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TAKING EDUCATION IN NEW DIRECTIONS

FALL 2010 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

FALL 2010

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EditorAna Luisa Terrazas

Assistant EditorJennifer P. Rich

A Professional Development Pro-gram for Reading: Mastering the Alphabetic Principle

The Important Role of Families of Low-Income University Students

Improving Teacher Education through Continuous Research

Emergent Biliteracy in Chinese and English

We are green! Imagine is printed on recycled paper.

www.coe.arizona.edu

Ronald W. Marx

Dean and Professor of Educational Psychology

Research addresses many of the challenges we face in education. In the College of Education, our research efforts are driven by the needs of educators across the P-20 system as they work to address these challenges.

Questions abound:

• The key to all educational attainment is literacy. How can we ensure all children learn to read?

• The demographics of America are changing. With growing numbers of bilingual children, how can we make sure they develop the language competence they will need for success?

• Our country will need in excess of a million new teachers in the next decade. How can we support these new teachers as they are inducted into the profession?

• More than ever, we know a college education is a necessity for an increasing number of citizens. How can we help all students go to college and, once there, flourish and succeed?

These questions are just a subset of the full range of educational research in the College of Education. The research of the four faculty members highlighted here is a reflection of our commitment to create educational success for all.

Ronald W. Marx

Take of a photo of this tag with your phone to see where it takes you! (You need the app from www.gettag.mobi.)

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by Nancy Mather• Professor Disabil i ty & Psychoeducational Studies

RESEARCH EXPERTISE

Learning disabilities with an emphasis on reading and written language

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than $1million to provide the course at no cost to teachers throughout the state, both live and online.

In 1997, the first RIME grant (Reading Instructional Methods of Efficacy) was awarded to Nancy Mather and Candace Bos in the University of Arizona Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation, in which they replicated portions of the TIME project, teaching classes and providing mentoring to kindergarten through third-grade teachers within Tucson public schools. This grant was funded for three three-year cycles with the last funding providing support for the Project RIME development of an online course. Early TIME-RIME research investigations focused on increased teacher knowledge (e.g., Mather, Bos, & Babur, 2001), whereas the most recent study also addresses improved student outcomes. Podhajski et al., (2009) investigated the effects of the TIME course on teacher knowledge and student outcomes. Two first-grade teachers, one second-grade teacher, and a mixed first- and second-grade teacher took the course and received on-site coaching for seven months. Three other teachers who did not take the course served as controls. There were 53 children in the experimental condition and 36 children in the control condition. Overall, the experimental-condition students made significantly greater gains in reading performance than the control students, and increases in teacher knowledge were apparent on the post-test results.

In the early years of the projects, nearly 1,500 K-2 teachers in Vermont and more than 200 teachers in Tucson received training. In 2003, members of the Stern Center (Blanche Podhajski and Marilyn Varricchio) and the UA (Nancy Mather and Janice Sammons) collaborated to develop TIME-RIME Online, which then provided professional development to thousands of teachers nationwide. Based upon the model of TIME-RIMEOnline, Podhajski, Varricchio, Mather, and Sammons (2010) created an interactive textbook on CD-ROM,

“Failure to learn to read as others do is a major catastrophe in a child’s life.” (Dolch, 1939, p.1)

Over the past two decades, both educators and politicians have focused on the importance of ensuring that all children become skilled readers. This topic is of critical importance for students with specific learning disabilities because at least 80 percent have trouble learning to read (Lyon, 1995). Because literacy is a secondary system that is dependent on oral language, reading teachers need to know a good deal about both spoken and written language (Aaron, Joshi, Quatroche, 2008; Snow, Griffin, & Burns, 2005), including “how the language works” at the sound, word, sentence, and text levels (Podhajski, 1995). Increased teacher knowledge and expertise can improve students’ word reading and spelling performance (e.g., McCutchen et al., 2002; Spear-Swerling, 2009). The goal of Mastering the Alphabetic Principle, a professional development program, is to increase teacher knowledge and student reading achievement.

A Brief History of the ProjectIn 1994, the Stern Center in Williston, Vermont, was awarded a Freeman Foundation grant after its president, Blanche Podhajski, was asked the question: “What would you do to increase literacy in Vermont?” She answered, “Invest in teachers.” This resulted in the creation of TIME (Training in Instructional Methods of Efficacy), a three-credit professional development course followed by a nine-month, in-school mentoring program. The goals were to: (a) strengthen school reading programs, (b) provide professional development in early reading instruction, and (c) increase teacher knowledge to improve student reading outcomes. Over the next six years, the Freeman Foundation funded TIME with more

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Mastering the Alphabetic Principle (MAP): How to Map Speech to Print for Reading and Spelling.

