Thea Williamson | Old Dominion University (original) (raw)
Papers by Thea Williamson
English teaching, Dec 29, 2022
Purpose Little research has been done exploring the nature of multilingual students who are not c... more Purpose Little research has been done exploring the nature of multilingual students who are not categorized as English language learners (ELLs) in English language arts (ELA) classes. This study about a group of multilingual girls in an ELA class led by a monolingual white teacher aims to show how, when a teacher makes space for translanguaging practices in ELA, multilingual students disrupt norms of English only. Design/methodology/approach The authors use reconstructive discourse analysis to understand translanguaging across a variety of linguistic productions for a group of four focal students. Data sources include fieldnotes from 29 classroom observations, writing samples and process documents and 8.5 h of recorded classroom discourse. Findings Students used multilingualism across a variety of discourse modes, frequently in spoken language and rarely in written work. Translanguaging was most present in small-group peer talk structures, where students did relationship building, generated ideas for writing and managed their writing agendas, including feelings about writing. In addition, Spanish served as “elevated vocabulary” in writing. Across discourse modes, translanguaging served to develop academic proficiency in writing. Originality/value The authors proposed a more expansive approach to data analysis in English-mostly cases – i.e. environments shaped by multilingual students in monolingual school contexts – to argue for anti-deficit approaches to literacy development for multilingual students. Analyzing classroom talk alongside literacy allows for a more nuanced understanding of translanguaging practices in academic writing. They also show how even monolingual teachers can disrupt monolingual hegemony in ELA classrooms with high populations of multilingual students.
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, And Practice, Aug 22, 2019
Research in the Teaching of English
Drawing on critical theories of labor and commodification, this qualitative embedded case study e... more Drawing on critical theories of labor and commodification, this qualitative embedded case study explores how students experience alienation and intimacy in the work of writing for an English language arts class. Analysis of fieldnotes from 30 observations, student writing products, and reflective interviews with focal students and the teacher illuminated the meaningful assemblages where conditions of intimacy permeated instruction. Two practices supported intimacy in working conditions: knowledge about writing built through a collective process of noticing, and open-ended work time characterized by “managed nonmanagement” (, p. 176), or calculated flexibility in rules and expectations. Findings illustrate how a literacy practice might contribute to students’ experience of alienation or intimacy (or both) while writing, depending on conditions of industrialization and commodification. Even as the teacher strove to deindustrialize work, commodification through grades and standardized ...
English Education
This article investigates the experiences of three early-career secondary English urban teachers ... more This article investigates the experiences of three early-career secondary English urban teachers who sought to strengthen their perspectives and practices of social justice teaching through professional development. Data include teacher interviews across their first three years of teaching, artifacts across three participants representing their professional development experiences and teaching and learning in their classrooms, and interviews of three informants who participated in professional development with two of the teacher participants. We then conducted a thematic analysis. We found six generative features of professional development/professional learning that promoted these urban teachers’ development as equity-oriented English teachers. This paper contributes to the knowledge base on professional development/professional learning in urban contexts in that it is the first to foreground urban teachers’ needs for professional development that promotes their equity-oriented edu...
English Teaching: Practice & Critique
Purpose Little research has been done exploring the nature of multilingual students who are not c... more Purpose Little research has been done exploring the nature of multilingual students who are not categorized as English language learners (ELLs) in English language arts (ELA) classes. This study about a group of multilingual girls in an ELA class led by a monolingual white teacher aims to show how, when a teacher makes space for translanguaging practices in ELA, multilingual students disrupt norms of English only. Design/methodology/approach The authors use reconstructive discourse analysis to understand translanguaging across a variety of linguistic productions for a group of four focal students. Data sources include fieldnotes from 29 classroom observations, writing samples and process documents and 8.5 h of recorded classroom discourse. Findings Students used multilingualism across a variety of discourse modes, frequently in spoken language and rarely in written work. Translanguaging was most present in small-group peer talk structures, where students did relationship building, g...
