It is tempting and even useful to imagine stable camps in a warlike contest over common interests... more It is tempting and even useful to imagine stable camps in a warlike contest over common interests in school reform, and it is an ingrained national tradition to portray meaningful struggle between camps, with Jimmy Stewart or Sidney Poitier playing the good guy in the movie version. Web 2.0 activism, a type of critical literacy, challenges that view as teachers and parents, long positioned in the backseat in national education reform, are increasingly able to drive, organize, and disagree with self-selected protagonists of positive change. In this chapter, we examine the connections among Critical Digital Literacies (CDL) and the struggle over what is “common” among stakeholders in American education.
Teaching and Teacher Education: Leadership and Professional Development
This article explores the challenges shared by novice teachers in a year-long series of professio... more This article explores the challenges shared by novice teachers in a year-long series of professional development workshops, which were designed to help novice teachers notice, unpack, and respond to the difficulties they were encountering in the first three years of teaching. The authors analyzed the data generated during the Oral Inquiry Process workshops to identify common challenges shared by the novice teachers who participated in this study and the nuances within them. Findings pointed to two common categories of struggle: reconciling theory and practice in standardized schools and managing relationships with veteran teachers. Nuances within these challenges included tension flowing from standardization, pacing constraints, and navigating complex relationships with veteran teachers. The authors argue that developing a nuanced understanding of the challenges novice teachers encounter is a vital first step in structuring teacher induction programs to respond to the needs of the teachers they serve. Working from the findings of the study, the authors offer recommendations for structuring professional development programs designed to help novice teachers embrace struggle through dialogue about and reflection upon the particular challenges created by their teaching contexts.
This study investigated a framework for supporting English teacher candidates' efforts to reconci... more This study investigated a framework for supporting English teacher candidates' efforts to reconcile theory and practice in classrooms that are subject to the tensions and challenges presented by contemporary, standardized education reforms that often ignore students' diverse cultural contexts, needs, and interests. Using the transcripts of seminar meetings in which teacher candidates engaged in structured, collaborative discussions focused on solving problems encountered during student teaching, this study used a dialogic, sociocultural perspective to consider how teacher educators can support teacher candidates as they make the transition from student to teacher. Data from a longitudinal qualitative study were used to examine the utility of problem-posing seminars as tools that can help English teacher candidates embrace the tension they encounter as competing ideologies collide during student teaching. In particular, participants' efforts to enact the tenets of dialogic approaches to teaching studied during university coursework were explored against the backdrop of contemporary, standardized curricula and classroom settings. Findings suggest that making collaborative problem-solving activities a key facet of English teacher education creates opportunities for teacher candidates to reconcile competing ideologies. This article provides a rationale and a structure for making inquiry, collaboration, and dialogue key components of teacher education programs.
Instructional practices in American schools have become increasingly standardized over the last q... more Instructional practices in American schools have become increasingly standardized over the last quarter century. This increase in standardization has resulted in a decrease in opportunities for teachers to engage in student-centered instructional practices. This article discusses how the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin can serve as the foundation for educators who are seeking alternatives to standards period teaching practices. A Bakhtinian view of language can be the basis for the creation of a dialogic pedagogy, which can help teachers and students navigate the complexities of teaching and learning in the secondary English classroom. More importantly, perhaps, Bakhtin’s theories can serve as a framework on which educators might build their arguments supporting the implementation of alternatives to standards period skill and drill instructional activities.
Hermans (2001) has argued that an individual's social position within an organization creates... more Hermans (2001) has argued that an individual's social position within an organization creates situations where " some people have more opportunity to take the role of power holder than do others " (p. 265). The authors have embraced this concept and engaged in Self-study to examine their teaching experiences to develop an understanding of the ways in which dialogue between students, teachers, and their theoretical mentors can make teaching and learning a more collaborative and equitable effort. This article focuses on how engaging in philosophical dialogue with mentors and viewing students as co-creators of knowledge and pedagogy can enhance teaching and learning and nourish teachers who are working through the constraints teachers encounter as a result of Standards Era policies. The isolation lamented by Lortie's (1975) classic text Schoolteacher remains a persistent and troubling element of teaching in the 21 st century (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Margolis, 2008). Desp...
