Description
This book explores the freedom to use the language resources we have at our disposal to learn to our fullest, to engage in inquiry about learning and teaching, and to go beyond the surface in topics of schooling and education. Within a particular school context, the author explores how these freedoms came into being, how they took shape, and what they meant for the individuals involved. She shows that the individual and social freedoms in which the teacher and the learner operate within schools are important measures and outcomes of intellectual development. In connecting language, culture, learning, and intellectual development as freedoms in her own life, the author explores a new way of seeing the role of multiple languages in education and the freedom to learn.
Author Info
María E. Torres-Guzmán is Associate Professor of Bilingual/Bicultural Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her publications have explored alternative perspectives on the relationship between multiple languages, multiple cultures and learning. Her current interests focus on linguocultural spaces and personnel historical narratives.
Reviews
Freedom at Work is a beautifully presented book that offers us an inspiring glimpse of what schools can be for English language learners. There are valuable lessons here about the importance of leadership, about creative ways of designing and sustaining professional development, and about the synergy of researcher-practitioner collaboration. It will be a great addition to the set of readings I usually recommend for future teachers and young researchers.
—Guadalupe Valdes, Stanford University
“Highly accessible to teachers and student teachers, this book offers a brilliant illustration of why schools and educational researchers in university programs should be working hand-in-hand, to more effectively develop viable approaches to schooling and more effective approaches to transforming deficit attitudes and differential practices that threaten freedom and justice.”
—Antonia Darder, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Enmarcando/An Introduction
Part One: Language Development as Freedom
Chapter 2 Language and Culture from the Periphery to the Center
Chapter 3 Negotiating Language
Part Two: Professional Development as Freedom
Chapter 4 The Professional Development Plan
Chapter 5 The Many Benefits of Group Study
Chapter 6 The Synergy of Collaboration
Chapter 7 Teaching as Social Practice
Part Three: Intellectual Development as Freedom
Chapter 8 Teachers Speak
Chapter 9 Other Theories of Development as Freedom
Chapter 10 One Principal’s Perspective
Chapter 11 My Perspective
Chapter 12 Conclusions: Openings for Future Freedoms
Index
About the Author