Inside /outside the classroom: Upper -elementary writers as facilitators and performers

This study investigates the meeting points of socialization and learning in an upper-elementary classroom, with an emphasis on one genre of writing event: peer writing conferences held outside the classroom and supervised by an adult other than the classroom teacher. Audio recordings of selected peer conferences are interpreted using approaches drawn from folklore, sociolinguistics and the ethnography of communication. Exploration of the classroom\u27s spatial and material world provides complementary data regarding the classroom\u27s communication structures. Photographic documentation, classroom “maps” and observations of communicative events (including nonverbal and spatial communicative patterns) recorded throughout the school year, contribute to this exploration. Peer conference participants are found to practice a wide range of competencies, including social, oral and literary, as they shape the event through accepting responsibility for leadership, and performing and discussing texts and the social events that surround them. The combination of ethnographic, sociolinguistic and spatial/material culture interpretive methods, is proposed as a means to bridge the study of teaching with that of learning, and to contribute towards inclusive and equitable literacy instruction practices