Learning English at School

Kelleen Toohey is Professor Emerita, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her recent research focuses on socio-material perspectives on language learning with a particular focus on early childhood language education. She is a co-author of Disrupting Boundaries in Education and Research (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Collaborative Research in Multilingual Classrooms (Multilingual Matters, 2009) and co-editor, with Bonny Norton, of Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

In a world that needs new visions and ethics, this book stimulates important and original conversations. Theoretically grounded in new materialism Toohey rethinks classrooms as assemblages, joining the human and non-human as we take rides with pens on paper, follow fingers on iPads, and play with objects. This is a generous open-ended critical inquiry into the lives of children, complete with research stories from which we can all learn.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Framing Story: Theory, Setting and Methodology2. New Materialism and Language Learning3. Kindergarten Stories4. Constructing School Identities: Kindergarten5. ‘Break Them Up, Take Them Away’: Practices in the Grade 1 Classroom6. Discursive Practices in Grade 2: Language Arts Lessons7. Appropriating Voices and Telling StoriesReferencesIndex