More than merely policy, neoliberalism shapes how teachers relate to their students and classrooms. This article seeks to make visible how neoliberalism functions to form and deform teacher’s subjectivities (and in turn their pedagogical practices) through an analysis of the experiences of two teachers within an accountability-constrained elementary school. Using data generated within an ethnographically-informed case study, we draw on discourse analytic and post-qualitative methodologies, in conversation with critical theorizing of neoliberalism, to examine how teachers’ subjectivities were fractured as they worked to simultaneously meet the demands of neoliberal accountability and the humanizing aims of their pedagogical philosophies. We describe three archetypes—the neoliberal pragmatist, the student advocate, and the humanizing pedagogue—constructed to represent the varied approaches taken by teachers in their attempts to reconcile these conflicting aims. Then, through two vignettes of classroom practice, we illustrate how neoliberal logics and policies compelled these teachers to balance competing subjectivities, resulting in those teachers enacting extensive test preparation that contradicted their pedagogical philosophies. Through this analysis, we argue that fragmentation of teachers’ subjectivities within neoliberalism functions to effectively keep teachers off balance in their attempts to both respond to and resist neoliberal educational reforms, resulting in a maintenance of the neoliberal order.

Preview this article: Outlook for Research Today and Tomorrow, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/cc/33/2/councilchronicle32753-1.gif

Preview this article: Editors’ Introduction: Pursuing the Midwifery Properties of Editing Research in the Teaching of English, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/58/1/researchintheteachingofenglish32607-1.gif

Although there is much research detailing the pedagogical constraints of high-stakes testing (HST), there is less that examines teachers’ practices within and beyond its control. This multiple case study analyzes ethnographic data to explore two teachers’ practices in an urban context where HST was relevant. Drawing on Foucault’s conceptualization of a plague-stricken town, we explore the mobilization of disciplinary power associated with HST. We then examine teachers’ agency as they taught beyond the administrative gaze. We found that teachers sometimes complied with administrative mandates while also articulating tensions of providing access and actively resisting/critiquing the test.

The term engagement is widely used in teacher education and professional development. There is, however, a lack of consensus about the meaning of this term: it is defined in numerous ways with various theoretical underpinnings. This article employs a postqualitative approach to explore conceptualizations of engagement and their implications for teaching and learning. Specifically, we examine written teaching reflections from one cohort of preservice teachers, asking: 1) How did preservice teachers use the word "engage(ment)" in their planning for and analysis of one-on-one literacy instructional events? and 2) What conceptualizations of engagement did these usages reflect? Through the analytic approach of thinking with theory, we plug these data into four theoretical perspectives that are relevant to preservice teachers' talk about engagement: 1) First Generation Activity Theory, 2) Reader Response Theory, 3) Self-Determination Theory, and 4) Inter-Comprehension Theory. We explore how each perspective illuminated our data, as well as questions that emerged. We conclude by (re)imagining engagement through a languaging relations perspective, arguing that this lens shifts toward a more humanizing conceptualization of engagement by centering the ongoing (re)making of relationships as people teach and learn.

