Engaging as Ethnographers: Insights from the Collaborative Study of a Literacy Learning Community

Van Sluys and five eighth-grade ethnographers with a range of linguistic experiences in Spanish and English write about their processes and findings in their shared study of parent literacy practices. Here, they describe a disconnect between their own understandings of literacy and their roles in a literacy learning community. For example, their Parent Project observations motivated them “to start richer conversations with people in literature groups and to listen carefully to what others have to say.”