Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-305) and indexes.
Pt. 1. Basic Perspectives. 1. Whole Language as a Learning Environment. 2. Whole Language Plus: Active Learners and Active Teachers. 3. How Knowledge about Language Helps the Classroom Teacher - Or Does It?: A Personal Account -- Pt. II. Wholes and Parts. 4. Contexts for Literacy: In the Mind and in the Classroom. 5. Play with Language and Metalinguistic Awareness: One Dimension of Language Experience. 6. "The Electric Company" Turns on to Reading. 7. Spontaneous and Scientific Concepts: Learning Punctuation in the First Grade / Courtney B. Cazden, Patricia Cordeiro and Mary Ellen Giacobbe. 8. Adult Assistance to Language Development: Scaffolds, Models, and Direct Instruction. 9. A Vygotskian Interpretation of Reading Recovery / Courtney B. Cazden and Marie M. Clay -- Pt. III. Texts in Contexts. 10. The Myth of Autonomous Text. 11. Information and Education: The Need for Critical Understanding. 12. Narrative Thinking and Storytelling Rights: Differential Treatment of Narrative Experience / Courtney C. Cazden and Dell Hymes. 13. How to do Academic Writing, and Why: A Beginning Account. 14. Vygotsky, Hymes, and Bakhtin: From Word to Utterance and Voice -- Pt. IV. Equity in New Zealand Education. 15. Differential Treatment in New Zealand Classrooms. 16. Butterflies and Origami Birds: Teachers, Actors, and Subtext. 17. Richmond Road: A Multilingual/Multicultural Primary School in Auckland. 18. The Case of the English Syllabus for Forms 6 and 7