Cassie J Brownell | University of Toronto (original) (raw)
Articles by Cassie J Brownell
The Critical Social Educator, Apr 15, 2021
In this paper, the authors specifically consider what it means to engage as a critical white soci... more In this paper, the authors specifically consider what it means to engage as a critical white social educator of young, racially diverse children. They document how one third-grade teacher-Ms. Honey, a thirty-something white woman-used diverse books as a springboard to cultivate a more critical curriculum. The authors demonstrate how, as the focal teacher centered on pressing and historical social issues-including systemic racism-in her curriculum, classroom, and community, she also re-learned (hi)stories herself. In the findings, the authors demonstrate how Ms. Honey carefully led children through a read-aloud within an integrated social studies and literacy unit. The authors frame Ms. Honey's actions as a critical social educator and, in doing so, they highlight the messy, seemingly imperfect work required to engage as a critical social educator.
Research in the Teaching of English, 2021
There is a particular urgency in this political moment to understand children's experiences with ... more There is a particular urgency in this political moment to understand children's experiences with current events. Drawing from data generated following the 2016 presidential election, this paper focuses on three racially and linguistically diverse children's persuasive compositions. Within a critical literacies writing unit focused on (im)migrant experiences, children called on legislators to act on the Republican administration's policies. Building on the understanding that all literacies are political and that teaching and learning are value-laden tasks, the author engaged a cultural rhetorics orientation-grounded in the understanding of texts, bodies, materials, and ideas as interconnected aspects of communication-for data generation and analysis. The findings highlight how children strategically employed rhetoric to persuade. They used logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as story, a central tool for meaning-making and building practices in the world. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how children, when properly supported, can agentively participate in critical literacies and act on real-world politics. Through the stories of young children, this study emphasizes what children have to tell adults and what a cultural rhetorics orientation, through its emphasis on story, enables literacies researchers and educators to understand about children's composing.
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 2021
Building from anthropologists studying the milieu of sound (Eisenlohr, 2018; Helmreich, 2007), we... more Building from anthropologists studying the milieu of sound (Eisenlohr, 2018; Helmreich, 2007), we invite readers to consider how to “ethnographically decipher everyday ways of living and doing, with a particular interest in how ambient sound productions are invested in meaning locally, and how ways of listening are forged and oriented differently” (Guillebaud, 2017, p. 1). We focus on the acoustic happenings of the Language and Media Center (LMC)—a technology-rich space located
within the arts-and-humanities–based residential college (RC) at Michigan State University—alongside the RC’s Art Studio.
Teachers College Record, 2021
This study contributes to larger conversations about how children use play to make schooled writi... more This study contributes to larger conversations about how children use play to make schooled writing personally meaningful and build upon their (digital) funds of knowledge. The author uses a descriptive case study design and ethnographic methods to examine how one child exemplified creative language play. Specifically, the author considers how the child used his physical play in the virtual world of Minecraft to invoke creative language play as a tool within the standardized curriculum. This study calls attention to the connection between children’s lived experiences and play in digital spaces—as physical acts enacted through screens—and their relation to, and being evidenced in, schooled writing. In turn, the author encourages a rethinking of what it means for adults to maintain clear lines between what is digital play and what is not. Further, the author argues for the importance of cultivating a space for children to build on what was previously familiar to them by offering scaffolds to bridge these experiences between what we, as adults, understand as binaries.
Theory Into Practice, 2021
Drawing from data generated in a third-grade classroom in the months following the 2016 US presid... more Drawing from data generated in a third-grade classroom in the months following the 2016 US presidential election, this article zooms in on self-produced videos a child made of her writing process. Organized around 3 "takes" of the child's writing, the author provides readers a glimpse into (1) the child's composing in the videos, (2) a narrative retelling of the author's viewing of the video series, and (3) a list of insights for educational researchers and practitioners to "take" away from the child's writing. In closing, the author extends an invitation for readers to consider, how if at all, the child's texts might be considered (digital) writing.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2021
This article examines how sound - as a medium, method, and modality - attunes educational ethnogr... more This article examines how sound - as a medium, method, and modality - attunes educational ethnographers to writing the "field" in new ways. In particular, the authors ask: How might cultivating practices of writing the field recording reorient the field note as an ethnographic object of inquiry? Examining the field recording as a representational, experimental, and pedagogical resource for prolonging encounters, this article reframes inquiry to disrupt what is traditionally read as experience in writing ethnographic research.