The MAP ProgramThe MAP program includes PowerPoint presentations with accompanying narration, video clips with demonstration teaching, video excerpts from national experts, and extensive interactive course activities that provide instant feedback. Table 1 provides an overview of the MAP curriculum that focuses on the development of basic reading and spelling skills.

Table 1. Overview of MAP Curriculum

Achieving Literacy: Background Research on Literacy Balanced Literacy Instruction

How the Language Works, Part I: Phonemes Consonant Phonemes Vowel Phonemes Reading and Spelling Development

How the Language Works, Part II: Phonemes to Graphemes Phonological Awareness Mapping Phonemes to Graphemes Orthographic Patterns

How the Language Works, Part III: Multisyllabic Words Syllables Morphemes Systematic Assessment and Instruction

Applications to Literacy: Reading and Spelling Automaticity and Fluency

Guiding Skill Application in Reading and Writing

Effective professional development that informs teacher knowledge can have a positive impact on children’s reading performance (Podhajski, Mather, Nathan, & Sammons, 2009). By helping teachers increase their understanding of reading processes and the essential components of effective instruction, teachers can become agents of change, rather than objects of educational reform (Nolen, McCutchen, & Berninger, 1990).

As noted by Lose (2007), “To be successful, the most struggling child requires the most expert teacher.” MAP’s goal is to help ensure that all teachers are reading experts equipped with adequate knowledge of language structure to teach all children how to read.

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Nancy Mather, Candace Bos, Blanche Podhajski (left to right)

REFERENCES

Dolch, E. W. (1939). A Manual for Remedial Reading. Champaign,

IL: Garrard Press.

Lose, M. K. (2007). A Child’s Response to Intervention Requires

a Responsive Teacher of Reading. Reading Teacher, 61, 276-279.

Lyon, G. R. (1995). Towards a Definition of Dyslexia. Annals of

Dyslexia, 45, 3-27.

Mather, N., Bos, C., & Babur, N. (2001). Perceptions and

Knowledge of Preservice and Inservice Teachers About Early

Literacy Instruction. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 34, 472-482.

McCutchen, D., Abbott, R. D., Green, L. B., Beretvas, S. N.,

Cox, S., Potter, N. S., & Gray, A. L. (2002). Beginning Literacy:

Links among Teacher Knowledge, Teacher Practice, and Student

Learning. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35, 69-86.

Nolen, P. A., McCutchen, D., & Berninger, V. (1990). Ensuring

Tomorrow’s Literacy: A Shared Responsibility. Journal of Teacher

Education, 41(3), 63-72.

Podhajski, B. (1995). TIME for Teachers. Williston, VT: Stern

Center for Language and Learning.

Podhajski, B., Mather, N., Nathan, J., & Sammons, J. (2009)

Professional Development in Scientific-Based Reading

Instruction. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 42, 403-417.

Podhajski, B., Varricchio, M., Mather, N., & Sammons, J. (2010).

Mastering the Alphabetic Principle: How to Map Speech to

Print for Reading and Spelling. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes

Publishing Co.

Snow, C. E., Griffin, P., & Burns, M. S. (2005). Knowledge to

Support the Teaching of Reading: Preparing Teachers for a

Changing World. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

Spear-Swerling, L. (2009). A Literacy Tutoring Experience for

Prospective Special Educators and Struggling Second Graders.

Journal of Learning Disabilities, 42, 431-443.

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percent complete bachelor’s degrees, compared with 81 percent of high-income students (Long & Riley, 2007). Less clear, however, are the reasons why. And the role of families in low-income students’ success remains understudied. My research aims to better understand the family dynamics at play as lower-income students attempt college.

Arizona Assurance Scholars We first surveyed Arizona Assurance Scholars to examine the factors that influenced their first-year grade-point average (G.P.A.), which “may well be the single-best predictor of student persistence” (Pascarella and Terenzini, 2005). Second, we interviewed students about their first-year experiences and made decisions about how to strategize.

