English Education - Volume 43, Issue 4, 2011

Educational researchers are accustomed to institutional review board (IRB) requirements (e.g., protecting participants) with students often identified as the only “vulnerable population” for IRB purposes. However, as practitioner research has gained more prominence, the vulnerability of teacher-researchers themselves has begun to surface. In this article I tell the stories of teachers who felt ostracized as a result of engaging in research and publication. Drawing on research from Scandinavia and Australia, I present some reasons why teachers might seek to “cut down” colleagues who conduct and publish research. Finally, I present suggestions for university-based researchers and teacher educators who wish to help practitioner researchers prepare for any potential backlash as well as some questions for future research.

In this article, service learning is explored as a pedagogical third space from which preservice teachers learn to teach the New English education. We argue that such a space has the potential to foster preservice English teachers’ understanding of their role and identity as future teachers and how this identity is always relative to the students they teach. Drawing from a study of 19 preservice English teachers’ experiences with service learning, we discuss three themes relevant to service learning and the preparation of English teachers: (1) service learning as a pedagogical third space for English teachers, (2) service learning as fostering the disruption of a teaching mythology, and (3) service learning as promoting a recognition of the New English education. Further, we propose that service learning can encourage prospective English teachers to complicate notions of teacher/student, official/unofficial language, singular authority/pluralistic power, and server/served.

In this article a team of English teachers and teacher educators reflect on both their involvement with the photovoice project Through Students’ Eyes (TSE) and on the photographic and written data of their students’ perspectives on school. After working with hundreds of youth involved with TSE for most of the past decade, they consider why they have been involved with the project, what it has meant for them as English teachers, the nature of their university/school collaborations, how the project has mattered to their students, and how it might matter to other English educators. The authors describe how they have gained knowledge of their students, maintained a professional humility, and recognized the importance of asking youth and themselves about the value of school.