Learning English at School

This revised edition discusses how insights from new materialism and posthumanism might be used in investigating second language learning and teaching in classrooms. With these new perspectives in mind, it updates the application of sociocultural theory to understanding how minority language background children learn English in their classrooms.

Kelleen Toohey is Professor Emerita, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her recent research focuses on socio-material perspectives on language learning with a particular focus on early childhood language education. She is a co-author of Disrupting Boundaries in Education and Research (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Collaborative Research in Multilingual Classrooms (Multilingual Matters, 2009) and co-editor, with Bonny Norton, of Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Kelleen Toohey is Professor Emerita, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her recent research focuses on socio-material perspectives on language learning with a particular focus on early childhood language education. She is a co-author of Disrupting Boundaries in Education and Research (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Collaborative Research in Multilingual Classrooms (Multilingual Matters, 2009) and co-editor, with Bonny Norton, of Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

I read this book with a deep sense of appreciation for how children engage in and with socio-material worlds. It is the kind of writing and research that comes with years of experience in the field, observing teachers and young children in respectful, ethical and attentive ways. Toohey tells stories that celebrate and venerate children as complex and persistent feelers, makers and thinkers. It is a book that belongs on our book shelves.

Kelleen Toohey writes of her transition from her groundbreaking sociocultural studies to an engagement with emergent socio-material perspectives. The result is an important new vision for the field: at once theoretically generative while never losing focus on the lifeworlds of students, classrooms and their communities.

In a world that needs new visions and ethics, this book stimulates important and original conversations. Theoretically grounded in new materialism Toohey rethinks classrooms as assemblages, joining the human and non-human as we take rides with pens on paper, follow fingers on iPads, and play with objects. This is a generous open-ended critical inquiry into the lives of children, complete with research stories from which we can all learn.