Maker Literacies and Maker Identities in the Digital Age, 2020
In this chapter, I build on previous scholarship that promotes a more expansive definition of 'sc... more In this chapter, I build on previous scholarship that promotes a more expansive definition of 'schooled' writing with a particular emphasis on what 'maker literacies' might afford children and, in turn, adults that engage with them in standardized classrooms (Wohlwend, Buchholz, & Medina, 2018; Wood, 2019).
Practical Literacy in the Early and Primary Years, 2020
Education Sciences, 2020
Drawing on data generated following the 2016 United States presidential election, in this article... more Drawing on data generated following the 2016 United States presidential election, in this article the author considers how a classroom makerspace made Black girls' literacies visible in new ways. During a six-week integrated humanities unit in a third-grade public school classroom in the Midwestern U.S., four Black girls used making to create a space for themselves to collaboratively make sense of contemporary (im)migration issues. In the findings, the author provides two analytic snapshots to illustrate how the girls' making exemplified the six components of the Black Girls' Literacies Framework-an asset-oriented framing that highlights how Black girls' literacies are (1) multiple, (2) connected to identities that are (3) historical, (4) collaborative, (5) intellectual, and (6) political/critical (Muhammad & Haddix, 2016). In closing, the author offers provocations for educational researchers and practitioners to consider, as they facilitate school-based opportunities for Black girls' literacies to be made visible through making.
Journal of Curriculum Studies Research , 2020
Situated in the months after the 2016 United States presidential election, this qualitative case ... more Situated in the months after the 2016 United States presidential election, this qualitative case study illuminates third-grade children's sense-making about the GOP Administration's proposed border wall with Mexico. In light of these present-day politics, close analysis of how young children discuss social issues remains critical, particularly for social studies educators. Looking across fifteen book discussions, we zero in on three whole-class conversations about (im)migration beginning with initial read alouds through the final debrief wherein children conversed with a local university anthropologist about the clandestine migration of individuals across the U.S.'s southern border. During initial discussions, children in the Midwestern school demonstrated their frustration towards racist laws of the mid-1900s. Others responded with empathy or made personal connections to their own family heritage. In the findings, we note a clear progression in how children understood (im)migration issues as evidenced by how their questions and curiosities shifted in later lessons. We highlight how, when children are encouraged to engage with social topics, they can act as critical consumers and position themselves as politically active and engaged citizens.
Perspectives and Provocations, 2019
Grounded in contemporary research highlighting how children's invaluable identity work is often o... more Grounded in contemporary research highlighting how children's invaluable identity work is often overlooked, this study investigates how one elementary child tailored mandated writing for their own social purposes. Detailing the text the child wrote in the mystery genre, the author illuminates the moves the child made to index particular positionings for himself and his teacher. Through one-on-one conversations with the child and teacher, the author highlights divergent readings of the text and how this text framed relationships-to one another and to children's writing-in new ways.
Curriculum Inquiry, 2019
Classrooms are host to complex sonic ecologies informed by ritualized patterns and routines, but ... more Classrooms are host to complex sonic ecologies informed by ritualized patterns and routines, but there remains a dearth of scholarship studying everyday sounds of schooling. Such research is important because it can amplify in new ways how children’s identities are constructed and thickened over time. This interpretive case study takes up the question as it interrogates sound’s capacity to inform children’s identities in a resource-limited, public elementary school in the Midwestern United States. Specifically, this inquiry explored in what ways sonic experiences might (re)produce and/or thicken (systemic) identities and positionings for children. Using critical positioning theories, the author details how sonic (re)occurrences informed children’s abilities to know, to be, and to be known in their classroom community. Through listening to the ambient experiences of everyday classrooms, the findings from this study showcase, new possibilities for exploring children’s identities and positionings. Through the storied experiences of two boys—acoustically described and analyzed—the author challenges critical early childhood researchers and educators to hear, perhaps for the first time, “unheard” everyday sounds like the alarm and consider the multiple ways such sounds resonate in classrooms.
