Courtney CazdenJane Braddock

RDG 692Spring 2013—Dr. Brown

Courtney Cazden

A primary school teacher, she has also taught non-fiction writing for more than fifteen summers at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College in Vermont

Charles William Eliot Professor of Education Emerita at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, retired

She was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford, and a Fulbright fellow in New Zealand. She is a Past President of the Council on Anthropology and Education and the American Society of Applied Linguistics.

A visiting professor in New Zealand (University of Waikato), visiting researcher in Singapore and in Australia

Contributions

An international specialist in child language and education, she is known professionally as a psychologist, educational anthropologist, and applied linguist.

In her teaching and research, she integrates these scholarly perspectives with her experience as a former primary school teacher.

Contributions

Her work has focused on the forms and functions of language(s) in classrooms and communities.

She moved the focus to drill and teacher lead “teaching” to realizing the importance of talk and peer discussion in the classroom.

Later in her career she continued her focus of classroom talking and listening to recognize whose voice is being heard and whose is not-equality.

Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning

importance of student-teacher talk: the importance of oral as well as written communication skills examples of talk in K-12 classrooms - math as well as language arts

findings from teacher researchers as well as university researchers

factors to achieve greater equity in what students learn

Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning

More than Circle Time

Questions

How has Courtney Cazden contributed to the study of literacy?

◦Brought the importance of listening and talking to students in the classroom to the forefront of educational research.

Questions con’t

How did she engage in inquiry?

◦She studied teachers and students in the classrooms over a long period of time to prove her theory of the importance of discourse among students and teachers. She further took these ideas into the home to help parents and other important adults understand how important it is to talk and listen to children.

Questions con’t

How is their work applied in classroom practice and policy development?

◦She brought the classroom discourse idea to children everywhere. She gave students a voice, while showing it is as important to listen to them as to talk to them.

Questions con’t

What will her legacy be?

◦Classroom Discourse◦Bilingual proponent for Indigenous people of

Australia and New Zealand.