inCantonese and English, and weinvited Mrs. Ismail to tell a story inArabic and English. We discussedwith Mrs. Ismail the choice of dual-language book to use as the basis ofthe storytelling, and togetherdecided on It’s Mine! by Rod Camp-bell (1988), a book with elaborateillustrations and appealing storycontent for young readers. Mrs.Ismail offered to make largecardboard animals to represent thecharacters in the story. We arrangedfor a trial run in a kindergartenclass. The young children wereenthralled by her visual displays andby her narrative in Arabic. Many ofthe kindergartners spoke Arabic astheir home language and thereforeunderstood her account of the story.

On the day of the storytelling, we setup four storytelling stations in theschool. Primary and junior classeswere pooled together to make up fourgroups that rotated through thestations in the course of the morning.We videotaped the sessions to gainfeedback for future planning. The ses-sions were received enthusiasticallyby a large majority of the students.Brenda Wong reported that herCantonese-speaking students told herafterwards that they were surprisedand thrilled to hear a story told inCantonese in an “English” school.They were proud that their home lan-guage could be heard by their teach-ers and peers. In some of the sessions,children showed curiosity towardother languages by asking for equiva-lents of familiar English vocabulary

Figure 1b. Excerpt from Maria’s bilingual Russian-English story



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terms such as “good morning,”“family,” “school,” and “friends.”

We learned from this project thatparents and teachers can worktogether in a partnership to organ-ize storytelling sessions. On thebasis of our experience, we suggestgrouping the students according tograde level so that the stories canbetter match students’ age andinterest level. Also, when producingaudiotapes of dual-language booksor telling stories based on thesebooks, it may be advisable to readeach page first in one language andthen in the other so that bilingualand monolingual children can listentogether without losing interest.

AN ACTION FRAMEWORKFOR ACADEMIC LANGUAGELEARNING

We now turn to the conceptualframework that has evolved from ouraction research initiative. At the timethe initiative was getting underway,this framework had not yet beenelaborated in its present form, butthe school- and university-basedparticipants brought some sharedassumptions to the table that wouldbecome core ideas embedded in theframework. We all saw students’home languages and cultures aspotential resources for learning. Wealso believed strongly in the impor-tance of parental involvement inchildren’s education. We all shared acommitment to connecting with indi-vidual children on a personal level aswell as at an instructional level.Finally, we all shared a view of liter-acy that went beyond merely theacquisition of skills in English.

Despite these shared assumptions, wehad to work very hard to bridge thesubstantial distances between profes-sional cohorts entrenched in differentdiscourse communities and with diver-gent understandings of their missionsas educators. As the collaboration pro-

gressed, and as we entered a work-intensive, hands-on stage, it becameevident through a variety of reflectionformats—project organizing meetings,focus group sessions, participants’journal reflections, interview conver-sations—that teachers, researchers, andadministrators did not share the sameunderstandings of their and otherstakeholders’ respective roles in andobligations toward children’s learning.Collaborating teachers were strugglingto accommodate pervasive Ministry ofEducation policies regarding curricularexpectations and standards. Adminis-trators representing the collaboratinginstitutions situated their commitments

within a set of efforts begun in the1980s to reform North American ele-mentary and secondary education.University researchers were often pre-occupied with the democratic natureof the “process,” as though otheruniversity-based colleagues, publish-ing in influential journals, were look-ing over their shoulders, ready topounce in the event that theschool–university–community collab-orations the project engendered didnot live up to their various idealizedversions of these relationships.Ultimately, however, all of these con-cerns were subordinated to whatproved to be our main focus—evolvinga school-based vision of how familiesand educators can work together toenhance bilingual children’s languageand literacy development.

A key construct of the frameworkthat emerged is that of negotiating

identities. Our interactions with stu-dents are constantly sketching a tri-angular set of images:

• an image of our own identities aseducators;

• an image of the identity options wehighlight for our students;

• an image of the society we hope ourstudents will help form.