English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 2019
Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to theorize teacher agency as enacted through a P/policymaki... more Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to theorize teacher agency as enacted through a P/policymaking lens in three elementary classrooms. Big-P Policies are formal, top-down school reform policies legislated, created, implemented and regulated by national, state and local governments. Yet, Big-P policies are not the only policies enacted in literacies classrooms. Rather, little-p policies or teachers' local, personal and creative enactments of their values and expertise are also in play in daily classroom decisions. Little p-policies are teachers doing their best in response to their students and school contexts.
Design/methodology/approach-Adapting elements of discursive analysis, this interpretive inquiry is designed to examine textual artifacts, situated alongside classroom events and particular local practices, to explicate what teachers' policymaking enactments regarding time and curriculum look like across three distinct contexts. Using three elementary classrooms as examples, this paper provides analytic snapshots illustrating teachers' policymaking to solve problems of practice posed by state and school policies for curriculum, and for use of time at school. Findings-The findings suggest that teachers ration (aliz)ed use of time in ways that enacted personal politics, to prioritize children's personal growth and well-being alongside teachers' values, even when use of time became "inefficient." An artifact from three focal classrooms illustrates particular practices-scheduling, connecting and modeling-teachers leveraged to enact little p-policy. Teachers' little p-policy enactment is teacher agency, used to disrupt temporal and curricular policies. Originality/value-This framing is valuable because little-p policymaking works to disrupt and negotiate temporal and curricular mandates imposed on classrooms from the outside.
Educational Studies, 2018
Although other disciplines have explored sound as more than oral language, music, or noise, educa... more Although other disciplines have explored sound as more than oral language, music, or noise, educational scholarship exploring everyday soundscapes still has room to grow. In this article, a team of transdisciplinary scholars from education, writing and rhetoric, and ethnomusicology explore new possibilities for sound in research and teaching by examining a cross-course assignment grounded in the sonic experiences of a residential, living-learning college community. Through examining student-produced compositions, we introduce a number of relevant insights into the relationships between space, community, and a pedagogy of aurality.
Language Arts, 2018
This article illustrates how one fourth grader used creative language as play to incorporate popu... more This article illustrates how one fourth grader used creative language as play to incorporate popular culture into the mandated writing curriculum. Segmented by one snapshot of the child’s in-class writing, I illuminate how he used subtle, intertextual tracings to other texts—drawing on characters, setting, and plot from a range of sources—to bring worlds of play into his writing. After exploring how the child playfully tailored and/or retold the story for his own purposes, I outline the concept of play(giarism) and demonstrate how, in an era of standardization, children are engaging in meaningful literacy practices, even if they must create them. Through this inquiry approach, teachers and researchers are offered new points of consideration to reimagine the teaching and learning of writing.
Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2018
Written as a letter to a first-year teacher, the author—acting as a mentor, veteran teacher—criti... more Written as a letter to a first-year teacher, the author—acting as a mentor, veteran teacher—critically conceptualizes the hidden curriculum using the work of Jackson (1968), Anyon (1980), and others in order to historicize the term for their newest colleague. Following an initial introduction to the hidden curriculum, the author draws on personal anecdotes from their experiences in two urban elementary schools in the Southern U.S. In doing so, the author brings to life the “qualities” of the hidden curriculum as they continue to exist in today’s classrooms across socioeconomic and cultural settings. To conclude, the author provides their first-year colleague a set of
questions to consider as they learn to see the hidden curriculum in their own classroom and practice. The friendly-letter format of this article offers an innovative way for teacher educators and researchers to engage prospective and in-service teachers in critical conversations about the concept of the hidden curriculum.
English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 2017
This qualitative study aims to use the conceptual lens of figured worlds to explore how a 10-year... more This qualitative study aims to use the conceptual lens of figured worlds to explore how a 10-year-old child positions her identity and participates in systems of power through her engagement in writing. Data was generated across an 18-week ethnographic case study in one fourth-grade classroom located in the Midwestern USA. Findings highlight how children’s writing reflected both an adherence to and a rejection of the mandated curriculum as well as other aspects of the figured world of schooling. In turn, this study offers suggestions about how, by reading children’s writing with a figured world lens, their identities and positionings may become more apparent. This study challenges teachers and researchers to read beyond “the basics” emphasized in the mandated curriculum to better attend to the ways children navigate standardized curricula, negotiate identities and positioning and use writing to (re)inscribe identities and positionings.
