The following article will address the need for classrooms to promote the use of children's literature whose characters speak in a dialect other than Standard English (specifically African American Vernacular English, or AAVE). It will begin by drawing attention to the lack of authentic representation of African Americans in picture books…

In their new collaboration, Celia Genishi and Anne Haas Dyson celebrate the genius of young children as they learn language and literacy in our diverse times. Despite burgeoning sociocultural diversity, many early childhood classrooms (pre-K to grade 2) offer a one-size-fits-all curriculum in which learning is too often assessed by standardized…

This study explored conceptualisations that two groups of Aboriginal and Anglo-Australian students attending metropolitan schools in Western Australia instantiate through the use of English words. At the time of the study, many educators believed that both these groups of students spoke the same dialect. A group of 30 Aboriginal primary school…