Moments and Patterns That Matter: Identifying Trajectories of Literate Activity Development in Students

• In Event: 26.080 - Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: 26.080-13 - Asset-Based Approaches to Students' Writing and Literate Activity

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a yearlong qualitative study that explores the writing activity of ten seventh grade students in two seventh grade language arts classrooms in southern California. Through a series of interviews, observations, document collection, and videotaped activity, the writing activity of students was analyzed in small segments of socialized action across the school year. Changes in activity were identified over time and anchored to environmental conditions, instructional design, and the particularities of individual students. Through a careful analysis of these moments of change in 'literate acts,' this study has been able to provide a review of writing activity at a granular level and connect it to larger social systems of which that activity is part.

Author

• Ryan J. Dippre, University of California - Santa Barbara