Multicultural Education Review, 2017
Attuning to the acoustic ecologies of multicultural education, this critical qualitative project ... more Attuning to the acoustic ecologies of multicultural education, this critical qualitative project interrogated how elementary prospective teachers (PST) used digital media to write community through and with sound. Examining PST produced soundscapes and the practice of sonic cartography, this study inquired how hearing difference and listening to community re-educated the senses towards issues of difference, belonging, and multiculturalism. Findings illuminate three ways in which PSTs maintained a ‘proper distance’ – a proximal, reflexive, and reciprocal stance – through digitally composing their cartographic creations and reflections. Developing materials that hear and sustain community, this study has implications for how English educators can attune to the frequencies and rhythms of culture while designing towards more equitable landscapes for learning.
The Reading Teacher, 2017
How can teachers support intermediate-grade students as they navigate and negotiate the intricaci... more How can teachers support intermediate-grade students as they navigate and negotiate the intricacies of language identity and use in the English language arts classroom? Through the stories of two students, the author offers ideas for how teachers can make space with and for students to meaningfully engage them using multiple languages.
The Critical Social Educator, Apr 15, 2021
In this paper, the authors specifically consider what it means to engage as a critical white soci... more In this paper, the authors specifically consider what it means to engage as a critical white social educator of young, racially diverse children. They document how one third-grade teacher-Ms. Honey, a thirty-something white woman-used diverse books as a springboard to cultivate a more critical curriculum. The authors demonstrate how, as the focal teacher centered on pressing and historical social issues-including systemic racism-in her curriculum, classroom, and community, she also re-learned (hi)stories herself. In the findings, the authors demonstrate how Ms. Honey carefully led children through a read-aloud within an integrated social studies and literacy unit. The authors frame Ms. Honey's actions as a critical social educator and, in doing so, they highlight the messy, seemingly imperfect work required to engage as a critical social educator.
Research in the Teaching of English, 2021
There is a particular urgency in this political moment to understand children's experiences with ... more There is a particular urgency in this political moment to understand children's experiences with current events. Drawing from data generated following the 2016 presidential election, this paper focuses on three racially and linguistically diverse children's persuasive compositions. Within a critical literacies writing unit focused on (im)migrant experiences, children called on legislators to act on the Republican administration's policies. Building on the understanding that all literacies are political and that teaching and learning are value-laden tasks, the author engaged a cultural rhetorics orientation-grounded in the understanding of texts, bodies, materials, and ideas as interconnected aspects of communication-for data generation and analysis. The findings highlight how children strategically employed rhetoric to persuade. They used logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as story, a central tool for meaning-making and building practices in the world. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how children, when properly supported, can agentively participate in critical literacies and act on real-world politics. Through the stories of young children, this study emphasizes what children have to tell adults and what a cultural rhetorics orientation, through its emphasis on story, enables literacies researchers and educators to understand about children's composing.
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 2021
Building from anthropologists studying the milieu of sound (Eisenlohr, 2018; Helmreich, 2007), we... more Building from anthropologists studying the milieu of sound (Eisenlohr, 2018; Helmreich, 2007), we invite readers to consider how to “ethnographically decipher everyday ways of living and doing, with a particular interest in how ambient sound productions are invested in meaning locally, and how ways of listening are forged and oriented differently” (Guillebaud, 2017, p. 1). We focus on the acoustic happenings of the Language and Media Center (LMC)—a technology-rich space located
within the arts-and-humanities–based residential college (RC) at Michigan State University—alongside the RC’s Art Studio.
Teachers College Record, 2021
This study contributes to larger conversations about how children use play to make schooled writi... more This study contributes to larger conversations about how children use play to make schooled writing personally meaningful and build upon their (digital) funds of knowledge. The author uses a descriptive case study design and ethnographic methods to examine how one child exemplified creative language play. Specifically, the author considers how the child used his physical play in the virtual world of Minecraft to invoke creative language play as a tool within the standardized curriculum. This study calls attention to the connection between children’s lived experiences and play in digital spaces—as physical acts enacted through screens—and their relation to, and being evidenced in, schooled writing. In turn, the author encourages a rethinking of what it means for adults to maintain clear lines between what is digital play and what is not. Further, the author argues for the importance of cultivating a space for children to build on what was previously familiar to them by offering scaffolds to bridge these experiences between what we, as adults, understand as binaries.
