Papers by Mary L . Neville
English Education , 2023
In this article, I consider how pre- and inservice educators notice texts they enjoy in their dai... more In this article, I consider how pre- and inservice educators notice texts they enjoy in their daily lived experiences and how this positioning may support an attention to equity-oriented English education. I focus on texts that educators working in professional roles, ranging from literacy coaches
to elementary and secondary ELA teachers to administrators, notice in their daily experiences. Drawing on a curricular assignment in a writing pedagogy course, I consider how educators relate the texts they find interesting to their own understanding of equity-oriented writing instruction. I examine how teachers consider the texts of their lives and how such attentiveness might help them build humanizing, equity-oriented curriculum with and for students. I also seek to disrupt the overwhelming emphasis on writing as what is needed to pass a standardized assessment. This alignment toward enjoyment may support English educators as they, in turn, support and view
students and their languages and literacies as worthy and brilliant.
English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 2022
Purpose: This paper aims to examine the reading of a book-length fiction or non-fiction text in o... more Purpose: This paper aims to examine the reading of a book-length fiction or non-fiction text in one disciplinary literacy (DL) teacher education course. This paper considers how the assignment may help pre- and in-service teachers understand literacy as multifaceted and connected within and beyond their content areas (Moje, 2015). The research explores how reading a book-length text may help support DL, equity-oriented curricula that consider literacy as empowerment and connected to lived and communal experiences (González et al., 2005; Muhammad, 2020). Design/methodology/approach: This work is grounded in a qualitative, humanizing methodology and thematic analysis approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Paris and Winn, 2014). This approach examines student work in one DL course, considering how teachers within and beyond English language arts (ELA) respond to the task of reading a book-length text.
Findings: First, the assignment offered space for participants to redefine literacy as empowerment and enjoyment. Second, the assignment helped participants connect literacy within and beyond their content areas and to see literacy as active and interdisciplinary. Third, the assignment includes clear limitations for a DL approach, particularly when participants focus mainly on connections to their content area. This sometimes obfuscated participants' enjoyment of reading.
Originality/value: The study offers a new perspective on a task that is often seen as specifically "ELA": reading a book-length text. This project offers space for ELA educators to consider literacy from a DL, equity-oriented framework focused on enjoyment in literature within and beyond ELA classrooms.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2022
In this study, the researchers explore how teacher candidates (TCs) across one content area liter... more In this study, the researchers explore how teacher candidates (TCs) across one content area literacies course and one bilingual education course engaged with their past linguistic experiences through two literacy autobiography assignments across the two separate classes. Borrowing from culturally sustaining, multiliteracies, and translanguaging pedagogies, the researchers examined students' associations with their past language and literacy experiences. Findings demonstrate that the assignment allowed participants to examine past linguistic experiences which informed their considerations of themselves and their future students as enactors of language and literacy. The researchers examine how a culturally sustaining, translingual, and multiliteracies approach may help TCs view their own and their future students' literacy repertories as texts.
The Reading Teacher , 2022
In this article, we examine traditional reading and mathematics practices to
determine how Black... more In this article, we examine traditional reading and mathematics practices to
determine how Black and Brown children might be better educated through
historically responsive literacy. A historically responsive model is a promising
improvement to the teaching and learning of reading and mathematics.
Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy , 2021
Teacher College Record, 2020
The purpose of this study is to explore how teachers' emotions are or are not supported and nurt... more The purpose of this study is to explore how teachers' emotions are or are not supported and nurtured in an urban high school, contextualized by an exploration of what it means to work in a "feminized" profession that is increasingly subject to regulations that limit teachers' autonomy and agency. Drawing on portraiture methodology and using interview and field note data from a case study on teacher morale in an urban high school, we advance a theory about the emotional rules of teaching in a neoliberal era.
Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 2020
In this article, we explore how the reading and writing of poetry can be a form of critical hope ... more In this article, we explore how the reading and writing of poetry can be a form of critical hope within secondary English teacher education courses, and across our experiences as English teachers. We begin by discussing a particular moment from our secondary English teacher education course, where one of our teacher interns prompted us to respond thoughtfully about the ways we have enacted critical hope by asking, "How do I teach with hope?" From this moment, we share five vignettes of how as former teachers and current teacher educators, we each read and taught with poetry and the ways these moments evoked possibilities for how we might trace the contours of critical hope through a deeper engagement of the relational and poetic within teaching.
English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 2018
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how three young women of Color responded with “... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how three young women of Color responded with “outlaw emotions” to the novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz in a
literature discussion group. This paper considers how readers respond with outlaw emotions and how responses showed emotions as sites of control and resistance. The aim of this paper is to help English language arts (ELA)
teachers construct culturally sustaining literature classrooms through an encouragement of outlaw emotions.
Design/methodology/approach – To examine how youth responded with emotion to Aristotle and Dante, the author used humanizing and ethnographic research methodologies and conducted a thematic
analysis of meeting transcripts, journal entries from youth and researcher memos.
Findings – Analyses indicated that youth responded with outlaw emotions to Aristotle and Dante, and these responses showed how youth have both resisted and been controlled by structures of power. Youth responses of supposed “positive” or “negative” emotion were sites of control and resistance, particularly within their educational experiences. Youth engaged as a peer group to encourage and validate outlaw emotions and indirectly critiqued emotion as control.
Originality/value – Although many scholars have demonstrated the positive effects of out-of-school book clubs, there is scant research regarding how youth respond to culturally diverse literature with emotion, both outlaw and otherwise. Analyzing our own and characters’ outlaw emotions may help ELA educators and students deconstruct dominant ideologies about power, language and identity. This study, which demonstrates how youth responded with outlaw emotions and gave evidence of emotions as control and resistance, shows how ELA classrooms might encourage outlaw emotions as literary response. These findings suggest that ELA classrooms attempting culturally sustaining pedagogies might center youth emotion in responding to literature to critique power structures across the self, schools and society.
The purpose of this study was to analyze the narratives constructed by urban youth in a summer pr... more The purpose of this study was to analyze the narratives constructed by urban youth in a summer program for future educators of color. In particular, we asked, " In what ways do students use texts to create counternarratives of urban education? " Utilizing visual counternarratives and counterstorytelling as theoretical frames, and through thematic analysis and visual amalgamated findings, we examined how students' written, visual, and audio texts countered stereotypes. Findings revealed that students used texts to create counternarratives of self, schools, and society.
Books by Mary L . Neville
Teaching the Canon in 21st Century Classrooms, 2018
Editorials by Mary L . Neville
Journal of Teacher Education , 2019
Uploads
Papers by Mary L . Neville
to elementary and secondary ELA teachers to administrators, notice in their daily experiences. Drawing on a curricular assignment in a writing pedagogy course, I consider how educators relate the texts they find interesting to their own understanding of equity-oriented writing instruction. I examine how teachers consider the texts of their lives and how such attentiveness might help them build humanizing, equity-oriented curriculum with and for students. I also seek to disrupt the overwhelming emphasis on writing as what is needed to pass a standardized assessment. This alignment toward enjoyment may support English educators as they, in turn, support and view
students and their languages and literacies as worthy and brilliant.
Findings: First, the assignment offered space for participants to redefine literacy as empowerment and enjoyment. Second, the assignment helped participants connect literacy within and beyond their content areas and to see literacy as active and interdisciplinary. Third, the assignment includes clear limitations for a DL approach, particularly when participants focus mainly on connections to their content area. This sometimes obfuscated participants' enjoyment of reading.
Originality/value: The study offers a new perspective on a task that is often seen as specifically "ELA": reading a book-length text. This project offers space for ELA educators to consider literacy from a DL, equity-oriented framework focused on enjoyment in literature within and beyond ELA classrooms.
determine how Black and Brown children might be better educated through
historically responsive literacy. A historically responsive model is a promising
improvement to the teaching and learning of reading and mathematics.
literature discussion group. This paper considers how readers respond with outlaw emotions and how responses showed emotions as sites of control and resistance. The aim of this paper is to help English language arts (ELA)
teachers construct culturally sustaining literature classrooms through an encouragement of outlaw emotions.
