Regarding Children's Words

Written by members of one of the best-known and longest-standing teacher study groups, this compelling collection of essays explores the intersection of thought, language, and culture as revealed in classroom discourse. Focusing on classroom issues, this insightful volume:

• Shows teachers how to make reflection play a key role in their teaching and planning and how to translate research into improved teaching and learning in the classroom.
• Includes research with diverse groups of students in a variety of settings, including pre-K, elementary school, high school, and special education classrooms.
• Features a chapter on the evolution of the renowned Brookline Teacher Researcher Seminar.
• Describes how this influential group functions, explaining how veteran teachers developed theories based on classroom investigations and collaborative work.

The editor of this book, Cynthia Ballenger, is a literacy teacher and one of the founding members of the Brookline Teacher Researcher Seminar. She is the author of Teaching Other People's Children: Literacy and Learning in a Bilingual Classroom which received the Outstanding Writing award from the National Association of Colleges of Teacher Education.

"Teachers need just what the Brookline Teacher Researcher Seminar offers in this book…wonderful, engaging, and intellectually stimulating."
—Ruth Shagoury, Lewis and Clark College

“The Brookline Teacher Researcher Seminar, whose story and work is on display in this book, transformed how we think about teaching, classrooms, and research. Based on the authors’ own experiences and the highly innovative strategies they devised to work together, these teachers developed powerful ways of studying language in classrooms. In the end, they have improved children's lives and set a new standard for teacher research.”
— James Paul Gee, University of Wisconsin-Madison