Living and Learning in the Here-and-Now: Critical Inquiry in Literacy Teacher Education (original) (raw)

Seeing the Everyday through New Lenses": Pedagogies and Practices of Literacy Teacher Educators with a Critical Stance

Teacher Education Quarterly, 2018

This article explores the practices and pedagogies of six literacy teacher educators with a critical stance. In this qualitative research study, three semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant over a three-year period. They were able to negotiate a critical stance into their teacher education courses in several ways: using an expansive definition of literacy; helping student teachers shed deficit perspectives; and integrating popular culture and media in the curriculum. The LTEs conceptualizations of literacy transcended traditional notions such as literacy as a set of autonomous skills (e.g., reading, writing) to include expansive notions of literacy including out of school literacy practices such as home literacies and community literacies. The literacy teacher educators modeled valuing expansive conceptions of literacy by including a wide range of texts in their courses, including: videos, blogs, spoken word, spaces, theatre, and social media (e.g., Twitter,...

Surfacing the Assumptions: Pursuing Critical Literacy and Social Justice in Preservice Teacher Education

Brock Education Journal

This paper outlines a four-year study of a preservice education course based on a socioconstructivist research framework. The preservice English Language Arts course focuses on critical literacy and teaching for social justice while employing digital technologies.The research study examines two concepts across all aspects of the course: 1) new literacies and multiliteracies; and 2) technology-supported transformative pedagogy for social and educational change. While the authors originally undertook the study to evaluate separate assignments of the course, the lens of the two themes has provided an opportunity for a scholarly review of their teaching practices. Research data include three course assignments over a 2-year period; an open-ended survey; and focus group and individual interviews with pre-service teachers. The authors discuss some of the affordances, challenges, and learnings associated with preparing teachers to teach critical literacy in a digital age. They also conside...

Rethinking Curriculum and Pedagogy in Schools: Critical Literacies and Epistemologies in Theory and Practice

Race, Justice, Activism in Literacy Instruction, 2020

This chapter builds on the argument from Irizarry’s chapter that “most schools teach the same content offered to generations past, often eschewing...the lived experiences and cultural practices students of color bring with them into classrooms.” Using a paired-format to examine a collaborative inquiry that bridges the longstanding divide among research, praxis, and action in literacy instruction, the authors draw from students’ experiences and constructed identities (Caraballo, 2016) in a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project. Using critical participatory epistemologies (Cammarota & Romero, 2009), culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris & Alim, 2014), and critical urban literacies (Kinloch, 2011), the authors make an argument for supporting social justice in education for those most underserved by our schools and in our society. The first author (Limarys) outlines and discusses findings from a long-term research study of preservice teachers’ experiences in the youth research seminar. The second author (Lindsey) reflects on how her engagement as a preservice teacher participant and co-researcher in the program informs her perspectives about curriculum and pedagogy. They discuss how students’ construction and negotiation of identities and literacies in action projects, research presentations, and hip hop and spoken word performances support their critical engagement and agency in addressing educational, social, and racial injustices. The chapter concludes with a discussion of implications for how educators can rethink curriculum and pedagogy in schools by relying on critical literacies to attend to race, justice, and activism.

Critical Literacy as a Tool for Social Change: Negotiating Tensions in a Pre-Service Teacher Education Writing Course

Journal of language and literacy education, 2020

In this Voices from the Field article, we (two teacher-educators/-researchers) describe our negotiation of teaching practices in an online writing course for pre-service teachers. Our overarching purpose is to disrupt dominant discourses of writing and to illuminate critical perspectives. Specifically, we highlight intentional shifts to our initiating texts to better align with tenets of critical literacy. We experienced various tensions that led us to redesign the course. In closing, we pose lingering questions that critical teacher educators may ask while engaging in the iterative process of learning and growing through practice.

Teacher Candidates’ Use of Critical Literacy to Shift Thinking about Texts and Social Justice

2020

It is essential to support teacher candidates in becoming culturally responsive and learning about social justice in the classroom as schools across the country become more culturally and linguistically diverse. In this qualitative study, the author looked at children’s literature as a way to support teacher candidates’ learning about critical literacy and social justice. Teacher candidates constructed an annotated bibliography of children’s texts centered around a topic of their choice. Findings suggest teachers increased their understanding and use of a critical literacy lens on the literature they selected and developed a deeper understanding of the potential connections between children’s texts and social justice.

Examining the immigrant experience: helping teachers develop as critical educators

Teaching Education, 2014

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine ways that a multicultural perspective using critical literacy practices engaged practicing teachers to rethink and re-vision oppressive hegemonic structures and attitudes regarding immigrant students and their families and helped them to develop as critical educators. In the context of a professional development master's program, 57 teachers experienced a curriculum strand focused on immigration issues and provided extensive feedback responding to the curriculum. The data were analyzed to assess in what ways using current and controversial issues helped teachers to develop their capacities to understand and critique the world in more complex ways and what impact these experiences had on their teaching practice. Evidence suggests that the majority of teachers were receptive to the curriculum although some teachers exhibited resistance. Resistance appeared to be minimized and teachers' development supported using curricular experiences that "put a face to the issue," that put learners "in others' shoes," that engaged teachers' emotions, and that made clear how policies, practices, and attitudes directly and indirectly impact the lives of children and their families.