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English Language Arts/ Teacher Training
(Re)Active Praxis: Reading Community in a Reading Community: Working toward Social Imagination in English Teacher Education
In this essay two English teacher educators detail a two-year inquiry process in which they worked to frame curriculum and instruction in secondary reading methods around the development of social imagination: the ability to engage imaginatively with the perspectives of others and to envision more just ways of being in the world. In the curricular approach detailed here preservice teachers developed social imagination by reading not only the words on the page but also the world around them attending to the ways in which other readers make meaning within their reading community. In this way classroom communities and intellectual partnerships become central to the teaching of reading and literature in English classrooms and serve as starting points for envisioning new ways of being in schools. The authors describe one particular classroom lesson in depth and discuss the connection between reading pedagogy in English and the imagination of more democratic and equitable classroom spaces.
Symposium: English Education in an Artificial World
Various English educators consider what the advent of “intelligent” technology means for ELA education and the ongoing pursuit of equity and justice.
(Re)Active Praxis: Dominant Discomforts: Reflections on Our Attempts to Queer English Teacher Education
In this essay two English language arts teacher educators reflect on their efforts to live out a queer anti-oppressive pedagogy and explore tensions in navigating emotionality and discomfort.
Research: “So, you’re not homophobic, just racist and hate gay Muslims?”: Reading Queer Difference in Young Adult Literature with LGBTQIA+ Themes
Reading moments of classroom talk as text we explored how prospective teachers in a Teaching Diverse Young Adult Literature course read and responded to Michael Muhammad Knight’s The Taqwacores a text with a Muslim LGBTQIA+ theme. Thinking with queer theory—and its constituent concept homonationalism more specifically—we examined how discourses of difference both liberatory and oppressive were shaped as notions of collective acceptance tolerance and inclusion intersected with interpersonal contradictions and contingencies. Using critical discourse analysis to trace how the “queer Muslim other” was indexed in conversation we highlight the promises and pitfalls of leveraging diverse youth literature as students examined and extended the privilege of personhood through the particulars of a single text.
Research: Exploring Trends in a Growing Field: A Content Analysis of Young Adult Literature Scholarly Book Publications 2000–2020
To understand trends in what seems to be an explosion of books written about young adult literature (YAL) the authors conducted a content analysis of scholarly books published between 2000 and 2020. The question What trends in YAL research and pedagogy do the books published in this span of time reflect? guided this inquiry to support English teacher educators in their engagement with YAL scholarship within and beyond teacher preparation. After examining 191 books with the majority of them focusing on research and theory in YAL findings emerged in five areas: critical events in society shifts in public education literacy movements publishing trends and scholarly community influence.
(Re)Active Praxis: The Possibilities of Community-Based Partnerships for English Language Arts Preservice Teacher Education
In this article we reflect on the potential of involving preservice teachers in pedagogical experiences with community-based organizations to cultivate all students’ genius and criticality (Muhammad 2020). Drawing on our (re)active praxis as teacher educators we examine our work with two preservice ELA teachers who planned and taught a critical literacy curriculum at a community-based site. By (re)imagining teacher education beyond traditional university and school classroom walls we consider the possibilities of bridging university-community contexts to develop our own implementation of critical pedagogies.
Research: “I want them to see writing as a joyful thing to do”: Noticing Texts as Equity-Oriented English Education
In this article I consider how pre- and inservice educators notice texts they enjoy in their daily lived experiences and how this positioning may support an attention to equity-oriented English education. I focus on texts that educators working in professional roles ranging from literacy coaches to elementary and secondary ELA teachers to administrators notice in their daily experiences. Drawing on a curricular assignment in a writing pedagogy course I consider how educators relate the texts they find interesting to their own understanding of equity-oriented writing instruction. I examine for how teachers consider the texts of their lives and how such attentiveness might help them build humanizing equity-oriented curriculum with and for students. I also seek to disrupt the overwhelming emphasis on writing as what is needed to pass a standardized assessment. This alignment toward enjoyment may support English educators as they in turn support and view students and their languages and literacies as worthy and brilliant.
