Language and Cultural Practices in Communities and Schools

This is a powerful collection of ethnographically grounded work that insists on the visibility of everyday and out-of-school practices in deepening our understanding of inclusive learning. This timely exploration of the diverse contexts of learning is an urgent call to consider the full complexities of the multiple spaces that are navigated by students. This volume opens possibilities for researchers, practitioners, communities and policy-makers to focus much-needed attention on the breadth of knowledge across contexts that constitutes robust and enduring learning. Norma Gonzalez, Professor Emerita, University of Arizona, USA. Garcia-Sanchez and Faulstich Orellana have pulled together an impressive collection of careful, long-term studies of language-in-context to illustrate how `everyday learning' can be reconceptualized as something that really happens every day and in all contexts, including schools. The everyday practices discussed range from Moroccan students' comparisons of varieties of Spanish in Spain, to conversations about `good citizenship' among students who have precarious immigration status. Through such everyday discussions about language, youth from minoritized groups, their peers, and their teachers build the knowledge to traverse contexts and cross communities. The chapters in this volume show us how this high-level intellectual travel is already being done, and how we all can, and must, all do more of it. Betsy Rymes, Professor of Educational Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, USA. This book is a unique and powerful volume that extends our understanding of culture and equity in education. It breaks down false binaries between academic competences and the linguistic and cultural knowledge that young people bring to the classroom at the same time as it instigates new thinking and models of what truly meaningful, creative, cultural sustaining and expansive learning can look like in schools. All educators committed to equity and social justice will value the breadth of insights into youth and community practices and educational implications shared in this book. Wan Shun Eva Lam, Associate Professor, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, USA.