‘This is my new normal’: teachers’ accounts of evaluation policy at local school board meetings

In this study, we seek to illuminate teachers’ constructions of US teacher evaluation policies through close analysis of the way teachers in one district describe these policies. We conducted a thematic discursive analysis of 60 teachers’ speeches, recorded during local school board meetings in a Tennessee school district. Using discursive psychology as a lens, analysis focuses on the teachers’ constructions of teacher accountability policies and their own positioning within the policies. We also attend to the linguistic resources teachers used in justifying their decision to speak during the meetings. Findings showed that while drawing upon repertoires of human capital and one-size-fits-all education, the teachers’ patterned participation involved the contestation of status quo practices of teacher evaluation and effectiveness by contrasting them with imagined possibilities of what evaluation could be instead. Implications for developing teacher evaluation are discussed.     

How ESL Teachers’ Sociocultural Identities Mediate Their Teacher Role Identities in a Diverse Urban School Setting

English-as-a-second language (ESL) teachers’ sociocultural identities and teacher role identities are posited to be deeply rooted in their personal histories. Yet, this being the case, how ESL teachers interpret, negotiate and construct their identities in the pedagogical process remains underexplored. This study is an exploration of the influences of teachers’ social, linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds on the conception of their roles as ESL educators. Fifty-seven teachers from inner-city high schools in Los Angeles responded to a questionnaire and interviews and provided self-written perspectives on how their personal histories mediated their pedagogical practices. Results indicated that the ESL teachers’ sociocultural identities significantly shape their pedagogical practices. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Navigating role forces and the aesthetic|authentic caring dialectic: a novice urban science teacher’s developmental trajectory

Examining role forces and resources available to new teachers is crucial to understanding how teachers use and expand cultural, social, and symbolic resources and how they engage teaching for social justice and caring in urban science education. This critical narrative inquiry explores three levels of story. First, the narratives explore my role as a district science staff developer and my efforts to leverage district resources to improve students’ opportunities to learn science. Second, the narratives explore the ways in which a novice science teacher, Tina, navigated role forces and the aesthetic|authentic caring dialectic in a high poverty, urban school. A third level of narrative draws on sociological theories of human interaction to explore role forces and how they shaped Tina’s developmental trajectory. I describe how Tina expanded cultural, social, and symbolic resources to enact her teaching role.     

Teachers' Assessment Practices: Preparation,Isolation, and the Kitchen Sink

A sample of 143 midwestern elementary and secondary school teachers from a variety of practice settings responded to a survey and provided comments regarding their assessment practices The purpose of the survey was to collect background (demographic) information on the teachers and information on several assessment-related practices, including frequency with which teachers assign routine class assignments, types of marks used to report student performance, frequency and grading of major assignments and tests, source of classroom tests, kinds of marks used, methods used to combine marks, meaning of grades, teachers' knowledge and perceptions regarding district grading policies, and teachers' awareness of the grading policies of their peers. Interviews with the teachers provided additional insights into their practices. Results indicated that teachers' assessment practices were highly variable and unpredictable from characteristics such as practice setting, gender, years of experience, grade level, or familiarity with assessment policies in their school district. Teachers generally claim to consider and incorporate a variety of objective and subjective factors when assigning grades on assignments, assessments, and report cards, synthesizing diverse kinds of information about achievement in ways that tend to maximize the likelihood that students will achieve high grades. Only about one half of the teachers surveyed indicated that they were aware of their districts' policies on grading; most were not aware of the assessment practices of their colleagues. Many teachers seemed to have individual assessment policies that reflected their own individualistic values and beliefs about teaching. Recommendations for making grades more meaningful ways of communicating about student performance are suggested.     

ESL TEACHER EDUCATION ABROAD AND AT HOME: A CAUTIONARY TALE

In this article, we compared teacher attitudes and beliefs about culturally appropriate language teaching resulting from an examination of two groups of preservice teachers. One group of preservice teachers enrolled in an English as a Second Language (ESL) study abroad program in Mexico; the other enrolled in a traditional on-campus ESL program. Our findings indicate that study abroad students gained a more empathetic understanding of language and cultural issues that affect language learners than their on-campus counterparts, but that they also developed some misconceptions about language learning based on their study abroad experience.     

