{"title":"Experiencing the cycles of love in teaching: the praxis of an early career Asian American ELA teacher","authors":"Kelli A. Rushek, Saba Khan Vlach, Tiphany Phan","doi":"10.1108/etpc-08-2022-0099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-08-2022-0099","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose Early career teachers (ECTs) of Color are key in making change, resisting racism and pushing back against white supremacy in K-12 education, specifically in English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms. Through a narrative telling inquiry (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000) of Nora, an Asian American ELA ECT in the Midwest, and by drawing on Fisher’s (2011) Critical Integral Pedagogy of Fearlessness, this study aims to recognize the narrative power within teaching praxis as Nora stories herself toward becoming a critical pedagogue. Design/methodology/approach Using narrative inquiry methodology and methods (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000), the authors simultaneously considered the commonplace tenets of narrative inquiry – temporality, sociality and place – of the intertwined relationships of the participants and observers. The field texts included in the corpus of data include myriad tellings of Nora’s experiences in her initial years of teaching ELA. Data were analyzed in stages of parsing out narrative blocks and structures. Findings The findings indicate that Nora, as an ECT, went through recursive cycles of fear as conceptualized by Fisher (2011) – bravery, courageousness and being fear-less – of working toward radical love (Hooks, 2000) within her ELA instruction. The authors argue that Nora confronted her personal and professional fears as she strove to become a critical pedagogue in her ELA classroom. Originality/value Current scholarship portrays ECTs as lacking agency in their development and/or effectiveness in the classroom and little is said about Asian American ELA ECTs and critical instruction. The authors present Nora’s counter-narrative to make visible what is right with ELA ECTs, specifically teachers of Color, as they transform their fear into courage to fight for educational equity.","PeriodicalId":45885,"journal":{"name":"English Teaching-Practice and Critique","volume":"62 19","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135092278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reading with love: the potential of critical posthuman reading practices in preservice English education","authors":"Karen Spector, Elizabeth Anne Murray","doi":"10.1108/etpc-05-2022-0074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-05-2022-0074","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose Preservice English teachers are expected to use literary theories and criticism to read and respond to literary texts. Over the past century, two of the most common approaches to literary encounters in secondary schools have been New Criticism – particularly the practice of close reading – and Rosenblatt's transactional theory, both of which have been expanded through critical theorizing along the way. Elucidated by data produced in iterative experiments with Frost's “The Road Not Taken,” the authors reconceptualize the reader, the text, and close reading through the critical posthuman theory of reading with love as a generative way of thinking outside of the habitual practices of European humanisms. Design/methodology/approach In “thinking with” (Jackson and Mazzei, 2023) desiring-machines, affect, Man and critical posthuman theory, this post qualitative inquiry maps how the “The Road Not Taken” worked when students plugged into it iteratively in processes of reading with love, an affirmative and creative series of experiments with literature. Findings This study mapped how respect for authority, the battle of good v evil, individualism and meritocracy operated as desiring-machines that channeled most participants’ initial readings of “The Road Not Taken.” In subsequent experiments with the poem, the authors demonstrate that reading with love as a critical posthuman process of reading invites participants to exceed the logics of recognition and representation, add or invent additional ways of being and relating to the world and thereby produce the possibility to transform a world toward greater inclusivity and equity. Originality/value The authors reconceptualize the categories of “the reader” and “the text” from Rosenblatt’s transactional theory within practices of reading with love, which they situate within a critical posthuman theory. They eschew separating efferent and aesthetic reading stances while also recuperating practices of “close reading,” historically associated with the New Critics, by demonstrating the generativity of critically valenced “close reading” within a Deleuzian process of reading with love.","PeriodicalId":45885,"journal":{"name":"English Teaching-Practice and Critique","volume":"6 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135431376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Claiming a space in the W/writerly community to increase English Language Arts teacher agency","authors":"Christy Goldsmith","doi":"10.1108/etpc-04-2023-0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-04-2023-0032","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose By engaging levels of W/writerliness , this paper aims to identify how English Language Arts teachers’ personal and professional W/writerly identities impact their performance of pedagogical agency. Design/methodology/approach In this narrative inquiry, the author draws on theories of writing identity and agency to analyze how four mid-career English teachers’ personal beliefs around writing intersect with their professional practice. Data sources include interviews, journal entries and classroom observations. Findings Nuanced differences in teachers’ W/writerly identities produce more substantial differences in their pedagogy, especially impacting their performance of agency to (re)define successful writing outcomes and to balance process and product in their writing instruction. Practical implications This paper presents one method to expand preservice and in-service English Language Arts (ELA) practitioners’ approaches to teaching writing even alongside limitations of their teaching context by (1) emphasizing their ownership over their own writing in university methods courses; (2) leading teachers on an exploration of W/writerly identities; and (3) investigating ways teachers can transfer their personal and professional learning to students via their own pedagogical agency. Originality/value The study extends the work of scholars in the National Writing Project, suggesting that nuanced exploration of ELA teachers’ W/writerly identities in preservice and in-service settings could increase their sense of