The Framework for 21 Century Learning provides a compelling vision for blending the specific cont... more The Framework for 21 Century Learning provides a compelling vision for blending the specific content and skills students need to learn to be successful in schools with the more ephemeral things students need to learn to be successful in our ever-changing world. We see this framework as an interesting and useful tool for navigating the complicated landscape of the increasingly standards driven world of U.S. schools. The danger, of course, is that this framework will be seen as simply another iteration of standards-based reform to be adopted in the quest to standardize schools. What is need is a set of powerful, authentic examples of the framework in action that show its rich potential for reforming teaching and learning practices. In this paper, we offer an example of how the principles of the Framework for 21 Century Learning can help teachers and students can work together to create rich learning experiences focusing on multiple literacies in a variety of settings.
International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2011
Myriad methods exist for analyzing qualitative data. It is, however, imperative for qualitative r... more Myriad methods exist for analyzing qualitative data. It is, however, imperative for qualitative researchers to employ data analysis tools that are congruent with the theoretical frameworks underpinning their inquiries. In this paper, I have constructed a framework for analyzing data that could be useful for researchers interested in focusing on the transactional nature of language as they engage in Social Science research. Transactional Analysis (TA) is an inductive approach to data analysis that transcends constant comparative methods of exploring data. Drawing on elements of narrative and thematic analysis, TA uses the theories of Bakhtin and Rosenblatt to attend to the dynamic processes researchers identify as they generate themes in their data and seek to understand how their participants' worldviews are being shaped. This paper highlights the processes researchers can utilize to study the mutual shaping that occurs as participants read and enter into dialogue with the world...
Recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers in rural schools is a persistent struggle in m... more Recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers in rural schools is a persistent struggle in many countries, including the U.S. Salient challenges related to poverty, geographic isolation, low teacher salaries, and a lack of community amenities seem to trump perks of living in rural communities. Recognizing this issue as a complex and hard to solve fixture in the composition of rural communities, we sought to understand how teacher preparation programs might better prepare preservice teachers for successful student teaching placements and, ideally, eventual careers in rural schools. In this study, we explore teacher candidatesΓCO perceptions of rurality while examining how specific theory, pedagogy, and practice influence their feelings of preparedness for working in a rural school. Using pre- and post- questionnaire data, classroom observations, and reflections, we assess the effectiveness of deliberate efforts in our teacher preparation program to increase readiness for rural t...
Citation: Stewart, Trevor T. (2010). A dialogic pedagogy: Looking to Mikhail Bakhtin for alternat... more Citation: Stewart, Trevor T. (2010). A dialogic pedagogy: Looking to Mikhail Bakhtin for alternatives to standards period teaching practices. Critical Education, 1(6). Retrieved [date] from Abstract Instructional practices in American schools have become increasingly standardized over the last quarter century. This increase in standardization has resulted in a decrease in opportunities for teachers to engage in student-centered instructional practices. This article discusses how the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin can serve as the foundation for educators who are seeking alternatives to standards period teaching practices. A Bakhtinian view of language can be the basis for the creation of a dialogic pedagogy, which can help teachers and students navigate the complexities of teaching and learning. More importantly, perhaps, Bakhtin's theories can serve as a framework on which educators might build their arguments supporting the implementation of alternatives to standards period skill...
Teaching and Teacher Education: Leadership and Professional Development, 2022
This article explores the challenges shared by novice teachers in a year-long series of professio... more This article explores the challenges shared by novice teachers in a year-long series of professional development workshops, which were designed to help novice teachers notice, unpack, and respond to the difficulties they were encountering in the first three years of teaching. The authors analyzed the data generated during the Oral Inquiry Process workshops to identify common challenges shared by the novice teachers who participated in this study and the nuances within them. Findings pointed to two common categories of struggle: reconciling theory and practice in standardized schools and managing relationships with veteran teachers. Nuances within these challenges included tension flowing from standardization, pacing constraints, and navigating complex relationships with veteran teachers. The authors argue that developing a nuanced understanding of the challenges novice teachers encounter is a vital first step in structuring teacher induction programs to respond to the needs of the teachers they serve. Working from the findings of the study, the authors offer recommendations for structuring professional development programs designed to help novice teachers embrace struggle through dialogue about and reflection upon the particular challenges created by their teaching contexts.
