Professional Documents
Culture Documents
LANGUAGE ARTS
TEACHER EDUCATION
ADVANCES IN RESEARCH ON
TEACHING
Series Editor: Volumes 111: Jere Brophy
Volumes 1227: Stefinee Pinnegar
Recent Volumes:
INNOVATIONS IN ENGLISH
LANGUAGE ARTS
TEACHER EDUCATION
EDITED BY
HEIDI L. HALLMAN
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA
ISBN: 978-1-78714-051-6
ISSN: 1479-3687 (Series)
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS ix
PART I
TOWARD A BROADER VISION OF ENGLISH
TEACHER EDUCATION
v
vi CONTENTS
PART II
LENSES FOR PREPARING PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS TO
TEACH ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
PART III
SOCIAL JUSTICE ORIENTED ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
TEACHER PREPARATION
ix
x LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Of the virtues received from our [predecessors] we can afford to lose none …. But
merely to preserve those is not enough. A task is laid upon each generation to enlarge
their application, to ennoble their conception, and, above all, to apply and adapt them
to the peculiar problems presented to it for solution.
Addams (1912/2002, p. 171)
I’ve been an English teacher for over 30 years, and at no time in my career
have I been less certain about what I do for a living. A glance at the texts
on my home bookshelves suggests as much: The Fire Next Time by James
Baldwin, the complete works of Shakespeare, a Spanish-English dictionary,
The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, a biography of the civil rights
leader Ella Baker, Capital by Karl Marx, The Absolutely True Diary of a
Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Were it not for the back copies of
English Education and RTE on a bottom shelf, anyone wandering into my
study could be forgiven for thinking that this is the collection of someone
who had switched undergraduate majors three or four times.
That I am usually untroubled by my uncertainty is due in part to evi-
dence that many English teacher educators share my sense of the eclectic
nature of our work. To summarize the, “Beliefs statement: What is English
education?” (2007) that emerged from the 2005 CEE Conference and
Policy Summit, our field encompasses “interdisciplinary inquiry” into the
teaching and learning of English, as well as the preparation and support of
teachers who “prepare learners to be creative, literate individuals; contribu-
tors to the cultural, social, and economic health of their communities; and
fully participating and critically aware citizens of our democracy in a com-
plex, diverse, and increasingly globalized world.” Though this description
of what we English educators do is accurate and as precise as it can reason-
ably be, it also indicates the expansiveness of our analytical and methodo-
logical horizons. Moreover, while implying an ethical rationale for what we
do, the statement also invites multiple interpretations of what, for instance,
a “creative, literate individual” is and how to help young people grow as
xiii
xiv FOREWORD
further by Slavoj Zizek, who insists that those who struggle for meaningful
freedom from structural violence must at times engage in “divine violence”
which is “divine” precisely because it results in justice (2008, p. 162).
As much as this posture of overt antagonism seems at odds with our
best intentions or unit plans, Jacques Ranciére goes so far as to say that
teachers’ role as “master explicators” is fundamentally incompatible with
democratizing politics. In Ranciére’s view, we educators get it wrong by
assuming an intellectual inequality between us and our students, and this
inevitably establishes a hierarchy of knowledge and status that perpetuates
and justifies social inequality. The sole alternative, Ranciére insists, is to
commit ourselves to the idea that “equality [is] not an end to attain, but a
point of departure, a supposition to maintain in every circumstance” (1991,
p. 138). To Ranciére, only from this radically egalitarian starting point can
an intermittent politics emerge as individuals verify their status as equal
subjects, and they do this by thinking and acting in ways that create dissen-
sus in the existing sociopolitical order (2004). As Ranciére sees it, this kind
of intellectual and political “emancipation” is something we simply can’t
teach (1991. p. 133). Why? Because the moment we begin to explain things
to others, we re-establish an intellectual hierarchy and its attendant
inequalities.
For my purposes here, these writers do not just disrupt the paradigms of
progressivism and critical pedagogy that we have relied upon to affirm
what Bieler and Burns call the “critical centrality” of social justice in
English education; rather, they also pose a direct challenge to what might
uncharitably be called our pretensions to political relevance. To the extent
that such challenges leave us unsettled, even confounded, they confirm the
need for a book that, as Heidi L. Hallman describes this one, “intends to
capture the spirit of disciplinary change.” This notion of “disciplinary
change” is, by my lights, worth underscoring, for it implies not alterations
to a relatively stable field of scholarship, but an acknowledgment that a
central feature of English education is as de Man (1986) said of literary
theory “the impossibility of its definition” (p. 3). Viewed in this way, to
become an English educator is to enter into an endless process of collective
self-critique and contested re-creation.
But if English education is characterized by a perpetual lack of agree-
ment regarding who we are, what we should do, and why, I think it’s
crucial that we understand such uncertainty not as a problem to be solved,
but as a condition to be celebrated. From this perspective, to cultivate
habits of disciplinary agility and intellectual humility is among our highest
obligations as we seek out and set forth a constantly expanding repertoire
xvi FOREWORD
of ways to think and talk about issues we have found to be worthy of our
attention. None of us is smart enough to do this on his or her own; no one
has the time or expertise to delve into all the sub-specialties that are rele-
vant to the preparation of ELA teachers. For this we must rely on each
other, and the value of such mutual dependency and trust is admirably illu-
strated in the chapters that follow.
Todd DeStigter
Department of English,
University of Illinois at Chicago,
Chicago, IL, USA
REFERENCES
Addams, J. (1912/2002). A modern Lear. In J. B. Elshtain (Ed.), The Jane Addams reader
(pp. 163176). New York, NY: Basic Books.
Alsup, J., Alvine, L., Blau, S., Calder, R., DeBlase, G., DeStigter, T., … Yagelski, R. (2007).
Beliefs statement: What is English education? Conference on English Education.
Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/cee/positions/whatisenglished
de Man, P. (1986). The resistance to theory. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Niebuhr, R. (1932/2013). Moral man and immoral society: A study in ethics and politics.
Louisville, KY: John Knox Press.
Ranciére, J. (1991). The ignorant schoolmaster: Five lessons in intellectual emancipation.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Ranciére, J. (2004). Dis-agreement: Politics and philosophy. Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
Zizek, S. (2008). In defense of lost causes. New York, NY: Verso.
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION TO
INNOVATIONS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE
ARTS TEACHER EDUCATION
REFERENCES
Dixon, J. (1967). Growth through English. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers
of English.
Dixon, J. (2003). Historical considerations: An international perspective. In J. Flood,
D. Lapp, J. R. Squire, & J. Jensen (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English
language arts (pp. 1823). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (2nd ed.). Philadelphia,
PA: Falmer Press.
Kirkland, D. (2008). “The rose that grew from concrete”: Postmodern blackness and new
English education. English Journal, 97(5), 6975.
Kirkland, D. (2010). Englishes in urban contexts: Politics, pluralism, and possibilities. English
Education, 42(3), 293306.
Squire, J. R. (2003). The history of the profession. In J. Flood, D. Lapp, J. R. Squire, &
J. Jensen (Eds.), Handbook of research on the teaching the English language arts
(pp. 317). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Swenson, J., Young, C. A., McGrail, E., Rozema, R., & Whitin, P. (2006). Extending the con-
versation: New technologies, new literacies, and English education. English Education,
38(4), 351369.
Street, B. (2003). What’s ‘new’ in the new literacy studies? Current Issues in Comparative and
International Education, 5(2), 7791.
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PART I
TOWARD A BROADER VISION OF
ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION
This page intentionally left blank
SECTION INTRODUCTION TO
PART I
Heidi L. Hallman
REFERENCE
Brass, J. (2014). Reconstituting teacher education: Literacy, critical theories, and English. In
J. Brass & A. Webb (Eds.), Reclaiming English language arts methods courses: Critical
issues and challenges for teacher educators in top-down times (pp. 121). New York,
NY: Routledge.
FINDING FOOTHOLDS IN A
CONSTRUCTION ZONE:
NAVIGATING THE DISCOURSES
OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
WITH PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS IN
THE 21ST CENTURY
ABSTRACT
the place where our identities are created and constructed.” Importantly,
Anthony also recognized that his future students may come from many dif-
ferent backgrounds, and he wanted to honor students’ diverse language
practices, saying,
Language is power. This fact is often forgotten in our schools, where teachers wield words
like a weapon, granting and revoking their students the right to speak on little more than
whims. What happens to a young Mexican-American girl who moves to America and is
told by her teacher that if she speaks Spanish in her classroom she will be given
after-school detention? Or an African American boy who is told by his White teachers that
ain’t isn’t a word, and that ‘It’s pronounced ask not aks?’ A part of her dies; a part of him
simply ceases to be.
Anthony’s version of ELA, as he saw it, was to foster inclusion and plurality,
especially with regard to students’ heritage languages and language practices.
He even wrote about the possibilities of having students share examples of or
complete assignments in their heritage language so that they might see their
own backgrounds and identities for what they were: assets. Anthony’s teach-
ing philosophy inspired me, and I found myself excited for both him and his
future students as he set out to do this important work.
I remember Anthony’s teaching philosophy for a second reason, as well
a reason that didn’t materialize until I received a written reflection from
Anthony a year later as he was completing his full-time, pre-service internship
at a local high school. This reflection completely departed from his original
teaching philosophy:
My mentor and the school in which I am placed frame the teaching of English in more eco-
nomical terms, less abstract terms. By that, I mean there is a big push at the school to pre-
pare the students, specifically the juniors, for eventually taking the ACT test. English,
therefore, is seen more as a means to an end, but we do know what’s best for our students.
After all, a command of academic English will help them get into college, and they have
been taught English for hundreds of years. It’s a core subject. It’s their mother tongue for
goodness sake!
It seemed that Anthony had completely lost his footing in his own imagined
paradigm for teaching ELA, and this new vision of the ELA classroom
seemed more than just a “fitting in” with the school culture or standardized
tests; it seemed an endorsement of an entirely different purpose for ELA.
I was frustrated not with Anthony, but with myself, as a teacher educator, for
not having done more to help beginning teachers like Anthony find their foot-
ing in a disciplinary terrain that is constantly morphing as teachers move
across contexts.
8 CORI MCKENZIE ET AL.
rules about knowledge and ways of knowing, and shape individuals’ experi-
ences and subjectivities. Therefore, different stakeholders may advance
their own discursively constructed paradigm(s) of English as unquestioned
sources of truth or authority We argue, however, that, as a discursive
construction, the school subject English is constantly made and re-made by
the dynamic play of social, ethical, political, and economic discourses.
Furthermore, we argue that ELA teachers can better navigate the field and
their ongoing negotiations with multiple, and even competing stakeholders,
by recognizing ELA’s discursive constructedness. This recognition, we feel,
invites teachers to consider where they stand in relation to these multiple
discourses, and rather than conceiving of any one discourse as single,
monologic, and authoritative (Bakhtin, 1981) leaves open the possibility
for teachers to leverage different discourse(s) without losing their footing in
the ELA paradigm(s) to which they feel most committed.
Scholars in the field have used a variety of metaphors to represent the
act of navigating the multiple purposes for and perspectives on ELA.
Hallman (2015), for example, refers to this navigation act as “shape-
shifting,” while Smagorinsky, Lakly, and Johnson (2002) refer to the move-
ment toward and away from school-sanctioned perspectives on ELA a
“waltz” (p. 211). For our part, we borrow the concept of “footing” from
Goffman (1974, 1981). Footing, quite simply, is “the stance or alignment”
(Wine, 2008, p. 2) that individuals take up in any context or social situation
and describes how individuals negotiate relationships, events, or interac-
tions. One key aspect of footing, as the term implies, is its maneuverability;
individuals can momentarily shift their footing in word or in deed to pro-
ject a certain stance about themselves, about others, or about some event
or relationship. Goffman describes this shifting as “the capacity of a dex-
terous speaker to jump back and forth, keeping different circles in play”
(1981, p. 156). We imagine the “different circles” to be the different para-
digms of English language arts, and we imagine the dexterous teacher to be
the one capable of drawing from multiple discourses while still maintaining
her footing (or simply “one foot”) in her own paradigm(s).
If a dexterous teacher is one that can shift their footing and keep a vari-
ety of circles in play, then when a beginning teacher like Anthony forgets
or rejects his prior beliefs about ELA, it suggests that he has moved himself
far from his earlier stance and it is no longer “a circle in play” (p. 156). We
posit that one way to grow into a dexterous teacher is to encourage pre-
service and intern teachers to notice and identify the different paradigms at
play in their schools and classrooms. Such work may help students keep at
least one foot in their own paradigms of ELA, even as they are pushed and
12 CORI MCKENZIE ET AL.
to be dexterous in their internship year. Kati and Cori carried this concern
with them as they planned and designed their English methods course for
the 20142015 school year. Having learned from Michael’s case of
Anthony, Kati and Cori felt they needed to begin their methods course with
a mapping exercise that called pre-service teachers’ attention the discursively
constructed nature of ELA. Throughout the first several weeks of the course,
students read an array of articles and book chapters exposing them to the
multiple discourses that have given form to the disciplinary content and
purpose(s) underlying English language arts. As a class, they entered into
these readings with an interest in surfacing authors’ implicit and explicit
understandings of the aims of English. In light of the more current neolib-
eral discourse of testing, accountability, and standardization that has not
only narrowed educational purposes, but also originated from sources other
than teachers themselves (Brass, 2015), Kati and Cori were adamant that
pre-service teachers do more than map themselves onto some static snapshot
of the disciplinary terrain; all three of us felt strongly that pre-service
teachers needed to participate in the field’s made-ness and construct that
terrain themselves, in conversation with other voices from the field (see the
appendix for one version of the matrix the class co-constructed).
The result was a matrix that pre-service teachers constructed first in
small groups and then collectively as a class, using the table features of
Google Docs to complete a graphic organizer with dimensions that shifted
throughout our year-long methods experience together. Though the organi-
zation of the matrix was very much in-flux throughout the introductory
unit, our pre-service teachers decided that the left-most column would be
organized around what they called the “paradigms” of English language
arts. Moving across the various columns of the matrix, pre-service teachers
sought to unpack the ways of knowing, saying, doing, feeling, and believing
that give rise to these paradigms, and to associate those ways of knowing,
saying, doing, feeling, and believing with other scholarly, policy, and/or
practitioner voices in the field of English language arts.
Students’ naming and elaboration of the paradigms reflected multiple
discourses. In the matrix our pre-service teachers constructed, we could see
evidence of the “college and career ready” purpose of education (a para-
digm they named “prepare for the future”), as well as more critical and
culturally sustaining discourses (evident in the “sustain multiple cultures”
paradigm, “promote critical consciousness” paradigm, and the “cultivate
identity formation” paradigm). We also sensed the impact of New Literacies
Studies in the “seek and create meaning using multiple literacies” paradigm,
and what Applebee (1974) might call the “traditions” of English language
14 CORI MCKENZIE ET AL.
Jeff
Jeff is a white man in his mid-20s who was placed in a British literature
classroom at a rural high school. Most of his students were white.
Throughout our methods class, Jeff showed a great deal of interest in hip-
hop pedagogies (he performs in a local hip-hop group), digital literacies,
and the way literature, especially American literature, might be used to
engage students in questions about race, oppression, and privilege. As an
intern teacher, Jeff continued to grapple with these interests and explicitly
Finding Footholds in a Construction Zone 15
Jaz
mentor teacher’s vision of ELA. The conversation she had over winter
break gave Jaz a sense of “the circle she needed to be in” (a metaphor that
matches Goffman’s about shifting footing) and helped her to decide what
she could cut and keep in order to better align her unit in the circle.
In the end, Jaz sacrificed by cutting the requirement that students’ stor-
ies be built around an issue of social justice. This allowed her to make time
to more explicitly teach some of the storytelling strategies that her mentor
teacher wanted students to practice. She did not, however, abandon her
focus on digital approaches to storytelling, which meant that she made
time in the unit for students to experiment with and learn about different
ways to make digital stories. Although Jaz was able to enact her commit-
ment to sustaining multiple literacies, the fact that she felt she had to set
aside her commitment to fostering social justice reflects the tendency for
intern teachers to acquiesce to the more conservative perspectives of tradi-
tional classroom settings (Smagorinsky et al., 2013). Furthermore, we
would like to emphasize that there is something particularly insidious about
the fact that as an African American woman teaching in a nearly all-white
school, Jaz felt that she had to “shave off” her unit’s focus on social justice.
Thus, although the matrix language may have offered a way for Jaz to
make sense of the compromising that she did during her internship year,
her experience highlights the fact that the matrix activity is certainly not a
protection against troubling compromises.
Amy
Amy is a white woman in her early 20s who taught senior British literature
classes at a STEM-focused military high school located in a large city.
