ABSTRACT
Freire’s dichotomy was evident in our work as we saw changes in the children and ourselves when we decreased the separations between words and worlds and supported the children in drawing on both, legitimately, across the many contexts in which they live. In this chapter I present the themes of counterportraiture that may apply to classrooms and serve as areas for further research to support the creation of classrooms in which writing is an integral part of a democratic project. These themes are the result of thematic analyses across the data and domains (see Appendix 1) from the previous chapters. I do not offer specific ideas for further research or classroom applications because such suggestions run counter to the relationships inherent in and context-driven specificity of counterportraiture. Counterportraiture is, ultimately, evidence of the democratic process when democracy is considered as both an ideal and a political project. As an ideal, democracy can never be achieved because of the continually changing contexts of our world, but as a political project we can use writing to help children and ourselves engage in an ongoing understanding, clarification, interrogation, and enactment of this ever-emerging ideal.
