<bigger>I am pleased to become a subsriber of the XMCA listserve,
although I tend to be a rather quiet participant. I am currently a
professor at Michigan State University. My research interests include
the study of literacy practices and discourse communities in special
education, particularly, inclusion classrooms. My most recent work
involves a collaborative research project with teachers to design and
implement a literacy curriculum based upon sociocultural theory that
might benefit primary-grade students with disabilities. Five
assumptions have guided the design and enactment of the curricular
approach, including: (a) students should be involved in meaningful,
purposeful and integrated activities that span traditionally separate
areas of the curriculum (e.g., oral, listening, speaking, and writing);
(b) classroom dialogues should be enacted that involve students in
social interactions within a cognitive apprenticeship model; (c)
students need to be
</bigger></fontfamily><bigger><fontfamily><param>Times</param><bigger>supported
in their zones of proximal
</bigger></fontfamily><fontfamily><param>Geneva</param>development
through the use of temporary scaffolds; (d) students should be
apprenticed in the literacy practices of the discourse community
(e.g., including the ways-of-thinking, ways-of-talking; ways-of-acting
that are related to self-regulation in speaking, reading, and
writing)</fontfamily><fontfamily><param>Times</param><bigger>; and (e)
students come to understand the communicative functions of oral/written
literacy by participating in a community of readers and writers.
</bigger></fontfamily><fontfamily><param>Geneva</param>I am also
involved in a in a collaborative research project with Dr. Yong Zhao
(of MSU) to develop and implement a web-based software that can be used
in elementary classrooms to enhance the literacy environments for all
students, but particularly for students with mild disabilities. I have
been influenced by many scholars (many of whom are subscribers of
XMCA), but I find myself citing the following (a partial listing):
M. Bakhtin
Douglas Barnes
Michael Cole
James Gee
Michael Halliday
Jay Lemke
Sarah Michaels
Luis Moll
Mary Catherine O'Connor
Addison Stone
Lev Vygotsky
Gordon Wells
James Wertsch
</fontfamily></bigger>
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Carol Sue Englert |
Michigan State University |
College of Education | Phone: (517) 355-1835
334 Erickson Hall | Fax: (517) 353-6393
East Lansing, MI 48824-1034 | E-mail: carolsue who-is-at MSU.edu
|
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