Amy’s students were predominantly Latin@ and African American. Amy’s
university allows students to apply to teach in this particular city, and
Amy’s decision to apply to this urban program reflects the commitments
and interests that surfaced during the methods class she took with us,
including a concern for culturally sustaining pedagogies, community- and
placed-based education, translingualism, and social justice. As an intern,
Amy aligned herself with ELA paradigms focused on sustaining multiple
cultures, promoting critical consciousness, and sharing cultural knowledge
(but not just the knowledge of the dominant culture). Her placement school
and district, however, are much more aligned with the college and career
readiness paradigm. Amy explained that her district’s way of ranking
schools accounts for four-year college acceptance rate, and that means that
18 CORI MCKENZIE ET AL.
the focus on college readiness trickles down from the district level to school
level administrators and finally down to her and other teachers who teach
twelfth grade students. For example, she felt that she had to leave time in
her lesson and unit plans to teach students how to write personal essays for
college applications and to practice the kinds of writing skills students must
perform on college entrance exams. Amy’s beliefs about ELA are also at
odds with the curriculum she must teach, which revolves exclusively around
canonical texts of British literature including texts like Beowulf and
Macbeth.
Because the focus on college and career readiness and the British litera-
ture curriculum were at odds with Amy’s beliefs about ELA, she had to
make careful compromises in her internship classroom. Sometimes this
meant that she had to put her beliefs on the “back burner” for the time
being; other times, she has found ways to be “thrifty and creative” in order
to bring her own vision of ELA into the classroom. For example, early on
in the internship year, Amy attempted to foster critical consciousness by
asking students to analyze Lady Macbeth through a feminist lens. Later in
the year she attempted to support multiple languages by asking students to
translate a canonical text into a home or community language that they
speak. Some students engaged in the task by writing the text in Spanish or
AAL while others remixed the text into modern academic prose or what
Amy called “tech language.” Finally, as a way to enact her commitment to
culturally sustaining and community-based education, Amy used the
required college entrance essay assignment in order to encourage students
to explore their cultural and community backgrounds. As Amy noted, she
often saw opportunities to combine multiple paradigms, and she took
advantage of these opportunities to simultaneously enact the college and
career readiness paradigm and the more progressive paradigms she brought
to her classroom.
While we are frustrated that Amy had to occasionally put her beliefs
“on the backburner,” we are heartened by the “thrifty and creative” ways
she has managed to compromise without losing her footing in the para-
digms she values. Like Jeff and Jaz, Amy’s teaching suggests that explicit
attention to the paradigms of ELA may help interns make sense of the
tension between their own vision of ELA and the way administrators at the
school and district level understand the purpose of ELA. Although Amy
may not always be able to bring her vision to fruition, her ability to make
space for her vision of ELA in the mandated curriculum shows that she has
not lost her footing.
Finding Footholds in a Construction Zone 19
Samantha
DISCUSSION
As we reflect on these portraits, we are reminded of Anthony’s story that
opens this chapter. Under the pressure of his school and school staff,
Anthony felt the need to forsake his own vision of English and assimilate
into the prescribed model of his school community. In his reflection, he
not only departed from his original philosophy, he actually backtracked
on some of his commitments and even countered some of his steadfast
beliefs. In this sense, we felt Anthony had lost his footing and lacked the
language he needed to “keep different circles in play” and advocate for
his own curricular and pedagogical decisions. In some ways, the experi-
ences Jeff, Jaz, Amy, and Samantha are similar to Anthony’s experience
as an intern; after all, all five interns found themselves in the middle of a
collision of paradigms that made it difficult for them to enact their vision
of ELA in their internship classrooms. However, the interviews with Jeff,
Jaz, Amy, and Samantha suggest that these four interns never quite lost
sight of the paradigms that best reflect their values and beliefs about
teaching, learning, and equity. Even when these commitments were not
valued, they often incorporated their vision of ELA into their instruction
in “thrifty and creative” ways, maintaining and consciously shifting their
footing. Furthermore, unlike Anthony, the intern teachers interviewed did
not eschew their earlier understanding of the purpose of ELA; they may
not have been able to fully enact this vision, but each of them continued
Finding Footholds in a Construction Zone 21
to feel aligned with the progressive visions of ELA that they had culti-
vated during their teacher education program.
The portraits of Jeff, Jaz, Amy, and Samantha remind us that teaching
is an ongoing negotiation between and among multiple stakeholders. The
portraits also suggest that there may be value in engaging pre-service tea-
chers in explicit analysis of the constructed nature of ELA and the many
paradigms that shape the field; after all, we see in Jeff, Jaz, Amy, and
Samantha an ability to use the language of the paradigms to recognize
the commitments of other stakeholders and to place these commitments
in dialogue with their own. Equipped with the language of the paradigms
and a recognition that English language arts is always being constructed
by multiple stakeholders within and across multiple contexts, Jeff, Jaz,
Amy, and Samantha never fully lost their footing.
Our experience with the matrix-building activity suggests that ELA tea-
cher educators may do well to help pre-service teachers view the field of
ELA as a dynamic discursive construction that teachers navigate each day.
As Smagorinsky et al. (2013) note, engaging pre-service teachers “might
not change school practice one bit” and it is “surely not enough,” but it
may help teachers “consider the consequences” of different approaches to
conceptualizing ELA (p. 180). Scaffolding pre-service teachers toward this
kind of work could take a variety of forms, but we suspect that it would
likely require pre-service teachers to engage in the following work: analyze
research, practitioner pieces, and pedagogical artifacts in order to examine
their underlying ideological and epistemological assumptions; name or
categorize the different paradigms in the field; and locate themselves on
this ever-shifting map.
Finally, we would like to emphasize that these portraits suggest that at
the core of working with the paradigms of ELA is the assumption that pre-
service teachers are agentive and will participate in the field of English lan-
guage arts, drawing on its richness and plurality to find spaces to create,
combine, or revise paradigms so that the field of English language arts may
continue to be “under construction” and not a stable set of traditions,
dated beliefs, or prescribed mandates that need to be enacted and imposed
(which may be how Anthony interpreted his situation). Thus, we advocate
that this paradigm work to be taken up beyond teacher education class-
rooms, with mentor teachers and department chairs and members, so that
teachers, and especially beginning teachers, may find ways to navigate the
discursive terrain of English Language Arts throughout their careers.
22 CORI MCKENZIE ET AL.
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187213.
Smagorinsky, P., Rhym, D., & Moore, C. P. (2013). Competing centers of gravity: A
beginning English teacher’s socialization process within conflictual settings. English
Education, 45(2), 147183.
Sperling, M., & Dipardo, A. (2008). English education research and classroom practice:
New directions for new times. Review of research in education, 32(1), 62108.
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24
APPENDIX
Appendix. The matrix: A co-constructed map of the paradigms of English Language Arts.
Sustain Constructivist Utilize cultural Does time allow Cultural Self- Teacher Promote Smagorinsky,
multiple capital of all for nuanced Exploration facilitated; empathy, Paris,
cultures students, exploration into Activities student oriented combat Kirkland,
empower culture? sight (multimodal inequity, Morrell
students, create for conflict, autobiographies); flatten
global thinking differing Inclusion of classroom/
perspectives on “Multicultural”, cultural
“culture”; does Literature in hierarchy
this category Instruction;
account for Celebrate
exploring languages other
unfamiliar than
25
Appendix. (Continued )
26
Purposes/ Assumptions Affordances Costs Illustration/ Teacher/ Objective Relevant
Paradigms about Example Student Authors
of ELA Knowledge Dynamic
Prepare for Transmissive (1) Financial Might limit (1) Preparing Largely teacher A prosperous Common core
the future: stability in this students by students for the and life for
$$$$/college/ life (2) Social confining them mentality of standards- students
work mobility to a particular standardized directed (Academically;
track tests. (2) common financially)
core. (3) AP
classes
Cultivate Constructivist Asks question, Teacher has the Use morally Student Prepare Alsup,
identity “Who am I potential to ambiguous texts, dominated students for Morrell,
formation (becoming)?”: influence such as Monster, dynamic: a lot civic Beach, Hicks
fosters civic, students in class of exploratory engagement,
moral, and understanding discussions discussion, the 21st
ethical growth of identity reflective/ century
based on what expressive workplace and
they teach and writing, and life in general
how they self-selected
ABSTRACT
Many situations that affect the teaching of English have been unevenly
examined in the scholarship. Asking the question, “What research in
English teacher education will address the demands of preparing English
language arts teachers for 21st century contexts?,” the authors provide
recommendations to the field that will make our work more relevant and
propose areas for further study based on current situations in English
education in the United States that will move the field forward. The
chapter suggests topics for further research centered on the English lan-
guage arts-specific methods (pedagogy) course that includes exploring
the tensions between literacy and English studies, integrating technology,
moving theory into practice, the effects of high-stakes testing and assess-
ments, and supporting more diverse student populations.
Keywords: English education; English education methods
courses; pedagogy
the school subject. As Brass (2014) notes, through this perspective, there
really are no “general” methods.
With this collective scholarship in mind, we define the subject-specific
methods course for the purpose of this chapter and our research, more
generally, as primarily focusing on the representation and teaching of ELA
content. A methods course often also involves inquiry into the beliefs or
opinions of participants regarding concepts of ELA at the secondary level,
the planning of lessons or courses of study, and classroom management
related to content-specific methods. We do not regard courses providing
background in English content for teacher candidates as methods courses if
the focus is not on how to teach that content.
Despite the wide range of studies that examine specific practices that
employ technology in the ELA classroom as a way to educate K12
students, few studies (Pope & Golub, 2000) have examined the impact of
Preparing English Teachers for Today’s Context 33
Various researchers have noted that teachers teach as they were taught,
although this is not a simple reproduction (Smagorinsky & Barnes, 2014). In
the United States, field experiences are intended to mediate the reproductive
relationship between university and K12 schooling, especially when sup-
ported by methods coursework (Garner & Rosen, 2009). Understanding the
explicit connections between the methods course and field experiences is
needed. In English education, there are studies of field experiences in diverse
settings (DeStigter, 1998), service-learning in English education (Hallman &
Burdick, 2011; Kinloch & Smagorinsky, 2014), and studies in building
partnerships with teachers and local school districts (Cercone, 2009;
34 DONNA L. PASTERNAK ET AL.
Smith & Anagnostopoulos, 2008; Zigo & Derrico, 2009); however, it is diffi-
cult to know what pedagogical shifts pre-service teachers undergo as a result
of structured assignments in ELA methods courses while engaging in field
placements. There is very little research to be found on this topic.
Smagorinsky, Lakly, and Johnson (2002), though, have noted how novice
teachers negotiate that terrain between program and placement, thereby
highlighting how beginning teachers negotiate the work they do in course-
work with the work they do in their field sites.
Researching the pedagogical shifts that beginning teachers experience as
a result of specific methods course assignments would make a solid contri-
bution to English education. Study of the theory/practice connection may
require more direct involvement between university and K12 teachers and
administrators, thereby broadening the research findings to examine in-
service teachers as well.
The Preparation of Teachers for Students with Diverse Racial, Cultural, and
Linguistic Backgrounds
The field of ELA has generally treated the teaching of English language
learners (ELLs) as a new strand of culturally responsive teaching (Gay,
2000) or culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1994); yet, teaching
ELLs requires understanding of not only cultural diversity, but linguistic
diversity. Research (e.g., de Oliveria & Shoffner, 2016) is just starting to
emerge about how future English teachers must understand the linguistic
and cognitive dimensions of language learning. If ELA methods courses
continue to move toward the inclusion of methods to teach ELLs, the field
of English teacher education would benefit from further guidance about
what aspects of language learning pre-service English teachers might most
need to effectively teach students whose first language is not English. For
example, recent research (Gort & Glenn, 2010) suggests that a focus on
ELLs does not necessarily “replace” existing content; rather, it reorients
the methods course to address new, relevant issues in the teaching of ELA.
Yet, the knowledge and strategies beginning teachers need to effectively
teach ELLs may extend beyond the scope of the single methods course or
of the ELA methods course instructor.
Though content fields, such as ELA, have been encouraged to address the
teaching of English language learners, Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, and Rycik
(1999) found that few middle and secondary programs prepare to address
the needs of ELLs throughout the curriculum. de Oliveira and Shoffner
Preparing English Teachers for Today’s Context 35
(2009, 2016) have posited that the teaching of ELLs as addressed with future
content-area teachers (e.g., ELA teachers) has generally resided under the
umbrella of “teaching diverse students.” Yet, as classrooms in the United
States become more culturally and linguistically diverse, perhaps it is too
general to characterize ELLs under such broad a category. de Oliveira and
Shoffner (2016) have been among the first to explicitly discuss the need to
prepare ELA teachers to be teachers of ELLs, thereby urging prospective
English teachers to gain a deeper understanding of linguistic diversity.
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ADVOCACY, HUMANITY, AND
HOPE IN THE FACE OF AN
EDUCATION WORLD GONE
WRONG
ABSTRACT
If given the choice, would we, as teacher educators, enter the profession
again? Would we embark on a career that is faced with an antagonistic
national context that has permeated nearly every aspect of a teacher’s
existence from the media to the teachers’ lounge, from the lack of
support from parents to the lack of respect from students, from the
misguided policies and accountability demands to the blanket, uncreative
curriculum? How can we, as teacher educators who are doubting our own
place in the field, reasonably expect to make a difference in the careers
of our graduates? This chapter explores how and why the preparation of
English Language Arts teachers must focus on three tenets in the present
context for education: Advocacy, Humanity, and Hope. By examining
different approaches that both authors have used with teacher candidates
through multiple vignettes, we will create a deeper understanding of both
the realities our new teachers face and the ways in which they can
efficaciously face those realities and help reclaim the profession of teach-
ing. Our work will be grounded in a blended framework of critical peda-
gogy and progressivism and thus examine these vignettes through that
collective lens.
Keywords: Teacher education; English language arts; political
landscape; advocacy; legislation; accountability
Hi Morgan,
It’s great to hear from you. I’m familiar with the term defeatism, but I did some search-
ing to get a better grasp on what you are dealing with in your classroom. I’ve referred
to it as disengagement or ambivalence. However, there are some materials online that
mention Vince Lombardi using it specifically in speeches/writing where he characterized
defeatism with the Green Bay Packers who lacked the motivation to work hard and
had already assumed they would lose even before they had played. They had a debilitat-
ing case of what Lombardi called defeatism … beaten down by failure and not expect-
ing anything but the worst. Is this what you mean? Is this what you are seeing with
your students? Let’s come up with a plan to work on it together.
Let me know!
Dr. W
Dr. W,
The Lombardi reference you gave is where I first heard about it too. I will also keep
looking for information about it and let you know how it goes. Sidenote: I think I’m
also dealing with instructor and administration defeatism and hope I find a solution
before I get sucked in and make a blog about it that results in my ultimate demise. But
I feel I need to write about it. Will you read it if I write about it?
Thank you for your help,
Morgan
I assured Morgan that I was willing to read, listen, and when she needed,
collaborate on some strategies that would help motivate her students. But
I was stumped with how to help with the teacher and administrator
Advocacy, Humanity, and Hope 43
defeatism she was facing. Morgan, in her very short email, identified the
very large elephant that had been in every room of every conversation
about education either of us has experienced for the past several years
educational defeatism (Dahrendorf, 1967; Eyster, 1966; Possony, 1942;
Solnit, 2010; Tennant, 2006).
Has school, a potentially unifying and positive force in any democracy,
become a place where defeatism is common? Unfortunately, we think so
and argue that education writ large is infected by the dystopian narrative
of failing schools, inept teachers, and unreachable students (Berliner &
Biddle, 1995; Goering et al, 2015; Witte & Goodson, 2010). On the news
(Jones, 2012), in the newspaper (Elliott, 2013), out of the mouths of legisla-
tors (often puppeted by corporate influences) (Gordon, Smyth, & Diehl,
2008), and in every aspect of popular culture (Rousmaniere, 1999), we are
confronted with a negative, antagonistic national context decrying that tea-
chers aren’t professionals and that students aren’t receiving the education
they deserve in the 21st century. Educators (and now teacher educators)
are measured by the success of PK-12 students on bogus snapshot test
scores (Ravitch, 2010) and entire state education systems and teachers are
now graded on arbitrary value-added measurements that have been shown
to be unscientific and ineffective (Harris & Herrington, 2015). Some of the
very best teachers we personally know are leaving the profession or are
weighing the repercussions of leaving (Writers who care blog citation,
Huffington Post citation). We can’t recall a time when the landscape has
been worse for education.
How’d we get here? How has education changed so rapidly that it’s
barely recognizable to those of us seasoned enough to see the last 15 years
or so? Maybe it’s the public’s fear of paying taxes or big government’s
influence or a general will to let market forces dictate all that happens in
this country. Let’s be clear, though, the forces are not unique to America.
The global education reform movement is creating these shifts everywhere.
