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English Language Arts/ Teacher Training
(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.
(Re)Active Praxis: Uncertainty and Vulnerability: Collaborative Course Redesign to Integrate Disciplinary Concepts and Justice Orientations in Contentious Contexts
This (Re)Active Praxis essay centers on the collaborative revision of two English language arts teacher education courses—one on literature and drama and the other on writing and language—in a state experiencing aggressive legislation against practices of diversity equity and inclusion that impacts teacher education preparing students to design justice-oriented education. Two objectives framed this collaborative course revision: to deliver critical teacher preparation grounded in cultural relevance and justice orientations and to design courses that integrate and demonstrate conceptual and instructional relationships between reading and writing. The authors share and reflect on their experiences and process of collaboratively revising the courses offering a heuristic derived from their decision-making to increase or improve ways education courses support preservice teachers’ opportunities to learn and teach literacy in culturally responsive justice-oriented classrooms.
Research: “It feels like a safe place”: A (Re)Invitation to the Writer’s Notebook as Humanizing Pedagogy in Preservice Literacy Teacher Education
This qualitative case study examines preservice teachers’ (PTs) self-selected writer’s notebook (WNB) entries and written reflections in two literacy methods courses. The authors use thematic analysis to consider how the writer’s notebooks supported PTs’ learning to teach multilingual writers while concurrently writing for themselves and navigating contemporary sociopolitical contexts. The authors describe how PTs used their writer’s notebooks to process emotion and identity develop professional stances and build experiential knowledge around multilingual multimodal writer praxis. The authors conclude with suggestions for teacher educators and researchers to expand these practices.
Research: “I’ve always had the abolitionist spirit in me”: Preservice Teachers of Color and Pedagogies of Abolitionist Praxis
This year-long ethnographic study explores how two ELA preservice teachers of color enacted pedagogies of abolitionist praxis—centering teaching and learning to and through an abolitionist praxis of identifying and dismantling surveillance criminalization and punishment—via the areas of curriculum and instruction relational work and organizing and activism. When enacting pedagogies of abolitionist praxis with specific attention to curriculum and instruction three findings were identified. First both teachers purposely and strategically designed their curriculum and instruction to explicitly teach an abolitionist praxis yet they did so via distinct approaches. Next the teachers rooted their curriculum and instruction in a radical Black Indigenous and feminist imaginary to teach about but more importantly teach against carceral practices policies and ideologies. Last both teachers facilitated youth-led action research projects that centered present and future world-building actions. This study provides implications for the education and support of preservice teachers and for K–12 teacher practice.
Editorial: Letting Students Lead the Way to Justice
As I write this editorial almost a year has passed since the 2023 ELATE Summer Conference in Atlanta. Yet the connecting presenting socializing and theorizing that occurred at the conference continue to generate important research and practices for the field of English language arts teacher education. This second special issue on the conference theme of “Centering Hope and Organizing for Justice” expands on this theme in exciting ways sharing research that will move education closer to justice. Yet before I highlight the justice-centered work contained in this issue I first want to reflect on the elements of hope and justice from the conference theme and how they are operating in my life scholarship and activism considering these questions: What is giving me hope right now? And how does hope help me organize for justice? I invite you dear reader to consider these questions alongside me.
Research: “They’re just not mature enough sometimes”: Teacher Candidates’ Languaging of Students and Criticality
Working in an English education teacher preparation program that emphasizes Muhammad’s (2020 2023) culturally and historically responsive literacy model three graduate teaching assistants sought to understand how teacher candidates (TCs) in the program take up the learning pursuit of criticality in their planning and teaching. In this article the authors discuss findings and implications from a qualitative study examining how four TCs languaged their understandings and enactments of criticality. Findings show that TCs’ definitions of criticality shaped their practice sometimes limiting it based on the compatibility of TCs’ curriculum or priorities with their understandings of criticality. In addition TCs’ deficit-framing of their students was a factor in how TCs explained the ways they did or did not take up criticality in their teaching. Implications from the study suggest a need to attend to the ways TCs language their students and conceive of criticality to support uptake of criticality in TCs’ planning and instructional practices.
(Re)Active Praxis: “I would get canceled for speaking like this”: Balancing Justice, Compassion, and Freedom in the Antiracist English Methods Classroom
In this essay the author reflects on a preservice teacher who disagreed with the antiracist focus of a methods class but refused to express her views in front of her peers suggesting that teacher educators may need to think harder about how to open spaces for divergent viewpoints on the worldview underlying antiracist pedagogy.
Symposium: Collective Dream for English Education
In this multiauthored piece ELATE members dream about what could be in ELA teacher education offering particular ideas resources theories and activities that could help them realize their dreams.
(Re)Active Praxis: Preparing Preservice Teachers for the Unknown with NCTE Resources
In this article the author shares a research assignment used with English language arts preservice teachers in a methods course to prepare them to engage with the NCTE professional community. The author shares how preservice teachers self-selected research topics designed classroom-ready teacher materials based on their research using NCTE journals and shared this research using panel presentations in class.
Research: Games to Promote Empathy as a Literacy Practice: A New Teacher’s Playful Practice
Researchers have advocated for the use of games for learning yet few studies focus on games within English teacher education. Even fewer studies examine English Language Arts (ELA) teachers as designers of games. In this article the authors examine a new ELA teacher’s design and implementation of a tabletop card game and explore what this game and its use in a middle school classroom illustrate about the purposes of games in secondary ELA. Data collection occurred across one year and included three semi-structured interviews and game materials. Key findings focus on games as (a) platforms for learning empathy as a literacy practice; (b) texts for story building and interpretive practice; and (c) ways to reimagine classroom learning. We discuss implications for teacher educators and teachers including games in ELA curriculum the use of games to reconceptualize schooling and tensions that can arise when teachers incorporate games in classrooms.