Design/methodology/approach – To examine how youth responded with emotion to Aristotle and Dante, the author used humanizing and ethnographic research methodologies and conducted a thematic
analysis of meeting transcripts, journal entries from youth and researcher memos.
Findings – Analyses indicated that youth responded with outlaw emotions to Aristotle and Dante, and these responses showed how youth have both resisted and been controlled by structures of power. Youth responses of supposed “positive” or “negative” emotion were sites of control and resistance, particularly within their educational experiences. Youth engaged as a peer group to encourage and validate outlaw emotions and indirectly critiqued emotion as control.
Originality/value – Although many scholars have demonstrated the positive effects of out-of-school book clubs, there is scant research regarding how youth respond to culturally diverse literature with emotion, both outlaw and otherwise. Analyzing our own and characters’ outlaw emotions may help ELA educators and students deconstruct dominant ideologies about power, language and identity. This study, which demonstrates how youth responded with outlaw emotions and gave evidence of emotions as control and resistance, shows how ELA classrooms might encourage outlaw emotions as literary response. These findings suggest that ELA classrooms attempting culturally sustaining pedagogies might center youth emotion in responding to literature to critique power structures across the self, schools and society.
Books by Mary L . Neville
Editorials by Mary L . Neville
to elementary and secondary ELA teachers to administrators, notice in their daily experiences. Drawing on a curricular assignment in a writing pedagogy course, I consider how educators relate the texts they find interesting to their own understanding of equity-oriented writing instruction. I examine how teachers consider the texts of their lives and how such attentiveness might help them build humanizing, equity-oriented curriculum with and for students. I also seek to disrupt the overwhelming emphasis on writing as what is needed to pass a standardized assessment. This alignment toward enjoyment may support English educators as they, in turn, support and view
students and their languages and literacies as worthy and brilliant.
Findings: First, the assignment offered space for participants to redefine literacy as empowerment and enjoyment. Second, the assignment helped participants connect literacy within and beyond their content areas and to see literacy as active and interdisciplinary. Third, the assignment includes clear limitations for a DL approach, particularly when participants focus mainly on connections to their content area. This sometimes obfuscated participants' enjoyment of reading.
Originality/value: The study offers a new perspective on a task that is often seen as specifically "ELA": reading a book-length text. This project offers space for ELA educators to consider literacy from a DL, equity-oriented framework focused on enjoyment in literature within and beyond ELA classrooms.
determine how Black and Brown children might be better educated through
historically responsive literacy. A historically responsive model is a promising
improvement to the teaching and learning of reading and mathematics.
literature discussion group. This paper considers how readers respond with outlaw emotions and how responses showed emotions as sites of control and resistance. The aim of this paper is to help English language arts (ELA)
teachers construct culturally sustaining literature classrooms through an encouragement of outlaw emotions.
Design/methodology/approach – To examine how youth responded with emotion to Aristotle and Dante, the author used humanizing and ethnographic research methodologies and conducted a thematic
analysis of meeting transcripts, journal entries from youth and researcher memos.
Findings – Analyses indicated that youth responded with outlaw emotions to Aristotle and Dante, and these responses showed how youth have both resisted and been controlled by structures of power. Youth responses of supposed “positive” or “negative” emotion were sites of control and resistance, particularly within their educational experiences. Youth engaged as a peer group to encourage and validate outlaw emotions and indirectly critiqued emotion as control.
Originality/value – Although many scholars have demonstrated the positive effects of out-of-school book clubs, there is scant research regarding how youth respond to culturally diverse literature with emotion, both outlaw and otherwise. Analyzing our own and characters’ outlaw emotions may help ELA educators and students deconstruct dominant ideologies about power, language and identity. This study, which demonstrates how youth responded with outlaw emotions and gave evidence of emotions as control and resistance, shows how ELA classrooms might encourage outlaw emotions as literary response. These findings suggest that ELA classrooms attempting culturally sustaining pedagogies might center youth emotion in responding to literature to critique power structures across the self, schools and society.