The hierarchical organization of the teaching profession and traditional modes of education refor... more The hierarchical organization of the teaching profession and traditional modes of education reform discourse have created a simplistic view of teachers’, and especially urban teachers’ responsibility for quality in education. Historically, the structure of and content of education reform discourse has cast teachers in a static role and inhibited their active participation in discussions of educational policy. This paper contextualizes education reform discourse in relation to past educational crisis narratives to interpret recent shifts in the structure of education reform dialogue. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of heteroglossia and addressivity, the authors examine contributions to online discussions and debate composed ostensibly by urban teachers in response to top-down reform discourses. The data were analyzed with respect to discursive choices and grouped subsequently as themed arguments and rhetorical moves. The authors argue that teachers’ strategic responses to education ...
Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 2016
This paper contextualizes contemporary urban teachers’ online dissent in public discussions of ed... more This paper contextualizes contemporary urban teachers’ online dissent in public discussions of education reform in relation to past educational crisis narratives to interpret recent shifts in the structure of education reform dialogue in the United States. It does so by examining the form and content of compositions in which teachers respond to education reform. The analysis is intended to describe the digitally mediated roles teachers are asserting in a complex public debate over the future of education in the United States. The structure and content of education reform discourse has often cast teachers in static roles, which inhibits their active participation in discussions of educational policy. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s position that language choices serve to stifle and/or reinvigorate dialogue, we examine contributions to online discussions and debate composed ostensibly by urban teachers in response to dominant discourses. The data were analyzed with respect to discursive choic...
Adolescent students’ social relationships have myriad influences on their lives. Therefore, it is... more Adolescent students’ social relationships have myriad influences on their lives. Therefore, it is important to ascertain how students’ social relationships can inform teachers’ efforts to create authentic learning experiences and increase student motivation to develop life-long reading habits. This paper examines middle school students’ perceptions of reading and the connections between social relationships and reading. Drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with eighth grades students, this paper discusses the role of social relationships in students’ motivation to read. The authors explore the students’ perceptions and some share some insight into how social relationships might increase students’ motivation to read.
rural students (Jimerson, 2005). Recruiting and retaining highly qualifi ed teachers also remains... more rural students (Jimerson, 2005). Recruiting and retaining highly qualifi ed teachers also remains a challenge for rural schools, due in part to the lack of community amenities, geographic and professional isolation, lower salaries, and higher poverty rates (Miller, 2012). Finding strategies to mitigate these challenges, such as student loan forgiveness and housing (Lowe, 2006), has proven to be complicated, especially when rural communities typically lack amenities that are more readily available in less remote or more affl uent places (e.g., community services or recreation facilities). While community closeness, small rural class sizes, and other attributes of rural communities are often noted as advantages for working in a rural school, realities of rural life can serve as barriers for recruiting highly qualifi ed teachers (Barley & Brigham, 2008; Monk, 2007). Regardless, these efforts to recruit teachers rarely address preparing novice teachers for success in rural classrooms. Efforts to recruit teachers to work in rural schools are futile if those teachers are not adequately prepared to provide instruction that meets the needs of the students. Staffi ng classrooms with ill-prepared teachers is detrimental to students and novice teachers. Moreover, these teachers will have to be replaced, exacerbating the problem of staffi ng schools by creating a revolving door at the head of the classroom. Barley and Brigham (2008) cite fi ve key strategies for preparing teachers for success in rural schools, but only one of these strategies, multiple-subject certifi cation, directly relates to efforts that can be addressed by a teacher preparation program. The remaining strategies, such as access to teacher preparation programs, are aimed Rural education advocates have argued for decades that rural students represent a forgotten minority (Pankratz, 1975), and that preparing teachers to meet the needs of rural learners marginalized by poverty and geographic isolation takes differentiated, specialized training (Robinson, 1954). The 1944 White House Charter of Education for Rural Children (Dawson & Hubbard, 1944) represents a government tome of rural statistics, recommendations, and program ideas, in which Eleanor Roosevelt points out the obvious disparities between rural and "modern" schools. The charter proclaims that every rural child deserves teachers "who are educated to deal effectively with the problems peculiar to rural schools" (p. 30). Some seventy years later, however, these timeworn frustrations and examples of continued inequities and injustices illustrated by contemporary rural education researchers persist (e.g.
