About the Authors

Laura Alamillo

Laura Alamillo is a third-year doctoral student in education language, literacy, and culture at the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently a graduate student researcher at the Center for Latino Policy and Research and the Harvard Immigration Project.

Jolynn Asato

Jolynn Asato is a doctoral student in the Division of Urban Schooling in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California at Los Angeles. Her current research interests revolve around language minority students, particularly in how issues of race, class, and gender are linked to policy decisions about education.

Carlos Cuauhtémoc Ayala

Carlos Cuauhtémoc Ayala is a doctoral student at Stanford University in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education with an emphasis on science education, assessment, and minority issues. He has 15 years of experience in education, teaching children (K-12 bilingual science and math), serving as principal, and instructing future teachers at the university level. His research focuses include math and science assessment practices with an emphasis is on cognition and linguistic minorities. As well as pedagogical practices in science instruction that enhance learning and increase enthusiasm for all students.

William Douglas Baker

William Douglas Baker is an instructor in the Teacher Education Program in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at University of California, Santa Barbara.  He has been a high school English teacher and is a Fellow of the South Coast Writing Project and the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project.  His current research interests focus on the examination of secondary school literacy, disciplinary knowledge construction in classrooms, and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching. His research uses an interactive ethnographic approach to examine how knowledge is socially and culturally constructed in classrooms.

Patricia Baquedano-López

Patricia Baquedano-López is an assistant professor in education, language, literacy, and culture at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. She is an applied linguist whose interests include the study of language socialization and literacy practices in and out of schools.

Michele Bousquet Gutierrez

Michele Bousquet Gutierrez is a research assistant in the School of Education at Stanford University. She earned a master's degree in education with a specialization in language learning and policy from Stanford in 1999.

Yuko Goto Butler

Yuko Goto Butler is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Education at Stanford University. She also teaches educational psychology and second language and literacy development at San Jose State University. Her research interests include the role of metacognition in second and bilingual language learning.

Frances Contreras

Frances Contreras is a Ph.D. candidate in administration and policy analysis at the Graduate School of Education, Stanford University. She is a graduate of the Univiersity of California, Berkeley and Harvard University. Frances presently serves on the board of the Chicana/Latina Foundation of Northern California and the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy.

Julia E. Curry-Rodríguez

Julia E. Curry-Rodríguez is a professor in the Mexican American Studies Department at San José State University. Her Ph.D. is in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. Using qualitative methods her research focuses on immigrant women and children . She specializes in race and gender, immigration (specifically Mexican), and Chicana/o studies.

Carol Dixon

Carol Dixon is a senior lecturer and assistant dean in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at University of California, Santa Barbara. She has been co-director of the South Coast Writing Project since its beginning in 1979. She is co-founder, with Dr. Judith Green, of the Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group, a research collaborative of writing project teachers, university faculty, and graduate students, which started in 1990. Her current research interests focus on the examination of exemplary classroom practice and on the ways these classrooms provide access to academic content for all students. In particular, she is interested in the processes and practices through which literate communities are established in these classrooms and the opportunities for learning that are available to students as a result of living in particular classroom communities. Her research uses an interactive ethnographic approach that combines ethnography from a cultural anthropology perspective to provide a look over time at the classroom community with sociolinguistic discourse analysis of classroom talk.

María E. Fránquiz

María E. Fránquiz is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She was awarded the NABE Outstanding Dissertation Competition in 1996. Her research examines Latina/o students' identity construction and its effect on school performance. Her publications appear in journals such as Language Arts; Journal of Classroom Interaction; TESOL Quarterly, Primary Voices; and in books such as The best for our children: Critical perspectives on literacy for Latino students; Teaching for a tolerant world: Grades K-6, essays and resources; and Making a difference in the lives of bilingual/bicultural children.

Patricia Gándara

Patricia Gándara is Professor of Education at University of California Davis, and Associate Director of the University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute. Her most recent book is entitled The dimensions of time and the challenge of school reform, published by SUNY Press.

Augustine Garcia

Dr. Augustine (Gus) Garcia is Professor of Elementary and Bilingual/ Multicultural Education at California State University, Bakersfield. Previously, he taught and coordinated a multicultural doctoral program at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. His degrees were earned at California State University, Fresno (B.A.) and the University of New Mexico (M.A. and Ph.D.).

