Who Owns Learning?: Questions of Autonomy, Choice, and Control

The concept of student ownership has provoked considerable debate in current language arts theory and practice. Clearly ownership cannot mean that teachers withdraw their support for students, but how do teachers strike a balance without threatening students' personal investment? And how do individual and cultural differences figure into this equation?

To answer these and other questions about ownership, Curt Dudley-Marling and Dennis Searle have asked outstanding teachers and scholars to share their own thoughts and experiences. The result is a remarkable collection of essays on a range of views. Some of the contributors reflect on practice, illustrating how they support student intentions without abdicating their responsibility to "teach." Others offer a more theoretical perspective, arguing that ownership is a more subtle and complex notion than previously imagined.

Curt Dudley-Marling is a professor in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, where he teaches courses in literacy and language arts. His research interests focus on struggling readers and writers, the social construction of learning identities, and the potential of high-expectation curricula with low-achieving students. He is the author or coauthor of a number of books with Heinemann, including A Family Affair (2000); Readers and Writers with a Difference, Second Edition (1996); Who Owns Learning? (1994); When Students Have Time to Talk (1991); and the James N. Britton Award-winning Living with Uncertainty (1997). Most recently, Curt has coauthored with Patricia Paugh A Classroom Teacher's Guide to Struggling Readers (2004) and A Classroom Teacher's Guide to Struggling Writers (2009).