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English Language Arts/ Higher Ed
Research: English Teachers’ Experience of Critical Language Teaching in an Anti-CRT Context
This study examines how English teachers in a politically conservative state integrate principles of Critical Language Awareness into their existing curricula despite a political climate hostile to teaching about social inequity. This project stemmed from concerns expressed by preservice teachers in an English methods class about their ability to enact the critical language teaching methods they were learning because of the political context in the state. Interviews with practicing teachers reveal how teachers incorporate critical language teaching across English courses as disparate as AVID English 9 Journalism and African American Literature. The study provides examples of external pushback against race-related curriculum and the resulting fear teachers carried in their professional and personal lives. It also documents teachers’ persistence in the face of fear. Finally the study raises challenges of teaching about race and language with white students in politically conservative contexts highlighting a need to support teachers doing critical language teaching in these spaces. The findings demonstrate that even under the scrutiny of anti-CRT sentiments teachers can successfully engage critical language awareness.
Invited Reflection: Small Talk about Big Ideas: The Benefits of ELATE Membership
In this piece three leaders of English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) reflect on their individual experiences with ELATE before collectively exploring the benefits of membership in the professional organization.
Feature: The Role of Reading Instruction in Teaching for Social Justice
College reading instruction warrants recognition as a necessary and actionable means of teaching for social justice. Faculty who teach students how to read course texts—and who guide and support them in doing so—advance social justice and equity via three separate mechanisms of action. These processes preferentially benefit marginalized and underserved students while more broadly fostering conceptual and perspective-taking skills essential for social justice.
Instructional Note: North Central Texas College’s First-Year Composition Textbook Project
In the fall of 2018 the First-Year Composition program at North Central Texas College (NCTC) initiated what informally became known as the Textbook Project. Our goal was to provide our community college students with innovative imaginative and inspiring classroom experiences that paralleled the high-impact opportunities their peers were afforded at four-year universities. The Textbook Project encompassed five key features: an NCTC-specific textbook a campus-wide common read resources for faculty and students in our college’s LMS a college-wide lecture series and funding for faculty professional development. Five years later the project’s emphasis on continuity through collaboration has revitalized the department through faculty engagement and increased student success.
Author-Title Index: Volume Fifty-One
Feature: The Misalignment between the Discipline and the Teaching of Writing
The majority of first-year writing “is taught by teachers whose educational backgrounds are more likely to be in literature cultural studies or creative writing than in rhetoric and composition” (Abraham 78). This disciplinary knowledge gap poses a challenge for FYW faculty to adjust to new shifts in FYW pedagogy. We would expect inhouse faculty development opportunities to help fill these gaps; however the results of our year-long qualitative study indicate that the lack of shared disciplinary knowledge and the constraints on adjunct faculty make it challenging for faculty without backgrounds in writing studies to adapt their pedagogies. We add to the body of scholarship on professionalization in two-year college writing studies (e.g. Andelora; Griffiths; Jensen et al.; Sullivan; Toth et al. “Distinct”) and argue that addressing this problem will require investing resources in adjunct support; changing hiring practices to prioritize expertise in writing studies; and designing faculty development that focuses on both theory and pedagogy.
Announcements
Instructional Note: Working the Whirlwind: SmartArt and Reflection as Introduction to Rhetorical Analysis Research Essays
This Instructional Note is designed to assist students with using the rhetorical skills they already have as a bridge to writing rhetorical analysis essays.
Instructional Note: Write from the Heart (Escribe desde el corazón): Connect Lived Experiences to First-Year Writing Curriculum
This Instructional Note grounded in Latin American cultural values offers “wise practices” for instructors to connect lived experiences to course curriculum encourage authentic voice and “home language practices” and treat students as extended family to reduce academic isolation.
Review: Transformations: Change Work across Writing Programs, Pedagogies, and Practices
Editor’s Introduction: Literacy Studies Really Ties the Room Together, Man: Holding on to Threads in Surreal Times
(Re)Active Praxis: What If? Wobbling in the Speculative
I take up a practitioner inquiry stance to examine a wobble I experienced while conducting research with ELA preservice teachers. Drawing on Garcia and O’Donnell-Allen’s Pose Wobble Flow framework (2015) I consider how my research design and pose as a justice-oriented teacher educator led me to wobble when participants agreed on a potentially problematic idea. Resisting and interrogating binaries of right/wrong and good/bad I speculatively (re)imagine the possibilities of my interactions with the ELA PSTs. Sharing these speculative (re)imaginings of wobbles in teacher education can function to deepen and make more flexible our individual poses and make visible just collective educational futures.