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Article
Publication date: 19 July 2022

Mary M. Juzwik, Robert Jean LeBlanc, Denise Davila, Eric D. Rackley and Loukia K. Sarroub

In an editorial introduction essay for the special issue on Religion, Literacies, and English Education in Global Dialogue, the editors frame papers in the special issue in…

517

Abstract

Purpose

In an editorial introduction essay for the special issue on Religion, Literacies, and English Education in Global Dialogue, the editors frame papers in the special issue in dialogue with previous scholarly literature around three central lines of inquiry: How do children, youth and families navigate relationships among religion, spirituality, language and literacy? What challenges are faced by language and literacy teachers and teacher educators around the globe who seek to respond to diverse religious and spiritual perspectives in their work? And what opportunities do teachers seize or create toward this end? How are developments of language and literacy theory, policy, curriculum and ritual entangled with race and religion?

Design/methodology/approach

Taking an essayist, humanistic approach, this paper summarizes, interprets and comments on previous scholarly works to frame the articles published in the special issue “Religion, Literacies, and English Education in Global Dialogue” in relation to the field and in relation to one another.

Findings

Denise Dávila, Matthew Deroo and Ilhan Mohamud reveal the relationships young people and families forge and navigate among spiritual literacies and literatures, digital technologies and ethnic identities. Heidi Hadley, Jennifer Wargo and Erin McNeill illuminate how teachers’ vocations, as well as their pedagogical goals and curricular artifacts, can become deeply entangled with religious and spiritual sense-making. Kasun Gajasinghe and Priyanka Jayakodi expand perspectives on both the ritualization and racialization of religion through nationalist policies surrounding national anthem performances in Sri Lanka. Anne Whitney and Suresh Canagarajah discuss how spiritual commitments, communities and experiences interact with their scholarly trajectories.

Research limitations/implications

The essay concludes with a discussion of scholarly capacity building that may be needed for conducting research on religion and spirituality in relation to languages, literacies and English education on a global scale.

Practical implications

The second section of the essay discusses challenges faced by language and literacy teachers and teacher educators around the globe who seek to integrate diverse religious and spiritual perspectives into their work. It foregrounds how many teachers and teacher educators work within contexts where ethnoreligious nationalism is on the rise. It highlights the need for language and literacy educators to develop curiosity and basic knowledge about diverse religions. Further it calls for teacher educators to engage with teacher candidates’ religious identities and sense-making.

Social implications

Because it considers religious and spiritual sense-making in relation to language and literacy education, the social implications of this work are significant and wide-reaching. For examples, the paper questions the conceit of secularism within education, pushing readers to consider their own spiritual and religious identifications and influences when they work across religious differences.

Originality/value

This paper identifies, interprets and assesses current threads of work on religious and spiritual sense-making within scholarship on languages, literacies and English education.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 21 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 April 2020

Mary Juzwik and Sal Antonucci

Recently, practitioner literature in English education has taken up the issue of writing-related shame in classrooms, calling for teachers to help students develop resilience. One…

267

Abstract

Purpose

Recently, practitioner literature in English education has taken up the issue of writing-related shame in classrooms, calling for teachers to help students develop resilience. One possible approach for nurturing shame resilience around writing is dialogic collaging: students make and dialogically engage with collages and with colleagues to explore the self-as-writer and to connect with others around writing struggles and joys. The purpose of this paper is to share and critically reflect on this pedagogical approach.

Design/methodology/approach

To share, interpret and consider the limitations and implications of the dialogic collaging pedagogy in service of writing-related shame resilience, the authors offer a multi-voiced narrative about one classroom instantiation of college, from the perspective of a university writing teacher and a student of writing.

Findings

On the interpretation, this story unfolds three central themes as follows: dialogic collaging can help students to develop a more realistic and situated sense of self-as-writer. That is, students can come to appreciate how “becoming a writer” is a process they – and others around them – are already in, rather than an unreachable achievement at which they will inevitably fail. The stance of playfulness nurtured through the dialogic collage process can provide a helpful distance between self and writing. These processes may – under certain conditions – support shame resilience.