agency to work against and within cultures of standardization.","PeriodicalId":45885,"journal":{"name":"English Teaching-Practice and Critique","volume":"110 9","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135808882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“I’m really just scared of the White parents”: a teacher navigates perceptions of barriers to discussing racial injustice","authors":"Shimikqua Elece Ellis, Christian Z. Goering","doi":"10.1108/etpc-05-2022-0067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-05-2022-0067","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose This study aims to explore the perceived barriers that a secondary English teacher faced when attempting to discuss racial injustice through young adult literature in Mississippi. Design/methodology/approach The authors rely on Critical Whiteness Studies and qualitative methods to explore the following research question: What are the barriers that a White ELA teacher perceives when teaching about racial injustice through The Hate U Give ? Findings The authors found that there were several perceived barriers to discussing modern racial injustice in the Mississippi ELA classroom. The participating teacher indicated the following barriers: a lack of racial literacy, fears of discomfort and an urge to avoid politics. Originality/value Much has been written about the urgent need for antiracist teaching practices in secondary English classes. This article explores the barriers a white ELA teacher perceived when attempting to discuss modern racial injustice through literature instruction in a white context of the “four pandemics” (Ladson-Billings, 2021).","PeriodicalId":45885,"journal":{"name":"English Teaching-Practice and Critique","volume":"28 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136233936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Playful literacies and pedagogical priorities: digital games in the English classroom","authors":"Alexander Bacalja, Brady L. Nash","doi":"10.1108/etpc-01-2023-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-01-2023-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose This paper aims to explore the characteristics of playful literacies in case study research examining digital games in secondary English classrooms. It analyzes how educators use play as a resource for meaning-making and the impacts of play on student learning. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a keyword search in relevant academic databases to identify articles within specified search parameters. This was followed by bibliographic branching to identify additional articles. Following the identification of 30 articles, two rounds of open coding were used to identify themes for analysis. Findings The literature revealed five types of playful pedagogical practices: single-player gameplay, turn-taking gameplay, multiplayer play, play-as-design and little or no gameplay. Discussion of these findings suggests that classroom play was a highly social activity across case studies. Furthermore, boundaries between types of play and their contributions to learning were blurred and often disrupted normative approaches to curriculum and teaching. Originality/value Given the novelty of replacing traditional texts with digital games in English classrooms, this study represents an important moment to pause and review the literature to date on a particular, understudied aspect of digital games in English curricula: their playfulness. This is especially important given the innovative ways in which digital play can shift thinking about meaning-making and narrative, two historically dominant concerns within the discipline of English.","PeriodicalId":45885,"journal":{"name":"English Teaching-Practice and Critique","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135303103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“I just want to word it better”: developing disciplinary literacies in an after-school spoken word poetry team","authors":"Melina Lesus, Andrea Vaughan","doi":"10.1108/etpc-06-2021-0069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-06-2021-0069","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Purpose\u0000This study aims to explore how youth poets wrote in a community of practice and how their out-of-school poetry writing contributed toward developing disciplinary literacy.\u0000\u0000\u0000Design/methodology/approach\u0000In this qualitative case study, the authors studied youth’s writing by drafting narrative field notes, collecting student writing and process drawings and interviewing participants.\u0000\u0000\u0000Findings\u0000The authors found that the poets in this study maintained ownership of their writing and engaged in writing processes in ways that reflected Behizadeh’s (2019) conception of authenticity as writing that connects both to students’ experiences, and to the purposes and audiences of their writing context.\u0000\u0000\u0000Practical implications\u0000This out-of-school context provides implications for how English Language Arts teachers can rethink what disciplinary literacy looks like in classroom writing instruction.\u0000\u0000\u0000Originality/value\u0000By maintaining ownership of their writing, the youth agentively positioned themselves not only as students accumulating disciplinary knowledge but also as participants in a community of practice.\u0000","PeriodicalId":45885,"journal":{"name":"English Teaching-Practice and Critique","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91391089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why is it so hard to reconcile disciplinary literacy and antiracism? Informational texts and middle grades English language arts","authors":"Chandra Alston, Sarah Byrne Bausell","doi":"10.1108/etpc-06-2021-0062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-06-2021-0062","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Purpose\u0000This study aims to understand the supports and challenges to using disciplinary and antiracism lenses when teaching with informational texts in middle grades English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms.\u0000\u0000\u0000Design/methodology/approach\u0000This paper analyzes teacher talk in four virtual sessions with four middle grades ELA teachers in one school district. Teachers had recently completed a voluntary, school-based antiracism professional development. Researchers used thematic analysis of session transcripts and semi-structured interviews.\u0000\u0000\u0000Findings\u0000Teachers’ informational text use was nested in and directed by curriculum and contexts that limited disciplinary and antiracist teaching. The context and texts constrained instruction to basic reading skills. Equity was conceptualized as supporting students’ persistence. Discussions of race were avoided.