What’s the point of it? Where will it end? None of these questions have
straightforward or easy answers but the one we’re most concerned with at
present is how in the world does someone become a teacher and thrive in
such a context? And why?
When Wilhelm and Novak (2011) published Teaching Literacy for Love
and Wisdom, we were both struck by the title because it seemed out of place
with other happenings in education. Smack dab in the middle of the wake
left by Waiting for Superman, Race to the Top, and the Common
Core State Standards fiascos, a book titled with words such as “love” and
“wisdom” relating to the classroom was something of an oddity, albeit
44 SHELBIE WITTE AND CHRISTIAN Z. GOERING
a refreshing one. At a time when the rest of the country was busy attempt-
ing to numerically represent a teacher’s impact a truly insane concept
from our view along came a book that really spoke to the heart and
humanity of what it means to teach English and literacy. Fast forward to
2017 and some of our dearest colleagues in teacher preparation have pub-
licly or privately announced that they would not, if given the chance, enter
teaching or teacher education in today’s climate for education. Any number
of articles in the popular media suggest that teaching isn’t a profession
sought out by many at this point there could be a new genre of writing
called “Why I’m Quitting My Teaching Job.” In reality, what seemed like a
lot of misguided, misinformed, and misleading rhetoric from 2000 to 2010
(think No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top) has now shaped education
policy in almost each of the 50 states, thereby making the act of teaching
qualitatively different than it was a few short years ago. What’s more, all
of this negativity and defeatism about education is pushing the very people
we need in the profession far away from it.
As former middle school and high school English teachers who now
devote our careers to preparing future teachers, we find ourselves standing
at a crossroads. Would we, as teacher educators, re-enter the profession of
teaching if given the opportunity to transcend time and see the educational
context of today? Chris, who was accepted to attend law school during the
semester he student taught, remembers thinking that he didn’t want his job
to be an everyday argument, so he chose education. How little did he know
that argument has become a large part of what we do. Shelbie, who enthu-
siastically role-played teacher and school even before she could talk, never
dreamt of doing anything else. Teaching was a profession to aspire to and
dream to be.
We stand perplexed. How do we continue to be hopeful and enthusiastic
about the teaching landscape with our teacher candidates when we, our-
selves, are struggling to find ways to navigate the rocky and dangerous
environment of education and higher education? It’s difficult though not
impossible to throw someone a life raft from a sinking ship.
What we’ve determined to be the best course of action, at least for our
approach, is to provide teacher candidates with advocacy tools and techni-
ques as well as an honest perspective about the challenges they face. For
our approach, we have taken what we have gleaned from decades of experi-
ence (successes and missteps) as classroom teachers and teacher educators
to share what we know about self-advocacy, student advocacy, and profes-
sional advocacy with our teacher candidates so that they may be better
equipped to deal with the realities of the profession they have chosen.
Advocacy, Humanity, and Hope 45
In order for our teacher candidates to find the hope and humanity in future
occupations, we have made the conscious decision to help them become
strategically political (Huebner, 1975) in order to survive in an education
world gone wrong.
I sit, observing a high school 10th grade regular level class during my first week of my
internship and see how they would rather harness incompetence and what is worse, find
it pleasurable. Also on my plate earlier in the day was a 9th grade International
Baccalaureate level class, with every advantage, on its way to becoming fully developed
with the same attitude I observed in the 10th grade class. The 9th graders showed signs
creeping into their culture: defiance, lack of effort, amusement from evidence of failure.
And what’s worse, I have found that the educators here are admittedly out of ideas and
motivation. The stress of being an ineffective educator is great and that stress can dwin-
dle their passion and love of questions and finding the answers. No more do they seek
answers to problems because they believe there are none, especially for this one, and
what’s worse, they do not bother to ask.
diversified and offered her the opportunities to learn these strategies. Field
placements in urban, suburban, and rural settings ensured, we thought,
Morgan had opportunities to interact with students from a variety of back-
grounds and saw examples of challenges in a variety of forms. In each
instance, we also believed that she was surrounded by mentor teachers who
were thinking aloud about their own teaching challenges and showing her
how to grapple with the complexities of leading a classroom of students
with varying degrees of willingness to be present and engaged.
Instead, our program had placed Morgan in a series of school placements
with overtly positive school administrators, teachers, students, and contexts
with progressive approaches and attitudes. What we didn’t realize was that
in each of these instances, the teachers and principals we had made exam-
ples of in our placement process made the very hard work of teaching and
engaging students look much too easy. Morgan, and our other future
teachers, had been shielded from the day-to-day struggles that all teachers
and schools face with their students. We had unknowingly provided a shiny,
Willy-Wonkian placement experience that had clearly caused harm.
Morgan was in unfamiliar territory. She was in a need of mentoring and
was desperately trying to advocate for herself. The hope she felt as an
entering teacher candidate was quickly dissipating. When teacher candi-
dates are placed in schools, their mentors are often assigned, such as the
cooperating teacher and university supervisor, while occasionally mentors
emerge, such as mid-career or career teachers making efforts to connect
with young teachers through like-minded conversations and offers of
support. Both the cooperating teacher and university supervisor were, as
Morgan stated, “infected by defeatism” and she had yet to have an
“organic” mentor emerge from the faculty. And in the absence of either a
positive mentor or strategies to deal with the issues at hand, Morgan had
chosen to write her way through it by reflecting in a blog. As a teacher
preparation program, we could do better.
What We Learned
organically in their own ways. Preparing our teacher candidates for either
scenario (and all the scenarios in between) was our new goal. Morgan’s
situation had made it abundantly clear, while we discuss with teacher can-
didates what a mentoring program might entail, rarely do we have conver-
sations about how to best advocate for and utilize the mentor/mentee
relationship.
Identifying effective colleagues to serve as mentors is critical to influen-
cing early career teachers to stay in the profession (Campbell & Brummett,
2007; Inman & Marlow, 2004; Wood, 2005) but it isn’t a sure bet. While
most would agree that mentors are an important part of the equation of
teacher preparation, Chris’ experiences recently questioned just how much
influence mentors should have. The Master of Arts in Teaching program at
the University of Arkansas, from 1997 to 2015, required students to be in
schools for 33 weeks as teacher candidates. While extended placement time
in the classroom has been supported in some of the literature as recipro-
cally beneficial to both the teacher candidate and the teacher/students/
classroom, the program faculty considered the alternative and reached a
frightening conclusion: classroom mentors were having an overwhelming
influence on the preparation of new teachers. If one follows the logic that
the current status of schools is broken, to spend all of one’s time learning
to teach in such a context is a liability, with interns beholden to mentors
who are, no matter how reluctant, part of that system. Chris’ program
underwent a significant revision and while there are 16 full weeks of student
teaching versus the previous 33, students are pulled back into longer and
more purposeful teacher education classes.
We believe classroom-based mentors can and should play a role in the
preparation of teachers but so should the faculty members at each institu-
tion. Being socialized into a problematic context will not create the change
we need nor the teachers who will transcend the current education context.
In realizing that our teacher candidates and early career teachers are mana-
ging the day-to-day aspects of the classroom such as classroom manage-
ment, learning new instructional materials, lesson planning, and classroom
organization but also engaging in the human side of education by commu-
nicating effectively, solving problems, and working collaboratively with a
variety of community members that includes other teachers and stake-
holders such as parents and guardians, we suggest that faculty members
must serve in active and strategic mentoring roles as well. Teacher candi-
dates are cautious to voice their concerns about these issues for fear of
being seen as weak or incompetent by the administration and thus losing
an opportunity for employment in the school or district. Any learning
48 SHELBIE WITTE AND CHRISTIAN Z. GOERING
situation void of the ability to take risks is deprived one of the most impor-
tant elements of acquiring new skills and knowledge. This is where we see
our roles expanding of late.
As in Morgan’s case, as prepared as she felt leaving her coursework to
become a teacher, the realities of the classroom offered her challenges she
felt she was not prepared to navigate. Of the survival skills necessary to
meet the demands of a classroom, Nahal (2010) found that first year
teachers, while full of love for the profession and an eagerness to change
student lives, often lack the ability to work through the realities of the
classroom, the untenable workload of grading and planning, or the unrea-
listic expectations of time and commitment required to be successful. We
must make visible for our teacher interns the very real aspects of teaching
and the ways to advocate for fair and equitable treatment for themselves
in order to be an advocate for others. Teachers early in their careers,
beyond a love for teaching, need guidance in navigating the disparity
between what is taught in teacher education and what is practical in the
real classroom. Finding the right ear to hear these concerns is the first
step. Mentor Teachers can fill that role but if we take the changes to
Chris’ program into consideration, we must account for the fact that find-
ing these teachers will become increasingly difficult and problematic
(Goering, 2013).
One of the most important roles we play in preparing our future teachers
to become political advocates is guiding teacher candidates to understand
when, why, and how to best advocate for their students. Many studies exist
to support the need for advocacy training for new teachers (Brighton, 1999;
Gordon & Maxey, 2000; Greenlee & Dedeugd, 2002; Huling-Austin, 1992;
Advocacy, Humanity, and Hope 49
Manley, Siudzinski, & Varah, 1989; Moir, Gless & Baron, 1999; Odell &
Huling, 2000; Stansbury & Zimmerman, 2000). For decades, our field has
published to illustrate the best ways that teachers can identify student inter-
ests needs (Burton, 1973; Purves & Beach, 1972), differentiate the curricu-
lum to meet those needs (Richardson, 1996; Tomlinson, 2001, 2014), and
communicate with stakeholders about the theory and practice that support
the advocated position (Brookfield, 1995; Korthagen & Kessels, 1999). We
immerse our teacher candidates in the literature of student advocacy, model
how to discover students’ interests and needs in order to design curriculum,
and offer opportunities for our teacher candidates to reach beyond the
traditional curriculum to design engaging and relevant lessons for future
use in the classroom. Had we done enough?
Jose continues:
This past week, it became clear that the curriculum was not working and that it was
time for a change. It was time for me to teach my own unit, so after discussion with my
cooperating teacher, I started in my 11th grade on level English class, my most challen-
ging class. The class, as a whole, avoids completing any assignments in class and select
students prefer to take assignments outside of the class to complete rather than be
caught doing work inside and they even visit my room during other periods to turn
work in. Greene suggests that finding a common goal within the class is one way to
combat the problems we were facing, so this past week on Tuesday, I threw the tradi-
tional curriculum in the trash, very much like To Sir, With Love, and explained that
I would give them this class time to make up any work (ALL students needed this). My
instincts told me that this would give me a clean slate with this class to begin a new
direction (also a foundation of completed grades to boost student morale.) Fifteen
minutes before the bell, I instructed students to gather their things and asked them to
have a conversation with me. I explained my frustration and new direction as follows:
‘I have been struggling planning instruction for you because I do not understand what
you want to achieve or what you want from this class. I have found myself frustrated
because I do not know how to make the literature useful in your life so it becomes
useless. In the position I am in I am required to plan instruction around certain texts
and teaching points. This I have to do. In order to help myself and you I want to ask
all of you what you want to get out of this class? What do you want to learn? OR What
do you want to do after high school?’
Jose remembered what we had spoken about many times in his teacher
education courses and that is if you want to know if things are working in
your classes, ask your students, preferably before, during, and after instruc-
tion thus to avoid a Sidney Portier moment like the one described. While
we applaud Jose’s approach, we were perplexed that Jose had waited until
this point to find out what his students needed from the class and from
him. There are many fundamental things that we cover in our Methods
50 SHELBIE WITTE AND CHRISTIAN Z. GOERING
What We Learned
Grassroots Efforts
teachers that hard-working teachers with real students could not be boiled
down into one number:
X
L X
Q
yti ¼ X i β þ yt r; iγt r þ Zqi θq þ ei
r¼1 q¼1
Partial value-added model formula:
Credit : Florida Department of Education:
Morgan’s original concerns with defeatism and Jose’s struggles with tea-
cher agency are tangible in Scott’s response about his friends outside of
education. We are up against unprecedented negativity and defeatism in
the prevailing public opinion about teachers and teaching. From an “any-
one can do that job” a decade or two ago to a “why would anyone do that
56 SHELBIE WITTE AND CHRISTIAN Z. GOERING
our struggles and successes in doing what is best for our students. It is and
should be our life’s honor to remain forever in touch with the people we
prepared to teach or prepare other teachers, modeling a sense of what
Scott mentioned in the quotation above.
In that same way, teacher educators are in as difficult of a situation
today as ever and taking care of one another instead of surrendering to the
market forces of competition prevalent in higher education is key. And
perhaps this is the lesson of all of this, if we stick together, we’ll have a
chance to positively impact generations of future teachers and students, to
turn back the asinine reforms and label them for what they really are
nefarious attempts at privatization to instead simultaneously enhance
ever-improving methods of teaching, our fragile democracies, and our
appreciation of the people in and around our lives.
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PART II
LENSES FOR PREPARING
PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS TO
TEACH ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
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SECTION INTRODUCTION TO
PART II
Heidi L. Hallman
Part II follows Dixon’s lead in the sense that it emphasizes the process
of doing English language arts. Part II begins with a chapter by Amanda
Haertling Thein, Richard Beach, and Anthony Johnston that explores the
implications of teaching literature through an identity-focused framework.
An identity-focused framework invites adolescents to approach literature in
a more engaged manner, relating themes to who they are and how they see
the world around them. Thein, Beach, and Johnston assert that most
classes that use young adult literature employ a very developmental
conception of adolescent identity. The authors then explain how a socio-
cultural approach, in contrast, emphasizes the relational component of
identity-making. The chapter “Re-Positioning Youth in English Teacher
Education,” by Robert Petrone and Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides, extends
the argument that the framing of adolescent identity is critical in the field
of English language arts teacher education. Highlighting three ways that
English teacher educators might facilitate prospective English teachers’
interrogation of dominant discourses of adolescence/ts, Petrone and
Sarigianides emphasize that this interrogation will help prospective English
teachers be better positioned to create pedagogical practices aligned with
more comprehensive understandings of secondary students. This chapter
also focuses on how youth, themselves, can be integrated into English
teacher education coursework as guest speakers on a range of English and
schooling practices, thereby being “re-positioned” as experts and contribu-
tors to English teacher education. The next chapter, the chapter “Beyond
the Knowledge Economy: Teaching English for Economic Justice,” by
Ross Collin, explores English language arts’ tradition of economic critique.
Collin asserts that although economic critique has long had a role in ELA,
it has seldom been seen as a way for teachers to pursue ELA’s economic
mission of teaching forms of literacy that students can use to improve their
63
64 SECTION INTRODUCTION TO PART II
economic positions. Collin introduces a way that ELA teachers can help
students improve their economic positions by showing them (a) how to
read and write about abuses of economic and political power and (b) how
to work toward a more economically just society. The final chapter in
Part II of the book, the chapter “From Research to Practice: Writing,
Technology, and English Teacher Education,” by Jen Scott Curwood,
Jayne C. Lammers, and Alecia Marie Magnifico, stresses the advantages
of writing authentically and looking at youths’ writing “in the wild”
(Curwood, Magnifico, & Lammers, 2013). Through drawing on their
experiences as English teacher educators and as researchers of digital litera-
cies and online affinity spaces, Curwood, Lammers, and Magnifico offer
examples from three English teacher education programs in the United
States and Australia to demonstrate a link between their research in out-of-
school spaces to literacy practices in school contexts.
Just as Dixon (1967, 2003) advocated for the process model in English
language arts through the personal experience agenda, stressing that
language is learned through the process of doing, Part II encourages the
teaching and learning of English language arts as fully rooted in the experi-
ence of doing. By encouraging students to share their life’s experiences, the
personal experience model, according to Dixon (2003) allows students to
“build [their] own representational world[s] and work to make this fit
reality as [they] experience it” (p. 13). This model is alive within Part II of
the book and resonates with a Deweyan, experience-based curriculum
(1938/1963), valuing and promoting learning through experience.
REFERENCES
Curwood, J. S., Magnifico, A. M., & Lammers, J. C. (2013). Writing in the wild: Writers’
motivation in fan-based affinity spaces. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy,
56(8), 677685.
Dewey, J. (1938/1963). Experience and education. New York, NY: Macmillan.
Dixon, J. (1967). Growth through English. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers
of English.
Dixon, J. (2003). Historical considerations: An international perspective. In J. Flood,
D. Lapp, J. R. Squire, & J. Jensen (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English
language arts (pp. 1823). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
RETHINKING IDENTITY AND
ADOLESCENCE IN THE TEACHING
OF LITERATURE: IMPLICATIONS
FOR PRE-SERVICE TEACHER
EDUCATION
ABSTRACT
more or less complete than those of anyone else. Such a view of identity
requires a more complex and nuanced conceptualization of adolescents,
their capabilities, and their interactions with texts than does an individual
view of identity. In this chapter, we outline a framework for identity
focused literature instruction that relies on sociocultural understandings
of identity, then draw on illustrations from classroom research to explore
three key ways that an identity-focused approach challenges current
approaches to pre-service teacher education related to literature instruc-
tion. Specifically, we explore challenges to the ways that we teach tea-
chers to select and evaluate literary texts, plan literature instruction, and
engage in inquiry and dialogue with students.
