Drawing upon a theoretical framework that acknowledges the bidirectional relationship between local discursive acts and institutional structures, this paper analyzes classroom observations with student interviews to understand how fifth-grade multilingual learners are making sense of dialogic literacy instruction to support their reading…

The proliferation of educational technologies has had a profound impact on the dynamics of education and has raised questions regarding how the nature of teaching and learning should be conceptualized. This study explores how the use of technology mediates class interaction, shapes class discourse, and supports the English learners' language…

Translanguaging offers a new perspective on language learning by affirming and leveraging the diverse language practices that make up learners' unitary language repertoire as resources for their learning. Despite the potential pedagogical benefits of translanguaging, English-only policies are still prevalent in many language classrooms. Even when…

Language in education for children and youth from low-income communities of color, including those learning English as an additional language, has been fraught for decades with ideological entanglements, conceptual ambiguities, and empirical limitations. Meanwhile, the teacher learning challenge to implement equitable teaching practices remains…

Reasoning words are linguistic features associated with classroom exploratory talk as students talk-to-learn, explore ideas, and probe each other's thinking. This study extends established research on use of reasoning words to a fourth- to fifth-grade literature-based English language learning context. We examined frequency and patterning of…

This article explores how a primary school teacher utilized the frameworks of dynamic assessment (DA) and the instructional conversation (IC) within a Spanish as a foreign language classroom. DA was used to construct zones of proximal development with individuals in the classroom context. A menu of pre-scripted assisting prompts, used to respond…

As the number of immigrant students increases in U.S. classrooms, so have the challenges teachers encounter as they seek to be culturally responsive. Framed by multicultural education and sociocultural theory, this qualitative study explored how 8 fifth-grade, newly arrived immigrant students ("newcomers") from 6 different countries,…

This study examines the social construction of proficiency and the discursive practices prevalent in linguistically diverse schools that afford or constrain participation in language learning communities. Drawing from discourse studies, positioning theory and a sociocultural framework, this study analyzed data from audio recordings and…