This constellation of relationshipssuggests that an image of the societythat students will graduate into andof the kinds of contributions theycan make to that society isembedded implicitly in theinteractions between educators andstudents. In this manner, whenteachers ignore or communicateindifference to students’ homelanguages and cultures, this attitudeconstitutes a message to studentswith respect to their identities andwho they are expected to be andbecome within the classroom. Bycontrast, when students’ languagesand cultures are incorporated withinthe classroom and proficiency inlanguages other than English is seenas a significant accomplishment,clearly a very different messageregarding identity is communicatedto students. These issues areexplored further in the frameworkdepicted in Figure 2.

The central sphere in Figure 2 repre-sents the interpersonal space createdin the interactions between teachersand students. Within thisinterpersonal space, or what Vygot-sky (1978) termed the zone of proxi-mal development, knowledge isgenerated (learning occurs) andidentities are negotiated. In contextsof cultural, linguistic, or economicdiversity where social inequalityinevitably exists, these interactionsare never neutral. They either chal-lenge the operation of coercive rela-tions of power in the wider societyor they reinforce these powerrelations.

The more studentslearn, the more theiracademic self-conceptgrows, and the moreacademically engaged

they become.


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At the other end of the sphere, wecan visualize the discourse of socie-tal power relations that is broadcastinto the classroom and directlyaffects how identities are negotiatedbetween teachers and students. Forexample, the discourse that assertsthat bilingual children need toassimilate and give up their L1 ifthey are to succeed in the society isnot a neutral scientific statement offact; on the contrary, it contradictsthe scientific data on this issue(Cummins, 2000) and derivesdirectly from patterns of coercivepower relations in the wider society.

This construction of children’sbilingualism as a problem to beresolved (as opposed to an asset tobe nurtured) frequently results inpatterns of teacher–student interac-tion that communicate to studentsthat they should leave theirlanguage and culture at the school-house door.

Our framework argues that withinthe interpersonal space ofteacher–student interactions,students’ cognitive engagement mustbe maximized if they are toprogress academically. Similarly,

teacher–student interactions mustaffirm students’ cultural, linguistic,and personal identities in order tocreate classroom conditions formaximum identity investment in thelearning process.

Thus, there is a reciprocal relationshipbetween cognitive engagement andidentity investment. The more studentslearn, the more their academic self-concept grows, and the more academi-cally engaged they become. Forstudents to invest their sense of self,their identity, in acquiring their newlanguage and participating actively

Figure 2. The development of academic expertise

FOCUS ONMEANING

• Making inputcomprehensible

• Developingcritical literacy

FOCUS ON USE

Using language to:

• Generate new knowledge

• Create literature and art

• Act on social realities

FOCUS ONLANGUAGE

• Cultivatingawareness oflanguage formsand uses

• Analyzing lan-guage formsand uses criti-cally

MAXIMUMCOGNITIVEENGAGEMENT

MAXIMUMIDENTITYINVESTMENT

TEACHER–STUDENTINTERACTIONS



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in their new culture, they mustexperience positive and affirminginteractions with members of thatculture, including their teachers.This perspective entails twoimplications for how teachers definetheir role. First, teachers must seetheir role as creating instructionalcontexts in which second-languagelearners can become active partnersin the learning process; and second,teachers must view themselves aslearners. That is, to teach effectivelythey must learn from their studentsabout students’ cultures,backgrounds, and experiences.

Maximum cognitive engagementand maximum identity investmentare realized in instruction that pro-vides opportunities for students to

focus on meaning, on languageitself, and on use of both oral andwritten language. In this regard, theimportance of extensive readingand writing in the development ofboth academic self-confidence andacademic language proficiency can-not be overemphasized. Readingtexts (ideally in both L1 and L2)that students can relate to their per-sonal histories or their understand-ing of the world generates themotivation to keep on reading.Writing narratives and analyses (inL1 and L2) that express their grow-ing sense of self allows students tomap out where they have comefrom and where they are going.However, students will also benefitfrom an explicit focus on develop-

ing an awareness of language andits pervasive role in all aspects ofour society. This focus on languageitself and its intersection with vari-ous kinds of power relations in soci-ety encourages students to harvestthe language (Goodman, 2003). Inthis way, they absorb maximum aca-demic language from what they readand are enabled to use this languagepowerfully and effectively in theirown speaking and writing.