This year-long qualitative embedded case study explores the nature of the discipline of English L... more This year-long qualitative embedded case study explores the nature of the discipline of English Language Arts in a secondary context, Midgard High School, using the case of the English Department (n = 27) and subsequent embedded cases of focal classes (n = 4) and focal students (n = 12). Relying on Bakhtinian theories of discourse, new materialist concepts of work (Tsing, 2015), and rhetorical genre theory (Bawarshi, 2003), the study shows how teachers’ talk and practices both perpetuated traditional expectations in English instruction and also broke with tradition to better serve a linguistically and racially diverse student body. Overall, teachers’ most common discourses about the discipline of ELA replicated 19th century traditions of defining it as the “tripod” (Applebee, 1974) of reading, writing, and language study. Students also articulated similar understandings of their work in ELA, however English IV students’ discourse was dominated by linguistic aspects of the discipline, in particular conceptions of “proper” English. The case of an English II classroom shows how writing instruction was an important space where teachers’ discourse and instruction departed from historicized patterns in three ways: reorienting the discipline around composition (rather than the traditional literature-focused course), specifically the writing of “real-life” text genres, and enacting classroom practices characterized by intimacy and closeness (Tsing, 2015). This study has important implications for practice as it suggests teachers and students have different experiences of the discipline of ELA, teachers practices might vary significantly within similar discursive patterns, and that novel (Bakhtin, 1981b) discourses and practices can exist in restrictive policy contexts. The study also shows possibilities for new ways to “do” ELA in high schools, particularly bringing students’ experiences and voices into the curriculum through writing instruction. Findings suggest the need for consensus building and a reexamination of the ideological underpinnings of classroom practices in ELA, particularly those related to language teaching that perpetuates ELA as monolingual and tied to notions of standardized language, as well as ideologies embedded in classroom work structures.Curriculum and Instructio
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 2019
This embedded case study investigates the nature of authorship in a secondary English Language Ar... more This embedded case study investigates the nature of authorship in a secondary English Language Arts classroom by examining two adolescents’ writing identities and experiences writing across genres. Using rhetorical genre theory, the study illustrates how composition and notions of authorship in this context were strongly informed by conversations—both with peers and the teacher. An additional finding was that students wrote themselves into different genre identities as they composed poetry, editorials, and memoirs, drawing on different authorial stances and sources of knowledge. Finally, this analysis documents robust learning about the nature of writing, including transferring rhetorical strategies across contexts and purposes, skills often called for in education policy as well as career and college writing, not documented in secondary schools. Implications for teaching include valuing relationship-building conversations, offering students multiple genre positions across secondary...
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2017
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2017
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2020
We explored how a group of 105 diverse middle‐school students self‐assessed their work as readers... more We explored how a group of 105 diverse middle‐school students self‐assessed their work as readers and writers during a summer enrichment program. Findings from the study revealed hauntings related to youth perceptions of language and literacy, evidence of a ghostly presence of standard language ideology. In the self‐assessments, youth discussed speed and volume, in addition to surface features of language, more frequently than meaning‐related aspects of literacy. These findings indicate the persistence of traditional definitions of literacy and thus the need for teaching that disrupts narrow understandings about the nature of reading, writing, and language.
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 2019
This article draws from an ongoing longitudinal qualitative inquiry into the preparation and deve... more This article draws from an ongoing longitudinal qualitative inquiry into the preparation and development of social justice–oriented urban English teachers. It examines the cases of three graduates of an urban education–focused teacher preparation program who claim different intersectional identities and have completed their fourth year as urban educators. The article explores two research questions. First, how do these teachers understand and enact critical education practices within their curriculum and instruction, socially situated relationships, and institutional structures? Second, how do they experience and understand their sociocultural identities as contributors to their practices as critical educators and the associated outcomes? Two findings are discussed. First, the teachers felt greatest agency and success within their classrooms (in comparison to other institutional spaces) to enact social justice–oriented curricula, instruction, and other educational practices, using r...