Research limitations/implications

The conclusion reflects on whether more explicit attention to shame could be fruitful and on the dynamics of teacher vulnerability in writing classrooms.

Practical implications

The authors hope to inspire writing teachers – particularly in secondary, post-secondary and adult education – to engage with dialogic collaging as part of their pedagogical repertoires.

Originality/value

Dialogic collaging is a pedagogical approach not previously discussed in the literature on secondary and post-secondary writing instruction, offering one promising way to address writing-related shame. It can make visible and build solidarity around how others are also in the midst of a process of becoming – as writers and/or with writing. This appreciation can help nurture a more realistic, playful and shame-resilient stance toward self-as-writer.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 19 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 April 2022

Heidi Lyn Hadley

This paper aims to examine how evangelical teachers’ religious identities influence their interpretation and teaching of texts in high school English Language Arts classrooms…

140

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine how evangelical teachers’ religious identities influence their interpretation and teaching of texts in high school English Language Arts classrooms. Further, this paper examines how evangelical teachers make choices about how to balance the demands of their religious and teacher identities as they interact with texts in their own classrooms.

Design/methodology/approach

Using Derridean deconstruction of the concept of ethical decision-making, the author uses critical discourse analysis to examine a conversation between two evangelical teachers as they talk about the tensions they feel as they teach The Crucible with their high school–aged students.

Findings

The findings show evangelical teachers’ religious and teaching identities were in tension across three themes: literary analytic frameworks, authorial intent and eternal truths and evangelism and fellowship.

Originality/value

By highlighting how evangelical teachers’ religious and teaching identities influence their classroom decisions, teaching practices and textual interpretations, this study offers another pathway through which teacher educators and researchers might examine the connection between teachers’ religious and teaching identities with the intent to invite more complexity into literary analysis.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 21 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 6 May 2015

Ryan M. Rish and Audra Slocum

To present a cross-case analysis of two pre-service teachers who studied their own teaching using video within a teacher inquiry project (TIP) – a teacher education pedagogy we…

Abstract

Purpose

To present a cross-case analysis of two pre-service teachers who studied their own teaching using video within a teacher inquiry project (TIP) – a teacher education pedagogy we are calling video-mediated teacher inquiry.

Methodology/approach

Activity theory is used to examine how inquiry groups collaboratively used video to mediate shifts in goals and tool use for the two pre-service teachers presented in the study. This chapter addresses the question of how video-mediated teacher inquiry supports the appropriation of teaching tools (i.e., classroom discussion) in a teacher education program.

Findings

The findings indicate that shifts in goals and tool use made during the TIP suggest greater appropriation of the pedagogical tool of classroom discussion. We also consider how these shifts may be bound by the inquiry project.

Practical implications

The use of video cases of teachers’ own teaching is an emergent pedagogy that combines elements of both case study methods and practitioner inquiry. We argue that this pedagogy supports tool appropriation among pre-service teachers in ways that may help them develop as reflective practitioners.

Details

Video Reflection in Literacy Teacher Education and Development: Lessons from Research and Practice
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-676-8

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 March 2022

Sarah Levine, Mary Hauser and Michael W. Smith

This study aims to explore the authentic questioning practices of English Language Arts teachers. Although language arts (LA) education emphasizes the value of authentic questions…

326

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore the authentic questioning practices of English Language Arts teachers. Although language arts (LA) education emphasizes the value of authentic questions in discussions about literature, teachers still tend to ask known-answer questions that guide students toward one literary interpretation. However, outside their classrooms, teachers talk about literary texts from stances of openness and curiosity. Helping teachers recognize and draw on their out-of-school literary practices might help them disrupt entrenched known-answer discourses. The authors studied how the same teachers asked questions about literature in different settings. The authors asked: To what degree and in what ways did teachers’ questions about literature change when they took on different roles in discussions of literature?

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on theories of classroom discourses and everyday practices, this study compared and analyzed types of questions asked by high school teachers as they took on three roles: teacher in the high school classroom, discussion leader in a professional development and everyday reader in discussion.

Findings

Analysis showed that as participants moved further away from their teacher role, they were more likely to ask authentic, curiosity-driven questions that engaged fellow readers in exploratory, dialogic interpretation. They were less likely to attempt to maintain authority over students’ interpretations.