Keywords: Identity; secondary school literature; sociocultural theory;
literature instruction
something which is assembled and changes over time throughout interactions with
others … who we are, or rather who we present ourselves to be, is an outcome of how we
routinely and repeatedly engage in interactions with others on an everyday basis.
(pp. 23)
Importantly, this view of identity assumes that people have multiple, inter-
secting identities that they negotiate across multiple contexts and across
time. For instance, a teacher performs a different identity in the classroom
than at home with family or at a social event with friends. These identity
performances are related to different expectations, norms, and roles that are
performed in each context and are manifested in various discourses, disposi-
tions, attitudes, relationships, and myriad other overt and subtle differences.
Additionally, a teacher’s identity performances in each of these contexts are
shaped by gender, race, and social class norms and experiences.
Synthesizing sociocultural theories of identity, Beach et al. (2015) define
identity as “the performance of practices grounded in a social and cultural
history and improvised upon in particular social situations through the
positioning of the self and others” (p. 5). In this conceptualization, identity
is understood as enacted through different ways of being and becoming by
adopting different practices in different contexts.
view asks us to view adolescents as complete human beings with experiences, beliefs,
and opinions that matter. (p. 6)
For instance, in studying a text like Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a
Part-Time Indian (2007) a young adult novel about a Spokane Indian boy
72 AMANDA HAERTLING THEIN
who leaves his reservation school to better his education at a White high
school, students might focus less on Junior’s “coming-of-age” through the
independent decision he makes about his education, and more on the ways in
which social and cultural narratives about family, friendship, loyalty, success,
and Whiteness create tensions for Junior as he negotiates competing identities
across the different social worlds he experiences. Students might then reflect
on ways in which such narratives work in their own social worlds.
In addition to refocusing the goals of identity work in the teaching of
literature, a sociocultural view of identity also encourages teachers to think
beyond limiting labels that position students as having intrinsic identity traits
and to develop a stance toward students that sees them as more complex.
From a sociocultural perspectives students are not just “adolescents” who
are self-focused and immature, “struggling readers” who are disengaged
with literature, or “behavioral problems” who are expected to be perpetually
disruptive. Instead, these labels become ways in which students are
positioned positionings that can be transformed through a shift in stance
toward students and instruction. Beach et al. (2015) explain, “When you
view your students as more than just a universal group of adolescents, you
raise their status. They become equal participants with you in the process of
identity work” (p. 14). In other words, teaching literature through a sociocul-
tural view of identity requires English teachers to dissolves some of the artifi-
cial boundaries that are often erected between teachers and students when
students are imagined to be incomplete people in the process of identity
work that teachers have already completed (Lewis & Finders, 2002). English
teachers, therefore, must be willing to share a more dialogic space with stu-
dents, to decenter some of their authority, and to engage with students in the
ongoing work of identity negotiation that can be mediated by literature.
as they take on different roles and work toward different goals in their own
social worlds.
Unresolved Identities
Many literary texts end with some sort of resolution to a problem or crisis.
In young adult literature particularly contemporary realistic fiction
coming-of-age and identity clarification often serve as resolutions to a
novel (Cadden, 2011). While appealing, such resolutions reinforce the
notion that identity is developed in adolescence and becomes fixed at the
start of adulthood (Thein & Kedley, 2015). Books that avoid clear coming-
of-age moments complicate ideas about identity resolution as a marker of
adulthood, allowing students to see identity as an ongoing negotiation.
Walter Dean Myers’s Monster (1999) is an example of a novel in which
the protagonist becomes increasingly less certain of his identity through the
course of the narrative. Steve is an African-American, urban teenager who
Identity and Adolescence 77
instruction in this school, English teacher Daryl Parks selected texts and
activities that provided students the opportunity to explore both race and
class as these constructs influence communities and identities (Beach,
Thein, & Parks, 2008).
For pre-service teachers, ethnographic observations and interviews can
shed light on the complex particularities of the communities, schools, and
students they interact with in their field experiences. These particularities
help pre-service teachers locate important starting points for developing
identity-focused literature instruction.
focus, they can begin to design specific activities for exploring identity
through literature. In this section we discuss a range of activities and prac-
tices that can be modeled in English education coursework and integrated
into pre-service teachers’ unit planning. These activities and practices incor-
porate the three key practices for identity-focused instruction outlined ear-
lier: adopting alternative perspectives, negotiating identities across different
social worlds, and making connections across people and texts.
Dialogic Discussion
Student-centered, inquiry-driven discussion is perhaps the most basic and
important activity that pre-service teachers should incorporate into their
units and lessons related to identity-focused literature instruction. Often
referred to as “dialogic” discussion (Nystrand & Gamoran, 1991), this form
of discussion is a contrast with teacher-directed recitation in which the tea-
cher poses questions, students recite answers, then the teacher evaluates
those answers for correctness (Mehan, 1979). Instead, in dialogic discussion
the focus is on “authentic questions” for which there are no prescribed
answers, and dialogue among all members of the class wherein “uptake” of
ideas occurs as people listen to one another and respond in a manner that
incorporates previous ideas into new contributions (Nystrand & Gamoran,
1991). Dialogic discussion is important for identity-focused literature
instruction because it allows for students to share and consider a range of
perspectives on a given issue rather than searching for a correct answer.
For pre-service teachers, writing authentic questions and facilitating
dialogic discussion can be a challenge because both tasks require a will-
ingness to entertain the unpredictable in one’s teaching. Writing truly
authentic questions means posing questions about which the teacher gen-
uinely wonders and wants to explore with their students. A question is
not really authentic if a teacher is hoping for the emergence of certain
kinds of responses or interpretations. Leading a dialogic discussion
requires improvisation. Teachers must become adept at asking follow-up
questions for clarification or elaboration, listening carefully to what stu-
dents find compelling and want to pursue in a given text, and making
choices about when to redirect discussion and when to let discussion
move in its own direction. English educators will want to allow signifi-
cant time for pre-service teachers to practice developing authentic inquiry
question and to lead dialogic discussions with their peers. O’Donnell-
Allen (2011) and Juzwik, Borsheim-Black, Caughlan, and Heintz (2013)
each provide useful strategies for helping pre-service teachers develop
strategies for dialogic discussion.
82 AMANDA HAERTLING THEIN
Writing
There are many ways in which pre-service teachers can design writing
tasks to help students explore identity in literature. For instance, students
might keep dialogue journals with a peer in which they write to one
another in the voices of literary characters (Vinz, 2000), or they might
Identity and Adolescence 83
create mock social media sites for characters, imagining what kinds of
images, quotations, media links, and daily commentaries a given character
might post.
Pre-service teachers might also be encouraged to design writing tasks
that help students reflect on their own identity performances and position-
ings in response to what they’ve interpreted in a literary text. Steph, a tea-
cher in a White, working-class, farming community in Iowa developed a
unit in which students explored identity as linked to the places they live.
Her students read The House on Mango Street (Cisneros, 1991), a novel
told in poetic vignettes about a young Mexican-American girl’s experiences
of race, class, gender, and family in an urban Chicago neighborhood. In
response to the novel, Steph’s students wrote their own vignettes focused
on the details of life in their own homes and neighborhoods. In writing
these vignettes, students considered how their own identities were shaped
by the homes they lived in and the neighborhoods they were a part of
(Beach et al., 2015).
Language Study
Finally, because identity is often performed through language and dis-
course, pre-service teachers should be encouraged to include close analy-
sis of language in designing activities for identity-focused literature
instruction. People learn to adopt different discourses as “identity tool-
kits” based on different ways of knowing and thinking. For example,
school administrators often adopt a discourse of business management
for justifying the need for “accountability” and “measurable outcomes”
(Gee, 2015).
In studying the ways in which language and identity shift as people
move across social worlds, students in DeAnn Long Sloan’s 10th-grade
English classroom studied Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Focusing
on the character of Calpurnia, an African-American housekeeper in a
White household, students noticed that the character’s language, dis-
course, and demeanor shift as she moves from the social world of her
work to the social world of her home and church community (Thein,
Oldakowski, & Sloan, 2010). Similarly, Flynn (2011) detailed a unit in
which students studied Soto’s play, Novio Boy (1997). Students in this
classroom examined how and for what purposes characters made choices
about speaking English or Spanish. Students came to see that language is
tied to identity performance in important ways; characters shifted their
use of language depending on their purposes, goals, and relationships in
various social contexts.
84 AMANDA HAERTLING THEIN
CONCLUSIONS
Moving beyond a view of identity as idiosyncratic, autonomous, and uni-
versally developed during adolescence means rethinking the ways in which
we approach identity in the teaching of English and English education.
Instructional units that aim to provide universal guidance in “coming-of-
age” or developing a resolute identity in the face of societal pressure
become intrinsically problematic when we view identity as fluid, shifting,
performed, and shaped by social, cultural, and institutional forces. Such
units position young people as incomplete human beings experiencing pro-
totypical crises. Further, such units fail to consider the complexity of the
lived experiences that young people encounter all of which shape what
they care about and how they position themselves in the world.
In this chapter, we have outlined a number of key shifts that a sociocul-
tural view of identity and adolescence requires of English teachers and
educators. We’ve also detailed central practices that might drive a sociocul-
tural, identity-focused approach to literature instruction. The implications
we’ve suggested for preparing pre-service ELA teachers make clear that
shifting toward a sociocultural identity-focused approach to literature
instruction means rethinking the stance English educators ask pre-service
teachers to take toward their future students. These implications suggest
that pre-service teachers must be taught to pay close attention to the social
and cultural contexts in which they will teach and to the specific needs,
desires, and interests of the students in those contexts. Previous approaches
to identity in literature instruction encouraged pre-service teachers to view
their students as hypothetical adolescents whose needs can be met through
texts and instruction that focus on universal crises and problems. The
approach outlined in this chapter provides a paradigm shift; it suggests
that pre-service teachers must be encouraged to treat their students as
complex, fully formed human beings by selecting texts that offer opportu-
nities for complex identity exploration, conceptualizing units that focus on
specific problems that matter to the youth they will teach, and designing
instruction that encourages perspective-taking and identity negotiation.
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Identity and Adolescence 87
ABSTRACT
For the past decade, the two of us have been intent on calling attention to
how ideas of youth and adolescence circulate within the field of English
Education. The underlying impetus for our work has been a concern that
(literacy) educational discourses and practices like the broader cultural
discourses and practices within which they exist often operate from a set
of naturalized, normative conceptions of adolescence that are problematic.
Such dominant discourses of adolescence typically position youth through
deficit orientations, and consequently engender pedagogical practices and
ways of thinking about secondary students that reify these diminishing per-
spectives. We are interested in locating how ideas of adolescence and youth
circulate in English Education, and in better understanding how some of
the more problematic of these ideas can be made visible and disrupted in
our work with pre- and in-service English teachers. Ultimately, our goal is
to guide educators to be better equipped to develop more humane and criti-
cal pedagogies in their secondary English classrooms.
In this chapter, we provide a brief overview of some of the central theo-
retical tenets and related scholarship in English Education that we see as
crucial for work focused on examining and disrupting conceptions of ado-
lescence. Additionally, we highlight several ways the two of us have
attempted to re-configure dominant notions of adolescence and youth with
pre- and in-service English teachers in our respective university-based
English teacher education programs. To do so, we discuss our approach to
teaching the Young Adult Literature course, a class that has increasingly
become a popular, and often mandatory component of most English
Education programs across the United States. Specifically, we explain how
we foreground the idea of a Youth Lens, an approach to the analysis of
texts focused on depictions of adolescence, age, and youth, through tea-
chers’ examinations of young adult literature. Second, and perhaps most
fitting with the spirit of this book, we explain innovations we have made in
our respective programs that follow this emphasis on revised views of ado-
lescence to put pre- and in-service English teachers into dialogue with
youth, particularly those typically labeled “at-risk.” Specifically, we explain
how we create opportunities in our programs to “re-position” secondary-
aged youth as experts in a range of ways.
In sharing these concrete interventions, our hope is to encourage fellow
English teacher educators to become even more strategic in working with
pre- and in-service English teachers regarding critiques of adolescence and
youth. Ultimately, our aim is to help bring about systemic change in our
field so that reconfigurations of adolescence and youth are central to the
work of English Education programs and literacy instruction in schools.
Re-Positioning Youth in English Teacher Education 91
theoretical and empirical scholarship that operates from the basic assump-
tion that youth and adolescence are cultural constructs (Austin & Willard,
1998; Best, 2007; Lesko, 2012), the lens draws upon literary scholarship,
mostly outside of English Education, that critiques young adult literature
for its representations of adolescence. Unbeknownst to us when we began
our own work critiquing representations of adolescence, scholars of chil-
dren’s literature who examine representations of childhood in texts have
propounded critiques of children’s and young adult literature specifi-
cally through assumptions that childhood and adolescence are cultural
constructs (Kokkola, 2013; Nikolajeva, 2010; Trites, 2000, 2007; Waller,
2009), indicating an existing tradition in the field writ large for this kind of
analysis of texts. (For more on the tenets of a Youth Lens, as well as exam-
ples of applications of it, see Lewis & Durand, 2014; Lewis, Petrone, &
Sarigianides, 2016; Sarigianides, 2015; Sarigianides, Lewis, & Petrone,
2015; Sieben, 2016; Thein & Sulzer, 2015; Thein, Sulzer, & Schmidt, 2013).
Building on these ideas, we typically organize our young adult literature
courses around three central aims. First, we introduce and explore the idea
of adolescence as a cultural construct. For many students, not only is this
idea new, but it also contradicts, or at least troubles, much of what they
previously learned in their coursework in adolescent development or educa-
tional psychology regarding youth. As Sophia has demonstrated, this cog-
nitive dissonance often leads to resistance to revised ideas of adolescence
(Sarigianides, 2012, 2014). A second aim of the course is to teach and prac-
tice a Youth Lens through applications to young adult literary texts. This
content and its application comprises the bulk of the course. A third aim of
the course involves creating space for students to develop pedagogical prac-
tices that build on the ideas of adolescence as a cultural construct, perhaps
through a Youth Lens, and applied to young adult literature. Typically,
these take the form of lesson plans, rationales for teaching certain texts,
and/or unit plans. For the remainder of this section, we discuss two key
moves we make to teach the idea of adolescence as a cultural construct and
to build a Youth Lens.
For many of our students, particularly those who have taken required
coursework in development psychology, the idea of adolescence as a cul-
tural construct is new. Though some teachers encountering this construct
Re-Positioning Youth in English Teacher Education 95
may not hold to deficit views of youth especially if they have extensive
experience working successfully with young people the presentation of a
traceable history of adolescence surprises most students in our courses. For
this reason, a key first step in building a Youth Lens to analyze young
adult literature is to explore with our students the idea of adolescence as
a construct.
To do so, we tend to avoid beginning with the lexicon and idea of a con-
struct. Instead, we have found it helpful to engage our students in a series
of activities, lectures, and readings that disrupt normative assumptions of
adolescence. In other words, we often take an inductive approach to intro-
ducing the idea of adolescence as a construct by first illustrating, or “show-
ing” its constructedness prior to naming it.
Though the possibilities for providing these contrastive experiences are
endless, one way we’ve had great success is by discussing the delineations
between “social age” and “biological age.” Unlike biological age which is
fixed, social age is “culturally produced through material practices” (Lesko,
2012, p. 107) and explains why it may be that the way a person acts may
not be consonant with the norms tied to her/his age. For instance, Lesko
recounts research from Norway that reveals delineations between “big”
and “little” 12-year-olds within family systems. In one family, for example,
a 12-year-old was considered “big” since she was responsible for tasks simi-
lar to adults in the household. In another family, a 12-year-old was consid-
ered “little” and was not responsible for tasks similar to the adults in that
household. This research reveals how the meanings ascribed to a particular
age are not inherent in biology but rather the positioning and status of the
youth within a specific family context.
To illuminate this distinction between social and biological age, Rob
often shares with his students the concept of a “parentified” or “adultified”
child, or, a “young carer.” A parentified child refers to youth who have
been thrust into the role of parent in relation to their own parent(s) and/or
younger siblings. The parentification of children may be physical, where a
child assumes practical responsibilities for the physical well-being of them-
selves and their parents (and siblings potentially), as well as the emotional
needs of their parents. In thinking of young adult literature, the case can
easily be made that Katniss in The Hunger Games, particularly at the onset
of the first book in the trilogy, is a parentified child as she is responsible for
caring for her mother and younger sister. Though common in many cul-
tures globally, in the United States, this phenomenon disrupts normative
notions of (an “American”) adolescence. This example opens up a range of
questions that can counter attempts at universalizing or naturalizing
96 ROBERT PETRONE AND SOPHIA TATIANA SARIGIANIDES
as well as news stories, and even The New Yorker cartoons that depict
stereotypes of youth. These texts have proven extremely useful in both
helping our students orient themselves toward a textual critique that fore-
grounds adolescence, as well as developing approaches to the young adult
literary texts they next encounter.
