Love and Language in the Workshop: Case Studies from the Workshop Classroom

The workshop classroom is rarely researched in the current movements of literacy education. Within education, few studies have addressed how the intersection of student and school culture, school systems, and curriculum impact student engagement in the workshop classroom discipline. Within the education and the workshop classroom in particular an inordinate amount of time has been spent attempting to engage adolescents in literacy skill acquisition by connecting to student identities. This dissertation examines student engagement within the workshop classroom. In this dissertation, student engagement in this setting will be considered via a theoretical lens and historical lens. My focal point is analyzing the ways student engagement affects the enactment of literacy skills. In this dissertation I examine the theory and history of the workshop classroom to explore the current movement of the workshop classroom through ethnography. The voices of the informants are echoed throughout this dissertation as they informed my exploration. Reflected here are two case studies. The first is an historical study that considers how workshop classroom teachers in particular have worked to encourage student engagement in the acquisition of literacy skills. The case study investigates the literacy practices and cultural and educational histories of six workshop classroom students and describes the discourse mechanisms that structure their text engagement. This case study identifies text engagement as a process of student and teacher identification and evaluative negotiation. It also traces connections between student identities and student engagement in the workshop classroom. These connections are essential to understanding student engagement. Analysis of the two case studies contributes to an ongoing theory of student engagement as it affects the reading and writing of adolescents in the workshop classroom. While the first of the case studies investigates the effects of the workshop classroom, the second case study supports the historical case by demonstrating that student engagement practices can constitute acts of literacy skill acquisition. The dissertation concludes by discussing the implications of the study on current practices of engagement in the workshop classroom.