Research limitations/implications

The authors hope researchers will build on these explorations of teacher stances and language in different roles, so we can work toward disrupt entrenched known-answer discourses in the classroom.

Practical implications

Drawing on this study’s findings about questioning practices of participants in their role as reader (as opposed to discussion leader or classroom teacher), the authors suggest that teachers and teacher educators consider the following: First, teachers need to understand the power of interpretive authority and known-answer discourses and compare them explicitly to their own everyday practices through rehearsals and reflection. Second, teachers might focus less on theme and more on exploration of individual lines, patterns and unusual authorial moves. Finally, when preparing to teach, if teachers can reconnect with the stance and language of uncertainty and curiosity, they are likely to ask more authentic questions.

Social implications

These findings suggest both the power of entrenched known-answer discourses to constrain and the potential power of making visible and drawing on teachers’ literary reading practices in out-of-school contexts.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no studies have made an empirical comparison of the relationship between the role a teacher takes on during discussion and the kinds of questions they ask about literature. This study offers insight into the value of everyday curiosity and other out-of-school resources that teachers could – but often do not – bring to their facilitations of classroom discussions. The findings suggest that teachers, teacher educators and researchers must recognize and recruit teachers’ everyday practices to the LA classroom.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 21 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 April 2022

Erin McNeill

The purpose of this study is an exploration of stories told by multilingual students participating in a literacy project in a secondary English course as part of a larger three…

128

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is an exploration of stories told by multilingual students participating in a literacy project in a secondary English course as part of a larger three year practitioner inquiry study, in which the author analyzed students’ literacy project to create a culturally responsive English curriculum. In this paper, the stories of two participating students were examined to derive ideas for an English curriculum in which students’ assets, such as cultural heritage and religious traditions, are recognized and honored.

Design/methodology/approach

Two objectives of the study were to learn about my students’ assets and to use them to complement the district-mandated texts in ways that honored students’ cultural traditions and accumulated knowledge. This paper focuses on an artifactual literacy project paired with reading the novel To Kill a Mockingbird in an English course for emergent bilinguals, in which the modified curriculum highlighted their experiences and traditions.

Findings

Two themes emerged from the analysis. First, religious communities are often valuable to emergent bilingual students. Second, although borders often separate the families of these students, they continue their religious traditions with those in their new communities in the USA, whose members have also carried traditions across borders to honor and preserve their families’ cultures, languages and religions in new places.

Originality/value

Religion is rarely discussed in public school English classrooms. This research project demonstrates the value of artifacts in secondary classrooms which provide a space for students to discuss personally meaningful religious and cultural literacy practices.

Article
Publication date: 20 April 2022

Kasun Gajasinghe and Priyanka Jayakodi

This paper aims to explore the relationship between religious and linguistic nationalism in Sri Lanka in the context of the controversy on singing the national anthem in Tamil…

333

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the relationship between religious and linguistic nationalism in Sri Lanka in the context of the controversy on singing the national anthem in Tamil during National Independence Day celebrations. It illuminates how language and religious policy work together to maintain Sinhala–Buddhist hegemony and exclude Tamil speakers as second-class citizens in postcolonial Sri Lanka.

Design/methodology/approach

The examination of the anthem controversy includes language and religious policy documents, newspaper articles and YouTube videos.

Findings

The national anthem as a site of struggle is a powerful case to explore how nation-states’ actors mobilize affect, intertwining ideologies on language, religion, ethnicity, geography, and so on to maintain and reinforce dominance over minoritized groups. Therefore, the authors believe that (singing) the national anthem can be a site of study for language policy.

Research limitations/implications

The authors acknowledge that the data used in this study are only in Sinhala and English and identify the need for further research using data sources in Tamil.

Originality/value

While this paper generally contributes to the scholarly dialogues on religion and language, it also sheds light on understanding politics in Sri Lanka. Finally, the authors propose that any meaningful policy implementation efforts toward achieving linguistic justice in Sri Lanka need to include parallel policy changes that promote equality among religions.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 21 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

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