@ Penn GSE: A Review of Research
Spring 2006/Volume 3, Number 2

On the Bookshelf

Yuko Goto Butler
Nihon-no shogakko eigo-o kanngaeu: Ajia-no shiten-karano Kennsho-to shogenn [English language education in Japanese elementary schools: Analyses and suggestions based on East Asian perspectives].
Tokyo: Sanseido Press, 2005.
The teaching of English as a foreign language has been introduced into East Asia largely by trial and error. Based on source materials from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan and Butler’s findings from a series of studies conducted in those countries, this book seeks to identify what has empirically been found to be effective in that process and what merits further investigation in order to constructively implement English instruction in East Asian elementary schools.

Norman A. Newberg.
The Gift of Education: How a Tuition Guarantee Program Changed the Lives of Inner-City Youth.
Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2005.
At the 1987 sixth-grade graduation at Belmont Elementary, in one of Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods, two philanthropists promised each student a chance-of-a-lifetime gift—a fully paid college education. This book follows 12 of those students—six who reached postsecondary school and six who didn’t make it out of high school. Their stories illustrate how children, properly challenged, can succeed, how philanthropy alone isn’t enough, and how government has failed inner-city communities.

Daniel A. Wagner and Robert B. Kozma.
Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2006.
New Technologies for Literacy and Adult Education: A Global Perspective.
For the estimated 850 million illiterate people worldwide, new information and communication technologies hold great promise. Published during the United Nations Literacy Decade, this book explores how technology can support basic literacy skills crucial for economic and social development. After analyzing the different approaches for using ICT to support adult literacy and basic education, the authors consider the implications for policymakers in the expanding role for new technologies in literacy development.

Stanton Wortham
Learning Identity: The Joint Emergence of Social Identification and Academic Learning
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Combining theoretical and empirical analysis, this book describes how social identification and academic learning can become deeply interdependent. Based on observations in one classroom, Wortham traces the identity development of two students, showing how they developed unexpected identities in part because curricular themes provided categories used to identify them and showing how the class learned about curricular themes in part because the two students were identified in ways that illuminated those themes.