As we move from the media texts to the literary texts, we also have
our students read literary criticism that either explicitly draws upon a
Youth Lens or otherwise draws attention to depictions of adolescence in
young adult literature. The work of English Education scholars Thein
and Sulzer (2015) have proven quite useful for our students. Their ana-
lyses offer concrete approaches to young adult literature that students
can immediately apply to texts. As our work with students begins to
examine intersections between depictions of adolescence with other social
categories such as gender or sexual orientation, the work of English
Education scholars Lewis and Durand (2014) and Sieben (2016) similarly
provide our students with ways to further deepen and complicate their
interpretive readings. In addition to these examples of literary criticism, a
range of others, particularly from literary scholars outside of English
education we cited earlier have proven helpful in pushing our students to
deepen and trouble their analyses.
(Vasudevan & Campano, 2007). We do this so the pre- and in-service teachers
have a positive experience with students who are typically labeled as having
little if anything to offer the intellectual and/or social life of schools. More
than that, though, we deliberately seek out marginalized youth to serve as
experts in teacher education to create a space within an academically sanc-
tioned institution to value the skills and knowledge the youth offer. Time and
time again in both these interventions and our own research with youth
we’ve come to see how creating such a space for anyone, but especially youth
for whom schools have been anything but hospitable, has powerful posi-
tive effects.
Though we have developed several of these opportunities within our
English Education programs, we highlight two of them in this section.
Both of these involve several secondary-aged youth coming into English
Education classes as guest speakers to address topics pertinent to the
course curriculum.
(and loved) Levithan’s (2003) Boy Meets Boy, described her in-class experi-
ence this way:
I found the book circles to be a difficult experience for me personally. I realized how
“unprepared” I was to talk about an LGBTQ text with a gay student or a bisexual
student. I was overly cognizant of my wording and phrasing of thoughts so I wouldn’t
offend the students in any way. It made me aware of how teachers (or simply people)
often express their opinions in ways that may unintentionally offend and ostracize
others. And not doing so is a difficult and conscious task.
I’m not sure if she improved as a reader or writer at all during the course of this class.
I hope so, but small changes are really hard to measure. I do know that she was from
the outset the most difficult student to teach the one I had the most qualms about
accepting into the class, the most frequently disruptive, uncooperative, and disrespectful
student of the bunch at times. The crazy thing is, she was also far and away the student
who cared the most about this class, and got the most out of it. The other three
students who came to speak to your class are articulate superstars who can talk about
how an experience affected them, but they have these busy lives full of promise and
opportunity. For [this student], the visits to Teachers College, and even just the subway
rides there and back, were the most memorable part of her academic career. One of the
most amazing things to come out of this class for me as a teacher was this sort of
re-evaluation of what some of my ultimate teaching objectives might look like. I focus
Re-Positioning Youth in English Teacher Education 103
so much on what students will be able to do and understand that it’s easy to forget
about what they might feel.
THINKING PROGRAMMATICALLY
By sharing these examples of concrete points of intervention, we hope to
stimulate thinking for how the field of English Education writ large can
begin to effect systemic revisions whereby reconfigurations of adolescence
are made central to the preparation and professional development of
English teachers. In the past few years, the field has made great strides in
this direction, and we hope the work we’ve shared here can help move us
along a bit further for the larger social justice purposes of improving the
school and out-of-school literacy experiences of the youth in teachers’ lives.
NOTE
1. Given space constraints, this section will provide a brief overview of the theo-
retical grounding and related scholarship. However, we have articulated
104 ROBERT PETRONE AND SOPHIA TATIANA SARIGIANIDES
the theoretical orientation for this work more extensively elsewhere. Please see
Petrone, Sarigianides, and Lewis (2015) for a more detailed discussion.
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BEYOND THE KNOWLEDGE
ECONOMY: TEACHING ENGLISH
FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE
Ross Collin
ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I consider arguments for aligning ELA with the demands
of a soon-to-arrive knowledge economy. I ask how these arguments call
ELA teachers to prepare students to work in an economy that values
creativity, interpretation, and cutting-edge literacies the stock-in-trade
of ELA classes. Although these arguments have many strengths they
play down standardization and play up creativity they rest on faulty
assumptions about the number and distribution of high-skills jobs in the
near future. Most people will not perform work that leverages creativity
and cutting-edge knowledge. Given this reality, I ask how teachers of
ELA teachers can take what’s good in the knowledge economy approach
and adapt it so diverse students can acquire literacies that may help them
succeed in and, perhaps, transform the economic field. This more viable
approach to ELA calls teachers to teach not only economically valuable
forms of reading and writing but also ways of critiquing and changing
economies in line with democratic principles. I illustrate the latter
When I think about ELA and economic critique, I think about a moment
from my first year of teaching English. I was standing in the hallway,
describing to a colleague my plans for teaching students about the eco-
nomic context of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. I talked about
investigating the Great Migration, redlining, and racial segregation in labor
unions. Passing by, another colleague smiled and said, “Ha ha! Every
English teacher thinks he’s actually a social studies teacher!”
It was a good-natured joke, but it rested on a shaky premise: Economic
critique belongs in social studies, not in ELA.
In this chapter, I argue not only that economic critique belongs in ELA,
but also that critique is a means of pursuing ELA’s economic mission. By
the latter, I mean the mission of teaching forms of literacy students can use
to improve their economic positions. While many English educators see
new literacies (e.g., digital literacies) as the most economically valuable
practices taught in ELA (see Beers, 2010; Burke, 2013; National Council
of Teachers of English [NCTE], 2009), I argue critical literacies are of
potentially greater value. To work out the practical implications of this
argument, I present a scenario activity for an ELA unit on A Raisin in the
Sun. I describe how, through engaging students in economic critique, the
scenario activity helps teachers pursue ELA’s economic mission.
English educators often cite new literacy skills as ELA’s contribution to the
economic success of students and of the nation as a whole.
Popular arguments about the economic value of new literacy skills rely
on a theory of skill-biased technological change (SBTC). This theory was
developed by economists including Lawrence Katz and Kevin Murphy
(1992) and popularized by figures including Robert Reich (1992), author of
the widely read book The Work of Nations. Reich’s arguments about SBTC
were brought into literacy studies by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel
(2003) and James Gee (2008). SBTC posits the following: In the second
half of the twentieth century, information technologies were developed that
enable companies to automate or outsource more and more work. The jobs
that are most susceptible to automation and outsourcing are routine pro-
duction jobs (e.g., many types of factory work). Given the realities of auto-
mation and outsourcing, routine production workers have little leverage to
improve their wages, job security, or working conditions. Thus, SBTC dis-
advantages low-skill workers. On the other side of the coin, SBTC advan-
tages high-skill workers who can use new tools to link together, manage,
and create networks in the high-tech global economy. For instance, the
new economy pays a premium for workers who can develop and advertise
new products to new consumer markets. Ultimately, theorists of SBTC
posit that a good deal of economic inequality has to do with who has crea-
tive, high-tech skills, and who does not.
Working with a theory of SBTC, some English educators frame ELA as
a good training ground for work in the new economy. Specifically, they
argue ELA classes can serve as venues in which students can hone their
creativity and learn new literacies (and especially digital literacies). For
example, English teacher Jim Burke (2013) writes,
[A]ll work dependent on the left-brain capacities logic, sequence, literalness, analysis
is increasingly sent abroad, or, more frequently, done by computers, whereas the right
brain work synthesis, emotional expression, creating context, and thinking about the
big picture is what should be [ELA teachers’] focus. (p. 4)
Striking a similar note, Kylene Beers (2010) argues, “One way we rebuild a
strong economy is to educate students so that they are able to do this
creative innovative work” (original emphasis, p. 7). Beers (2010) says
that while the worker who learns new literacies may lose a routine job to
globalization, she can find an innovative, higher-paying job in the creative
sector, so “She still has a job, and a better one” (p. 6). By trying out new
literacies in ELA classes, advocates argue, students will be better equipped
to perform the kind of work valued in new times. Thus, for some English
Beyond the Knowledge Economy 111
educators, new literacies are means by which they can pursue ELA’s eco-
nomic mission of teaching forms of literacy students can use to improve
their economic positions. And by teaching new literacies to all students,
they can equip all future workers with valuable skills and thus rectify socio-
economic inequality (for closer analyses of arguments about literacy and
new economies, see Collin, 2014, 2016).
SBTC and its ELA corollary make sense in a general way. Many
American workplaces, like the broader society, have grown more high-tech
and have come to require forms of literacy that fit the new high-tech envir-
onment. However, SBTC explains less and less the closer we look at eco-
nomic trends. As economist Paul Krugman (2015) writes, SBTC “has fared
very badly over the past quarter-century, to the point where it no longer
deserves to be taken seriously as an account of what ails us” (par. 8). For
one thing, Krugman observes, real wages of American college graduates
those whom SBTC is supposed to advantage have stalled over the past
20 years. Relatedly, job markets in the United States show less demand for
creative, high-tech jobs than SBTC predicts. And data on business invest-
ments show most companies are not rushing to purchase new worker-
replacing technologies. What’s more, other advanced capitalist nations
such as Canada and Germany nations subject to the same technological
changes as the United States have not shed jobs at the American rate.
“In short,” Krugman (2015) argues, “a technological account of rising
inequality is looking ever less plausible, and the notion that increasing
workers’ skills can reverse the trend is looking less plausible still” (para. 11;
for a more elaborated critique of SBTC, see Schmitt, Shierholz, & Mishel,
2013). Thus, like most economists, ELA educators would do well to drop
SBTC and its pedagogical corollaries.
because of political efforts to tilt the playing field in favor of the powerful,
then ELA teachers might teach their students to ask why the playing
field is arranged as it is and how it might be arranged in a more
equitable manner. In this way, ELA teachers can help students improve
their economic positions. Specifically, ELA teachers might have students
read and write texts that pose questions of equality underlying current eco-
nomic debates: What do we owe each other? In what sense am I my broth-
er’s and my sister’s keeper? How can we balance individuality against
responsibility to the group? By reading and writing texts that engage these
questions, students can learn forms of economic critique they can use in
broader struggles that determine their pay, their cost of living, and the
taxes they pay. Below, I present an ELA scenario activity that pursues this
type of economic critique.
But doesn’t this approach to teaching English transgress disciplinary
boundaries? Shouldn’t ELA stick to the literary and personal and leave the
economic and political to social studies? In a word, no. Disciplinary bound-
aries are not so clearly drawn. For years, ELA classes have addressed
socio-political problems of racism and anti-Semitism by reading books
such as Richard Wright’s Native Son, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird,
and Elie Wiesel’s Night. Moreover, some of the most commonly taught
texts in ELA foreground questions of economic inequality. Consider,
for example, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, George Orwell’s
Animal Farm, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, The Pearl, and Of
Mice and Men, Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, Sherman
Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. These texts can and should be read for their
literary merit and for the opportunities they present for personal reflection.
At the same time, however, they should be read for their portrayals of the
haves and have-nots and for their explanations (implicit or explicit) of eco-
nomic inequality.
Although economic critique is an important current in ELA a current
relayed, if nowhere else, in the texts listed above it has long sparked
controversy. For instance, in his presidential address to the 1934
Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, Oscar J.
Campbell discussed pedagogies of reconstructionism and their emphasis on
economic critique. He warned,
The greatest danger in such a time as ours is that one’s mind may be completely captured
by the immediate and pressing. Values which are not obvious are in danger of becoming
obscured or lost. Our duties in a rapidly changing world can best be discharged
if we remain cognizant of the nature of our subject and of those deeper regions
114 ROSS COLLIN
Consider, for instance, Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. This classic play
is set in a working-class African-American neighborhood in Chicago in the
1950s. The five members of the Younger family live in a cramped apart-
ment and work through compounding problems of personal, social, and
economic varieties. Much of the conflict in the play turns on the question
of whether the Youngers should move into a bigger home in an all-white
neighborhood whose residents try to keep out people of color through brib-
ery and violence.
One big question at the heart of the play is “When must we share?” The
residents of the all-white neighborhood in A Raisin in the Sun do not want
to share their neighborhood with people of color. Thankfully, few students
today would seriously argue it is acceptable for people to try to segregate
neighborhoods on the basis of race. However, many people adolescents
and adults believe it is acceptable to segregate neighborhoods on the basis
of income (which, in the United States, is bound up with race). Many of
these same people resist efforts to build subsidized housing in high-income
areas, arguing that if people want to move into affluent neighborhoods, they
should work harder and save more money. Others argue that given the
unequal geographical distribution of good jobs and good schools, it is
exceedingly difficult in some neighborhoods to pull oneself up by one’s boot-
straps. Therefore, people of this second opinion argue, public money should
be used to fund affordable housing in high-income areas. On this issue, dif-
ferent people offer different answers to the question “When must we share?”
Because housing policy is notoriously tricky and too arcane for many
adolescents, English teachers might reproduce the dilemma in a scenario
more accessible to high school students (this approach to creating scenarios
is adapted from McCann, Johannessen, Kahn, & Flannagan, 2006). In
other words, teachers might develop a case study set in the teenage world
that raises the question “When must we share?” In this way, English tea-
chers can connect the text (A Raisin in the Sun) to students’ lives and to the
broader realm of economic debate. The following section presents a sce-
nario handout to be distributed to students and worked through in an ELA
class that recently finished reading A Raisin in the Sun.
Although FHS does not have much money to field athletic teams, it has
a long established, nationally ranked debate team. Many students see
debate as the most prestigious extracurricular activity at the school. In per-
sonal essays submitted with college applications, members of the team
often describe their participation in debate. Each year, an average of four
seniors from the team are awarded academic scholarships from the colleges
they will attend (average scholarship: $2,500). These seniors almost always
credit the debate team with helping them distinguish themselves as students
deserving of scholarships.
Because FHS has little money to spend on extracurricular activities,
members of the debate team and other teams and clubs have to pay partici-
pation fees. For a student to join the debate team, she must pay a $300 fee
each year that covers travel, food, lodging, and registration for debate tour-
naments. This $300 is in addition to money put up by FHS and money gen-
erated by the annual debate team fundraiser (selling candy bars).
Each year, the 30 members of the debate team usually include about 27
students from lower middle class Glendale and about 3 students from work-
ing class and poor Rock Row. Many families from Rock Row see the $300
fee as a deal breaker. To open up the club to more students from Rock
Row, Mr. Turnbaugh, the faculty advisor of the debate team, has proposed
charging Glendale debaters an extra $100 a year. This extra money an
average of $2,700 a year ($100 times 27 students) could fund nine free
spots for debaters from Park Row ($2,700 divided by $300). Mr.
Turnbaugh’s proposal elicited the following reactions from FHS students.
Jenny Trimarco (Rock Row): Finally, a little fairness! For years, only
kids from Glendale could afford to be on the debate team, so only kids
from Glendale got to list debate on college applications and get those big
scholarships. That’s a lot of valuable stuff college slots and scholarship
money given just to the kids from the richer side of the tracks.
Compared to all that valuable stuff, $100 isn’t even all that much. Debaters
from Glendale can totally afford it and it would give kids from Rock Row
a better chance at getting into a good college and being able to afford tui-
tion. Thank you, Mr. Turnbaugh!
Jared Richards (Glendale): Turnbaugh’s heart is in the right place, but
this plan just isn’t fair. Sure, most families from Glendale are a little better
off than most families from Rock Row. But they’re not so much better off
that they can just cough up an extra $100 any time someone asks for it.
Plus, better off families are better off because they worked for it. And
because they worked for it, they should be able to spend that money on
their own kids, not someone else’s kids.
Beyond the Knowledge Economy 117
SCENARIO DEBRIEF
This scenario prompts ELA students to consider key questions of equality
at the center of A Raisin in the Sun. Crucially, the scenario is set in the
world of adolescence (i.e., it is set in a high school) and its central conflict
is a live debate (i.e., economic redistribution is up for public debate in a
way purposeful racial segregation is not). Moreover, as per McCann et al.’s
(2006) advice for designing scenarios, none of the four views is outrageous
or easily dismissed even if students disagree with a particular view, they
will have to consider and argue against the (perhaps limited) good sense of
that view. By working through the scenario and comparing and contrasting
it to the events of A Raisin in the Sun, students can develop nuanced argu-
ments about when and why people must share resources.
