Kara Michelle Taylor, Evan M. Taylor, Paul Hartman, Rebecca Woodard, Andrea Vaughan, Rick Coppola, Daniel J. Rocha and Emily Machado
This paper aims to examine how a collaborative narrative inquiry focused on cultivating critical English Language Arts (ELA) pedagogies supported teacher agency, or “the capacity…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how a collaborative narrative inquiry focused on cultivating critical English Language Arts (ELA) pedagogies supported teacher agency, or “the capacity of actors to critically shape their own responsiveness to problematic situations” (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, p. 971).
Design/methodology/approach
Situated in a semester-long inquiry group, eight k-16 educators used narrative inquiry processes (Clandinin, 1992) to write and collectively analyze (Ezzy, 2002) stories describing personal experiences that brought them to critical ELA pedagogies. They engaged in three levels of analysis across the eight narratives, including open coding, thematic identification, and identification of how the narrative inquiry impacted their classroom practices.
Findings
Across the narratives, the authors identify what aspects of the ELA reading, writing and languaging curriculum emerged as problematic; situate themselves in systems of oppression and privilege; and examine how processes of critical narrative inquiry contributed to their capacities to respond to these issues.
Research limitations/implications
Collaborative narrative inquiry between teachers and teacher educators (Sjostrom and McCoyne, 2017) can be a powerful method to cultivate critical pedagogies.
Practical implications
Teachers across grade levels, schools, disciplines and backgrounds can collectively organize to cultivate critical ELA pedagogies.
Originality/value
Although coordinated opportunities to engage in critical inquiry work across k-16 contexts are rare, the authors believe that the knowledge, skills and confidence they gained through this professional inquiry sensitized them to oppressive curricular norms and expanded their repertoires of resistance.
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Emily Machado, Rebecca Woodard, Andrea Vaughan and Rick Coppola
This study examines how writing teachers manage linguistic ideological dilemmas (LIDs) around grammar instruction and highlights productive strategies employed by one teacher in…
Abstract
This study examines how writing teachers manage linguistic ideological dilemmas (LIDs) around grammar instruction and highlights productive strategies employed by one teacher in an instructional unit on poetry. We conducted semi-structured interviews with nine elementary and middle-school teachers to better understand how they conceptualized and enacted writing pedagogies in urban classrooms. Then, we documented the teaching practices of one teacher during a 9-week case study. We describe three LIDs expressed by the teachers we interviewed: (1) a perception of greater linguistic flexibility in speech than in writing; (2) a sense that attention to grammar in feedback can enhance and/or inhibit written communication; and (3) apprehension about whether grammar instruction empowers or marginalizes linguistically minoritized students. We also highlight three productive strategies for teaching grammar while valuing linguistic diversity employed by one teacher: (1) selecting mentor texts that showcase a range of grammars; (2) modeling code-meshing practices; and (3) privileging alternative grammars while grading written work. We describe how teachers might take up pedagogical practices that support linguistic diversity, such as evaluating written assignments in more flexible ways, engaging in contrastive analysis, and teaching students to resist and rewrite existing language rules.
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As a novice teacher, I often journaled about my experiences with the complexities and nuances of teaching pedagogy, administrative conflicts, failure to fit it, and difficulty…
Abstract
As a novice teacher, I often journaled about my experiences with the complexities and nuances of teaching pedagogy, administrative conflicts, failure to fit it, and difficulty with student engagement. My writing served as an anchor as I continued to develop, learn, and teach in my own classroom. After my first year in the classroom, I was not sure if I would return due to political and bureaucratic complaints that I had formed over a year working full time in the education system. I felt voiceless, as if my identity as an educator was being erased. When I made the transition to public school in my second year as an English Language Development teacher, I struggled with the same voicelessness I had at the beginning of my career. So, I flipped everything I knew about teaching and engagement and tossed the lesson plan out of the window and shared power with my students. The process of writing and actively engaging with lived experience was something I began to teach my own students and to instill in them as they became advocates and storytellers of their own. This is their story.
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Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is highly prevalent in the United States, yet is largely culturally invisible. This study examines what people know about their illness, both before and…
Abstract
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is highly prevalent in the United States, yet is largely culturally invisible. This study examines what people know about their illness, both before and after diagnosis, and the relationship to race. The data are from in-depth interviews in 2004 with 53 persons, mostly white or African American, with HCV in the southeastern United States. The respondents have varying educational backgrounds, family incomes, and possible modes of transmission of HCV. Regardless of whether the diagnosis of HCV came as a surprise, respondents had a range of reactions including fear, shock, sadness, and ambivalence. Knowledge of the disease postdiagnosis varies as some people have expert knowledge, moderate knowledge, or inaccurate to no knowledge of the disease. Minority respondents have less knowledge of HCV than whites. This racial disparity in knowledge has profound implications for people with HCV and the larger society.