Connected threadsI understand a teacher as a weaver of worlds (Butler, 2023).A teacher must first listen and observe to understand each child's intricate pattern already in progress, taking into account student's likes, dislikes, talents, cultural practices and the intricacies of their personality.It takes time; it is slow, careful work.Teachers thoughtfully select threads connecting student prior knowledge to academic ideas.Masterfully looping interests to book choice, from social studies topics to student's lived experience.Threading math concepts with the wider world.Thereupon, unfolding how these ideas matter in the larger tapestry of their lives and community.A careful weaver learns to braid together each student, welcoming them alongside as partners in the task.Shared books, common interests and common experiences form the inner tapestry of the classroom community.From this supportive center constructed carefully from academic and social lessons learned collectively throughout the year, each child's tapestry fans out.Weavers reflect and analyze each child's patterns, ideas and growth.They ask questions about what is missing and create lessons or draw from old lessons in their repertoire.Careful weavers keep tabs on social connections that seem threadbare and need attention and collaborate with other weavers in detail-oriented reflection to imagine future threads.I once identified as a careful weaver.I strove to honor student's experiences and lace interests, ideas, community and the wider world into academic milestones.It was challenging work and like all weavers, I made mistakes.No tapestry is perfect and growth happens when we go back, apologize and repair haphazard strands or broken threads.The teacher sets the tone for the tapestry, the values we interlace into the center will continue in the student's patterns as they weave.This includes humility, a deep love for learning, adapting and changing techniques.Being a weaver is uncomfortable work.Learning new techniques requires going deeper into unfamiliar bodies of knowledge.Students thrive on this path; young brains need unchartered territory and seek out motifs that fit their generation.Understanding these new motifs is hard for some weavers; we do not always enjoy change.Careful weavers honor the discomfort and find ways to connect old knowledge with new patterns.Those in power are often less attuned to our tapestry; they are disconnected and unprepared for the discomfort.School boards and legislative bodies respond with overemphasizing standardization.I interpret this emphasis on stiff, standardized patterns as fear of ideas they do not yet recognize.Student innovation is overshadowed, the connection between what those in power consider "standard" and our community's weaving practices unravels.Weavers are left confused, disoriented and out of rhythm.Our job as weavers requires intense concentration and a solid link with the students and communities we serve.Distraction from this task results in fabricated templates no longer exemplifying the community's unique knowledge.The standard tapestries created are designed for comparison, thereby measured and ranked.Some patterns and ways of weaving are valued above others.Weavers must choose to signal and perform ways of knowing that are legible to those in power, those holding clipboards and assigning us a ranking.Those in power walk away from classrooms unaware that authentic weaving values all patterns and thoughtfully braids them with academic ideas, even creating new ones.It is slow work and does not have a clear end point for convenient measurement.Nothing about careful weaving is convenient or neatly packaged.

This invited paper highlights the reflections of expert panelists who were spontaneously called upon, graciously accepted, and quickly organized to respond thoughtfully and compellingly to Dr. Arlette Willis' powerful and timely Oscar Causey address at the 2022 Literacy Research Association (LRA) annual conference. In her address, Dr. Willis issued a clarion call for a Transcendent Approach to Literacy (TAL) to a space where “We re-create literacy as an equitable and moral construct” (Willis, 2023, p. 133). This paper comprises Dr. Alfred Tatum's comprehensive introduction, the cogent reflections on TAL by panelists Dr. Josh Coleman, Dr. Marcus Croom, Dr. Matthew Deroo, Dr. Michiko Hikida, Dr. Emily Machado, Dr. Patriann Smith, Dr. Chad Waldron, and Dr. Rahat Zaidi, and Dr. Willis' eloquent epilogue. In her epilogue, she provides not an ending but the genesis of a movement forward for the LRA community to “be brave” and actively and genuinely engage in a TAL that “democratizes literacy, declaring literacy belongs to all.”

While reflection is generally considered an important part of becoming a teacher, there is no consensus regarding how reflection assignments might be best incorporated into teacher education programs. In this multiple case study, we examine the writing of early-childhood (P-3) preservice teachers who were asked to write either reflections or analytic notes. Using a constant comparative analysis, we found that when asked to write analytic notes rather than reflections, preservice teachers tended to use more evidence to support their claims, but often used language that erased their interpersonal relationships with students. Implications for preservice teacher education programs are discussed.

Recent stories raising the alarm about students’ poor reading skills and calling for greater attention to the “science of reading” represent the latest round in the ongoing “reading wars.” Going back at least as far as the 1950s, scholars, pundits and policy makers have debated which teaching strategies are most successful at helping students become proficient readers. However, Leah Durán and Michiko Hikida argue that these debates fail to get at the root issues behind students’ poor reading performance. Even when schools with the lowest reading scores implement science-backed pedagogical approaches, these shifts do not make up for structural inequalities in facilities, resources, and teacher quality. Reading scores reflect problems rooted in class and race inequalities that cannot be resolved through pedagogy alone.

Efforts to improve classroom language practices and children’s language learning, as a means of supporting reading comprehension, may depend on teachers’ knowledge about language structures and language development. To date, however, educational researchers and teacher educators have little understanding about teachers’ knowledge about oral language. The current study reports on the development of the Teachers’ Content Knowledge of Oral Language Survey (TCKOLS), a measure designed to assess preservice and in-service early childhood teachers’ knowledge in this domain. The research team created the TCKOLS following a rigorous, iterative development process and conducted an initial pilot study with 32 preservice early childhood teachers and 26 pre-professional speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Findings support internal consistency and provide validity evidence for the measure. On average, preservice early childhood teachers correctly answered 69% of items and were particularly knowledgeable about vocabulary skills and development. As hypothesized, preservice early childhood teachers were less knowledgeable about oral language than pre-professional SLPs, and TCKOLS scores were significantly correlated with existing measures of vocabulary and morphological knowledge. Preservice teachers’ preparation to support children’s language learning, however, was not associated with their TCKOLS scores. The measure may be used in future research, to examine teachers’ knowledge about language across samples and contexts and as related to classroom practices and children’s learning, and to inform teacher preparation programs and professional development to better support such knowledge.