Action in Teacher Education, 2019
The Urban Review, 2015
AbstractThis paper explores how a preservice teacher defined, experienced, and transacted with mu... more AbstractThis paper explores how a preservice teacher defined, experienced, and transacted with multiple professional communities in becoming a social justice-minded urban English teacher. It extends research on urban teachers and professional communities by arguing that professional community in relation to urban teachers must be informed by sociopolitical understandings of community. The paper undertakes such retheorizing of professional community by drawing upon and combining Wenger’s (Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1998) work on communities of practice and Collins’ (Am Sociol Rev 75:7–30, 2010) conceptualization of community as sociopolitical terrain. Applying this reconceptualized notion of professional community, the paper describes and analyzes how the preservice teacher became increasingly adept at critically analyzing and engaging, creating and transforming, his professional communities to achieve greater justice in urban education.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2020
We explored how a group of 105 diverse middle‐school students self‐assessed their work as readers... more We explored how a group of 105 diverse middle‐school students self‐assessed their work as readers and writers during a summer enrichment program. Findings from the study revealed hauntings related to youth perceptions of language and literacy, evidence of a ghostly presence of standard language ideology. In the self‐assessments, youth discussed speed and volume, in addition to surface features of language, more frequently than meaning‐related aspects of literacy. These findings indicate the persistence of traditional definitions of literacy and thus the need for teaching that disrupts narrow understandings about the nature of reading, writing, and language.
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, Practice, 2019
This embedded case study investigates the nature of authorship in a secondary English Language Ar... more This embedded case study investigates the nature of authorship in a secondary English Language Arts classroom by examining two adolescents’ writing identities and experiences writing across genres. Using rhetorical genre theory, the study illustrates how composition and notions of authorship in this context were strongly informed by conversations—both with peers and the teacher. An additional finding was that students wrote themselves into different genre identities as they composed poetry, editorials, and memoirs, drawing on different authorial stances and sources of knowledge. Finally, this analysis documents robust learning about the nature of writing, including transferring rhetorical strategies across contexts and purposes, skills often called for in education policy as well as career and college writing, not documented in secondary schools. Implications for teaching include valuing relationship-building conversations, offering students multiple genre positions across secondary writing experiences, and considering ways to build upon writers’ self-described and socially constructed identities as successful writers.
Action in Teacher Education, 2019
This paper explores how two teacher candidates in an equity-focused preparation program negotiate... more This paper explores how two teacher candidates in an equity-focused preparation program negotiated among multiple perspectives about teach- ing the English Language Arts in linguistically and culturally diverse teach- ing contexts. We present cases of two preservice teachers (PTs) who experienced tensions in their development as a result of ideological coherence within program coursework. One PT experienced tensions in fieldwork with colleagues who thought differently about English teaching, and another PT experienced tensions within coursework as he struggled to find space to engage in his own inquiries beyond the required curriculum. This paper contributes to research about how teacher education can sup- port PTs’ ability to negotiate complex and sometimes conflicting demands of multiple communities they work in as educators.
This article investigates the experiences of three early-career secondary English urban teachers ... more This article investigates the experiences of three early-career secondary English urban teachers who sought to strengthen their perspectives and practices of social justice teaching through professional development. Data include teacher interviews across their first three years of teaching, artifacts across three participants representing their professional development experiences and teaching and learning in their classrooms, and interviews of three informants who participated in professional development with two of the teacher participants. We then conducted a thematic analysis. We found six generative features of professional development/professional learning that promoted these urban teachers’ development as equity-oriented English teachers. This paper contributes to the knowledge base on professional development/professional learning in urban contexts in that it is the first to foreground urban teachers’ needs for professional development that promotes their equity-oriented educational stances and practices and that illuminates how productive principles for professional learning can facilitate meeting those needs.