118 ROSS COLLIN
LOOKING AHEAD
Although there are good reasons to strengthen ELA’s tradition of eco-
nomic critique, there are several obstacles in the way. First, testing regimes
must be pushed back so English teachers can reclaim the time it takes to
carry out investigations of equality and inequality. The scenario presented
above would take two or three class meetings to work through, so teachers
will need schedules that are not locked up with skill-and-drill test prep.
Second, teacher education and professional development programs should
present more opportunities for ELA teachers to explore ways of teaching
economic critique in their classes. Teachers and teacher educators who
want to strengthen ELA’s tradition of economic critique might take their
cues from teachers who have fought to expand discussions of racial justice
in ELA classes. In other words, successful efforts to put race on the ELA
agenda might inform efforts to emphasize economics. Finally, researchers
might study and write about the efforts of ELA teachers who focus on eco-
nomic critique. Researchers might describe and analyze innovative ways of
teaching A Raisin in the Sun or The Grapes of Wrath or the lyrics of the first
wave of hip hop (which swept out of the economically stressed South
Bronx). By building up the field’s stocks of knowledge about teaching for
economic justice, teachers and researchers can make economic critique a
more recognizable and more practical part of ELA.
Beyond the Knowledge Economy 119
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by Virginia Commonwealth University’s
Presidential Research Quest Fund.
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FROM RESEARCH TO PRACTICE:
WRITING, TECHNOLOGY, AND
ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION
ABSTRACT
Writers, their practices, and their tools are mediated by the contexts in
which they work. In online spaces and classroom environments, today’s
writers have increased access to collaborators, readers, and reviewers.
Drawing on our experiences as English teacher educators and as
researchers of digital literacies and online affinity spaces, this chapter
offers examples from three English teacher education programs in
the United States and Australia to demonstrate how we link our research
in out-of-school spaces to literacy practices in school contexts for our
pre-service teachers. To do so, we share an illustrative example from
each program and consider how in-class activities and assessment tasks
can encourage pre-service teachers to learn about: the importance of
clear goals and real-world audiences for writers; the value of self-
sponsored, interest-driven writing in the English curriculum; and the role
of authentic conversations between readers and writers as part of the
writing, revising, and publishing process. The chapter concludes with
provide her with insight into the challenges associated with composing a
creative work under timed exam conditions. As part of an assessment in
one of her English methodology classes, Alice (all student names are pseu-
donyms) was tasked with writing a creative piece, receiving constructive
feedback, and reflecting on her writing process and the final product. She
chose to use fanfiction as an entry point into creative writing, and to focus
specifically on Attack on Titan, a Japanese manga series. As she explained,
“There’s been a lot of love put into the world. As a fan, I can’t help but
respond to it and try to help make it fuller.”
Creativity is evident in fan culture, which sparks fans’ interest in writing
stories, creating art, producing videos, and engaging in interactive games.
Jenkins (1992) argues that these practices blur “any clear-cut distinction
between media producer and media spectator, since any spectator may
potentially participate in the creation of new artworks” (p. 247). Prior
research has shown that fanfiction allows young adults to draw on mentor
texts to develop their writing craft (Curwood, 2013, 2014), engage in colla-
borative writing and role-playing (Thomas, 2007), construct hybridized
identities (Black, 2008), and share their creative work with an authentic
audience (Lammers, Magnifico, & Curwood, 2014). While it may not be
practical for teachers to use online writing communities like Figment.com
or Wattpad.com directly in their classrooms, research suggests that there is
substantial value in integrating self-sponsored writing practices and in facil-
itating constructive feedback processes in schools.
Discussion
For teachers in New South Wales, creative writing in an integral part of
the secondary English curriculum and a significant component of the HSC
exam. In her reflection, Alice expressed her belief that fanfiction draws on
students’ interests and passions, and that it can serve as an entry point into
creative writing. She argued, “It’s oftentimes much less intimidating to
write [fanfiction] than original prose because there is already a world and
set of characters to build on. It would be excellent for students who need a
boost of confidence in their creative processes.” As an avid writer and
artist, Alice was already comfortable with expressing herself creatively and
producing transformative works for a public audience. By choosing to
write her fanfiction story under exam conditions, she gained insight into
how she might prepare her own students to draw on their personal inter-
ests, develop deep understandings of genres and conventions, and be pre-
pared to respond to diverse prompts and multimodal stimuli. This
particular assessment task provided pre-service teachers with agency to
explore various facets of creative writing; for Alice, it allowed her to bring
her own passion about manga into the university classroom and it also
challenged her to grow as a writer and an educator.
This case highlights how one of my pre-service teachers, Thom, used blogs
to innovate writing instruction in his student teaching placement. Though
blogs are not a new innovation, they continue to be a means of developing
From Research to Practice 129
teachers’ and students’ digital literacies (Hicks & Turner, 2013), particu-
larly because they facilitate digital, multimodal, and communicative writ-
ing, connecting writers with audiences within and beyond the classroom.
Through this case, we see one example of how our research connects to
practice by directly informing our pre-service teachers’ work with their
own students.
The research and practice literature documents varied experiences of
students and teachers blogging as part of English instruction. Blogs can
encourage students who do not contribute verbally in class to participate
(Gillespie, 2006), facilitate collaborative writing and idea sharing (Allison,
2009; Ranker, 2015), and bring a sense of play and enjoyment into student
writing (West, 2008). However, Hicks and Turner (2013) stress the impor-
tance of using “blog” as a verb and not a noun, saying, “To blog is to
write, to publish, and to invite comment” (p. 60).
“What is the nature and relationship between human beings and story-
telling, and how has the relationship changed over time?”
Blogging as Instruction. Thom used his blog as an instructional tool, with his
students as the only intended audience. Often the entries provided written
instructions for lesson activities. On the day I observed Thom’s teaching, he
greeted students at the door, handing each an index card and asking them to
read the blog entry displayed on the SmartBoard. Thom had written, “We’re
going to do some talking and writing. 1) What are your favorite stories? Think
it out, talk it out, and list three on the card. If three is too difficult to narrow
down to, list five. …” (emphasis in original). His daily entries also offered
encouragement to student writers (“Your blog posts are beyond fabulous.
Like, wow.”), and directed them to writing resources. For example, during a
lesson on writing 500-word short stories, Thom’s blog entry included a hyper-
link to a mentor text that provided “an example of a rather powerful 500
word short story” and to writing contests, so students could see real-world
opportunities and audiences for pieces of this length. Thom spoke directly to
students in his blog entries, with reminders (“Use this time wisely, catch up
with things you don’t have handed in.”) and in ways that showcased his own
voice, as in this excerpt from his final entry at the end of student teaching:
“As we reach the end of our own story together, do you have any questions?
That was a terribly lame joke, but whatever. Seriously, any questions?”
Thom used the technical affordances of blogs as a means of enhancing
his instruction. For one writing prompt, he embedded a provocative image
in the entry and guided students’ writing by posting, “Remember that
you’re not telling the story of the picture, but building your own story off
an aspect (or two or three) of the picture!” He maintained a blog roll that
linked all of the students’ blogs to his own, connecting students for peer-
review activities. Rarely did Thom encourage students to use the comment
feature on his blog, except to have them submit links to assignments, such
as when students used Padlet.com to brainstorm their final story. Thus,
Thom’s blog served primarily as one-way communication from teacher to
students. While Thom acknowledged that there were students “who never
read the blog,” he also recognized that “blog access was a great deal of
help” to many students, including one on the autism spectrum who “pre-
ferred to independently access the daily materials.”
132 JEN SCOTT CURWOOD ET AL.
Discussion
In reflecting on his rationale for incorporating blogs into his writing
instruction, Thom explained:
The reasoning behind my intention to create a learning community that practiced
publishing written stories in blog-based affinity spaces was to have a classroom culture
of flexibility. By and large, I wanted the students to realize that the way we tell stories
changes, evolves, and (especially) that they have the power and skill to craft their
own narratives.
Thus we see Thom embracing Kalantzis and Cope’s (2012) notion that
English teachers need to prepare students to be flexible communicators,
able to recognize the impact that digital tools and practices have on lit-
eracies (see also Lankshear & Knobel, 2011). Looking at how Thom and
his students blogged demonstrates the roles that audience and purpose
play in shaping how blogs get taken up in an English classroom. Thom
blogged to communicate with his students and organize his daily lessons.
His students blogged to complete writing assignments, but also to become
authentic creators of digital content connecting with audiences beyond
their teacher. Finally, Thom’s case illustrates how blogging was used to
meet the curriculum goal of preparing creative writers for publication
while also addressing the broader NYSCC standards, which encourage
using technology for the production and distribution of writing.
From Research to Practice 133
Discussion
Teachers in New Hampshire are required to meet state media literacies
standards for certification, but real experiences with making and sharing
media complicate often-cited “best practices” for literacy instruction.
Providing students with choice and a real audience for their work chal-
lenged all of us throughout the semester (Allison, 2009; Magnifico, 2010).
“Choice,” for me, meant choosing to not push students beyond thin inter-
pretations of each week’s learning event, and instead providing models and
trusting that experimentation would continue. As students continued to
From Research to Practice 137
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PART III
SOCIAL JUSTICE ORIENTED
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
TEACHER PREPARATION
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SECTION INTRODUCTION TO
PART III
Heidi L. Hallman
The final section of the book begins with a chapter by Deborah Bieler and
Leslie David Burns that articulates the centrality of social justice in English
education. This chapter reveals the tensions surrounding definitions of
social justice, yet articulates the importance of the commitment to social
justice tenets within teaching practices, particularly through professional
organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of English
(NCTE). In the following chapter, the chapter “Addressing LGBTQ-
Themed Texts and Heteronormativity in English Education,” Melissa
Schieble and Jody Polleck illustrate the ways that social justice teaching
can be incorporated into an English language arts methods course through
LGBT-themed literature. Schieble and Polleck describe an innovative
field experience for prospective English teachers that focuses on pairing
prospective teachers with mentor teachers who can help prospective tea-
chers develop critical orientations to classroom teaching. As Schieble and
Polleck note, teacher education programs consistently struggle to provide
opportunities to engage teacher candidates in learning why and how to
implement critical work in schools. Peter Williamson and Marshall A.
George, in the chapter “Toward Clinically Rich English and Literacy
Teacher Preparation: A Tale of Two Programs,” situate social justice tenets
and preparation in school sites within teacher education university-school
partnerships, more generally, and urge us to consider what a true partner-
ship approach to teacher education might look like. Particular features of
two clinically rich English language arts teacher preparation programs,
one in California the other in New York, are described in an effort to
share lessons learned. Finally, in the book’s concluding chapter, Terri L.
Rodriguez, Catherine (Kate) M. Bohn-Gettler, Madeleine (Madey) H.
Israelson, Madeline (Maddy) A. O’Brien, and Lauren Thoma present a
collaborative view of socially just teacher education. This final chapter
145
146 SECTION INTRODUCTION TO PART III
ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that equipping teachers for the essential task of
serving as social justice advocates in their classroom and school commu-
nities must become the central task of English teacher preparation
programs. This argument is positioned against the backdrop of a U.S.
sociopolitical climate that has seen increased injustice and violence
against youth, teachers, and schools in spite of official policies promising
otherwise. The authors describe current efforts to achieve a social justice
focus in two spaces that are particularly influential for practicing and
aspiring English teachers: pre-service teacher preparation coursework
and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), our primary
professional organization. The chapter examines the trajectory of
research and practice that has arisen in response to the 2012 NCTE stan-
dard on social justice in English teacher preparation and offers sugges-
tions to the next generation of educational researchers about increasing
the visibility and efficacy of this important work.
Keywords: Social justice; English teacher preparation; advocacy;
social justice teaching
connect texts across time and space, and wonder what it all means for use
in society and life, here and right now. English teachers position students
to consider how individuals and institutions are implicated in it all, how
writing reflects and changes how people think over time, and how students
may want to seek justice through their own literate acts. This is why it is
critical for social justice to become central to English teacher preparation.
Literacy practices the domain of English teachers have always inter-
twined language and power (Freire, 1970/2000; Janks, 2010).
Those of us who teach English for social justice and prepare future tea-
chers to engage in this work, even when practicing the most positive of dis-
positions, are likely to encounter both internal and external resistance;
thus, we must prepare ourselves and our future teachers not only to expect
but also to engage positively with discomfort, an inevitable consequence of
social justice work. In an attempt to wrestle with such contradictions and
paradoxes, our chapter examines new trajectories of practice and research
on teaching English for social justice that have arisen in response to what is
now known as Standard VI (Social Justice) in the National Council of
Teachers of English/Council for Assessment of Education Professionals
(NCTE/CAEP) Standards for English Language Arts Teachers, Grades
712 (National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), 2012) (see the
appendix). This standard is historic, as it is the first teacher preparation
standard in any discipline to require future teachers to demonstrate their
knowledge of social justice-, diversity-, and equity-oriented theories in their
instructional planning and implementation. We look specifically at social
justice work occurring in English teacher preparation coursework and our
primary professional organization, NCTE. We conclude by offering sugges-
tions to the next generation of educational researchers about how to
increase the visibility and efficacy of this important work.
and respond to the needs of diverse learners according to its stated profes-
sional missions. With such history, it is not surprising that the first social
justice standard for teaching and teacher education would arise from this
organization. The 2012 social justice standard (hereafter, “Standard VI”)
arose primarily out of the NCTE-based Conference on English Education
(CEE) Commission on Social Justice in Teacher Education Programs. It is
instructive to consider how groundwork for this standard was carefully laid
over time through a CEE Position Statement (“Beliefs about Social Justice
in English Education,” 2009) and, later, an NCTE Resolution (“Resolution
on Social Justice in Literacy Education,” 2010), with each of the three docu-
ments gradually expanding in scope and deepening in resolve. The process
that led to the standard’s existence is reminiscent of the instructional scaf-
folding process, in which learners acquire new skills by gradually facing
increasingly complex scenarios and doing so increasingly independently
(Applebee & Langer, 1983; Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). The language of
Standard VI itself implies a significant degree of instructional scaffolding
must occur before a future teacher is able to meet this standard. The stan-
dard requires future teachers to “demonstrate knowledge” of social justice.
Specifically, they must “plan and implement … instruction” that “promotes
social justice” and “use knowledge of theories and research to plan” cul-
turally relevant or culturally sustaining instruction. As is true of most of the
other standards, the language of Standard VI makes a fundamental assump-
tion that future English teachers have already, at some point in the past,
attained the levels of knowledge and comprehension in Bloom’s Taxonomy
and surpassed them on their way to application, analysis, evaluation, and
creation. If English teacher educators view the standards as directives for the
higher-order summative assessment of our pre-service teachers, then, as
backwards design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) makes clear, we must build in
a significant amount of scaffolding in order for the pre-service teachers to be
successful as social justice practitioners.
In the spirit of Bloom’s Taxonomy, the knowledge domain of teaching
for social justice is suggestive of the hors cate´gorie or HC (“beyond cate-
gory”) of the steepest mountain climbs in the Tour de France, a level of
mastery to which all elite cyclists aspire to attain. Future English teachers
still need to master both content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge
before they can attempt pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987),
but future equity-oriented English teachers also need to master an addi-
tional knowledge base and skillset: the pedagogical content knowledge of
how to teach English for social justice. For example, Standard VI.1
requires them to “plan and implement … instruction that promotes social
152 DEBORAH BIELER AND LESLIE DAVID BURNS
(ESJ)
(ESJ)
Pedagogical
Context
Content
Knowledge
Knowledge
(ESJ) (ESJ)
Pedagogical Content
Knowledge Knowledge
knowledge about how educators can work toward equity through culturally
sustaining pedagogies (Paris, 2012), racial literacy (Sealey-Ruiz & Greene,
2015), and equity literacy (Gorski, 2014). By privileging this domain, equity
and social justice can serve future teachers as the foundation of all future
learning and a lens through which they view all domains, not something
“added on” in student teachers’ 11th hour and thus be less likely to receive
their fullest embrace. For example, consider the following scenario: Two dif-
ferent teacher educators ask their future secondary English teachers to write
a two-day lesson plan sequence for a 9th-grade short story unit on irony
using “The Lesson” (Bambara, 1972) and “The Necklace” (de Maupassant,
1907). The first teacher educator asks her aspiring teachers to read and dis-
cuss the above-referenced texts on culturally sustaining pedagogies, racial lit-
eracy, and equity literacy before discussing lesson planning, while the second
teacher educator does not include these frameworks and focuses only on les-
son planning methods. Aspiring teachers taught by first teacher educator
would be much more likely to notice and incorporate in their teaching how
issues of poverty and race/ethnicity figure prominently in these two short
stories, to consider how their knowledge of the school community could
play a role in their framing of these stories, and to look for opportunities to
integrate their students’ skills, interests, and inquiries as they distinguish
between three types of irony. Aspiring teachers taught by the second teacher
educator would be much more likely to limit their focus to distinguishing
between three types of irony. What would happen to our teacher
154 DEBORAH BIELER AND LESLIE DAVID BURNS
Justice is not likely to become the central value unless something is done to deal with
the inequalities existing in a particular school in such a fashion that “the long term
expectations of the least favored,” as John Rawls puts it, are improved. (p. 182)
There is no simple formula for achieving progressive social change. Tactics that have
regularly proven successful in a particular context are not guaranteed to work under
The Critical Centrality of Social Justice 159
NOTES
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thelesson.html
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The Critical Centrality of Social Justice 161
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The Critical Centrality of Social Justice 163
APPENDIX
NCTE/NCATE Standards for Initial Preparation of Teachers of
Secondary English Language Arts, Grades 712
Approved October 2012
(Excerpt)
Standard VI. Candidates demonstrate knowledge of how theories and research about social
justice, diversity, equity, student identities, and schools as institutions can
enhance students’ opportunities to learn in English Language Arts.
