GENRE AND PRACTICE - SHAPING POSSIBILITIES FOR CHILDREN

This article examines the dialogic nature of educational practices in two diverse communities. We examine how kindergarten and first-grade t eachers in two settings use locally specific variants of the genre of early childhood education to describe their practice and the children with whom they work. We rely on Bakhtinian notions of speech genre to theorize these differences, arguing that genres portray conceptions of children that represent issues of power and status. We argue that the meanings attached to the way students are viewed are generated within a community and that they have profound implications for the way chil dren's performance is interpreted.