English Education - Volume 40, Issue 3, 2008

As coeditor of the April 2006 issue of this journal, Tara Star Johnson wrote an eloquent essay in which she explored “the increasing bureaucratic pressure to mass-produce, homogenize and monitor students” as manifested in the No Child Left Behind Act and the NCATE accreditation process. The story I wish to tell parallels Johnson’s, and, I hope, adds to it in useful ways.

In my current role as an English educator, I am alarmed to see too many promising beginning teachers leave the profession shortly after they start. While multiple small and/or case studies have examined the negative induction experiences of novice teachers, the profession is still not successful in lowering the attrition rate.

Though it is now difficult to imagine any language arts teacher at any grade level not knowing about “the writing process,” many of the teaching practices employed in classrooms in the name of said writing process suggest that teachers may have different understandings about what the writing process entails as a model of writing and learning to write, conceptually or epistemologically.

Student teachers often find themselves in a dilemma when leading classroom discussions about texts. These conflicts may not necessarily be a reflection of student behavior or classroom management. Instead, they may be a sign of active engagement and students taking the challenge beyond their current knowledge level. These episodes of sociocognitve conflicts can be the “intellectual high point of the lesson” and have the potential of leading to true discussion and true learning.

Shaping the Reading Field offers the reader a compilation of short biographies, chronologically and thematically arranged, of 16 influential reading “pioneers.” English teachers and educators interested in undertaking and promoting research as professional development will find examples, researcher narratives, and guiding frameworks.