‘But what did they learn?’ Clearing third spaces in virtual dialogues with children created by Susan Jane Britsch

In the age of standards, the challenge is great to sustain children’s voices as transformative forces in academic contexts. Interactive writing may offer an environment where children can reframe their engagement with curricular and personal knowledges, or even redefine the nature of academic content itself. This article focuses on the second year of a school-university project in which child and adult writers carried out long-term email dialogues. The adult writer-researchers questioned the suitability of these dialogues for enhancing the children’s curricular knowledge while supporting their personal investment in writing. The year-long dialogues resulted in three types of third-space environments where children differently balanced the relationship of curricular knowledge to personal knowledge.