We discovered Arizona Assurance aid definitely eases tremendous financial constraints and enhances students’ chances for success. However, knowing how students relate to their families and engage in work while enrolled also is important to support effective programming. For instance, we found students who commuted while living with their parents had G.P.A.s that were no lower than their on-campus counterparts. Also, students working more than 20 hours per week performed as well as students who were not working, but only if the job was not service-related, which is associated with lower G.P.A.s. This challenges prior assumptions that living on campus is always the ideal option and that working too many hours poses an obstacle to degree completion.

Why might this be the case? Interviews reveal how on-campus students face additional stressors living away from family. Perhaps, unlike more affluent students who might feel more entitled to the financial and other support of their family for their college-going efforts, these low-income students feel a strong obligation to not “burden” their families. Even burdening parents by

by Regina Deil-Amen• Associate Professor Education Policy Studies and Practice

RESEARCH EXPERTISE

College access and success

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“I feel so proud to be the one leading the family into something new, something that we didn’t know.”

This statement was made by a Latina — the first in her low-income family to attend college. Such students are a focus in my current research, and what they say sometimes challenges prevailing notions of what constitutes college success.

Family and College PursuitsMuch of my research examines community colleges, but more recently, I have addressed the challenges faced by our own University of Arizona students. For example, my colleagues, Assistant Professor Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, graduate student Manuel González Canche, and doctoral graduate student Mary Irwin, helped me perform a mixed-methods analysis of the Arizona Assurance Scholars, who receive full financial aid based on family incomes under $42,400. Our findings show that low-income students’ ideas about the intersection of family and their college pursuits inform how they live and work while enrolled. Support of my ongoing research demonstrates the UA College of Education’s commitment to ensuring high-quality opportunities for lower-income students.

That low-income students are far less likely to complete college than their peers is a fact. Nationally, only 36

The Important Role of Families of Low-Income University Students

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disclosing challenges they face in college is a situation some students avoid. They say, “I didn’t want to ask for help from anybody … I just tried to act like there was nothing wrong when I was home.”

Added Responsibilities and ObstaclesMany students feel obligated to help support their families financially, often feeling guilty and anxious for not helping laid-off or single parents. Consequently, students often choose to work longer hours, which students admit, “… started to really stress me out. It made classes a lot more difficult.” However, only those working longer hours in customer-service jobs had G.P.A.s that suffered. Working in academic and administrative jobs — ideally on campus — did not harm their G.P.A.s.

Students often weigh their college goals against the lost support their families experience due to their absence from the home. For some, limited resources and visiting family nearly every weekend prevented them from being more involved on campus. They say, “Many of the other students are very integrated into college life, and I feel like my foot is kind of in the door but not exactly. When I compare myself to other students … they have, like, meal plans, they’ll go out to dinner all together ... and then there’s the football games and stuff that I don’t go to because I can’t afford (tickets). So it feels like those (reasons) kind of set me apart, I guess. Also, I think I have a lot of responsibility — more than other college students — to go home. (I’m) not doing as many college activities as other people. Many people don’t worry so much about those … financial situations, but that’s a big obstacle of mine.”

Another student describes feeling guilty about not being with her parents and 10-year-old brother, who frequently is home alone while her parents work long hours. She explains, “It’s horrible. I used to cry myself to sleep just

saying, ‘I’m not there, and I’m not being good to my parents. They’ve given me so much, and they’ve always been there, and now I’m not home.’

Especially my little brother (she begins crying), I’m his big sister, and it makes me so sad not being there for him.”

Many students who continue living with family avoid such tensions, and they also avoid some of the high costs of campus living. They say, “Eating at home saves so much money.”

Making Education a Family ProjectUnderstanding this mutual support and obligation between students and their families helps the university adjust support services to maximize the financial investment of Arizona Assurance. Rather than focusing on the deficits of Latino low-income families (Villalpando & Solorzano, 2005), my research moves toward a view that acknowledges the positive potential of existing family dynamics (Moll 2000; Rios-Aguilar, 2010). Education is often considered a “family project” among Latinos (Gildersleeve, 2010), with family relationships characterized by reciprocity and confianza (confidence) (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). And students feel obligated to maintain that reciprocity. My research uncovers low-income students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds experiencing this to some extent, suggesting that these frameworks may also apply more generally beyond particular racial and ethnic communities.

REFERENCES

Gildersleeve, R. (2010). Fracturing Opportunity: Mexican Migrant

Students and College-going Literacy. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Long, B., & Riley, E. (2007). Financial Aid: A Broken Bridge to

College Access. Harvard Educational Review, 77(1), 39-43.

