English Education - Volume 33, Issue 1, 2000

Uses action research methods to describe one classroom in order to urge English educators to invite their students to participate in literacy and social action. Suggests ways that Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary theory can help English teachers and English educators discover and better understand the link of word and deed.

Discusses English education in terms of (1) fluidity of identity; (2) educational experiences of teaching, learning and research; and (3) research that takes into account unrepeatable moments, contexts, situation, and social and cultural relations of similarity and differences. Calls for teacher preparation programs that provide theoretical as well as contextualized reasons why teachers should respond to difference.

Provides personal narratives of four teachers regarding their work to create more democratic classrooms in urban settings. Explores the issues of authority and democracy in day-to-day teaching in the areas of (1) authority, democracy, and relationships; (2) formations; (3) authority and democracy in the writing workshop; and (4) reformations.

Examines the relationship between past ways of understanding what it has meant to teach and learn in English classrooms and the present movement toward change. Argues that the central purpose of working in relation to the past is to guard against participating in a ‘presentism’ that denies the past.

Available in print version only.