This study addresses how problem-posing seminars provided room for preservice teachers (PSTs) to ... more This study addresses how problem-posing seminars provided room for preservice teachers (PSTs) to navigate the disconnect between theory and practice, facilitating reflection on their experiences, and fostering self-efficacy as novice English teachers. Viewing student teaching as identity construction, the authors applied the lens of Lensmire’s “voice as project” to written reflections of problem-posing seminar participation, exploring perceptions of self-efficacy in teaching. Written reflections indexed themes present in the larger data set generated from problem-posing seminars: the transitional nature of the student teacher field experience, the emerging reliance on a dialogic pedagogy, and their burgeoning sense of agency in the classroom. The problem-posing framework can be an integral scaffold supporting English teachers’ efforts to enact a dialogic pedagogy or other student-centered frameworks for teaching, establishing spaces where the mosaic of different facets of experience is valued and enables teacher and student alike to define their voices and determine their own trajectories.
This paper explores urban teachers' published responses to education reform. These compositions p... more This paper explores urban teachers' published responses to education reform. These compositions published online are examined as sources of cultural knowledge that are relevant to teacher education. Using sociolinguistic theory and method, the compositions' arguments and rhetorical moves are analyzed to interpret the use of digital compositions to respond to education reform initiatives in the United States. The patterned speech contained in these compositions demonstrates forms of agency important to the pursuit of professional autonomy. This finding has implications for teacher education and raises questions about whether and how cultural resources being developed by urban (and other) teachers through online composition may be ethically appropriated to benefit pre-service and in-service teachers.
It is tempting and even useful to imagine stable camps in a warlike contest over common interests... more It is tempting and even useful to imagine stable camps in a warlike contest over common interests in school reform, and it is an ingrained national tradition to portray meaningful struggle between camps, with Jimmy Stewart or Sidney Poitier playing the good guy in the movie version. Web 2.0 activism, a type of critical literacy, challenges that view as teachers and parents, long positioned in the backseat in national education reform, are increasingly able to drive, organize, and disagree with self-selected protagonists of positive change. In this chapter, we examine the connections among Critical Digital Literacies (CDL) and the struggle over what is “common” among stakeholders in American education.
Teaching and Teacher Education: Leadership and Professional Development
This article explores the challenges shared by novice teachers in a year-long series of professio... more This article explores the challenges shared by novice teachers in a year-long series of professional development workshops, which were designed to help novice teachers notice, unpack, and respond to the difficulties they were encountering in the first three years of teaching. The authors analyzed the data generated during the Oral Inquiry Process workshops to identify common challenges shared by the novice teachers who participated in this study and the nuances within them. Findings pointed to two common categories of struggle: reconciling theory and practice in standardized schools and managing relationships with veteran teachers. Nuances within these challenges included tension flowing from standardization, pacing constraints, and navigating complex relationships with veteran teachers. The authors argue that developing a nuanced understanding of the challenges novice teachers encounter is a vital first step in structuring teacher induction programs to respond to the needs of the teachers they serve. Working from the findings of the study, the authors offer recommendations for structuring professional development programs designed to help novice teachers embrace struggle through dialogue about and reflection upon the particular challenges created by their teaching contexts.
This study investigated a framework for supporting English teacher candidates' efforts to reconci... more This study investigated a framework for supporting English teacher candidates' efforts to reconcile theory and practice in classrooms that are subject to the tensions and challenges presented by contemporary, standardized education reforms that often ignore students' diverse cultural contexts, needs, and interests. Using the transcripts of seminar meetings in which teacher candidates engaged in structured, collaborative discussions focused on solving problems encountered during student teaching, this study used a dialogic, sociocultural perspective to consider how teacher educators can support teacher candidates as they make the transition from student to teacher. Data from a longitudinal qualitative study were used to examine the utility of problem-posing seminars as tools that can help English teacher candidates embrace the tension they encounter as competing ideologies collide during student teaching. In particular, participants' efforts to enact the tenets of dialogic approaches to teaching studied during university coursework were explored against the backdrop of contemporary, standardized curricula and classroom settings. Findings suggest that making collaborative problem-solving activities a key facet of English teacher education creates opportunities for teacher candidates to reconcile competing ideologies. This article provides a rationale and a structure for making inquiry, collaboration, and dialogue key components of teacher education programs.
