Cynthia Brock

This book offers a comprehensive report on a three-year, cross-cultural, critical participatory action research study, conducted in children’s homes and communities in Fiji. This project contributed to building sustainable local capacity in communities without access to early childhood services, so as to promote preschool children’s literacy development in their home languages and English. The book includes rich descriptions of the young children’s lived, multilingual literacy practices in their home and community contexts. This work advances research-based practices for fostering young children’s multilingual literacy and building community capacity in a post-colonial Pasifika context; further, it shares valuable insights into processes and complexities that are inherent to multiliteracy and cross-cultural research.

This book offers a comprehensive report on a three-year, cross-cultural, critical participatory action research study, conducted in children’s homes and communities in Fiji. This project contributed to building sustainable local capacity in communities without access to early childhood services, so as to promote preschool children’s literacy development in their home languages and English. The book includes rich descriptions of the young children’s lived, multilingual literacy practices in their home and community contexts. This work advances research-based practices for fostering young children’s multilingual literacy and building community capacity in a post-colonial Pasifika context; further, it shares valuable insights into processes and complexities that are inherent to multiliteracy and cross-cultural research.

This concise resource provides innovative new strategies for supporting English learners in elementary classrooms. The authors delve into the social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds of English learners in American schools, and describe how to teach to each student's strengths and background knowledge. Each chapter provides examples from real classrooms where first, third, and fifth grade teachers are working to serve students from a wide variety of backgrounds. Guided by up-to-date research on disciplinary literacy, these expert authors provide a meaningful guide to integrating best-practices for English learners across content areas - science, mathematics, and social studies - while fostering high levels of academic proficiency.