English teaching, Dec 29, 2022
Purpose Little research has been done exploring the nature of multilingual students who are not c... more Purpose Little research has been done exploring the nature of multilingual students who are not categorized as English language learners (ELLs) in English language arts (ELA) classes. This study about a group of multilingual girls in an ELA class led by a monolingual white teacher aims to show how, when a teacher makes space for translanguaging practices in ELA, multilingual students disrupt norms of English only. Design/methodology/approach The authors use reconstructive discourse analysis to understand translanguaging across a variety of linguistic productions for a group of four focal students. Data sources include fieldnotes from 29 classroom observations, writing samples and process documents and 8.5 h of recorded classroom discourse. Findings Students used multilingualism across a variety of discourse modes, frequently in spoken language and rarely in written work. Translanguaging was most present in small-group peer talk structures, where students did relationship building, generated ideas for writing and managed their writing agendas, including feelings about writing. In addition, Spanish served as “elevated vocabulary” in writing. Across discourse modes, translanguaging served to develop academic proficiency in writing. Originality/value The authors proposed a more expansive approach to data analysis in English-mostly cases – i.e. environments shaped by multilingual students in monolingual school contexts – to argue for anti-deficit approaches to literacy development for multilingual students. Analyzing classroom talk alongside literacy allows for a more nuanced understanding of translanguaging practices in academic writing. They also show how even monolingual teachers can disrupt monolingual hegemony in ELA classrooms with high populations of multilingual students.
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, And Practice, Aug 22, 2019
Research in the Teaching of English
Drawing on critical theories of labor and commodification, this qualitative embedded case study e... more Drawing on critical theories of labor and commodification, this qualitative embedded case study explores how students experience alienation and intimacy in the work of writing for an English language arts class. Analysis of fieldnotes from 30 observations, student writing products, and reflective interviews with focal students and the teacher illuminated the meaningful assemblages where conditions of intimacy permeated instruction. Two practices supported intimacy in working conditions: knowledge about writing built through a collective process of noticing, and open-ended work time characterized by “managed nonmanagement” (, p. 176), or calculated flexibility in rules and expectations. Findings illustrate how a literacy practice might contribute to students’ experience of alienation or intimacy (or both) while writing, depending on conditions of industrialization and commodification. Even as the teacher strove to deindustrialize work, commodification through grades and standardized ...
English Education
This article investigates the experiences of three early-career secondary English urban teachers ... more This article investigates the experiences of three early-career secondary English urban teachers who sought to strengthen their perspectives and practices of social justice teaching through professional development. Data include teacher interviews across their first three years of teaching, artifacts across three participants representing their professional development experiences and teaching and learning in their classrooms, and interviews of three informants who participated in professional development with two of the teacher participants. We then conducted a thematic analysis. We found six generative features of professional development/professional learning that promoted these urban teachers’ development as equity-oriented English teachers. This paper contributes to the knowledge base on professional development/professional learning in urban contexts in that it is the first to foreground urban teachers’ needs for professional development that promotes their equity-oriented edu...
English Teaching: Practice & Critique
Purpose Little research has been done exploring the nature of multilingual students who are not c... more Purpose Little research has been done exploring the nature of multilingual students who are not categorized as English language learners (ELLs) in English language arts (ELA) classes. This study about a group of multilingual girls in an ELA class led by a monolingual white teacher aims to show how, when a teacher makes space for translanguaging practices in ELA, multilingual students disrupt norms of English only. Design/methodology/approach The authors use reconstructive discourse analysis to understand translanguaging across a variety of linguistic productions for a group of four focal students. Data sources include fieldnotes from 29 classroom observations, writing samples and process documents and 8.5 h of recorded classroom discourse. Findings Students used multilingualism across a variety of discourse modes, frequently in spoken language and rarely in written work. Translanguaging was most present in small-group peer talk structures, where students did relationship building, g...