REFLECTIONS ON PAST ANDFUTURE DIRECTIONS

Collaborators in the “Situatinglearning in home, school, and com-munity” project at Thornwoodrecognize that our efforts at provid-

Partnerships between university-based and school-basedresearchers can provide new insights into the complexity ofthe many critical issues facing education today. Teacherresearchers and university researchers offer differentangles of vision on the phenomena studied, serving tobring new understandings forward and allowing for trian-gulation of data. Successful ongoing research partnershipsare complex, multi-layered, and based on distributedexpertise. What counts as “expertise” and whose expertisecounts at a particular point in time shifts across members,time, and events to meet the needs and purposes of thecollaborative work. Acknowledging the different types ofexpertise and the ways in which what we know and can domight change over time increases the possibilities for whatwe are able to understand individually and collectivelyfrom our different angles of vision.

Constructing a collaborative research partnership involves:

• Establishing a relationship of ethical collaborative workand mutual respect.

• Building open communication and regular dialogueamong researchers to support everyone’s needs.

• Negotiating ways of entering and being in classrooms(e.g., roles and relationships, placement of video

cameras, degrees of participation in everyday classroomlife), as well as opportunities for discussing phenomenaand sharing data, observations, and research decisions.

• Negotiating who has access to the data, how data iscollected, what is collected, when it is collected (recog-nizing the teacher’s and/or student’s right to say “no” atany point), for what purpose, and by whom.

• Negotiating degrees of participation in the research byany of the researchers.

• Creating new genres for sharing the individual and col-laborative work with different audiences and publics.

• Developing ways to cite the sources of knowledge whenusing student and teacher materials to acknowledgeauthorship of these resources.

• Negotiating who will represent the work in which waysto which groups for what purposes so that new rolesand relationships can be shared with others.

—Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group: Beth Yeager, Judith Green, & Carol Dixon

Layers of Distributed Expertise: Building Successful University/Teacher-Research Partnerships


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unity as Curriculum

ing native language support areonly in their infancy. In an ongoingeffort to ensure that bilingualstudents feel a greater sense ofbelonging and emotional supportand develop high self-esteem, ourgroup continues to focus on provid-ing native language support. Theinitiative has allowed us to discoverand access knowledge, expertise,and energy in our students andcommunity that we were largelyunaware of in previous years(Schecter & Cummins, 2003). Weare encouraged by the fact that newideas emerge in a relatively sponta-neous way now that our collectivemindsets are oriented in this direc-tion. For example, teacher LyndaSliz gave her newcomers thechallenging project of creating anillustrated bilingual dictionary. Shesupplied a commercial illustrateddictionary as a template and as areference. The studentsdemonstrated a strong sense ofindependence and pride in compil-ing and illustrating their bilingualdictionaries.

We are very much aware that weare unlikely to find many of thedirections described and advocatedin this article explicitlyrecommended in most state orprovincial curriculum guidelines.Our project and ongoing languageplanning endeavors have attemptedto go to the deep structure of ourpedagogical mandate by affirmingthe identities of the students weteach, involving parents and otherfamily members as powerfulcontributors to their children’slearning, and ensuring that all stu-dents become cognitively engagedin the learning process.

In addition, we believe that theThornwood experience illustrateshow collegial dialogue and

brainstorming of ideas at the schoollevel can generate practices that,through a spiraling process, engagewith existing theory andcommunity practices to generatedeeper understandings of what canbe achieved pedagogically in multi-lingual school contexts. We hope,too, that in time the cultural andlinguistic capital that bilingual stu-dents bring to schools will bevalued at its full worth.

Authors’ NoteWe wish to thank the educators atThornwood Public School, in particular,Nicole Baron, Valerie Dale, Anita Kelly, Lind-say Sale, Lynda Sliz, Brenda Solomon, andBrenda Wong, for their willingness to enterinto the collaborative project described inthis article. We are also grateful to theSocial Sciences and Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada (SSHRC) for a grant thatsupported this work.

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Author Biographies

Jim Cummins is professor in the Depart-ment of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learn-ing at the Ontario Institute for Studies inEducation of the University of Toronto.Patricia Chow is currently the teacher-librarian and special education teacher atThornwood Public School, Mississauga,Ontario. Sandra R. Schecter is professorof Education and Theoretical and AppliedLinguistics at York University, Toronto,Ontario.


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