ABSTRACT
This chapter presents our study of how literacy practices were negotiated and constructed in a junior high school English class as a teacher-researcher, two researcher-teachers, and 45 students put a writing workshop approach into practice for 1 year. Our research was situated in a local and particular context: two urban, seventh-grade literacy workshop classrooms comprised of 12-and 13-year-old students from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. To understand the social negotiation and construction of literacy practices that occurred during this daily, 1-hour class, we sought to understand literacy practices of the participants (teacher, students, and researchers) in and out of the workshop. We did this by gathering data not only on students’ inworkshop literacy practices, but also their out-of-workshop and out-of-class practices. Elizabeth and Debra also gathered data that allowed us to observe our own practice, and we kept journals of our experiences as a way of documenting our literacy beliefs and practices.
