Professional Book Reviews: Locating Standards That Elevate Individual and Social Development

The three books reviewed in this column examine the role educators play in creating and promoting learning experiences that elevate individual and social development. The first book titled Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices, edited by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knoble delves into complexities of supporting language arts curriculum that supports digital literacies and challenges readers to think more about, not only the theoretical underpinnings for including digital literacies in the classroom, but also provides examples of how to do so in an effective way. The second title, Research for Political Action and Social Change, edited by Mollie V. Blackburn and Caroline T Clark, presents literacy as inseparable from either local or global influences, and demonstrates literacy as transformative for social change and political action. The last title in this column is Children, Language, and Literacy: Diverse Learners in Diverse Times by Celia Genishi and Anne Haas Dyson. In this book, the authors challenge the one-size-fits-all curriculum that too often stems from the current culture of standardized tests. Telling stories of children whose literacy learning is impossible to standardize, these authors present compelling arguments for the teacher as the maker of standards based on the children they teach.