Instructional practices in American schools have become increasingly standardized over the last q... more Instructional practices in American schools have become increasingly standardized over the last quarter century. This increase in standardization has resulted in a decrease in opportunities for teachers to engage in student-centered instructional practices. This article discusses how the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin can serve as the foundation for educators who are seeking alternatives to standards period teaching practices. A Bakhtinian view of language can be the basis for the creation of a dialogic pedagogy, which can help teachers and students navigate the complexities of teaching and learning in the secondary English classroom. More importantly, perhaps, Bakhtin’s theories can serve as a framework on which educators might build their arguments supporting the implementation of alternatives to standards period skill and drill instructional activities.
Hermans (2001) has argued that an individual's social position within an organization creates... more Hermans (2001) has argued that an individual's social position within an organization creates situations where " some people have more opportunity to take the role of power holder than do others " (p. 265). The authors have embraced this concept and engaged in Self-study to examine their teaching experiences to develop an understanding of the ways in which dialogue between students, teachers, and their theoretical mentors can make teaching and learning a more collaborative and equitable effort. This article focuses on how engaging in philosophical dialogue with mentors and viewing students as co-creators of knowledge and pedagogy can enhance teaching and learning and nourish teachers who are working through the constraints teachers encounter as a result of Standards Era policies. The isolation lamented by Lortie's (1975) classic text Schoolteacher remains a persistent and troubling element of teaching in the 21 st century (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Margolis, 2008). Desp...
The Framework for 21 Century Learning provides a compelling vision for blending the specific cont... more The Framework for 21 Century Learning provides a compelling vision for blending the specific content and skills students need to learn to be successful in schools with the more ephemeral things students need to learn to be successful in our ever-changing world. We see this framework as an interesting and useful tool for navigating the complicated landscape of the increasingly standards driven world of U.S. schools. The danger, of course, is that this framework will be seen as simply another iteration of standards-based reform to be adopted in the quest to standardize schools. What is need is a set of powerful, authentic examples of the framework in action that show its rich potential for reforming teaching and learning practices. In this paper, we offer an example of how the principles of the Framework for 21 Century Learning can help teachers and students can work together to create rich learning experiences focusing on multiple literacies in a variety of settings.
International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2011
Myriad methods exist for analyzing qualitative data. It is, however, imperative for qualitative r... more Myriad methods exist for analyzing qualitative data. It is, however, imperative for qualitative researchers to employ data analysis tools that are congruent with the theoretical frameworks underpinning their inquiries. In this paper, I have constructed a framework for analyzing data that could be useful for researchers interested in focusing on the transactional nature of language as they engage in Social Science research. Transactional Analysis (TA) is an inductive approach to data analysis that transcends constant comparative methods of exploring data. Drawing on elements of narrative and thematic analysis, TA uses the theories of Bakhtin and Rosenblatt to attend to the dynamic processes researchers identify as they generate themes in their data and seek to understand how their participants' worldviews are being shaped. This paper highlights the processes researchers can utilize to study the mutual shaping that occurs as participants read and enter into dialogue with the world...
Recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers in rural schools is a persistent struggle in m... more Recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers in rural schools is a persistent struggle in many countries, including the U.S. Salient challenges related to poverty, geographic isolation, low teacher salaries, and a lack of community amenities seem to trump perks of living in rural communities. Recognizing this issue as a complex and hard to solve fixture in the composition of rural communities, we sought to understand how teacher preparation programs might better prepare preservice teachers for successful student teaching placements and, ideally, eventual careers in rural schools. In this study, we explore teacher candidatesΓCO perceptions of rurality while examining how specific theory, pedagogy, and practice influence their feelings of preparedness for working in a rural school. Using pre- and post- questionnaire data, classroom observations, and reflections, we assess the effectiveness of deliberate efforts in our teacher preparation program to increase readiness for rural t...