\u0000\u0000\u0000Research limitations/implications\u0000This study has implications for ELA teacher preparation, and district and state resources to support merging disciplinarity and antiracism in informational text instruction in ELA. The study is limited by the small sample from one district and access to only teacher self-reports.\u0000\u0000\u0000Originality/value\u0000Secondary ELA disciplinary literacy has privileged literature, yet there is an increase of informational text use in middle grades ELA. Teachers need support teaching informational texts through disciplinary and antiracism lenses.\u0000","PeriodicalId":45885,"journal":{"name":"English Teaching-Practice and Critique","volume":"117 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80503791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What is an ELA text set? Surveying and integrating cognitive, critical and disciplinary lenses","authors":"D. Reynolds","doi":"10.1108/etpc-06-2021-0075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-06-2021-0075","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Purpose\u0000Researchers and teachers have noted the power of students reading text sets or multiple texts on the same topic, and numerous articles have been published with examples of and frameworks for text set construction. This study aims to traces the theoretical assumptions of these frameworks and explores their distinct implications and tensions for understanding disciplinary literacy in English language arts (ELA).\u0000\u0000\u0000Design/methodology/approach\u0000The author draws on three frameworks, using a focal article for each: cognitive (Lupo et al., 2018), critical (Lechtenberg, 2018) and disciplinary (Levine et al., 2018), and connect those articles to other research studies in that tradition. Separately, the author describes each of the three text set frameworks’ design principles. Then, across frameworks, the author analyze the disciplinary assumptions around each framework’s centering texts, epistemological goals and trajectories.\u0000\u0000\u0000Findings\u0000The centering text, goals and trajectories of each framework reflect its underlying epistemological lens. All frameworks include a text that serves as its epistemological center and the cognitive and disciplinary frameworks, both rely on progressions of complexity (knowledge/linguistic and literary, respectively). The author traces additional alignments and tensions between the frameworks and offer suggestions for possible hybridities in reading modality and reading volume.\u0000\u0000\u0000Originality/value\u0000Many articles have been written about models of text set construction, but few have compared the assumptions behind those models. Examining these assumptions may help English teachers and curriculum designers select texts and build curriculum that leverages the strengths of each model and informs researchers’ understanding of disciplinary literacy in ELA.\u0000","PeriodicalId":45885,"journal":{"name":"English Teaching-Practice and Critique","volume":"122 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88599285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tensions between disciplinarity and generality within a professional development on writing instruction","authors":"Michelle Kwok","doi":"10.1108/etpc-06-2021-0059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-06-2021-0059","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Purpose\u0000Although English Language Arts (ELA) teachers have historically been expected to take the lead in literacy training, the domain of ELA has yet come to terms with what holds it together as a discipline. Within this conundrum, the author studied one group of ELA teacher leaders who led a professional development (PD) aimed at training teachers in disciplinary writing instruction. This study aims to explore the differences in perspectives between what constitutes disciplinarity for ELA teachers and teachers in other content areas.\u0000\u0000\u0000Design/methodology/approach\u0000Over the course of two years, the author observed the PD, taking extensive field notes, collecting artifacts and conducting interviews. The author engaged in constant comparative analysis of the data throughout this time, open coding within each data source and then triangulating the data to support the author’s finding.\u0000\u0000\u0000Findings\u0000Whereas the ELA teacher leaders seemed to focus on general aspects of writing, teachers from the other content areas shared discipline-specific understandings about writing. The teachers and teacher leaders, however, did not explicitly discuss these differences in how they conceptualized writing instruction; rather, this tension was revealed through the author’s analysis of the data.\u0000\u0000\u0000Originality/value\u0000The findings of this study illustrate how a vague definition of writing in English and of disciplinary literacy has come to bear on one PD of writing. This study recommends future research to continue to develop clear epistemologies, purposes and literate practices of the disciplines related to ELA.\u0000","PeriodicalId":45885,"journal":{"name":"English Teaching-Practice and Critique","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81310360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Designing interpretive communities toward justice: indexicality in classroom discourse","authors":"Scott Storm, Karis Jones, Sarah W. Beck","doi":"10.1108/etpc-06-2021-0073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/etpc-06-2021-0073","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Purpose\u0000This study aims to investigate how, through text-based classroom talk, youth collaboratively draw on and remix discourses and practices from multiple socially indexed traditions.\u0000\u0000\u0000Design/methodology/approach\u0000Drawing on data from a year-long social design experiment, this study uses qualitative coding and traces discoursal markers of indexicality.\u0000\u0000\u0000Findings\u0000The youth sustained, remixed and evaluated interpretive communities in their navigation across disciplinary and fandom discourses to construct a hybrid classroom interpretive community.\u0000\u0000\u0000Originality/value\u0000This research contributes to scholarship that supports using popular texts in classrooms as the focus of a scholarly inquiry by demonstrating how youth in one high school English classroom discursively index interpretive communities aligned with popular fandoms and literary scholarship. This study adds to understandings about the social nature of literary reading, interpretive whole-class text-based talk and literary literacies with multimodal texts in diverse, high school classrooms.\u0000","PeriodicalId":45885,"journal":{"name":"English Teaching-Practice and Critique","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76269269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}