Element 1: Candidates plan and implement English language arts and literacy
instruction that promotes social justice and critical engagement with
complex issues related to maintaining a diverse, inclusive, equitable society.
Element 2: Candidates use knowledge of theories and research to plan instruction
responsive to students’ local, national and international histories,
individual identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender expression, age,
appearance, ability, spiritual belief, sexual orientation, socioeconomic
status, and community environment), and languages/dialects as they affect
students’ opportunities to learn in ELA.
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ADDRESSING LGBTQ-THEMED
TEXTS AND HETERONORMATIVITY
IN ENGLISH EDUCATION
ABSTRACT
educators must work to promote greater visibility about LGBTQ topics for
a host of reasons, but importantly because of the powerful role ELA teachers
can play in interrupting homophobia and heteronormativity in schools.
project and salient findings from our study of the experience for English
educators interested in devising similar projects for their courses.
It is important to note that candidates have some discussion about
LGBTQ literature and topics in courses taken prior to the Methods class.
For example, during a class focused on young adult literature, which
Melissa and Jody alternate teaching, candidates read young adult novels
that are written by authors who identify as LGBTQ and/or explicitly
address gender identity and sexual orientation (e.g., Aristotle and Dante
and the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz; I am J by Chris
Beam; and Hero by Perry Moore). Candidates participate in both indepen-
dent reading and book clubs with LGBTQ-themed young adult books.
Issues regarding heteronormativity are also addressed. For example,
Melissa and Jody share statistics about LGBTQ youth in schools from
GLSEN surveys (www.glsen.org) and candidates read and discuss
Blackburn and Smith’s (2010) article, “Moving beyond inclusion of LGBT-
themed literature in English Language Arts classrooms: Interrogating
heteronormativity and exploring intersectionality.” Candidates examine
ways that heteronormativity operates at their college campus and reflect on
their own personal experiences with how gender identity and sexual orien-
tation are normed. They then use these ideas to analyze homophobia and
heteronormativity in whole group discussions and book clubs. To avoid
problematic inclusion models where one week on the syllabus is devoted to
LGBTQ-themed literature, candidates have choice books for different
topics throughout the semester that also feature LGBTQ authors and/or
characters and discuss how heteronormativity operates within all of the
novels they read. These conversations build and/or extend candidates’ prior
knowledge about homophobia and heteronormativity for the video-based
field experience in their subsequent Methods course.
Analyzing a critical unit of study from multiple access points (e.g., reading
a chapter, examining the unit plan document and viewing a video clip)
supported candidates to identify, describe, and analyze elements from the
critical unit of study that demonstrated methods they were learning about
in the course. Beth, one ELA candidate who is white, self-identifies as
heterosexual and in her early twenties, wrote:
The video clip of this unit’s introductory lesson demonstrated how the instructor
initiated students’ responses to the essential questions that they would be exploring and
expanding upon during the following weeks. The instructor began the lesson with an
174 MELISSA SCHIEBLE AND JODY POLLECK
independent writing reflection and then had students share with a partner what they
had written about in response to two of the four essential questions. Next, the students
then were prompted to share their views with the whole class. By utilizing this “think-
pair-share” method, the teacher not only engaged her students, but also supported their
literacy development. Also, this instructor activated students’ prior knowledge by
having them connect the theme of discrimination with novels they had previously read
in the school year. (The Bluest Eye and Night)
The model critical unit of study supported Beth to identify several scaffolds
to help develop students’ understandings about the essential questions for
the unit. From watching the video clip, she identified that engaging
students in a free-write and then sharing answers with their partner was a
“think-pair-share” method that deepened students’ understandings. We
also noted that Beth focused only on the instructional methods, not the
content of what was said that related to LGBTQ themes of injustice.
Additionally, Beth considered how the instructor (Jody) activated students’
prior knowledge about discrimination from previous critical units of study,
and how this instructional move activated students’ schema to consider
ways that the LGBTQ community experiences discrimination in the context
of reading Angels in America. Again, we noted, however, that Beth did not
name the LGBTQ community or reflect on the students’ conversations
about the heteronormativity survey. Instead, she focused on perhaps more
safe and less controversial points about instructional methods and discrimi-
nation in general terms. We noted that an additional question, such as,
How do the instructional methods prompt students’ to engage critically with
the text?, may have supported Beth to focus more on how the method
facilitated students’ critical interpretations of content.
Several candidates also used the model critical unit of study to suggest cur-
ricular modifications. Melissa encourages candidates to consider modifica-
tions in the context of a class of students at their fieldwork site, because it
supports them to assert their own knowledge and agency in the planning
process, rather than view the model critical unit plan as a finished and fixed
product. Instead, posing a question about modifications encourages candi-
dates to consider their own students, and how the critical unit could be
modified to meet their needs and interests. Michael, an undergraduate can-
didate of color in his early twenties who did not share his sexual orientation
during the course, demonstrated strong interest over the semester in
LGBTQ-Themed Texts and Heteronormativity in English Education 175
The Angels in America unit represents a good model for teaching this particular play.
I would also teach the play, primarily because it is one of the pivotal LGBT texts that
exists out there that speaks to the majority. I would, however, change some things in
the unit in the context of my field site classroom. I could start it off with an activity
showcasing Act up and what AIDS really looked like during the initial outbreak, which
I know they would be fascinated with since the details of the events of the outbreak are
the kinds of ethical analysis that really gets them going.
We also noted that analyzing the documents and video clip as a field
experience prompted a few candidates to reflect on how critical issues were
addressed in the context of their traditional field experience. Ben, a candi-
date who is white, heterosexual and in his early twenties, was completing
fieldwork at a school in a low-income neighborhood for young men of
color. Ben noted:
Considering my field site classroom and teaching I have seen this semester (two differ-
ent sections of 7th grade ELA), I have not seen the explicit incorporation of social
justice as it is modeled in Jody’s Angels in America unit plan. The class is currently
reading Walter Dean Myers’ Monster. The instructor is not, at least thus far, interrogat-
ing the social justice of America’s prison system at the same sort of level at which Jody
pushes students to interrogate LGBTQ issues and heteronormative culture. The
students are, however, developing a deep understanding of Steve Harmon (the protago-
nist of Monster), an understanding which does include some ethical consideration of
Steve’s guilt or innocence, his relatively young age, and his feelings of hopelessness in
176 MELISSA SCHIEBLE AND JODY POLLECK
jail. I think that a certain teaching of social justice is appropriate at the high school
level and not at the middle school level.
Ben’s analysis of the critical unit of study helped him reflect on what he
was observing at his own field site, which by location and demographic
would be a context where students likely have personal experience with
race and class oppression. He noted that his cooperating teacher has facili-
tated students’ comprehension of Monster by considering the main charac-
ter’s guilt or innocence and feelings of despair in the prison system. The
critical unit of study, however, supported Ben to see how his teacher could
push students to think more deeply and examine the structural inequalities
related to the U.S. prison system. His reflection about this issue was
prompted by recognizing that Jody’s critical unit of study pushes students
to consider underlying issues related to the LGBTQ community and a
heteronormative culture, a move beyond analyzing characters’ surface level
actions. Therefore, examining a critical unit of study served as a model for
how candidates might facilitate discussion at a deeper, structural level.
Ben’s response shows that when candidates have models of critical units of
study they have the tools to think about how to interrogate systems of
power in the classroom. Ben questions the appropriateness of discussions
about social justice at the middle school versus high school level, however.
Melissa has observed that discourses about childhood innocence in the con-
text of critical teaching is a common tension for ELA candidates. To
further address this issue, perhaps introducing candidates to critical units
of study for middle grades may help alleviate these concerns.
justice, what evidence did you see of this work at your field site? If you did not observe these
issues, how might you have modified a lesson you observed?
One of our initial questions with this project concerned how candidates
would imagine teaching LGBTQ texts and/or addressing heteronormativity
after analyzing the Angels in America unit of study. We wondered if providing
a model of how this text was taught in a 10th grade classroom might prompt
candidates to re-evaluate some of their assumptions and fears. Similar to
Beth, most candidates agreed the issues were important, but felt they could
not address them in the classroom (at least until they had more experience)
LGBTQ-Themed Texts and Heteronormativity in English Education 179
Last year when I was teaching in an after-school program, I noticed that many of my
fifth graders would refer to each other as “faggots” a lot and being a lesbian, that really
bothers me. I didn’t know how to breach the subject with them because they are fifth
graders, so for a while I let it slide. Halfway through the school year, though, I could
no longer stand it and I had to intervene and clear up their misconceptions about the
word. Looking back, I went about this in the worst way possible! When I heard some-
one call another student a “faggot” again, I stopped to address it, asking the student
what that word even means. He replied by saying “stupid.” Another student said “no,
that’s gay.” Then I asked them what gay meant and at least a third of the students
thought gay also meant stupid. I proceeded to tell them that both terms are negative
words used to make fun of people who like someone who is the same gender as them.
I also told them that nothing is wrong with that and that it’s offensive to people who
identify that way when you use those words to be mean to others. I also proceeded to
tell them that I take offense to those words because I identify that way and would
appreciate if they don’t use those words in my class or in the after-school program. As
soon as I disclosed that information, one student raised her hand to say it’s cool that
we have a gay teacher, which was relieving but made me think twice about whether
I should have said that much at all …
Here, we see Candice grapple with the ethical issue to intervene when
students use homophobic language. She noted that her own personal iden-
tity as a lesbian who is “bothered” by this language finally prompted her to
interrupt students use of the word “faggot” in class, to discuss their misper-
ceptions about the meaning of this word, and to share why using this
language is offensive. (It is also interesting to note that, like Ben, Candice
drew on discourses of innocence as a resource that at first limited her inter-
ruption of this derogatory use of language.) Even though she received
180 MELISSA SCHIEBLE AND JODY POLLECK
When I went home, I discussed it with my girlfriend and although she knew my inten-
tions were good, she yelled at me for putting myself in such a compromising situation. In
the moment, all I thought about was righting the wrong in their minds so they won’t use
the word again, but I also opened myself up to much ridicule from parents and adminis-
trators. I also didn’t breach the subject in a skillful or tactful way, which could have
backfired on me horribly had I not had the great rapport with those students that I did.
This is one of the moments I will never forget and which haunt me a little as a prospec-
tive teacher. I can’t imagine ever being closeted again, but I am especially fearful of dis-
closing my sexuality to high school students who are exploring their own sexualities and
who I can possibly be only 6 years older than. As the articles highlight, there are many
horrible, overtly sexual stigmas attached to sexualities other than heterosexual and I am
very nervous about how to navigate being a lesbian in a space that is very heterosexual.
I really appreciated the article about how to incorporate LGBT texts into the curriculum
and the list of LGBT YA lit titles provided. I look forward to becoming more versed in
this area so I can be a better advocate for myself, my students, and their learning.
Candice’s fears after interrupting the event during the afterschool program
centered on whether parents or administration would “ridicule” her for
coming out to her students, and her girlfriend worried that she had compro-
mised her teaching position at the school. Clearly, the blog reveals that
Candice felt extreme vulnerability after the event occurred. She questioned
whether she handled it effectively (which we believe she did) and expressed
fear and anxiety about “how to navigate being a lesbian in a space that is
very heterosexual.” Candice’s vulnerability and fear after interrupting stu-
dents’ homophobic use of language has been a point of reflection for Melissa
as the Methods instructor. For example, Melissa often questions how her
own identity as a heterosexual woman privileges her ability to adopt a criti-
cal stance, teach texts that feature gay or lesbian characters, or interrupt
homophobia and address heteronormative culture with students. Because
she does not have personal experience with the vulnerability or fear that
Candice ascribes to her own struggles with being out as a teacher, she can
talk about these issues from the stance of a heterosexual woman. This is an
important issue for teacher educators to reflect upon and talk about openly
with candidates, and demonstrates the need to encourage multiple view-
points to support Candice. What is noteworthy, however, is that Candice
appreciated the resources from the course and felt they invited her interest in
learning more about how to take on an advocacy stance. Perhaps Candice’s
experience demonstrates the important role that LGBTQ visibility plays in
teacher education coursework and, unlike John who we opened with at
LGBTQ-Themed Texts and Heteronormativity in English Education 181
next step when ELA teachers express these concerns in our courses. (See
Thein (2013) for further discussion about disrupting these assumptions and
useful questions for implementing these conversations.)
Overall, we found that that modeling critical teaching practices using
LGBTQ texts may not be enough to move candidates from assumptions to
action. It did, however, provide candidates with tools for noticing important
critical issues at their fieldwork sites and suggesting beginning or “safer”
steps for bringing LGBTQ texts and conversations about heteronormativity
into the ELA classroom. Given the general invisibility of LGBTQ topics in
teacher education, the project supported new teachers who were already
committed to or interested in building their knowledge and pedagogical
skills. As English teacher educators, we learned a great deal from our own
students about how to open up opportunities for making in and out of
school spaces more just for LGBTQ students, teachers, and allies.
NOTE
1. Acronyms used differ across the research literature. Where possible, the
specific acronym used by authors in the publications referred are used.
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VA: ASCD.
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TOWARD CLINICALLY RICH
ENGLISH AND LITERACY
TEACHER PREPARATION: A
TALE OF TWO PROGRAMS
ABSTRACT
Teacher education in the United States has been widely criticized for its
uneven and often poorly supported approach to preparing novices for
clinical practice. In 2010, the Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation
and Partnerships for Improved Student Learning (commissioned by the
National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education) released
a report titled “Transforming Teacher Education Through Clinical
Practice: A National Strategy to Prepare Effective Teachers.” The
report called for teacher education to “be turned upside down,” a
dramatic shift from traditional approaches to preparing teachers to
“programs that are fully grounded in clinical practice and interwoven
with academic content and professional courses” (p. ii). Many prepara-
tion programs in the United States are engaged in efforts to become
more clinically rich in their approach to teacher preparation. This
chapter will examine the call for more clinically rich approaches to
English language arts teacher education, and will highlight how such a
shift is integral to more socially just teacher preparation programs.
Particular features of two clinically rich English language arts teacher
preparation programs, one in California the other in New York, will be
described and research focusing on the programs will be highlighted in an
effort to share lessons learned.
Keywords: Teacher education; clinical focus in teacher education;
university-school partnerships; pre-service teachers
for the clinical component of programs. For example, strong teacher educa-
tion programs must have coherence and integration across fieldwork and
coursework. This can occur by sequencing courses so that they build upon
the developmental levels of teacher candidates while making deliberate con-
nections between course assignments and real artifacts of practice such as
student work and lesson plans. Programs can also make explicit links
between theory and practice so that candidates can learn from extensive,
highly supervised clinical work that helps them learn from expert practice
in classrooms that serve divers learners. By tightly integrating fieldwork
and coursework, candidates can learn “in and from practice” (Ball &
Cohen, 1999) as a part of their daily apprenticeships in classrooms. By
establishing new relationships with schools, teacher education programs can
develop what Zeichner (2010) has referred to as a “third space” for schools
and universities to level relationships and exchange ideas and practices.
These pedagogical cornerstones provide a framework for what we mean
by the term clinically rich teacher preparation. Clinical richness is not
necessarily achieved by providing longer, more sustained clinical experi-
ences, though these can certainly be features from which to begin. Also,
moving teacher education courses into P-12 schools so that they are
embedded in the spaces where practice happens does not necessarily mean
that they are integrated into those environments or make explicit connec-
tions between the theories and practices that govern practice in those
settings. Strengthening clinical practice means more than increasing field-
work or more practice; it means breaking down the barriers between course-
work and fieldwork so that candidates can learn to “see” complex practice
with new tools and understandings (Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald,
2009; Grossman et al., 2009; McDonald et al., 2014; Warren-Little, 2003).
