ABSTRACT
For the last fifteen years, as Lesley has studied teaching practices in classrooms, she has observed students with language differences, social conflicts, or learning disabilities engage and achieve. In these studies, she documented how students with disabilities, with English as a second language, and with nonstandard English varieties successfully interacted in instructional practices. Similarly, in other classrooms, students tracked as general students were able to succeed in classrooms designated for the “gifted and talented.” That work has led us to look at the discourse practices of those classrooms to understand what, in their practices, may have contributed to the students’ achievement. The role of the teacher’s language-in-use was always central. However, understanding how language outside of classrooms also influences the worlds and identities evoked and created in the classroom was also key. Interdiscursivity-that is, how discourses intersect, overlap, and interlace-is ever-present in all classroom discourses, whether it is spoken, written, or acted.27
