This qualitative classroom study follows two high school English teachers, in one class apiece, and their students across a school year in a diversely populated urban high school in the south central United States. Using case study, ethnographic, and microanalytic methods, the research focuses on writing instruction and ways in which talk and relational dimensions inside one-to-one, teacher-student writing conferences interact and influence subsequent student writing and reflect larger classroom patterns established by the teacher. Data sources include fieldnotes; video recordings of writing conferences; audio recordings of student and teacher interviews across the year; transcriptions; student writing, and other documents. The approaches to analysis include constant comparison, discourse analysis, and microanalysis (Bogdan & Bicklen, 1992; Erickson, 1992; Bloome et al., 2005; Charmaz, 2006). Informing the analytic process are sociocultural theories of learning, language, literacy, and relationships (Gee, 1996; Wertsch, 1991; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988, 1991; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Bahktin, 1981, 1986, 1994; Wells, 2007; Noddings, 1988, 2005). Central to the theoretical foundation for examining evidence of teaching and learning in this study are Erickson’s (2006) sedimentation, Burbules and Rice’s (1991) communicative virtues, and van Manen’s (1991, 1995) pedagogical tact. Findings include, 1) structures that make writing conferences dialogic encounters including openings and closings, internal structures, and duration; 2) relational moves, or interpersonal efforts by teachers inside writing conferences, that serve to bring the curriculum and the student closer include particular kinds of verbal and non verbal communications; and, 3) instructional moves, or how the teachers used talk for specific instructional purposes, including teaching of writing rules, drafting, and modeling the role of the reader. Findings suggest that teaching and learning occur in the context of relationships, and in recursive and non-linear patterns; moreover, brief encounters between teacher and student that are both instructional and relational may build over the arc of the life of the classroom. This investigation may contribute to the limited literature on high school writing conferences and help educators consider their potential as particular kinds of instructional conversations and relational platforms to encourage dialogic classroom environments hospitable to students from diverse backgrounds. / text

For low-income minority and marginalized communities, American democracy’s educational mission remains unfulfilled. Student voices have provided insight into ways that schools disserve and serve students and how schools can improve in promoting academic achievement; however, academically successful low-income students’ voices—particularly those at the elementary school level—are largely excluded from the literature. Providing a platform for student voices, this qualitative, intrinsic critical case study explored six high achieving low-income students’ views of their academic success and how that success was achieved. Participants were six fifthgrade students, their parents, and teacher, in a school-wide Title I urban public school. Data were collected over a 12-week period through individual interviews, observation, participation, and semiformal conversations. Using an immersive pattern analysis, four main categories emerged from the student interview data: student beliefs about their role; classroom structures; teacher practices; and family support. The study found four principal success factors: a dynamic effort-driven view of success and intelligence; a rigorous dialogic classroom that prioritized student voice, critical thinking, collaboration, and social imagination; an accountable classroom culture of high expectations and mastery learning; and the richly diverse experiences and teachings of parents and families as valuable funds of knowledge. Implications and recommendations are included for policy, practice, and future research.