Audra Slocum
Oakland University, Department of Teaching and Learning, Faculty Member
- West Virginia University, Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty Memberadd
- Critical Pedagogy, Language and Identity, English Education, Adolescent Literacy, Urban Education, Ethnography of Communication, and 13 moreTeacher Research, Appalachian Studies, Rural education, Multicultural Teacher Education, Curriculum and Instruction, Education, Critical Theory, Literacy, Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory, Critical Regionalism, Social Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis, and Ethnographyedit
- Caroline Clarkedit
Purpose: To present a cross-case analysis of two pre-service teachers who studied their own teaching using video within a teacher inquiry project--a teacher education pedagogy we are calling video-mediated teacher inquiry. Design:... more
Purpose: To present a cross-case analysis of two pre-service teachers who studied their own teaching using video within a teacher inquiry project--a teacher education pedagogy we are calling video-mediated teacher inquiry.
Design: 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 teacher inquiry project 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.
Keywords: teacher inquiry, video, preservice teacher education, reflective practice, classroom discussion
Design: 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 teacher inquiry project 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.
Keywords: teacher inquiry, video, preservice teacher education, reflective practice, classroom discussion
Research Interests:
This case study using ethnographic methods addresses how teachers shape cultural processes related to girlhoods, and the roles of children’s play in this dynamic. Poststructuralist theory of the carnival was used to analyze gendered,... more
This case study using ethnographic methods addresses how teachers shape cultural processes related to girlhoods, and the roles of children’s play in this dynamic. Poststructuralist theory of the carnival was used to analyze gendered, classed power dynamics within two rural Appalachian preschool classrooms influenced by a popular local festival. The findings indicate that the “feminist” approach to cultivating “good” girls for the community— those who could go to college to gain the capital to support men if needed (and thus the turbulent extractive industries)—did not always have “femin- ist” effects of equalizing gender roles. It masked a status quo that supported the domination by men and young boys over women and girls, including the classroom teachers and girls in this study. In addition, it supported the myth of the meritocracy and the role(s) of extractive economies in its construction, a narrative that continually excluded the working class from middle-class girls’ play spaces. The research suggested that place-based education and teachers’ understanding of classed, raced, and gendered tensions related to local community life are important ways of thinking about carnival in the classroom that may support possibilities for shifting power dynamics in play relations.
Research Interests:
This paper discusses the social positioning work three Appalachian adolescents engaged in during two literacy events drawn from a year-long critical teacher-researcher ethnographic study in a twelfth-grade English class in a rural... more
This paper discusses the social positioning work three Appalachian adolescents engaged in during two literacy events drawn from a year-long critical teacher-researcher ethnographic study in a twelfth-grade English class in a rural Appalachian high school. Data analysis indicates that in these literacy events, the focal students positioned themselves and their communities in relation to discourses on Appalachia for different social and political purposes. This study suggests that attending to the negotiations Appalachian adolescents make in relation to cultural discourses can better support critical, culturally sustaining academic curricula.
Research Interests:
This paper centers on the discursive moves that two adolescents girls in rural Appalachia use to negotiate dominant discourses regarding Appalachian identity and language. The data is drawn from a year-long critical ethnographic... more
This paper centers on the discursive moves that two adolescents girls in rural Appalachia use to negotiate dominant discourses regarding Appalachian identity and language. The data is drawn from a year-long critical ethnographic teacher-researcher study in a senior English class located within a rural high school in the Appalachian region of the United States. Data analysis indicates that the adolescents in this study constructed local definitions and identity positions regarding language usage that complicated the dominant discourses of Appalachian identities. This study suggests that attending to local relations of power regarding language reveals both the implications and the disruptions in the dominance of mainstream speech patterns for Appalachian adolescents' social positioning.
Research Interests:
In February 2018, teachers and other school personnel in West Virginia went on strike over persis- tently low salaries and a series of other defunding and deprofessionalizing legislative proposals. Over nine days, teachers created signs... more
In February 2018, teachers and other school personnel in West Virginia went on strike over persis- tently low salaries and a series of other defunding and deprofessionalizing legislative proposals. Over nine days, teachers created signs that argued their cause and showcased their messages on roadsides, in their own communities, en masse at the state capital, and in media outlets across the globe. In this article, we describe five themes that emerged from a discourse analysis of 50 protest signs. In response to circulating dismissive and demeaning discourses, teachers positioned themselves as professionals, content specialists, moral authority figures, valuable resources, and inheritors of cultural legacies.