This year-long qualitative embedded case study explores the nature of the discipline of English L... more This year-long qualitative embedded case study explores the nature of the discipline of English Language Arts in a secondary context, Midgard High School, using the case of the English Department (n = 27) and subsequent embedded cases of focal classes (n = 4) and focal students (n = 12). Relying on Bakhtinian theories of discourse, new materialist concepts of work (Tsing, 2015), and rhetorical genre theory (Bawarshi, 2003), the study shows how teachers’ talk and practices both perpetuated traditional expectations in English instruction and also broke with tradition to better serve a linguistically and racially diverse student body. Overall, teachers’ most common discourses about the discipline of ELA replicated 19th century traditions of defining it as the “tripod” (Applebee, 1974) of reading, writing, and language study. Students also articulated similar understandings of their work in ELA, however English IV students’ discourse was dominated by linguistic aspects of the discipline, in particular conceptions of “proper” English. The case of an English II classroom shows how writing instruction was an important space where teachers’ discourse and instruction departed from historicized patterns in three ways: reorienting the discipline around composition (rather than the traditional literature-focused course), specifically the writing of “real-life” text genres, and enacting classroom practices characterized by intimacy and closeness (Tsing, 2015). This study has important implications for practice as it suggests teachers and students have different experiences of the discipline of ELA, teachers practices might vary significantly within similar discursive patterns, and that novel (Bakhtin, 1981b) discourses and practices can exist in restrictive policy contexts. The study also shows possibilities for new ways to “do” ELA in high schools, particularly bringing students’ experiences and voices into the curriculum through writing instruction. Findings suggest the need for consensus building and a reexamination of the ideological underpinnings of classroom practices in ELA, particularly those related to language teaching that perpetuates ELA as monolingual and tied to notions of standardized language, as well as ideologies embedded in classroom work structures.Curriculum and Instructio
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 2019
This embedded case study investigates the nature of authorship in a secondary English Language Ar... more This embedded case study investigates the nature of authorship in a secondary English Language Arts classroom by examining two adolescents’ writing identities and experiences writing across genres. Using rhetorical genre theory, the study illustrates how composition and notions of authorship in this context were strongly informed by conversations—both with peers and the teacher. An additional finding was that students wrote themselves into different genre identities as they composed poetry, editorials, and memoirs, drawing on different authorial stances and sources of knowledge. Finally, this analysis documents robust learning about the nature of writing, including transferring rhetorical strategies across contexts and purposes, skills often called for in education policy as well as career and college writing, not documented in secondary schools. Implications for teaching include valuing relationship-building conversations, offering students multiple genre positions across secondary...
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2017
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2017
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2020
We explored how a group of 105 diverse middle‐school students self‐assessed their work as readers... more We explored how a group of 105 diverse middle‐school students self‐assessed their work as readers and writers during a summer enrichment program. Findings from the study revealed hauntings related to youth perceptions of language and literacy, evidence of a ghostly presence of standard language ideology. In the self‐assessments, youth discussed speed and volume, in addition to surface features of language, more frequently than meaning‐related aspects of literacy. These findings indicate the persistence of traditional definitions of literacy and thus the need for teaching that disrupts narrow understandings about the nature of reading, writing, and language.
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 2019
This article draws from an ongoing longitudinal qualitative inquiry into the preparation and deve... more This article draws from an ongoing longitudinal qualitative inquiry into the preparation and development of social justice–oriented urban English teachers. It examines the cases of three graduates of an urban education–focused teacher preparation program who claim different intersectional identities and have completed their fourth year as urban educators. The article explores two research questions. First, how do these teachers understand and enact critical education practices within their curriculum and instruction, socially situated relationships, and institutional structures? Second, how do they experience and understand their sociocultural identities as contributors to their practices as critical educators and the associated outcomes? Two findings are discussed. First, the teachers felt greatest agency and success within their classrooms (in comparison to other institutional spaces) to enact social justice–oriented curricula, instruction, and other educational practices, using r...