Moll, L. (2000). Inspired by Vygotsky: Ethnographic Experiments

in Education. In C. Lee & P. Smagorinsky (Eds.), Vygostkyan

Perspectives on Literacy Research: Constructing Meaning

through Collaborative Inquiry (pp. 256-268). New York:

Cambridge University Press.

Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds

of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to

Connect Homes and Classrooms’ Theory into Practice, 31,

132-141.

Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini. P. T. (2005). How College Affects

Students: A Third Decade of Research. Vol 2. USA: Jossey Bass.

Rios-Aguilar, C. (2010). Measuring Funds of Knowledge:

Contributions to Latina/o Students’ Academic and Non-academic

Outcomes. Teachers College Record, 112(8).

Villalpando, O., & Solorzano, D.G. (2005). The Role of Culture

in College Preparation Programs: A Review of the Research

Literature. In W.G. Tierney, Z.B. Corwin, & J.E. Colyar (Eds.),

Preparing for College: Nine Elements of Effective Outreach

(pp.13-28). Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Valuing Teachers as People and ProfessionalsWhen I moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I began a longitudinal study of the career paths of 13 secondary-school English teachers. Their experiences over 10 years provided the stories that explain why teachers decide to leave the classroom. Two teachers in the study moved from school to school and in and out of teaching several times. Once they found a school that valued them as people and professionals — one in which colleagues took an active interest in their success — they began to thrive. They now are tenured teachers who are well-respected in their schools and communities. Only three of the 13 teachers are teaching in the schools in which they began. All three found jobs in which the school’s expectations were congruent with their teacher-education programs and, at the same time, provided collegial, supportive environments.

My ongoing, as well as previous, research led me to join with others across Illinois to form a statewide network of support for new teachers. The Illinois New Teacher Collaborative (INTC) is now in its sixth year of providing resources to programs and individuals who work with beginning teachers. Leaving INTC for the University of Arizona was a hard decision. But, if a collaborative project cannot survive personnel changes, then it is not truly collaborative. The INTC continues to thrive after my departure, and its sixth-annual conference will be held in March 2011.

The Importance of School-level SupportI have just completed a chapter in an edited book on research on teacher induction, a term that describes the support novice teachers receive as they begin their first teaching positions. Strong induction programs often predict whether talented new teachers will remain in a particular school, district, or in the teaching

Learning to teach — and teach well — requires a solid foundation in both content and instructional strategies prior to beginning a career, followed by support from colleagues and opportunities to continue learning after being hired by a school or district.

Resources Teachers NeedMy research focuses on the contexts and processes that promote teachers’ initial and continued learning. In 1995, my colleagues and I at the University of Houston conducted a study involving five action-research projects in five different schools. In each of these projects, principals, teachers, and university professors worked together to identify areas for improvement, create plans for promoting improvement, and analyze whether learning conditions for teachers had improved (Clift, Veal, Holland, Johnson, & McCarthy, 1995). During that project, we all became aware of the importance of providing teachers, especially new teachers, with the resources they need to learn about the school and the community.

Improving Teacher Education through Continuous Research

by Renée Clift• Professor• Associate Dean for Professional Preparation

Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies

RESEARCH EXPERTISE

Teacher education, professional development, and educational leadership

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profession. My chapter in this book, Past, Present, and Future Research on Teacher Induction, touches on a related interest, the role of technology in initial and continuing teacher preparation. As my colleagues and I have studied the rise and fall of Internet-based programs, we have found many cases of systems that began with external funding and disappeared once the funding ended. I am concerned that the time, money, and professional investment in these systems have not resulted in systemic change. Perhaps this is because the Internet cannot replace the importance of school-level support in terms of immediacy or interpersonal warmth.

Improving Teacher Education Since moving to the UA last year, I have worked with my colleagues to redesign professional-preparation programs based on research that also contribute to the research base. My colleagues, Iliana Reyes, Chris Iddings, Donna Jurich, Kathy Short, and I have received a grant from the Helios Foundation to embed our early childhood teacher-preparation programs in the community, as well as in early childhood centers. While there are many components to this project, one I work with is the self-study of teacher-education practice. In fact, UA College of Education graduates helped found the Self-Study Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.

Self-study is one important method we can use to monitor our teacher-education students’ learning. I also work with college administrators in Australia, the United States, and England to learn more about how self-study can enable teacher-education administrators to improve our practices and programs. For more information about the INTC, visit intc.education.illinois.edu.

