My research focuses on language and literacy development in the early childhood years. By literacy, I do not mean simply children's handwriting and spelling; I mean children's use of print to represent their ideas and to interact with other people. I use qualitative and sociolinguistic research procedures to examine written language use from children's points of view--from within their own social lives. I have aimed to situate children's literacy development within the social and ideological complexity of urban schools and contemporary times. I do not examine gender, race, class, and other constructed categories as "variables" that may make literacy development problematic, but, rather, as potentially critical aspects of children's sense of, and expression of, self and other.
Over the years, the work has developed multiple strands. My projects include an interest in written language as part of children's symbolic repertoire (e.g., talk, drawing, dramatic movement) and in the intersection of childhood cultures and school literacy learning. What matters most to school children is often other children. Written language can become woven into their unofficial childhood practices in ways that co-exist with, contribute to, or conflict with the official school world. Young children's literacy use often entails their participation in popular culture. So I have become interested in changing notions of written language and of the texts through which people learn and play (particularly those of popular culture), in how children's literacy use reflects these changing notions, and in how schools should respond to those changes.
In my current Spencer-funded project, I have been interrogating notions of the basics for literacy learning. Through an ethnographic study in an urban school site serving low income children of color, I focus on the relationships between literacy as articulated in federal, state, district, and school documents, in the officially enacted classroom curriculum and, most importantly, in how children in the observed first grade interpreted the basics in their own life spaces. The major questions concern how the basics are locally defined and enacted, the values and world views about language (i.e., the ideology) under-girding those basics, and how children interpret those basics, including the cultural and textual resources that inform their responses. Ultimately, the goal is to reconceptualize what's basic in literacy learning.
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Faculty Research Profiles: Anne Haas Dyson
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Professor
Curriculum & Instruction
304 Education Building
1310 S. 6th St. MC 708
Section Links
Research Biography
Degrees
- Ph.D., Education, University of Texas, Austin, 1981
- M.Ed., Curriculum and Instruction, University of Texas, Austin, 1976
- B.S., Elementary Education (concentration: English), University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1972
Key Professional Appointments
- Professor, Curriculum & Instruction, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006--
- Professor, Department. of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, 2002-2006
- Professor, Division of Language, Literacy, & Culture, University of California, Berkeley, 1991-2002
- Associate Professor, Division of Language, Literacy, & Culture, University of California, Berkeley, 1987-1991
- Assistant Professor, Division of Language, Literacy, & Culture, University of California, Berkeley, 1985-1987
- Visiting Assistant Professor, Division of Language, Literacy, & Culture, University of California, Berkeley, 1984-1985
- Graduate Faculty, Graduate School, University of Georgia, 1984-1985
- Assistant Professor, Department of Language Education, University of Georgia, 1981-1985
Activities & Honors
- Selection as "Scholar", Hofstra University, 2007
- Janet Emig Award, given by the Conference on English Education of the National Council of Teachers of English, National Council of Teachers of English, 2006
- Janet Emig Award, National Council of Teachers of English, 2002
- Purves Award, National Council of Teachers of English, 1999
- Distinguished Teaching Award, University of California-Berkeley, 1998
- Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year Award, Choice, 1995
- David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English, National Council of Teachers of English, 1994
- Editorial Board Member, Language & Literacy Series, Teachers College Press, 1989- present
- Editorial Board Member, Written Communication, 1987- present
Selected Publications
- Dyson, A. H. (2007). School literacy and the development of a child culture: Written remnants of the "gusto of life." In D. Thiessen & A. Cook-Sather (Eds.), International handbook of student experiences in elementary and secondary school. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
- Dyson, A. Haas, & Smitherman, G. The right (write) start: African American Language and the discourse of sounding right. Teachers College Record.
- Dyson, A. H. (2006). On saying it right (write): “Fix-its” in the foundations of learning to write. Research in the Teaching of English, 41, 8-44.
- Dyson, A. H. (2006). Literacy in a child’s world of voices, or, the fine print of murder & mayhem. Response to David Olson. Research in the Teaching of English, 41, 147-153.
- Dyson, A. H. (2005). Crafting "the humble prose of living": Rethinking oral/written relations in the echoes of spoken word. English Education, 37, 149-164.