Citation: Stewart, Trevor T. (2010). A dialogic pedagogy: Looking to Mikhail Bakhtin for alternat... more Citation: Stewart, Trevor T. (2010). A dialogic pedagogy: Looking to Mikhail Bakhtin for alternatives to standards period teaching practices. Critical Education, 1(6). Retrieved [date] from Abstract Instructional practices in American schools have become increasingly standardized over the last quarter century. This increase in standardization has resulted in a decrease in opportunities for teachers to engage in student-centered instructional practices. This article discusses how the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin can serve as the foundation for educators who are seeking alternatives to standards period teaching practices. A Bakhtinian view of language can be the basis for the creation of a dialogic pedagogy, which can help teachers and students navigate the complexities of teaching and learning. More importantly, perhaps, Bakhtin's theories can serve as a framework on which educators might build their arguments supporting the implementation of alternatives to standards period skill...
Teaching and Teacher Education: Leadership and Professional Development, 2022
This article explores the challenges shared by novice teachers in a year-long series of professio... more This article explores the challenges shared by novice teachers in a year-long series of professional development workshops, which were designed to help novice teachers notice, unpack, and respond to the difficulties they were encountering in the first three years of teaching. The authors analyzed the data generated during the Oral Inquiry Process workshops to identify common challenges shared by the novice teachers who participated in this study and the nuances within them. Findings pointed to two common categories of struggle: reconciling theory and practice in standardized schools and managing relationships with veteran teachers. Nuances within these challenges included tension flowing from standardization, pacing constraints, and navigating complex relationships with veteran teachers. The authors argue that developing a nuanced understanding of the challenges novice teachers encounter is a vital first step in structuring teacher induction programs to respond to the needs of the teachers they serve. Working from the findings of the study, the authors offer recommendations for structuring professional development programs designed to help novice teachers embrace struggle through dialogue about and reflection upon the particular challenges created by their teaching contexts.
The hierarchical organization of the teaching profession and traditional modes of education refor... more The hierarchical organization of the teaching profession and traditional modes of education reform discourse have created a simplistic view of teachers’, and especially urban teachers’ responsibility for quality in education. Historically, the structure of and content of education reform discourse has cast teachers in a static role and inhibited their active participation in discussions of educational policy. This paper contextualizes education reform discourse in relation to past educational crisis narratives to interpret recent shifts in the structure of education reform dialogue. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of heteroglossia and addressivity, the authors examine contributions to online discussions and debate composed ostensibly by urban teachers in response to top-down reform discourses. The data were analyzed with respect to discursive choices and grouped subsequently as themed arguments and rhetorical moves. The authors argue that teachers’ strategic responses to education ...
Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 2016
This paper contextualizes contemporary urban teachers’ online dissent in public discussions of ed... more This paper contextualizes contemporary urban teachers’ online dissent in public discussions of education reform in relation to past educational crisis narratives to interpret recent shifts in the structure of education reform dialogue in the United States. It does so by examining the form and content of compositions in which teachers respond to education reform. The analysis is intended to describe the digitally mediated roles teachers are asserting in a complex public debate over the future of education in the United States. The structure and content of education reform discourse has often cast teachers in static roles, which inhibits their active participation in discussions of educational policy. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s position that language choices serve to stifle and/or reinvigorate dialogue, we examine contributions to online discussions and debate composed ostensibly by urban teachers in response to dominant discourses. The data were analyzed with respect to discursive choic...
Adolescent students’ social relationships have myriad influences on their lives. Therefore, it is... more Adolescent students’ social relationships have myriad influences on their lives. Therefore, it is important to ascertain how students’ social relationships can inform teachers’ efforts to create authentic learning experiences and increase student motivation to develop life-long reading habits. This paper examines middle school students’ perceptions of reading and the connections between social relationships and reading. Drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with eighth grades students, this paper discusses the role of social relationships in students’ motivation to read. The authors explore the students’ perceptions and some share some insight into how social relationships might increase students’ motivation to read.