REFERENCES

Clift, R. T., Veal, M. L., Holland, P., Johnson, M., & McCarthy, J.

(1995). Collaborative Leadership and Shared Decision Making:

Teachers, Principals, and University Professors. New York:

Teachers College Press.

Clift, R. T., Hebert, L., Cheng, Y-M., Moore, J., & Clouse, N.,

(2010). Exploring the Potential of Internet-Based Technology for

Mentoring and Induction Programs. In Wang, J., Odell, S., &

Clift, R. (Eds.). Past, Present, and Future Research on Teacher

Induction: An Anthology for Researchers, Policy Makers, and

Practitioners (pp. 151-168). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Clift, R. T. (2009). Repurposing My Professional

Practice: Learning from My Students over Time and

Place. Studying Teacher Education, 5, 129-142. Doi:

10.1080/17425960903306492

Smith, T. M., & Ingersoll, R. M. (2004). What Are the Effects

of Induction and Mentoring on Beginning Teacher Turnover?

American Educational Research Journal, 41, 681-714. Doi:

10.3102/00028312037004849

Wang, J., Odell, S., & Clift, R. T. (Eds.). (2010). Past, Present

and Future Research on Teacher Induction: An Anthology for

Researchers, Policy Makers and Practitioners. Lanham, MD:

Rowman & Littlefield.

Wilkins, E., & Clift, R. T. (2007). Building a Network of Support

for New Teachers. Action in Teacher Education, 28(4), 25-35.

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they use and the units of sound and meaning meant to be represented by those scripts.

In this article, I describe the latest study of this type conducted with my colleague, Tina Tsai, where we detail the ways in which kindergarten and first-grade bilingual children learning to write both English and Chinese conceptualized and talked about these different writing systems. Although there are no extant studies in Chinese using this methodology, similar research with children learning to write Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and Japanese has corroborated findings that children move through increasing levels of more sophisticated understanding related to how scripts represent sound and meaning, regardless of whether the script is alphabetic, syllabic, or consonantal (Kwak, 2006; Pontecorvo & Zucchermaglio, 1988; Tolchinsky & Teberosky, 1998; Yaden & Tardibuono, 2004).

The StudyTo explore this hypothesis, 12 bilingual children, ages 4 to 6, were recruited from a private, after-school program providing Chinese-language instruction to students from kindergarten to eighth grade five days a week. Children completed 11 writing tasks weekly over a three-month period in both English and Chinese, including writing their name, parents’ names, several words, and a sentence. Portions of these samples were then masked by the researcher, and the children were asked to explain what was written.

Findings supported three of the five levels of conceptual development as defined by Ferreiro & Teberosky (1982) for Spanish-speaking children. For example, some children had not linked any linguistic unit (syllable or word) with the script they were writing (Level 1).

However, some realized that objective differences in

the scripts (when part

The study of emerging biliteracy in young children as a field is relatively young in the United States (Garcia, 2002; Hornberger, 2003), spanning only the past three decades or so. When one of the scripts is in a least- commonly taught language, such as Chinese, published investigations drop off even more rapidly. Surprisingly, Mandarin Chinese has notably risen to the rank of the third-most commonly spoken language in the United States after English and Spanish since the 2000 census.

Sound and MeaningFor much of the past 15 years, colleagues, former students, and I have studied issues related to how young, emergent bilingual children simultaneously acquire knowledge about two separate writing systems in such pairs of languages as English and Spanish (Yaden & Tardibuono, 2004; Yaden & Martinez-Yaden, 2008), English and Korean (Kwak, 2006), English and Chinese (Yaden & Tsai, in press), and English and Farsi (Mirzaei, 2003). All of these investigations employed a clinical case study, microgenetic design, to reveal the nature of children’s thinking about the relationships between the scripts

Emergent Biliteracy in Chinese and English

by David Yaden• Professor

Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies

RESEARCH EXPERTISE

Developmental issues in early childhood education, family literacy, and theories of reading disabilities

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of the original was covered) indicated that the meaning of the writing had changed (Level 2). Finally, several children in the study indicated awareness of the syllabic hypothesis (Level 3) in that letters or clusters of letters (although unconventional in sound-letter association) in English represented syllables in words just as single characters in Chinese represented syllables (or words in many cases) in Chinese.