Theory Into Practice, 2021
Drawing from data generated in a third-grade classroom in the months following the 2016 US presid... more Drawing from data generated in a third-grade classroom in the months following the 2016 US presidential election, this article zooms in on self-produced videos a child made of her writing process. Organized around 3 "takes" of the child's writing, the author provides readers a glimpse into (1) the child's composing in the videos, (2) a narrative retelling of the author's viewing of the video series, and (3) a list of insights for educational researchers and practitioners to "take" away from the child's writing. In closing, the author extends an invitation for readers to consider, how if at all, the child's texts might be considered (digital) writing.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2021
This article examines how sound - as a medium, method, and modality - attunes educational ethnogr... more This article examines how sound - as a medium, method, and modality - attunes educational ethnographers to writing the "field" in new ways. In particular, the authors ask: How might cultivating practices of writing the field recording reorient the field note as an ethnographic object of inquiry? Examining the field recording as a representational, experimental, and pedagogical resource for prolonging encounters, this article reframes inquiry to disrupt what is traditionally read as experience in writing ethnographic research.
Maker Literacies and Maker Identities in the Digital Age, 2020
In this chapter, I build on previous scholarship that promotes a more expansive definition of 'sc... more In this chapter, I build on previous scholarship that promotes a more expansive definition of 'schooled' writing with a particular emphasis on what 'maker literacies' might afford children and, in turn, adults that engage with them in standardized classrooms (Wohlwend, Buchholz, & Medina, 2018; Wood, 2019).
Practical Literacy in the Early and Primary Years, 2020
Education Sciences, 2020
Drawing on data generated following the 2016 United States presidential election, in this article... more Drawing on data generated following the 2016 United States presidential election, in this article the author considers how a classroom makerspace made Black girls' literacies visible in new ways. During a six-week integrated humanities unit in a third-grade public school classroom in the Midwestern U.S., four Black girls used making to create a space for themselves to collaboratively make sense of contemporary (im)migration issues. In the findings, the author provides two analytic snapshots to illustrate how the girls' making exemplified the six components of the Black Girls' Literacies Framework-an asset-oriented framing that highlights how Black girls' literacies are (1) multiple, (2) connected to identities that are (3) historical, (4) collaborative, (5) intellectual, and (6) political/critical (Muhammad & Haddix, 2016). In closing, the author offers provocations for educational researchers and practitioners to consider, as they facilitate school-based opportunities for Black girls' literacies to be made visible through making.
Journal of Curriculum Studies Research , 2020
Situated in the months after the 2016 United States presidential election, this qualitative case ... more Situated in the months after the 2016 United States presidential election, this qualitative case study illuminates third-grade children's sense-making about the GOP Administration's proposed border wall with Mexico. In light of these present-day politics, close analysis of how young children discuss social issues remains critical, particularly for social studies educators. Looking across fifteen book discussions, we zero in on three whole-class conversations about (im)migration beginning with initial read alouds through the final debrief wherein children conversed with a local university anthropologist about the clandestine migration of individuals across the U.S.'s southern border. During initial discussions, children in the Midwestern school demonstrated their frustration towards racist laws of the mid-1900s. Others responded with empathy or made personal connections to their own family heritage. In the findings, we note a clear progression in how children understood (im)migration issues as evidenced by how their questions and curiosities shifted in later lessons. We highlight how, when children are encouraged to engage with social topics, they can act as critical consumers and position themselves as politically active and engaged citizens.
Perspectives and Provocations, 2019
Grounded in contemporary research highlighting how children's invaluable identity work is often o... more Grounded in contemporary research highlighting how children's invaluable identity work is often overlooked, this study investigates how one elementary child tailored mandated writing for their own social purposes. Detailing the text the child wrote in the mystery genre, the author illuminates the moves the child made to index particular positionings for himself and his teacher. Through one-on-one conversations with the child and teacher, the author highlights divergent readings of the text and how this text framed relationships-to one another and to children's writing-in new ways.