In this chapter, we describe clinically rich English teacher preparation in
two different teacher education programs, the Stanford Teacher Education
Program (STEP) and the Hunter College Urban Teacher Residency
Program for English (UTR). We address how these programs work toward
coherence and integration, how they weave theory and practice, and how
they forge new relationships with schools. Our examples attend to how
practice-based clinical work is embedded in the coursework of these pro-
grams, and how coursework is connected with fieldwork. For example, we
discuss pedagogical tools for practice-based learning such as the study of
cases and other representations of teaching (like student work and video),
as well as pedagogical innovations such as the use of enactments and
rehearsals in coursework. We also address the design and settings of clinical
practice. For example, we discuss placing teacher candidates in the settings
188 PETER WILLIAMSON AND MARSHALL A. GEORGE
where they can learn the most about serving particular populations of
students, pedagogical tools like clinical instructional rounds, and efforts
to “contextualize” teacher education to prepare candidates for specific
schools, districts, and cities.
the elements of the daily ELA lesson plans (all aligning with the content of
the three course they are concurrently taking) to a collaborative teaching
model, in which they work with individuals or small groups of students.
Toward the end of the summer program, residents are expected to plan and
teach at least one whole class lesson. Each day, residents meet with their
cooperating teacher to reflect on the lessons of that day as well as plan for
the following day. NV and HC also provides professional development at
the summer school site for residents and their cooperating teachers.
Residents and mentors are required to have two “sacred” meeting times
each week. The first focuses on planning of a lesson that the resident will
teach, and the second on feedback: both for the resident about her teaching
of the lesson and on providing meaningful feedback to students that will
best facilitate their learning. Somewhat similar to the STEP program clini-
cal rounds, mentors and residents are expected to observe other teachers in
the school together and discuss those observations, review, and reflect on
video of themselves teaching a lesson, and engage in ongoing inquiry pro-
jects focusing on their own instruction (i.e., a new or modified teaching
strategy). In short, the mentor-resident partnership is one focused on
mutual learning, growth, and reflection.
Each semester, residents are expected to make a 2030 minute formal pre-
sentation, known as a Defense of Learning (DOL) to their mentor, a non-
UTR teacher, a school administrator and a member of the HC faculty. The
objective of the DOL presentation is to demonstrate how the resident used
the inquiry cycle throughout the semester to establish goals for students, plan
instruction, monitor, and revise instructional and classroom management
strategies, and to present evidence of, analyze, and reflect on the learning that
they facilitated for students over the course of the semester. DOL presenta-
tions are expected to include student work samples that support the resident’s
assertions about student learning and utilize technology to facilitate the audi-
ence’s understanding. These presentations are aligned with HC coursework
and residents are able to use them to fulfill requirements in at least one course
they are taking at the college as well as the EdTPA.
Other members of the support team, though involved less than the men-
tor, also play important roles in the professional development of the
resident. HC field supervisors visit the residents monthly during the fall
semester and at least twice in the spring semester of year 1, and twice
during the fall of year 2. In addition, NV coaches are in the classroom with
their assigned residents monthly during the first year. Finally, instructors of
the reflective seminar/practicum course that is taken each semester view
teaching videos submitted by the residents as part of their required course-
work, providing feedback and support. This team approach to coaching,
supervision, and assessment provides residents with far more support than
students in traditional teacher preparation programs (or first year teachers,
for that matter) receive.
One commonality in the success of both STEP and UTR is definitely the
partnerships that exist between the two universities and the public schools
in the cities in which they are located. Indeed, the two programs provide
Toward Clinically Rich English and Literacy Teacher Preparation 199
Schools of education must design programs that help prospective teachers to under-
stand deeply a wide array of things about learning, social and cultural contexts, and
teaching and be able to enact these understandings in complex classrooms serving
increasingly diverse students; in addition, if prospective teachers are to succeed at this
task, schools of education must design programs that transform the kinds of settings in
which novices learn to teach and later become teachers. This means that the enterprise
of teacher education must venture out further and further from the university and
engage ever more closely with schools in a mutual transformation agenda, with all of
the struggle and messiness that implies. (2006, p. 302)
Achieving these goals will require teacher preparation programs that can
continuously strive for coherence, simultaneously preparing teachers for the
schools that we have while also preparing them for the schools that we want.
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TELLING OUR STORIES:
NAVIGATING SOCIAL
JUSTICE-ORIENTED
TEACHING ON THE GROUND
ABSTRACT
This chapter weaves together the voices of five teachers and teacher edu-
cators (two first-year classroom teachers and three teacher education
faculty) collaborating to better understand socially just outcomes in the
field of English language arts teacher preparation. Building from the pre-
mise that it is the seeking of multiple perspectives and the notion of voice
that lie at the heart of socially just pedagogy, this collaboration aims to
tell one story a research narrative through many voices. As White,
female educator-researchers who experience privilege along a multitude
of dimensions (e.g., socioeconomic status, language, race, ability, sexual
orientation), the authors embrace activist-ally identities that seek to
understand systemic injustices; act with an empowered and critically
the study. We story our identities and our work here because we believe in
the power and promise of narrative as a way of knowing (Bruner, 1990;
Polkinghorne, 1988). The goal of our chapter is to explore themes in the
intersections of our stories, including labels and the complexities of identi-
ties; privilege, authority and our role in social justice work; definitions of
success in social justice teaching; and who we are as activist-allies.
Terri
Lauren
I recently earned a bachelor’s degree from a small liberal arts college in the
Midwest with teaching licenses in English Language Arts (ELA) and
Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). I began my teaching
career that same year at a highly diverse urban school. I teach English as
210 TERRI L. RODRIGUEZ ET AL.
Venn Diagrams and American History. (Do my students know the history
of their own birth country?)
The root of most of our problems is my own lack of understanding and
the education systems’ lack of understanding for where my students are.
No matter how informed I make myself or how deeply I want to compre-
hend my students’ lives, I never will. I will always live indoors. I will always
be able to choose where I live. I will always live with clean water, enough
food, and basic human rights. That my students have not, I know but
I will never understand. The same is true for most people, in and out of
school, who make a lot of decisions, experiences and rules for my students.
It’s complicated when we need to be patient with our students’ ideas,
experiences, and needs but we don’t have the means to sit down and really
understand each other.
One Friday, knowing that I’m a fan of tea, a student brought me a mug
of “Somali tea.” I asked the student how to make it I loved it. He said,
“It’s just tea. You put it in hot water.” After more prodding, I discovered
that the whole recipe called for black tea, milk, sugar, and Somali spices.
Neither the student nor I knew what the mystery spices were. The kind stu-
dent encouraged me, “Miss, you have to just keep trying until it is right.
That’s how you will learn.” Now, I make a lot of tea, and I am learning
that “differentiation” and “affective domain” are more than dusty terms in
pedagogy textbooks. I am learning that they are an act of acrobatics to
maintain, but they are central to my students’ well-being. They allow for
better understanding of my students, and better understanding of my
students allows for better advocacy. I am learning to teach the student who
comes to class each day. My students are teaching me to listen.
Parents are surprisingly great allies. Most of my families don’t know any
English, but they (everyone!) bravely come in to the school to support
student learning and behavior any way they can. I also have amazing
co-workers who are a library of resources and a shoulder to cry on all in
one. The biggest support, no doubt, is my students who LOVE to be in
school! They value every aspect of education as a real privilege and want to
make the most of it. By helping me and each other, they exaggerate all the
good in our classroom.
Kate
Madey
I remember hearing long ago that answering the question “Who are you?”
is very clear-cut and straightforward for men. Men will respond with their
professional title: “I’m a lawyer,” “I’m an electrician,” “I manage a restau-
rant.” I believe women struggle more to respond to this question. So
I begin there, I am a woman; a wife and a mother (perhaps the roles I hold
most dear). I am a teacher-I also think of myself as a learner. I’m an assis-
tant professor, a teacher educator. It is these roles that lead me to
this work.
I do this work because I believe in social justice and equity. I entered the
field of education with well-intentioned, albeit missionary, goals of making
a difference in communities that I myself did not belong to (Cochran-
Smith, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 2001). I am a person who experiences
unearned privilege because of my race (white) and socioeconomic status
(middle class). I believed “I just want to help them,” a performative tool of
Whiteness that maintains existing systems of racial privilege (Picower,
2009, p. 209). The more time I spent working as an educator, the more
I had experiences that disrupted and dismantled my missionary thinking,
clearing the way for new learning, understanding and insight into systems
of inequity, my own identity and what is means to be an activist ally. This
is why I do this work.
Telling Our Stories 215
she hadn’t read the book but the black boy on the cover made her think
her student might like it … she didn’t mean any harm …. This incident was
the catalyst for my first scholarly inquiry into the topic of preparing
teachers in ways that cultivate socially just teaching practices.
In my current position I had the opportunity to join this research team
and continue to learn about preparing social justice activist educators. And
I am learning a great deal. Perhaps most significantly, I am struck by how
this work consistently underscores the power of stories. It is through the tell-
ing of stories that truths are uncovered, new insights gained and beliefs are
transformed. Hearing stories from multiple perspectives and different voices
is one of the most powerful lessons I’ve experienced through this work.
I consider my allies to be my students, past and present, K-12 and higher
education. My teacher education colleagues are my allies; those I see and
collaborate with daily, and those whose scholarship has challenged, pro-
voked and inspired me. And finally, I think of social justice activists both
local community and nationally to be allies. These individuals I don’t know
personally have to courage to speak out objecting to the oppression, harm
and marginalization of communities. All of these individuals teach me and
inspire me, guiding me in the lifelong work of advocating for social justice.
Maddy
students to talk while I listen, to hear and understand their side of the story
before determining a consequence.
With these labels of “unfair,” “racist,” and “mean,” around our social
sphere, the biggest obstacle for me being an activist ally is fitting many
diverse emotional, social, and instructional needs into the time and space
allotted for a classroom. Imagine trying to weave together conversations
about gender equality with Spanish vocabulary, grammar and culture,
literacy benchmarks with content differentiated by student lexile levels, all
in 47 minutes. The emotional needs of 30 students are not going to be satis-
fied by one teacher in a single class period. The small size of my school, less
than 1,000 students K-12, greatly impacts students’ and staff’s perspectives
on justice because in this environment everyone can be heard.
Since I began student teaching two years ago, I have experienced the
innumerous ways by which a school can be “successful.” There are days
when the pressures of standards-driven curriculum takes the wheel and
teachers must design lessons to improve assessment data and make our
school more successful from a government perspective. There are days
when success is bringing students on a field trip to a skating rink and seeing
the smiles on their faces as they grow in community with one another.
There are days when success is understanding that a seventh grade student
didn’t finish her homework because she had to go to work with her mom
last night. I am learning that teachers can’t listen to every student at every
moment of need, but that we can make our classrooms and hallways places
that encourage conversations about privilege alongside and interwoven
with rigorous academic work.
My allies are my students, because they hold other teachers and me
accountable for our words and actions. My allies are my co-workers,
because we want to make our school a safe and strong community where
students have opportunities to grow and learn from each other. My allies
are also friends, family, and strangers who ask questions and continue the
conversation about our education system in the hopes of re-defining success
in American schools.
The task of responding to the question “Who am I?” surprised us and took
on Herculean proportions, not only because we first allotted ourselves only
100 words (it seemed like such a simple question), but because we worried
about what to include in our personal narratives. Questions arose about
intersections (or divisions?) between our personal and professional identi-
ties. “What is appropriate or relevant to tell?” we asked each other. Our
ensuing conversation both reaffirmed our collective knowledge and raised
important questions for reflection. We embody complicated identities that
reflect complex realities. We are not just an occupation, nor do we have
just one role in our classrooms or in our journeys. Yet how do we find the
language to name who we are and where we belong? We hesitate to label
ourselves as “white,” “women,” and “middle class” because we understand
how limiting labels are. In order to be helpful, we think labels must be
personally meaningful, especially in the ways we view our students. We
understand that questioning how we view our students and who we are
relative to them is an important undertaking in social justice teaching. If
we struggle with defining ourselves, we know that we must translate that
thinking to our students, their families, and our work; to how we define
“diversity;” to the euphemisms and labels we casually throw around (e.g.,
urban, at-risk, English learner, reluctant reader, low socioeconomic status).
For all of us, teacher educators and beginning teachers alike, success is
externally defined as the attainment of measurable objectives in relation to
academic standards. We carefully align our teacher preparation coursework
with one set of standards while ensuring that beginning teachers are
aligning their instruction and assessment of K-12 students with another set
of standards. But what is success in terms of social justice teaching? Is it, as
earlier referenced, dispositional movement through developmental stages
(Miller, 2008; Nieto & Bode, 2008, as cited in CEE, 2009)? Is it action?
What if social justice is embedded in paradigm shifts when there is a focus
on critical reflection, or as Kate earlier described in her teaching, “A critical
aspect of [social justice] work is to encourage preservice teachers to
consider multiple perspectives and critically reflect on their cultural
lenses … not because I want them to think in a ‘right’ way, but because of
the importance of such tasks to better our world.” Could successful social
justice teaching be considered micro-advocacy the little bits and pieces of
every-day and all-the-time interactions between teachers and students on
the ground, so to speak, in the myriad and complex contexts and
Telling Our Stories 221
When Kate asks if she is “acting, and not just talking,” she illuminates a
central concern of social justice teaching. How does telling our stories
translate into our work? Could the act of reflection in itself be considered
activism? If we focus on the “ally” in “activist ally,” we remember that all
listening doesn’t require change that sometimes listening without change
is the act. Our intent, at times, may be to focus on understanding, rather
than changing, others’ perspectives. We remind ourselves that “we don’t
know what we don’t know,” and as Madey describes, come into teaching
without “malicious intentions” even as we realize we are complicit in
oppressive systems.
Do our beliefs and definitions of social justice change with the stories we
tell and hear? Should they? Implicit in these questions is a reiteration of the
focus we see in our stories on seeking the perspectives and listening to the
voices of students. We enter the social justice world with one perspective,
but through experience and critical reflection, we see that perspective
change and evolve. Only through becoming a learner of our students
and recognizing the critical importance of a broad community: parents, stu-
dents, teachers, professors, community agencies, etc., can we work against
oppression and embrace disruptive change. Our allies range from those
closest to us to strangers to many in-between. We are encouraged to find
that we count our students as a major alliance; we see these alliances as
purposefully built through modeling and opportunity to practice. Being an
activist ally means learning from our students how to listen, how to care,
how to act, how to inspire, and how to persevere. As Lauren’s young
Somali teacher-student said, “Miss, you have to just keep trying until it is
222 TERRI L. RODRIGUEZ ET AL.
right. That’s how you will learn.” As activist-allies, we take heart in the
wisdom and patience of our teacher-students who graciously allow us to
keep trying until it is right.
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225
226 ABOUT THE AUTHORS
in a 21st century context, the value of poetic literacy practices, and the
spiritual and embodied dimensions of literary reading.
Michael Macaluso is Fellow of the Institute for Educational Initiatives and
an Assistant Professor of the Practice for English Education in the Alliance
for Catholic Education at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to
teaching methods and education-related courses in this role, he works with
new and beginning teachers of all disciplines and grade levels and their
school systems across the country. His primary research focuses on criti-
cal approaches in English Education.
Alecia Marie Magnifico is Assistant Professor at the University of
New Hampshire, where she coordinates the English Teaching program.
She teaches courses on teaching methods, digital literacies, and research
methods, and her research interests focus on understanding, supporting,
and encouraging adolescents’ and teachers’ writing. Her recent work can be
found in Literacy and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and she
is a co-author of Conducting Qualitative Research of Learning in Online
Spaces (Sage).
Cori McKenzie is Doctoral Student in the Curriculum, Instruction and
Teacher Education program at Michigan State University. She is interested
in exploring how contemporary theory might help scholars and teachers
re-imagine English teacher preparation, approaches to literature instruction
in secondary classrooms, and qualitative research methodologies.
Madeline (Maddy) A. O’Brien is 2010 graduate of the College of Saint
Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, where she majored in English and
Hispanic Studies. She spent two years teaching middle school and high
school Spanish in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota and currently teaches high
school Spanish in Hastings, Minnesota. She has worked both locally and
internationally to learn and teach about social justice and continues to use
language education as an integral tool for social justice activism.
Donna L. Pasternak is Professor of English Education in the Department
of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
She directed the English education Program from 2001 through 2011 and
is the site director for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Writing
Project. Her scholarship has focused on the teaching of literature and
writing, critical inquiry, teacher development, and the integration of tech-
nology into the teaching of English. She has published widely in these
areas.
About the Authors 229
Shelbie Witte, the Kim and Chuck Watson Endowed Chair in Education, is
Associate Professor of Adolescent Literacy at Oklahoma State University.
Witte has published extensively on 21st century literacies and teacher repre-
sentations in popular culture. Witte is journal co-editor of NCTE’s Voices
from the Middle, directs the OSU Writing Project, and founded the
Initiative for 21st Century Literacies Research, a think tank of 21st century
literacies practitioners and researchers.