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This article addresses issues related to biliteracy development in children. It presents 2 case examples as illustrations, 1 of "incipient" biliteracy, obtained in a kindergarten classroom, and 1 of "instructed" biliteracy, obtained in a third-grade classroom. Both examples highlight how children use the social processes and cultural resources at hand to develop their literate competencies in Spanish and English. In addition, special challenges, such as the predominance of reductionist forms of schooling, and special resources, as found in "additive" circumstances for learning, are discussed in relation to the formation of biliteracy in classrooms.

One of the fundamental values built in to current special education practice is the notion of equity for students with disabilities. In a review regarding the least restrictive environment (LRE), Yell (1995) said, "LRE is a principle stating that students with disabilities are to be educated in settings as close to regular classes as appropriate for the child" (p. 193). Although almost all stakeholders agree with these goals in principle, there is significant and heated debate in the professional community about how to achieve these goals. Much of the discussion on LRE seems to reflect a specific place-a physical context such as the general education classroom. In this article, we draw on a sociocultural framework to propose an expanded view of LRE. Specifically, we argue that a focus on the physical setting is not the most appropriate unit of analysis. Rather, we suggest that the same placement or setting can be either facilitating or restrictive, depending on the social organization of specific activity settings that comprise a given context. A different view is provided by sociocultural theory, which proposes a unit of analysis that includes the individual in interaction with a specific activity setting.

In this conversation, a group of educators discuss professional development and identity, representation in academe, assessment of linguistically diverse students, current movements in literacy instruction, teaching style and process of instruction, content of instruction, and teacher training from their perspectives as Latino and Latina researchers.

The questions and issues that underlie bilingual education are constrained by deficit views about the abilities and experiences of language-minority students. In general, most research has emphasized how well students acquire English, assimilate into mainstream culture, and perform on tests of basic skills. Employing a sociocultural perspective that acknowledges the many resources that are available to children outside of the school, the author describes how research about children's communities can be used to enhance instruction. For this to work, researchers and teachers must redefine their roles so that they enter into collaborative working relationships that focus on ways of bringing about educational change.

This paper proposes an alternate model of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. It is argued that conceptions of the «zone» emphasizing the transfer of skills from adult to child are too narrow, theoretically misleading, and of limited instructional utility. The concept is then examined in relation to Vygotsky's broader theoretical and practical concerns. Examples taken from a recent classroom observational study are provided to illustrate how the concept of the zone can facilitate a critical assessment of children and of the social system created for the children to learn. The focus is on the appropriation and mastery of mediational means, such as writing, assessed not only or necessarily through independent performance after guided practice, but by the ability of children to participate in qualitatively new collaborative activities. The role of the adult isn't to provide structured cues to facilitate performance, but through exploratory talk and other social mediations assist children in taki...

Of great value, in both scientific and practical respects, would be the pedagogicalpsychological investigation of the reciprocal relation between learning activity and the productive labor that pupils undertake together with adults. This problem has received precious little attention by developmental and pedagogical psychology in the Soviet Union, although the development of learning activity is closely tied precisely to productive activity. V. V. Davydov (1988, p. 34) One of the most interesting and important contributions of Vygotskian psychology is the proposal that human thinking must be understood in its concrete social and historical circumstances. As Luria (1982) explained it, to understand thinking one must go beyond the human organism. One must search for the origins of “conscious activity,” not in the “recesses of the human brain or in the depths of the spirit, but in the external conditions of life.” “Above all,” Luria continued, “this means that one must seek these origins in the external processes of social life, in the social and historical forms of human existence” (p. 25). He later reiterated as follows: The basic difference between our approach and that of traditional psychology will be that we are not seeking the origins of human consciousness in the depths of the “soul” or in the independently acting mechanisms of the brain. … Rather, we are operating in an entirely different sphere – in humans' actual relationship with reality, in their social history, which is closely tied to labor and language. (1982, p. 27)

The seminal work of Russian theorist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) has exerted a deep influence on psychology over the past 30 years. Vygotsky was an educator turned psychologist, and his writings clearly reflected his pedagogical concerns. For Vygotsky, schools and other informal educational situations represent the best cultural laboratories to study thinking. He emphasized the social organization of instruction, writing about the 'unique form of cooperation between the child and the adult that is the central element of the educational process'. Vygotsky's emphasis on the social context of thinking represents the reorganization of a key social system and associated modes of discourse, with potential consequences for developing new forms of thinking. This volume is devoted to analyzing Vygotsky's ideas as a means of bringing to light the relevance of his concepts to education. What does Vygotsky's approach have to offer education? Distinguished scholars from various countries and representing several disciplines discuss the essence and significance of Vygotsky's work, analyze the educational implications of his thoughts, and present applications in practice, addressing educational issues such as school organization, teacher training, educational achievement, literacy learning and development, uses of technology, community-based education, and special education.

or "regular" school programs. These inputoutput models usually rely on standardized norm-referenced tests as measures of program "effectiveness" and fail to consider either other types of tests or other school-process variables which intervene between program input and academic outcome. Mehan (1978) has pointed out that there is a certain methodological irony in the work of researchers and evaluators who use such models to examine the influ