David Jolliffe – författare

In Literacy as Conversation, the authors tell stories of successful literacy learning outside of schools and inside communities, both within urban neighborhoods of Philadelphia and rural and semi-rural towns of Arkansas. They define literacy not as a basic skill but as a rich, broadly interactive human behavior: the ability to engage in a conversation carried on, framed by, or enriched through written symbols. Eli Goldblatt takes us to after-school literacy programs, community arts centers, and urban farms in the city of Philadelphia, while David Jolliffe explores learning in a Latinx youth theater troupe, a performance based on the words of men on death row, and long-term cooperation with a rural health care provider in Arkansas. As different as urban and rural settings can be—and as beset as they both are with the challenges of historical racism and economic discrimination—the authors see much to encourage both geographical communities to fight for positive change.

This volume offers a new perspective on the evaluation of writing. The first half of the volume reviews research on composing and examines existing methods of evaluating writing. The second half sets some limitations in assessing changes incomposing processes, describes some methods researchers in other areas have used to investigate cognitive processes, and outlines a model of writers' knowledge that can lead to comprehensive assessments of writing skills.

This work calls attention to the ways that teachers of writing must attend to the idea of the classroom, must be conscious of the spaces in which they meet students and must be aware of the physical, material conditions that constrain or affect the teaching of writing.