This book brings together Patricia F. Carini's concept of the developing child as a "maker of works" and M.M. Bakhtin's theory of language as "hero" to re-examine how we have defined and researched early written language development. Through a collection of five essays and a documentary account of one young writer, Himley explores fundamental questions about development, language use and learning, and phenomenological reading or description as a possible interpretive methodology in education and research. She demonstrates how to understand writing as the complex semiotic authoring of self and...

This work introduces, through story and essay, a disciplined descriptive process for understanding children's strengths as particular learners and thinkers. The descriptive review is a method of collaborative inquiry that draws on the detailed knowledge teachers and parents have of children.

By carefully documenting how space was made for Jenny - a child who didn't fit the school mold - this book offers a renewed sense of human possibility and an attainable vision of what schools can be. The authors demonstrate that it is only by attending to each and every child that schooling can begin to achieve its most noble aim: equality. Readers are introduced to Prospect's educational philosophy and descriptive processes, with details about what the processes are and what they offer teachers, parents, and children. Jenny's story is told through these processes - ways of looking at...