As student populations become culturally and linguistically diverse, mismatches between students and the mostly White teaching force create challenges for schools and teacher education programs. This article—drawing from the Coaching With CARE project and building on research valuing the role of cooperating teachers (CTs) in supporting critical, socially just teaching—examines c/Critical conversations between CTs and preservice teachers (PTs) to highlight ways CTs may bring critical understandings into mentoring work. Findings show that using tools like retrospective video analysis (RVA) and responsive critical discourse analysis (CDA) helped provide space for some CTs to engage in critical discussions of traditional power hierarchies within the classroom, the roles they and their students assume in societal power structures, and ways those understandings may affect their classroom teaching. The examples also demonstrate the challenges facing teacher educators who hope to engage in similar work and importance of professional development for CTs that includes critical reflection on their own identities and power.
This review of empirical research focused on the preparation of writing teachers synthesizes findings from 82 articles published between 2000 and early 2018. The new understandings generated through this analysis are presented in two sections. First, we provide an overview of how the studies we reviewed draw from and circulate dominant discourses of writing, leading to a call for more transparency and clarity on the part of scholars who study writing and writing pedagogy. Then, we explore experiences in literacy teacher education that may shift the writing identities, beliefs, or teaching practices of prospective writing teachers. We position these shifts as being potentially disruptive to the often uninterrupted circulation of powerful discourses in important and generative ways, since the teaching of writing in the 21st century must break from inherited traditions to best prepare writers to use their voices actively and confidently in the world.
Purpose
This paper aims to consider how students and teachers engaged in political work in their design and enactment of critical literacy workshops in one US elementary school facing pressures of accountability and standardization.
Design/methodology/approach
As a collaborative team of university researchers and classroom teachers, the authors used a qualitative, thematic approach to analyze data collected across a two-year, ethnographic case study.
Findings
Drawing on Janks’ (2012) conceptualization of p/Politics, this analysis identified three ways in which teachers approached their teaching politically: constructing flexible and broad definitions of readers and writers; blurring hierarchies between teachers, students and texts; and viewing literacy as a tool of power. In addition to elaborating on these themes, the findings illustrate how these political teaching practices supported students’ engagement with explicitly Political topics.
Originality/value
The era of Trump and “fake news” calls for people to not only start discussions about important social issues but also be able to engage in these discussions diplomatically and critically – in other words, to not only respond to the world but also to reconstruct it (Luke, 2004) and to imagine it better (Greene, 1995). This study offers a timely examination of ways to reshape reading and writing workshops in more critical ways, helping to prepare students for participation in the civic, career and personal worlds within and beyond school.
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