Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-172) and index.

"Effective and inspirational pedagogy has been achieved through identity texts in multilingual school contexts, engaging students around the world. This book shows how identity texts are used.

The term identity texts was first used by the Canada-wide Multiliteracies Project to describe a variety of creative work by students - collaborative inquiry, literary narratives, dramatic and multimodal performances - led by classroom teachers. The identity texts produced held up a mirror to the students who reflected their identities back in a positive light.

Jim Cummins and Margaret Early describe the nature of identity texts and how they relate to broader orientations to pedagogy, and consider several pedagogical frameworks within which they have been integrated. Brief case studies follow of identity text construction by educators and students in schools in parts of North America and China, in Burkina Faso and Uganda in Africa, end in Italy, Spain and Greece. The closing chapter elaborates on the ways in which identity text construction can promote powerful forms of learning among culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Identity Texts is essential reading for everyone concerned with developing appropriate pedagogy for schools and for all who work with multilingual children." (Book Cover)

CONTENTS

Part One: Identity Texts
Chapter 1: Introduction / Jim Cummins and Margaret Early
Chapter 2: Frames of Reference: Identity Texts in Perspective / Jim Cummins, Margaret Early and Saskia Stille
Chapter 3: "I'm not just a coloring person": Teacher and Student Perspectives on Identity Text Construction / Lisa Leoni, Sarah Cohen, Jim Cummins, Vicki Bismilla, Madiha Bajwa, Sulmana Hanif, Kanta Khalid and Tomer Shahar

Part Two: The Case Studies
Chapter 4: Case Studies of Identity Text Creation
Case Study 1: Performing Identity Texts: A multilingual creative writing class in the State Prison of Oaxaca, Mexico / Angeles Clemente, Michael Higgins, Donald Kissinger and William Sughrua
Case Study 2: Multilingual Identity Texts in the Library Curriculum / Sarah Cohen and Padma Sastri
Case Study 3: Creating Picture Books and Performance as Identity Texts in a Core French Classroom / Margaret Early and Cindy Yeung
Case Study 4: Weaving Other Languages and Cultures into the Curriculum in International Primary Schools / Eithne Gallagher
Case Study 5: "We're just like real authors": The power of dual language identity texts in a multilingual school / Frances Giampapa and Perminder Sandhu
Case Study 6: Identity Journals in Multicultural/Multilingual Schools in Greece / Vasilia Kourtis-Kazoullis
Case Study 7: Multi-Language Identity Texts + Internet Technology: A Case Study in Guza, China / Jonathan Lambert
Case Study 8: "I am Becoming More Intelligent Every Day": 'Non-Native' English Student teachers' liberating Identity Texts / Mario E. Lopez-Gopar
Case Study 9: Getting Students to Document Linguistic Diversity / Dolors Masats and Virginia Unamuno
Case Study 10: The Multimodal Discursive Construction of A Dancer on YouTube as Identity Text / Kim Meredith
Case Study 11: Identity Affirmation through Story Writing / Rania Mirza
Case Study 12: Identity Texts in a Sister-Class Context: How are ELL students' voices heard? / Jacqueline Ng Case Study 13: Drama as Identity Texts in Ugandan HIV/AIDS Clubs / Bonny Norton
Case Study 14: Multilingualism as an Academic Resource / Diane Potts
Case Study 15: Let Me (Re)tell You My Story: Creating trilingual identity texts at an orphanage school in Burkina Faso / Gail Prasad
Case Study 16: Quilting Our Communities: Creating personal and collective identity texts through the integration of the Arts in a Grade 3 class / Gail Prasad and Nancy Dykstra
Case Study 17: Identity Texts for Teacher Training in Multicultural Society / Jérémie Séror, Amanda Hennessey and Nico Paluzzi
Case Study 18: Developing American Sign Language (ASL) Identity Texts / Kristin Snoddon

Chapter 5: 'It really comes down to the teachers, I think': Pedagogies of choice in multilingual classrooms / Jim Cummins, Margaret Early, Lisa Leoni and Saskia Stille

References

Index