rural students (Jimerson, 2005). Recruiting and retaining highly qualifi ed teachers also remains... more rural students (Jimerson, 2005). Recruiting and retaining highly qualifi ed teachers also remains a challenge for rural schools, due in part to the lack of community amenities, geographic and professional isolation, lower salaries, and higher poverty rates (Miller, 2012). Finding strategies to mitigate these challenges, such as student loan forgiveness and housing (Lowe, 2006), has proven to be complicated, especially when rural communities typically lack amenities that are more readily available in less remote or more affl uent places (e.g., community services or recreation facilities). While community closeness, small rural class sizes, and other attributes of rural communities are often noted as advantages for working in a rural school, realities of rural life can serve as barriers for recruiting highly qualifi ed teachers (Barley & Brigham, 2008; Monk, 2007). Regardless, these efforts to recruit teachers rarely address preparing novice teachers for success in rural classrooms. Efforts to recruit teachers to work in rural schools are futile if those teachers are not adequately prepared to provide instruction that meets the needs of the students. Staffi ng classrooms with ill-prepared teachers is detrimental to students and novice teachers. Moreover, these teachers will have to be replaced, exacerbating the problem of staffi ng schools by creating a revolving door at the head of the classroom. Barley and Brigham (2008) cite fi ve key strategies for preparing teachers for success in rural schools, but only one of these strategies, multiple-subject certifi cation, directly relates to efforts that can be addressed by a teacher preparation program. The remaining strategies, such as access to teacher preparation programs, are aimed Rural education advocates have argued for decades that rural students represent a forgotten minority (Pankratz, 1975), and that preparing teachers to meet the needs of rural learners marginalized by poverty and geographic isolation takes differentiated, specialized training (Robinson, 1954). The 1944 White House Charter of Education for Rural Children (Dawson & Hubbard, 1944) represents a government tome of rural statistics, recommendations, and program ideas, in which Eleanor Roosevelt points out the obvious disparities between rural and "modern" schools. The charter proclaims that every rural child deserves teachers "who are educated to deal effectively with the problems peculiar to rural schools" (p. 30). Some seventy years later, however, these timeworn frustrations and examples of continued inequities and injustices illustrated by contemporary rural education researchers persist (e.g.
This study addresses how problem-posing seminars provided room for preservice teachers (PSTs) to ... more This study addresses how problem-posing seminars provided room for preservice teachers (PSTs) to navigate the disconnect between theory and practice, facilitating reflection on their experiences, and fostering self-efficacy as novice English teachers. Viewing student teaching as identity construction, the authors applied the lens of Lensmire’s “voice as project” to written reflections of problem-posing seminar participation, exploring perceptions of self-efficacy in teaching. Written reflections indexed themes present in the larger data set generated from problem-posing seminars: the transitional nature of the student teacher field experience, the emerging reliance on a dialogic pedagogy, and their burgeoning sense of agency in the classroom. The problem-posing framework can be an integral scaffold supporting English teachers’ efforts to enact a dialogic pedagogy or other student-centered frameworks for teaching, establishing spaces where the mosaic of different facets of experience is valued and enables teacher and student alike to define their voices and determine their own trajectories.
This paper explores urban teachers' published responses to education reform. These compositions p... more This paper explores urban teachers' published responses to education reform. These compositions published online are examined as sources of cultural knowledge that are relevant to teacher education. Using sociolinguistic theory and method, the compositions' arguments and rhetorical moves are analyzed to interpret the use of digital compositions to respond to education reform initiatives in the United States. The patterned speech contained in these compositions demonstrates forms of agency important to the pursuit of professional autonomy. This finding has implications for teacher education and raises questions about whether and how cultural resources being developed by urban (and other) teachers through online composition may be ethically appropriated to benefit pre-service and in-service teachers.
This study explored print-processing and vocabulary differences among a group of 5th- and 6th-gra... more This study explored print-processing and vocabulary differences among a group of 5th- and 6th-grade students who had scored below the 50th percentile on a standardized reading test. Guided by the simple view of reading, we applied cut scores (low/high) to the students’ performance on print-processing and vocabulary tasks. The design allowed for the placement of students in 1 of 4 reader profiles: (a) high print processing/low vocabulary (25%), (b) high print processing/high vocabulary (14%), (c) low print processing/high vocabulary (14%), or (d) low print processing/low vocabulary (48%). An important finding was that 62% of the students could not read grade-level text with adequate accuracy and rate. In fact, many could not read comfortably a full level below their grade placement. We consider instructional implications.
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