Freedom at Work: Language, Professional, and Intellectual Development in Schools (Series in Critical Narrative) - Hardcover

“This book is a must read for teachers, administrators, and staff developers committed to the education of bilingual students, language equity, and social justice.”
―CHOICE

Freedom at Work is a beautifully presented book that offers us an inspiring glimpse of what schools can be for English language learners. There are valuable lessons here about the importance of leadership, about creative ways of designing and sustaining professional development, and about the synergy of researcher-practitioner collaboration. It will be a great addition to the set of readings I usually recommend for future teachers and young researchers.
―Guadalupe Valdes, Stanford University

“Highly accessible to teachers and student teachers, this book offers a brilliant illustration of why schools and educational researchers in university programs should be working hand-in-hand, to more effectively develop viable approaches to schooling and more effective approaches to transforming deficit attitudes and differential practices that threaten freedom and justice.”
―Antonia Darder, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

This book explores the freedom to use the language resources we have at our disposal to learn to our fullest, to engage in inquiry about learning and teaching, and to go beyond the surface in topics of schooling and education. Within a particular school context, the author explores how these freedoms came into being, how they took shape, and what they meant for the individuals involved. She shows that the individual and social freedoms in which the teacher and the learner operate within schools are important measures and outcomes of intellectual development. In connecting language, culture, learning, and intellectual development as freedoms in her own life, the author explores a new way of seeing the role of multiple languages in education and the freedom to learn.