Re(Active) Praxis: Making a Place for Rurality: Toward a More Inclusive Multicultural Teacher Education
This piece recounts how a teacher educator’s experiences as a rural student and teacher at various educational levels have shaped her professional identity. Pairing these experiences with scholarship on rural cultural identity she outlines how ELA teacher educators can honor rural identities cultures and ways of being in their classrooms. The pedagogical moves detailed in this piece offer opportunities for both teacher educators and preservice teachers to consider ways of inviting rural culture into their classroom—to make rural culture part of an inclusive and multicultural way of teaching.
Invited Response: Promise and Perils of GenAI in English Education: Reflections from the National Technology Leadership Summit
In this essay three English educators who attended the National Technology Leadership Summit reflect on the benefits of using GenAI in English education while simultaneously considering the perils of its use. After posing many critical questions for consideration they conclude with a call for teacher educators to develop a robust research agenda focused on GenAI in partnership with preservice teachers and students as well as a push to engage in policy advocacy that can inform local and state policies.
Re(Active) Praxis: Navigating NCTE Preparation Standards and Restrictive Legislation in English Education Programs
In the midst of quickly changing education legislation English education teacher educators must consider how to prepare teacher candidates with a full understanding of new restrictive legislation as they design and implement instruction upholding NCTE’s standards for antiracist/antibias instruction while protecting themselves from school-level discipline and/or state-level legal implications. In this essay a teacher educator reflects on these conflicts in relation to her own practice and how she has made curricular changes to engage her students in this work.
Research: Solidarity-as-Project: Charting Democratic Co-inquiries in an Asian American Girl and Woman–Centric English Education Community
Informed by AsianCrit sociocultural literacy studies and solidarity scholarship this article examines how an Indian American woman scholar-practitioner and eight Indonesian American girls collectively engaged with civic learning in an out-of-school critical English education space. The researcher offers the construct of solidarity-as-project by tracing examples of how the facilitator and participants crossed boundaries of identity and experience to interdependently learn about and centralize Asian American civic legacies. The researcher also considers the complications of power and diversity in those co-learning processes. The article concludes with recommendations for how English teacher education can orient teacher candidates toward enacting solidarity-as-project alongside Asian American girls and young women.
Re(Active) Praxis: Sub Way, Teach Fresh: How Five Weeks as a High School English Teacher Sharpened My Life as an English Teacher Educator
In this essay the author reflects on his experience as a short-term substitute teacher in a high school English classroom. He considers the personal and professional tensions that led him there the impact of his time in the classroom and the potential it offered to identify and navigate the teacher educators’ “radical preferences” that might occasionally need sharpening.
NCTE Vice Presidential Address: The Work of ELATE
This is a lightly edited version of the address given by Tonya B. Perry at the ELATE Summer Conference on July 7 2023 at Georgia State University Atlanta.
(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.
(Re)Active Praxis: What Happens When You Read about Racism?
This reflective essay explores three graduate students’ experiences hosting an antiracist teaching book club with preservice English language arts teachers in the spring of 2021. The book club centered on practical advice for engaging secondary students through antiracist pedagogies while meeting the expectations placed on new teachers. Through reflection the authors found the book club opened a space for critical conversations on their own responsibilities as antiracist educators.
(Re)Active Praxis: Disrupting Segregated Knowledge Flows: Reflections from an Evolving Abolitionist
Amid a time of social protest against systemic racism the author recalls an experience of her own racism as a white literacy researcher and ELA educator. She acknowledges and describes her racism as both a means to redesign teaching practice and an invitation to other ELA educators to allow the discomfort that can come with reflection. Drawing on Bettina Love’s articulation of abolitionist teaching as well as scholars in critical English pedagogy and critical literacies the author focuses on the problem of segregated knowledge flows and shares ways in which she is disrupting this systematic tendency.
Research: Preparation and Practice: Preservice English Teachers’ Experiences in Learning to Facilitate Text-Based Discussions
This study explores the experiences of one cohort of secondary English preservice teachers (PSTs) learning to facilitate text-based discussions during a methods course. The authors analyze how the use of a Common Core-aligned instructional text and mixed-reality simulations support PSTs in developing discussion facilitation skills. Implications highlight that teacher educators need to examine their timing of approximations in teacher education programs and explain how simulated environments are intentionally used for PSTs to refine their practice.
Research: ELA Teachers and Whiteness: Hesitancy as Barrier to Teacher Agency Development
This study examines ways preservice teachers transfer their developing agentive identities—specifically around race/ism inequity and whiteness—from the teacher education context to secondary English language arts classrooms as well as barriers preventing that transfer. This inquiry utilized qualitative case study methods to conduct in-depth analysis of six ELA preservice teachers’ written reflections class discussions and student-instructor conferences. While the preservice teachers showed evidence of developing “theoretical agency” in the teacher education context they often struggled to maintain their agentive poses within secondary ELA contexts. Their struggles manifest as hesitancy connected to their awareness of and navigation of their own whiteness. Findings suggest preservice teachers need opportunities to interrogate whiteness through curricula and structural inequities and to engage in agency development across a variety of contexts.