ABSTRACT
Jerome (Jerry) C. Harste is emeritus professor of language education at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he was the first member of that faculty to hold the Martha Lea & Bill Armstrong Chair in Teacher Education. His book Language Stories and Literacy Lessons (Heinemann, 1984), coauthored with Carolyn Burke and Virginia Woodward, was awarded the David H. Russell Research Award for Outstanding Contributions in the Teaching of English. Jerry is a coauthor of Creating Classrooms for Authors (Heinemann, 1988) and Creating Classrooms for Authors and Inquirers (Heinemann, 1996) as well as host and developer of several videotape series including The Authoring Cycle and Visions of Literacy (available from Irwin in Canada and Heinemann in the United States 1986 and 1990-2, respectively). He sees this volume as extending both the work begun in these earlier volumes as well as his work with teachers in creating curricula that highlight multiple ways of knowing, inquiry-based learning, and critical literacy. Twelve years ago Chris Leland, a group of teachers from the Indianapolis Public Schools, and Jerome created a new public K-8 school called the Center for Inquiry (CFI), dedicated to creating curriculum based on the inquiry questions of learners. Because of its success, other CFIs have sprung up nationally, and the Indianapolis Public Schools opened a second CFI in fall 2006. “Jerome C.,” as he is known in academic circles-because of the way he signs his name in professional publications-has served on the board of the International Reading Association and is past president of the National Reading Conference, the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy, the Whole Language Umbrella, and the National Council of Teachers of English.