This article explores how critical pedagogy unfolds in the everyday interactions between teachers and students. Specifically, Freirean constructs of critique and dialogue were explored in two key literacy events drawn from an ethnographically informed case study of one fourth-grade classroom. The events were first examined from an ethnographic perspective to understand how sociopolitical issue(s) were being critiqued (or avoided). These events were then analyzed again through microanalytic discourse analysis to explore how teachers and students jointly accomplished dialogue and critique through proposing and taking up of particular stances toward text(s). By juxtaposing these two analytic lenses, the researchers argue for an understanding of critical pedagogy, particularly the tenets of critique and dialogue, as interactionally co-constructed in the continually evolving, everyday talk between teachers and students. This article closes by considering the implications of this work for classroom-based literacy research that examines critical pedagogy.

ABSTRACTIn this article, we argue that the “science of reading” (SOR) construct is being used to shape the future of literacy teacher preparation and silence the voices and work of literacy teacher education researchers to the detriment of quality science, quality teaching, and quality teacher preparation. First, we briefly inspect the SOR movement in terms of its historical roots in experimental psychology. Next, we examine the claims being made by SOR advocates regarding the absence of attention to the SOR literature in teacher preparation programs, and the related claims for the negative consequences that occur when these so‐called underprepared teachers enter the workforce. Then, we present literature reviews, drawn from a large and dynamic database of research on literacy teacher preparation (over 600 empirical studies that were published between 1999 and 2018); the studies in the database have been excluded from the SOR. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of equity, agency, and design as a pathway forward in improving literacy teacher preparation.

This chapter explores how emergent bilingual children and youth engage in everyday forms of translanguaging within the context of classroom interactions. Drawing on ethnographic and interactional data from three urban schools, it highlights the ways in which these students transform the social space of their respective classrooms by disrupting supposed linguistic boundaries and generating novel opportunities for learning and social interaction. These findings point to the need to follow the lead of emergent bilingual students in the development and implementation of translingual policies and pedagogies. The ways students normalize translanguaging in their everyday expressions of bilingualism can be leveraged in classrooms to prepare them to engage with multiple communities.

The chapter explores how ideologies of language, race, and (dis)ability are materialized in and through everyday classroom talk. Drawing on ethnographic and interactional data from two different urban schools, it examines how received social categories are imposed, inscribed, and reified as students of color are positioned as particular kinds of learners and particular kinds of people. It invokes the construct of languaging to highlight these students’ agency in negotiating, contesting, and disrupting these identities as they interact with their peers within the context of language and literacy learning. Drawing on and combining theoretical insights from scholarship on languaging relations, a raciolinguistic perspective, and disability critical race studies, the chapter examines classroom interactions involving an African American boy identified as “Learning Disabled” in a fifth-grade ESL classroom and a Filipino boy positioned as “struggling” in a multi-age Spanish-English dual-language classroom, focusing on how particular identities emerge for them within this institutional context.

Today’s world requires attention to all aspects of initial literacy teacher preparation, including how and what preservice teachers learn about the component processes of reading. To address this imperative, a review was conducted of articles published from 2000 to 2018 identified through the CITE-ITEL database ( https://cite.edb.utexas.edu ) that reported findings related to reading processes and initial teacher preparation. After an inductive analytic process, the authors organize findings into five focus areas: (a) definitions and delimitations of reading processes, (b) studies of preservice teachers’ beliefs about teaching reading processes, (c) research identifying preservice teachers’ knowledge gaps and misconceptions, (d) intervention studies aimed at increasing preservice teachers’ knowledge, and (e) studies detailing the application of knowledge about reading processes into contexts of pedagogical practice. The discussion considers the current gaps in how reading processes and literacy are conceptualized and possible areas of inquiry related to preservice teacher education and reading processes.