Structure and ToneAt a more advanced level and unique to Chinese, some children detected and could name the embedded characters within the semantic-phonetic compounds they were writing. However, they usually could not make a connection between the name or sound they assigned to the part and the character’s whole pronunciation. For instance, one child

(Figure 1), when interpreting the Chinese characters 媽媽 (/Mā/ /mā/) for “mom,” designated the left half as /nú/ (tone 2) “female,” a conventional interpretation of 女. For the right half of the second 媽 /Mā/ (tone 1), he assigned the character name /Mǎ/ (tone 3) “horse,” a conventional interpretation of 馬 which shares a similar syllable structure, but has a different tone. Thus, young Chinese

writers, like young English writers, go through periods, both early and late in writing development, where they can write conventionally, without completely understanding how scripts represent units of sound and meaning.

Levels of ConceptualizationFinally, we also were interested in how the knowledge gained about one language related to the conceptualizations of the written system in the other. We discovered that there were at least four major patterns (Granott & Parziale, 2002) across the two languages, only one of which is illustrated here — substantial variation (conceptually) in both languages. In Figures 2 and 3, Harry’s (pseudonym) patterns indicate maximum variation across all levels of conceptualization in both English and Chinese over a three-month period.

Figure 1. A child traces and interprets characters which comprise the kanji for “mom” in Chinese 媽媽 (Mā mā).

Figure 2. Wide, irregular, and densely clustered variation in reasoning about English both within and between weekly sessions.

Figure 3. Wide, but spaced and periodic variation in reasoning levels over three months concerning Chinese.

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Thelen, E., & Smith, L. (1994). A Dynamic Systems Approach to

the Development of Cognition and Action. Cambridge, MA: The

MIT Press.

Tolchinsky, L., & Teberosky, A. (1998). The Development of

Word Segmentation and Writing in Two Scripts. Cognitive

Development, 13, 1-24.

Yaden Jr., D. B., & Martinez, C. C. (July 2008). The Emergent

Literacy Project. Paper presented at the 22nd World Congress of

Reading, Costa Rica.

Yaden Jr., D. B., & Tardibuono, J. M. (2004). The Emergent

Writing Development of Urban Latino Preschoolers:

Developmental Perspectives and Instructional Environments for

Second-language Learners. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 20,

29-61.

Yaden Jr., D. B., & Tsai, T. (in press). Learning How to Write in

English and Chinese: Young Bilingual Kindergarten and First

Grade Children Explore the Similarities and Differences Between

Writing Systems. In M. Gort and E. Bauer (Eds.), Early Bilingual

Development: Exploring Young Learners’ Use of Their Linguistic

Resources. NY: Routlege.

REFERENCES

Ferreiro, E., & Teberosky, A. (1982). Literacy Before Schooling (K.

Goodman, Trans.). Exeter, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

(Originally published in 1979.)

Granott, N., & Parziale, J. (2002). Microdevelopment: A Process-

oriented Perspective for Studying Development and Learning.

In N. Granott & J. Parziale (Eds.), Microdevelopment:Transition

Processes in Development and Learning (pp. 1-28). Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hornberger, N. H. (2003). Continua of Biliteracy. In N. H.

Hornberger (Ed.), Continua of Biliteracy: An Ecological

Framework for Educational Policy, Research, and Practice in

Multilingual Settings (pp. 3-34). Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual

Matters Limited.

Kwak, J. (2006). The Writing Development of Korean Heritage

Children. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation.) University of

Southern California, Los Angeles.

Mirzaei, A. (2002). Development of Orthographic Knowledge

in a Consonantal Script: Children’s Invented Spellings in Farsi.

(Unpublished doctoral dissertation.) University of Southern

California, Los Angeles.

Pontecorvo, C., & Zucchermaglio, C. (1988). Modes of

Differentiation in Children’s Writing Construction. European

Journal of Psychology of Education, 3, 371-384.

Siegler, R. S. (1996). Emerging Minds: The Process of Change

in Children’s Thinking. New York: Oxford University Press.

Adaptive and Normal VariationIn summary, we found that the children operated with several knowledge levels about the nature of scripts in both English and Chinese similar to what Siegler (1996) found in investigating children’s math knowledge. In addition, children exhibited a range of understandings even in a single session when asked to interpret what they wrote. Yet it is this variation, we suspect, exhibited in learning to write which is adaptive, normal (Thelen & Smith, 1994), and leads to further growth as young writers experiment with, explore, and construct understandings of written systems.

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