Political tensions: English teaching, standards, and postsecondary readiness

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper was to highlight ways two novice secondary English teachers negotiated the politics of college and career readiness along with the literacy needs of students, in the age of accountability. Design/methodology/approach This three-year longitudinal qualitative case study focused on two participants in English teacher preparation and their first two years in the classroom. Findings The findings focus on participants’ definitions of college and career readiness as it pertains to their English Language Arts classrooms. Next, the focus is on two themes: tensions these novice teachers experienced as they attempted to build classrooms focused on postsecondary readiness, and the ways in which they worked to bridge the gap between their definitions of college and career readiness and the realities of their classrooms. Research limitations/implications Connections among high stakes testing environments, postsecondary readiness and literacy teacher education are important to the field. Studying the experiences of novice teachers can fill a present gap at the intersection of these concepts. Practical implications Curriculum in teacher education should introduce standards, as well as provide a platform for negotiating and critiquing them. Three focus areas to help pre-service teachers mitigate tensions between minimum skills assessments, college readiness and literacy are personal experience, collaboration and reflective partnerships. Originality/value There has been little to no research done on the tensions between preparing all students to be college and career ready and the minimum skills based priorities that govern many school systems and its impact on novice teachers. This classroom reality is important to literacy teacher education.

Working Toward a Socially Just Future in the ELA Methods Class

“…Other articles explored tensions around different definitions of ELA education by involving one of the more authoritative “institutions” in education: the standardized test. Hungerford-Kresser and Vetter’s (2017) article discussed the tension between novice teachers’ understandings of what it meant to prepare students for “college and career readiness” and the state-standardized curriculum, which, ironically, were supposed to “conveniently coexist” (p. 416). The teachers felt stymied by high-stakes testing but relied on personal experiences of postsecondary life and a focus on collaboration to create meaningful instruction for students.…”

The language of teacher agency in an eighth grade ELA classroom

“…While interview studies have value to understand teachers’ perspectives (Biesta et al , 2017), the ability to assess how teachers’ language conveys messages to students, with the support of other data sources as evidence for the resources involved in teachers’ acts, can help researchers explore how various ecological factors in the classroom enable and constrain teachers’ choices. Like Keranova (2016) and Hungerford-Kresser and Vetter (2017), this study used classroom moments as first sources that could be further illuminated by data of other types and from other contexts. Since transcripts from the classroom or interviews could be open to multiple interpretations, secondary sources play a vital role in directing the researcher’s attention to probable messaging.…”

“…One position is as engaged professionals that leverage their interests, passions and expertise (Lopez, 2011; Bieler, 2013; Keranova, 2016). The second is as managers of reform, standards and assessments (Brass, 2015; Buchanan, 2015; Hungerford-Kresser and Vetter, 2017; Wessel-Powell et al , 2019). In the positions of teachers illuminated by these studies, we see the centripetal influence (Bakhtin, 1981/2006) of educational policy.…”

“…Rather than being freeing for teachers, Brass’s governmentality analysis suggested that the freedom to teach as teachers feel professionally and personally driven exists only if students succeed on assessments. A teacher in Hungerford-Kresser and Vetter’s (2017) study found college and career readiness as articulated in the CCSS to be incomplete in preparing students for future endeavors, so she used other methods not officially tied to the standards-based curriculum to help students learn skills such as collaboration. Wessel-Powell et al (2019) also demonstrated that large-scale policy needs to be worked out locally, such that how it is reiterated often depends on the working of the local teacher; in that translation, the teacher has the opportunity to invite students into the creation of the policy at the local level so that what is actually practiced might align more with the context of the teacher, bringing her professional history and goals for student learning into play in ways that typical views of standardization do not acknowledge.…”

“Advocacy cheating”: teacher noncompliance in standardised literacy testing

“…As noted, publicised literacy testing and overarching discourses of neoliberalism in schooling have undermined English/Literacy teachers' professionalism and agency (Brass, 2014;Day et al, 2006). Further, these international trends have somewhat compromised teachers' professional integrity, classroom autonomy and attention to "classroom, school, community or policy environments" (Bascia and Rottmann, 2011, p. 788) to meet mandated regulations and encourage student success (Gannon, 2013;Hungerford-Kresser and Vetter, 2017;Polesel et al, 2014). This testing and standardisation context clearly contributes to growing pressure on teachers' professionalism and agency.…”