Curriculum Inquiry, 2019
Classrooms are host to complex sonic ecologies informed by ritualized patterns and routines, but ... more Classrooms are host to complex sonic ecologies informed by ritualized patterns and routines, but there remains a dearth of scholarship studying everyday sounds of schooling. Such research is important because it can amplify in new ways how children’s identities are constructed and thickened over time. This interpretive case study takes up the question as it interrogates sound’s capacity to inform children’s identities in a resource-limited, public elementary school in the Midwestern United States. Specifically, this inquiry explored in what ways sonic experiences might (re)produce and/or thicken (systemic) identities and positionings for children. Using critical positioning theories, the author details how sonic (re)occurrences informed children’s abilities to know, to be, and to be known in their classroom community. Through listening to the ambient experiences of everyday classrooms, the findings from this study showcase, new possibilities for exploring children’s identities and positionings. Through the storied experiences of two boys—acoustically described and analyzed—the author challenges critical early childhood researchers and educators to hear, perhaps for the first time, “unheard” everyday sounds like the alarm and consider the multiple ways such sounds resonate in classrooms.
English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 2019
Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to theorize teacher agency as enacted through a P/policymaki... more Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to theorize teacher agency as enacted through a P/policymaking lens in three elementary classrooms. Big-P Policies are formal, top-down school reform policies legislated, created, implemented and regulated by national, state and local governments. Yet, Big-P policies are not the only policies enacted in literacies classrooms. Rather, little-p policies or teachers' local, personal and creative enactments of their values and expertise are also in play in daily classroom decisions. Little p-policies are teachers doing their best in response to their students and school contexts.
Design/methodology/approach-Adapting elements of discursive analysis, this interpretive inquiry is designed to examine textual artifacts, situated alongside classroom events and particular local practices, to explicate what teachers' policymaking enactments regarding time and curriculum look like across three distinct contexts. Using three elementary classrooms as examples, this paper provides analytic snapshots illustrating teachers' policymaking to solve problems of practice posed by state and school policies for curriculum, and for use of time at school. Findings-The findings suggest that teachers ration (aliz)ed use of time in ways that enacted personal politics, to prioritize children's personal growth and well-being alongside teachers' values, even when use of time became "inefficient." An artifact from three focal classrooms illustrates particular practices-scheduling, connecting and modeling-teachers leveraged to enact little p-policy. Teachers' little p-policy enactment is teacher agency, used to disrupt temporal and curricular policies. Originality/value-This framing is valuable because little-p policymaking works to disrupt and negotiate temporal and curricular mandates imposed on classrooms from the outside.
Educational Studies, 2018
Although other disciplines have explored sound as more than oral language, music, or noise, educa... more Although other disciplines have explored sound as more than oral language, music, or noise, educational scholarship exploring everyday soundscapes still has room to grow. In this article, a team of transdisciplinary scholars from education, writing and rhetoric, and ethnomusicology explore new possibilities for sound in research and teaching by examining a cross-course assignment grounded in the sonic experiences of a residential, living-learning college community. Through examining student-produced compositions, we introduce a number of relevant insights into the relationships between space, community, and a pedagogy of aurality.
Language Arts, 2018
This article illustrates how one fourth grader used creative language as play to incorporate popu... more This article illustrates how one fourth grader used creative language as play to incorporate popular culture into the mandated writing curriculum. Segmented by one snapshot of the child’s in-class writing, I illuminate how he used subtle, intertextual tracings to other texts—drawing on characters, setting, and plot from a range of sources—to bring worlds of play into his writing. After exploring how the child playfully tailored and/or retold the story for his own purposes, I outline the concept of play(giarism) and demonstrate how, in an era of standardization, children are engaging in meaningful literacy practices, even if they must create them. Through this inquiry approach, teachers and researchers are offered new points of consideration to reimagine the teaching and learning of writing.
Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2018
Written as a letter to a first-year teacher, the author—acting as a mentor, veteran teacher—criti... more Written as a letter to a first-year teacher, the author—acting as a mentor, veteran teacher—critically conceptualizes the hidden curriculum using the work of Jackson (1968), Anyon (1980), and others in order to historicize the term for their newest colleague. Following an initial introduction to the hidden curriculum, the author draws on personal anecdotes from their experiences in two urban elementary schools in the Southern U.S. In doing so, the author brings to life the “qualities” of the hidden curriculum as they continue to exist in today’s classrooms across socioeconomic and cultural settings. To conclude, the author provides their first-year colleague a set of
questions to consider as they learn to see the hidden curriculum in their own classroom and practice. The friendly-letter format of this article offers an innovative way for teacher educators and researchers to engage prospective and in-service teachers in critical conversations about the concept of the hidden curriculum.
English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 2017
This qualitative study aims to use the conceptual lens of figured worlds to explore how a 10-year... more This qualitative study aims to use the conceptual lens of figured worlds to explore how a 10-year-old child positions her identity and participates in systems of power through her engagement in writing. Data was generated across an 18-week ethnographic case study in one fourth-grade classroom located in the Midwestern USA. Findings highlight how children’s writing reflected both an adherence to and a rejection of the mandated curriculum as well as other aspects of the figured world of schooling. In turn, this study offers suggestions about how, by reading children’s writing with a figured world lens, their identities and positionings may become more apparent. This study challenges teachers and researchers to read beyond “the basics” emphasized in the mandated curriculum to better attend to the ways children navigate standardized curricula, negotiate identities and positioning and use writing to (re)inscribe identities and positionings.
Multicultural Education Review, 2017
Attuning to the acoustic ecologies of multicultural education, this critical qualitative project ... more Attuning to the acoustic ecologies of multicultural education, this critical qualitative project interrogated how elementary prospective teachers (PST) used digital media to write community through and with sound. Examining PST produced soundscapes and the practice of sonic cartography, this study inquired how hearing difference and listening to community re-educated the senses towards issues of difference, belonging, and multiculturalism. Findings illuminate three ways in which PSTs maintained a ‘proper distance’ – a proximal, reflexive, and reciprocal stance – through digitally composing their cartographic creations and reflections. Developing materials that hear and sustain community, this study has implications for how English educators can attune to the frequencies and rhythms of culture while designing towards more equitable landscapes for learning.
The Reading Teacher, 2017
How can teachers support intermediate-grade students as they navigate and negotiate the intricaci... more How can teachers support intermediate-grade students as they navigate and negotiate the intricacies of language identity and use in the English language arts classroom? Through the stories of two students, the author offers ideas for how teachers can make space with and for students to meaningfully engage them using multiple languages.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly
Journal of Early Childhood Literacy
Drawing from data generated during the 2016-2017 academic year, this study centred on U.S. childr... more Drawing from data generated during the 2016-2017 academic year, this study centred on U.S. children’s design of two critical literacies compositions—a letter to Congress and a persuasive multimodal text. Situated within an integrated unit focused on (im)migrants, children asked legislators to act on the GOP Administration’s proposed border wall and the #MuslimBan. Simultaneously, their teacher took steps to engage students in critical literacies conversations about access in/to the United States. Using a case study design, I investigated the following: How might traditional perceptions of ‘expert’ shift as children engage in critical literacies using varied materials and technologies? Specifically, I highlight how, by engaging an expansive skill set of communicative practices, children designed texts and enacted identities related to civic agency. Through multimodal composing, one nine-year-old white boy exemplified how children highlight knowledge beyond what is captured in a writt...
English Teaching: Practice & Critique
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to theorize teacher agency as enacted through a P/policymaki... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to theorize teacher agency as enacted through a P/policymaking lens in three elementary classrooms. Big-P Policies are formal, top-down school reform policies legislated, created, implemented and regulated by national, state and local governments. Yet, Big-P policies are not the only policies enacted in literacies classrooms. Rather, little-p policies or teachers’ local, personal and creative enactments of their values and expertise are also in play in daily classroom decisions. Little p-policies are teachers doing their best in response to their students and school contexts. Design/methodology/approach Adapting elements of discursive analysis, this interpretive inquiry is designed to examine textual artifacts, situated alongside classroom events and particular local practices, to explicate what teachers’ policymaking enactments regarding time and curriculum look like across three distinct contexts. Using three elementary classrooms as examples, ...
The Reading Teacher, 2017