Action in Teacher Education, 2019
The Urban Review, 2015
AbstractThis paper explores how a preservice teacher defined, experienced, and transacted with mu... more AbstractThis paper explores how a preservice teacher defined, experienced, and transacted with multiple professional communities in becoming a social justice-minded urban English teacher. It extends research on urban teachers and professional communities by arguing that professional community in relation to urban teachers must be informed by sociopolitical understandings of community. The paper undertakes such retheorizing of professional community by drawing upon and combining Wenger’s (Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1998) work on communities of practice and Collins’ (Am Sociol Rev 75:7–30, 2010) conceptualization of community as sociopolitical terrain. Applying this reconceptualized notion of professional community, the paper describes and analyzes how the preservice teacher became increasingly adept at critically analyzing and engaging, creating and transforming, his professional communities to achieve greater justice in urban education.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2020
We explored how a group of 105 diverse middle‐school students self‐assessed their work as readers... more We explored how a group of 105 diverse middle‐school students self‐assessed their work as readers and writers during a summer enrichment program. Findings from the study revealed hauntings related to youth perceptions of language and literacy, evidence of a ghostly presence of standard language ideology. In the self‐assessments, youth discussed speed and volume, in addition to surface features of language, more frequently than meaning‐related aspects of literacy. These findings indicate the persistence of traditional definitions of literacy and thus the need for teaching that disrupts narrow understandings about the nature of reading, writing, and language.
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, Practice, 2019
This embedded case study investigates the nature of authorship in a secondary English Language Ar... more This embedded case study investigates the nature of authorship in a secondary English Language Arts classroom by examining two adolescents’ writing identities and experiences writing across genres. Using rhetorical genre theory, the study illustrates how composition and notions of authorship in this context were strongly informed by conversations—both with peers and the teacher. An additional finding was that students wrote themselves into different genre identities as they composed poetry, editorials, and memoirs, drawing on different authorial stances and sources of knowledge. Finally, this analysis documents robust learning about the nature of writing, including transferring rhetorical strategies across contexts and purposes, skills often called for in education policy as well as career and college writing, not documented in secondary schools. Implications for teaching include valuing relationship-building conversations, offering students multiple genre positions across secondary writing experiences, and considering ways to build upon writers’ self-described and socially constructed identities as successful writers.
Action in Teacher Education, 2019
This paper explores how two teacher candidates in an equity-focused preparation program negotiate... more This paper explores how two teacher candidates in an equity-focused preparation program negotiated among multiple perspectives about teach- ing the English Language Arts in linguistically and culturally diverse teach- ing contexts. We present cases of two preservice teachers (PTs) who experienced tensions in their development as a result of ideological coherence within program coursework. One PT experienced tensions in fieldwork with colleagues who thought differently about English teaching, and another PT experienced tensions within coursework as he struggled to find space to engage in his own inquiries beyond the required curriculum. This paper contributes to research about how teacher education can sup- port PTs’ ability to negotiate complex and sometimes conflicting demands of multiple communities they work in as educators.
This article investigates the experiences of three early-career secondary English urban teachers ... more This article investigates the experiences of three early-career secondary English urban teachers who sought to strengthen their perspectives and practices of social justice teaching through professional development. Data include teacher interviews across their first three years of teaching, artifacts across three participants representing their professional development experiences and teaching and learning in their classrooms, and interviews of three informants who participated in professional development with two of the teacher participants. We then conducted a thematic analysis. We found six generative features of professional development/professional learning that promoted these urban teachers’ development as equity-oriented English teachers. This paper contributes to the knowledge base on professional development/professional learning in urban contexts in that it is the first to foreground urban teachers’ needs for professional development that promotes their equity-oriented educational stances and practices and that illuminates how productive principles for professional learning can facilitate meeting those needs.