Judith Green

Judith Green (Professor of Education, Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of Californai, Santa Barbara) engages in research on classroom discourse and the social construction of knowledge. She has served as editor of the Reading Research Quarterly, edited two books on language, discourse, and ethnography, and is series editor for Language and Social Processes (Hampton Press). She has presented at AILA, Conference for Sociocultural Research, ISCRAT, AERA, and NCTE. Current publications focusing on discourse analysis include Consequential progressions: Exploring collective-individual development in a bilingual classroom; Discourse, literacy, and social practice; The myth of the objective transcript; The construction of social competencies through talk; and Talking knowledge into being.

Kris D. Gutiérrez

Kris D. Gutierrez is a professor in the Division of Urban Schooling in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Gutierrez's research focuses on studying the literacy practices of urban schools. In particular, her research concerns itself with the social and cognitive consequences of literacy practices in formal and non-formal learning contexts.

Kenji Hakuta

Kenji Hakuta is Professor of Education at Stanford University, where he teaches courses on language development, bilingual education, and research methods. He received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Harvard University in 1979.

Julie Maxwell-Jolly

Julie Maxwell-Jolly is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Davis. The focus of her doctoral studies is education policy with respect to culturally and linguistically diverse students. Ms. Maxwell-Jolly has spent almost two decades working in various capacities in this field as a bilingual teacher, advocate for language minority students, and researcher.

Jennifer Evelyn Orr

Jennifer Evelyn Orr is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University in educational linguistics. She currently works as a research assistant in the School of Education at Stanford.

Deborah Palmer

Deborah Palmer is a doctoral student at the University of California at Berkeley and is also a bilingual educator. She has been working on issues related to the implementation of Proposition 227 in California. Other research interests include dual immersion programs for second language learners and issues of bilingualism and biliteracy.

Sara Micaela Paredes

Sara Micaela Paredes was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She received her M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in language, literacy, and culture. Her research focused on how educational reform policies influence schooling at the district, school, and classroom level.

Kellie Rolstad

Kellie Rolstad is Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction at Arizona State University, where she teaches courses on language diversity, multicultural education, and elementary language arts methods. Her interests include two-way immersion programs, bilingual curriculum development, and a variety of topics in sociolinguistics. Examples of her work have appeared in the Bilingual Review, NABE News, the Bilingual Research Journal, and Sozialwissenschaftliche Literatur Rundschau. She may be reached at rolstad@asu.edu.

Elsa Schirling

Elsa Schirling is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University in language, literacy, and policy at the Graduate School of Education. She has her master's degrees in language, literacy, and culture as well as in policy analysis and evaluation—both from Stanford University—with a minor in organizational behavior. Elsa has over 10 years of experience in education. She has taught at the elementary school level and is currently a teacher educator, preparing teachers to teach in diverse classrooms.

Tom Stritikus

Tom Stritikus is Assistant Professor of ESL/Bilingual Education at the University of Washington. He is a former third- and fourth-grade teacher. His research interests include biliteracy, language policy, and language development.

Angela Valenzuela

Angela Valenzuela is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Faculty Associate at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching interests are in the sociology of education, minority youth in schools, educational policy, and urban education reform. Dr. Valenzuela is also the author of Subtractive schooling: U.S. Mexican youth and the politics of caring (State University of New York Press, 1999). Her book is the winner of this year's American Educational Research Association Outstanding Book Award.

Celia Viramontes

Celia Viramontes is a Ph.D student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests center on Mexican and Central American immigrant communities in California and the role of community-based activism in creating social change for Latino immigrants, students, and their families.

Beth Yeager

Beth Yeager is currently a doctoral student in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is also a part-time second-grade teacher in the Santa Barbara School District. Ms. Yeager has been a bilingual teacher at the preschool and elementary level for 31 years, 14 of those in fifth- or sixth-grade bilingual classrooms. She is a Fellow with the South Coast Writing Project and a member for ten years of the Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group, a collaborative classroom-based research partnership between teacher-researchers and university-based researchers. Her current work as both a teacher-researcher and as a university researcher has been focused on issues of equity in access to academic content and constructing communities of inquirers in diverse settings. Recent publications include articles on teaching for social justice and social action as well as on her work as a teacher-researcher.