Reviews for Teaching Health Education in Language Diverse Classrooms

The average rating for Teaching Health Education in Language Diverse Classrooms based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-02-25 00:00:00 Christopher Ernsting Smagorinsky's anthology is a detailed examination of trends in composition research from 1984-2003. He opens the collection by "assum[ing] a strong quantitative bias through much of the [preceding] era" covered in previous iterations of such collections (3). He notes shifts in the period his book addresses toward qualitative research and "[i]ssues of equity, gender, cultural practice, social relationships, tacit hierarchies and power relationships, the social nature of textuality ... arising from ... scholars oriented to the various 'post' positions" (4). In short, many researchers have moved from the search for universals .... and generated new questions about the situated nature of teaching and learning as they are enacted amid competing political agendas, constructed subjectivities, social goals and structures" (12). The book opens with sections on elementary and secondary composition. The chapter "Writing at the Postsecondary Level" notes contemporary teachers, rather than focusing on "developing writing abilities," seek to cultivate "a certain sensibility, a ... disposition of mind in which the student writer is taught a commitment to community service, an awareness of inequities, a critical stance toward authority, and a questioning nature regarding established ways of thinking" (88). After sections on teacher research and L2 composition education, a section of research in rhetoric claims that social constructionists guided by Paulo Friere adhere to "the antifoundationalist position that there is no basis for seeking, acquiring, and producing knowledge" (175), as that "[t]heory and pedagogy have yet to define methods of accomplishing the goal of pluralism alongside the goal of empowering students to succeed individually and socially in ... Standard English" (177). A chapter on family and community literacies notes the importance of changing institutions rather than just educating individuals, and is followed by a chapter on "Writing in the Professions" (208). The final chapter focuses on historical studies in composition, which notes Lad Tobin's reflections on "the heady first move toward a theory-based pedagogy" in the "early years of the process movement" (265).

Review # 2 was written on 2016-10-02 00:00:00 Tim Zitzelberger Though there is a kernel of goodness in this critique of theory, you have to wade through a crap load of caveats and disclaimers. There is way too much "situating" going on here. Ede makes some great points, reminding us that the classroom is far too complex to be contained by a single theory, proposing that theory should come from the ground. I think this book would have been much more effective as an ethnography, where she could actually perform her critique, rather than write a mediocre book about it.