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My main interest in teaching, research, and writing is a socio-culturally informed perspective on literacies and numeracies and how these perspectives can shape classroom, home, and community practices, as well as curriculum and assessment policies. Having spent years as a public school teacher, curriculum director, program evaluation specialist, and educational consultant, I have used my literacies/numeracies interests in the service of schools, families, and organizations, such as the NJ Pinelands Commission (http://www.state.nj.us/pinelands/pinecur/index.htm). In my research and college teaching, I am especially interested in underserved and underrepresented populations and the ways in which community service learning can serve both students and communities. From my earliest years as a reader of the Sunday newspaper comics on my dad’s lap in Runnemede, NJ, I have been interested in the intersection of literacy practices and social identities, although I didn’t call it that when I was 5. That interest now takes the form of studying the literacy practices of students and how those practices reflect, constitute, and are imbricated in their social identities (race, class, gender, and local identities). I have completed studies in two suburban classrooms and an urban classroom. I continue to analyze this data and to draw on it in my writing, my teaching, and my thinking about literacy. For six years many of my students from my Teaching the Young Learner course, and adult residents of a housing development in Chester, PA, coordinated and co-taught a summer literacy camp for 5-12 year olds called Writing Our Way. Although we no longer coordinate the program it has been replicated at a number of housing developments in Chester- Upland and funded through the school district and other organizations. I am also interested in the literacies and learning of adults. I am a founding member and advisor to the Learning for Life Program, a lifelong learning program for staff on the campus that pairs staff and students in mutual learning partnerships. Since the inception of L4L we have conducted focus group interviews, surveys, and other data for the purposes of program improvement and to understand how this student-staff lifelong learning program impacts participants and the campus. As a service-learning activity linked with my course Literacies and Social Identities, I have involved both students and staff in the data collection, analysis, and writing about Learning for Life. During the summer of 2001 a Summer of Learning program was started which is coordinated and run by staff and students. To learn more about Learning for Life, link to http://www.swarthmore.edu/admin/learningforlife. I recently concluded an exciting pilot research project with Eva Gold and Rhonda Phillips at Research for Action in Philadelphia in which we looked at numeracy practices in a Head Start classroom and followed four children into their homes to see their family and community numeracy practices. While current questions about failure to learn mathematics are often focused on classroom methodologies, we looked instead at the situated numeracy practices of four focal children, understanding that children are not merely products of school but participants in complex home, community, and school cultures. We used ethnographic methods of interview, observation, and collection of naturally-occurring data to make sense of the similarities and contrasts of home and school practices in a variety of socio-economic settings. Funded by the Wm. Penn Foundation, the study paralleled and was done in close collaboration with colleagues working on the Leverhulme Mathematical Research Project, UK. Our analysis revealed the ways in which numeracy practices travel with children across home and school and, within those contexts, shape complex and sometimes limited social identities for children. School imperatives, such as assessments and socialization curricula, often obscure teachers’ views of children’s mathematical practices. Deficit assumptions about family and community support for children, and limited interaction between caregivers and teachers, further contribute to the tendency of school personnel to overlook the mathematical practices children bring with them to school. Public schools are where a majority of children and teachers still congregate. In order to stay truly current it is important to me to be in classrooms in public schools as much as possible. I like knowing firsthand what children and teachers are thinking about and doing. Therefore, I continue to supervise student teachers and to consult on curriculum, literacy, and program evaluation in schools. For example, I have consulted at The Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, conducted an evaluation of the Reading Excellence Act Implementation in the Chester-Upland School District, Chester, PA, where I documented changes in classroom practices over the 3 years of the funding. I also work as an educational consultant in curriculum design and language arts instruction through the Educational Information and Resource Center, Sewell, NJ. This work keeps me in schools and keeps me in touch with classroom teachers, an important resource for me as a mentor to future researchers and policy-makers and supervisor to pre-service teachers. Courses:
Anderson, D. D. (in revision). The Persuasive Letter: Academic literacy or social reproduction. Research in the Teaching of English. Anderson, D. D. (in press). Home to school: Numeracy practices and mathematical Anderson, D. D. (2003). Students and service staff learning and researching together on a college campus. Michigan Journal of Community ServiceLearning, 9:2, 47-58. Anderson, D.D. (1999). “WO-MAN” meets “Callie the Torturewoman”: Naming and renaming across talk and text. In Wertheim, S., Bailey, A., & Corston-Oliver, M. Engendering Communication: Proceedings of the Fifth Berkeley Women and Language Conference. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group. Anderson, D.D. (1998). Reconstructing Discipline. (Review of the book: Beyond Discipline: From compliance to community, by Alfie Kohn, 1996. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.) Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 19(4).
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