Research: Understanding English Teachers’ Ideological Becoming in the Work Toward Linguistic Justice
In this article we explore the ideological becoming (Bakhtin 1981) of secondary and college English teachers as they participated in professional learning communities and later codesigned pedagogical innovations that aimed to further develop teachers’ and students’ critical language awareness. Drawing on qualitative data from two design-based research studies our cases demonstrate the impact of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic authoritative discourses as well as diverse internally persuasive discourses on the participating teachers’ ideological becoming. Our cases also illustrate the complicated and contradictory nature of developing critically conscious internally persuasive discourses. The findings suggest the importance of sustained professional learning across a teaching life if we are truly committed to working toward linguistic justice in schools and communities.
(Re)Active Praxis: Theory and Practice in Action as Teacher and Teacher Educator
A year before leaving his high school English classroom to start a PhD program in English education the author conducted an action research project on student camera use in online synchronous classes. In this essay the author reflects on that project from his new vantage point as a first-year graduate student and teacher educator in training sharing insights into and implications for the power of a theory for making and remaking meaning.
Research: Learning to Teach Writing by Becoming a Writer: An Examination of Preservice Teachers’ Engagement with the Writing Process
Finding ways to develop preservice teachers (PSTs) as both writers and teachers of writing can be a heavy lift for teacher education programs. This article presents a portion of the data from a larger study undertaken as longitudinal formative design research. Data were gathered from 410 PSTs over a three-year period across four courses in teacher education and English language arts at a private liberal arts university in a southwestern state. Two research questions guided the study: (1) How do preservice teachers engage in practices grounded in process discourse in the context of their teacher education courses?; and (2) How do preservice teachers’ beliefs about their writing self-efficacy change during a semester of engaging in writing with a focus on process discourse? Key findings of the study included PSTs engaging in prewriting activities (e.g. reading researching) but engaging less in writing while preparing to write (e.g. quicklist webs). Furthermore the PSTs utilized peers in revising writing but did not visit those with the most knowledge and skill in supporting writing (e.g. professor writing center). Finally PSTs’ confidence in their writing which was higher at the start of courses than previous research often indicates decreased across their time in the courses.
Research: High Fidelity: Factors Affecting Preservice ELA Teachers’ Commitment to Antiracist Literature Instruction
As the U.S. grapples with a racial reckoning teacher educators need to know what education programs can do to send preservice teachers into the field committed to engage in antiracist teaching and confident that they can do it well. This semester-long bi-institutional qualitative study of preservice teachers in two white-dominant methods courses for the preparation of English teachers examines the research question: What factors contribute to preservice teachers’ commitment to teaching about racism in the context of literature study? Defining commitment as a combination of intention and demonstrated ability to enact antiracism in future antiracist teaching through Love’s concept of abolitionist teaching as well as Kant’s conception of a categorical imperative this study identified four factors affecting participants’ commitment to antiracism: 1) knowledge about race and racism; 2) the role of participants’ racial identity in doing antiracist English teaching; 3) experience with antiracist pedagogies; and 4) field-based experiences tied to race. Implications from the study focus on the need to connect teachers’ racial identity understandings to discipline-based teaching; modeling discipline-centered antiracist pedagogies; and helping candidates to racialize field experiences as part of their preparation.
Research: Teaching While Grieving a Death: Navigating the Complexities of Relational Work, Emotional Labor, and English Language Arts Teaching
English language arts scholarship has suggested literacy classrooms should be inclusive of both teachers’ and students’ grief and loss experiences; however teachers’ grieving experiences remain understudied. This article analyzes seven in-depth interviews in order to understand ELA teachers’ experiences of teaching while grieving a death finding that ELA teachers navigating personal loss perceived particular rules for fulfilling relational work in teaching: hiding certain negative emotions navigating the teacher role and foregrounding students’ learning needs. Creating ELA classrooms inclusive of trauma and loss experiences requires teacher educators to attend to the interplay of teachers’ conceptions of relational work and their experiences and emotions related to loss.
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