Book Review: Understanding Literacy Teaching and Learning Outside Classrooms

Book Review: Understanding Literacy Teaching and Learning Outside Classrooms Schools Out!: Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice. Glynda Hull and Katherine Schultz, Editors, 2002. New York: Teachers College Press (1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027). Softcover, 278 pages.

Schools Out!: Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice is an edited book that pushes our thinking on the literate practices of children and families in settings beyond classrooms. Stretching across voices, geographical locations, organizations, and physical settings, the editors and contributors provide a clear picture that reinforces the notion that literacy teaching and learning is more than a discrete set of skills and strategies to be learned by children and adults. They raise our awareness about the necessary roles that literacy plays in the lives of people in out-of-school contexts. The editors and contributors make the point many times over that neither learning nor uses of literacy end when school is out.

The book is divided into four sections, with two chapters in sections one and two, three chapters in section three, and one chapter in section four. Each chapter ends with two scholarly commentaries written by classroom teachers and literacy educators as a way to bridge voices and perspectives on literacy practices in out-of-school programs and activities. The authors synthesize main points and raise issues that need to be addressed further.

Part I, Framing the Issues, includes two chapters coauthored by the editors. In Chapter One, Schultz and Hull lay out the theoretical and conceptual frameworks for understanding the significance of out-of-school contexts and the impact that a variety of theories have on literacy learning. They identify the ethnography of communication, (e.g., Heath, 1983; Taylor & Dorsey-Gaines, 1988), perspectives on Vygotskian and activity theory (e.g., Engestrom, Miettinen & Punamaki, 1999; Scribner & Cole, 1981), and The New Literacy Studies (e.g., Gee, 2000; Street, 1993a, 1993b) as the theoretical categories used to examine literacy theory in out-of-school contexts. Many studies of literate practices in the home, workplace, and community organizations and programs have enabled literacy scholars to more closely examine literacy practices in school and thus have moved the field forward over the past 25 years. Schultz and Hull provide readers with a selective but comprehensive review of the literature in the three theoretical categories mentioned above. They use the theories as a lens to locate the growing body of literacy research and practices in settings other than classrooms.

In Chapter Two, Hull and Schultz present a scholarly overview of boundaries crossed in literate practices, activities, and behaviors in out-of-school contexts. Using brief but descriptive vignettes from recent research on literacy in nonschool settings, the authors couch these studies within the three theoretical frameworks to explore how this work can influence literacy research invested in bridging classrooms and various nonschool settings. The authors ask tough rhetorical questions in an effort to push our thinking about why students and adults might find their literate activities at home, in community programs and organizations, and in the workplace appealing and engaging, while rejecting classroom literacy practices and activities.

Literacy at Home and In the Community includes Chapters Three and Four. Chapter Three, written by Ellen Skilton-Sylvester, is an ethnographic study of Nan, a Cambodian girl, and her writing experiences outside of school over a three-year period. Nan exhibited powerful differences between her in-school and out-of-school writing behaviors and products. While Nan's ESOL and fourth-grade teachers spoke of her writing weaknesses, she wrote consistently and often outside of school. Perhaps Nan's greatest assets were her oral, visual, and creative focuses in writing. There was a clear mismatch, however, between what Nan was required and expected to do in school literacy activities and practices and what she was capable of producing in her personal writing.

Juan C. Guerra and Marcia Farr, coauthors of Chapter Four, examine a number of spiritual letters that Dona Josefina wrote to God and several pieces of autobiographical writings by Mula, one of Dona Josefma's nieces. Dona Josefina wrote short prayers for a prayer circle, which were read and responded to with a short comment by the leader of the prayer circle. The authors look at the features of Dona Josefina's spiritual letters, such as to whom the letters are addressed (e. g., God, Jesus), self-identities present in the writing, and how the letters as a community literacy practice relate to school writing. Main, Dona Josefina's niece, wrote personal narratives at the request of one of the authors. Main's personal narratives were influenced by school-oriented expectations (e.g., texts were more complex through revisions). Guerra and Farr ask a key question: What insights do the outof-school writing of women such as Dona Josefina and Malu provide college composition teachers who are increasingly facing students from diverse communities? They answer the question by providing possibilities for future research directions and implications for practice.