The intersection of school context and teachers’ data use practice: Implications for an integrated approach to capacity building

The current emphasis on data is a powerful force behind educational reform strategies. Administrators and teachers are inundated with data and increased expectations for data-driven practices in an effort to drive school reform. This mixed method study examined teachers’ experiences in a pilot professional development program to enhance data literacy and data use practices among nine grade-level elementary and middle school teacher teams in a single school district. Pre, post and follow-up surveys of the 28 teacher participants revealed promising outcomes of the professional development program. Significant increases in teachers’ reported data literacy, efficacy, and collaboration were evident. The study also examined school-level factors that supported data use practices and data cultures. Interviews with 15 school principals revealed how structural features such as district requirements, school expectations, and established policies and routines influenced teachers’ data use practice. Structural factors facilitating collaboration were associated with instructional goals and improvement cultures.     

Exploring How a Study Abroad and International Service-Learning Project Shaped Preservice Teachers’ Understanding of Humanizing Pedagogy

In an attempt to better prepare future teachers to fight against social injustice, support their culturally and linguistically diverse students and wrestle with social and educational complexities around the globe, many education programs have increased the number of study abroad programs and international service learning projects. In this qualitative study, we explored seven preservice teachers’ experiences related to humanizing pedagogy after participating in a study abroad program combined with an international service-learning project in a South African rural community. Analyzing multiple data sources such as interviews and reflective journals, we discovered that the preservice teachers grappled with the political, social, economic, and educational differences they encountered during the international project and wrestled with conflicting ideas and beliefs about poverty and language. They identified their relationships with students as catalysts to address these educational issues and their need to reverse systemic inequities. They built caring relationships with students in the community and developed additive perspectives the focused on the students’ community cultural capital. The preservice teachers expressed deep critical reflection and a desire to promote a more fully human educational world where students have the opportunities to enact their agency, their creativity, and their language and culture.     

Preparing Teachers for Success with English Language Learners: Challenges and Opportunities for University Tesol Educators

This study investigates the role that a socioculturally grounded university English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program played in shaping teachers' work with English Language Learners (ELLs). Subjects were a group of teachers at “Wheatland Elementary School,” a newly designated ESOL site for a school district in Kansas. From an analysis of teachers' comments on course evaluations, written class assignments, formal observations of their post-coursework instruction, and a questionnaire administered at the onset and conclusion of an 18 credit-hour program, we examined changes in teachers' (a) attitudes toward ELLs, (b) beliefs about how children acquire second languages, and (c) knowledge of pedagogical practices that promote successful language and content learning. Our findings suggest that well-planned university programs influence even very experienced teachers and those who may be ambivalent toward ESOL endorsement mandates, and policies that limit the requirements for those seeking state ESOL endorsement may be ill advised.     

Teachers of Newcomer Immigrants in Provincial Schools in Sweden: A Quest for Culturally Responsive Teaching in the Era of Homogenization

This study focuses on teachers of new arrival migrant pupils in a provincial school district in mid-Sweden. The paper draws from qualitative interviews with these teachers and extracts from lessons of as well as written reflections of these lessons. The study explores the teachers’ perspectives and pedagogical responses to newcomer migrants in their classrooms. The pedagogical practices are analyzed for culturally responsive teaching, referring to the extent to which the lessons build on the personal and cultural strengths of the pupils, their linguistic capabilities, as well as their prior knowledge and experiences. The findings demonstrate attempts at building on the pupils’ cultural and linguistic experiences, which compares well with some hallmarks of culturally responsive pedagogy. However, as pressures to teach for tests increase, the teachers face the dilemma on how to create spaces for culturally responsive teaching in school contexts that face powerful ideologies of cultural and linguistic homogenization.     

School choice in the stratilingual city of Vancouver

This paper examines the links between language, social difference and political domination in the practices of parental school choice at the heart of a global city, Vancouver. Vancouver is a highly diverse city, especially in terms of language. Its inner city is replete with multiple languages whose exchange values are not equal. In this context, our case study of two elementary schools observes that white middle‐class parents choose a predominantly white school – whose students are non‐ESL and have a second language choice of French – in a socially and ethnically mixed inner city neighbourhood, creating a stark imbalance in the student population of local neighbourhood schools. This paper examines parents' accounts of their choices, which they rationalise on the basis of linguistic competency and differentiation from multilingual others. We draw from Pierre Bourdieu's theory of language and symbolic power and Ghassan Hage's spatial theory of nationalist practice to understand the linguistic dimension of school choice rationalisation made by white middle‐class parents. In the context of these insights, we argue that the way anglophone white middle‐class parents choose their children's schools is intricately linked to active processes of reproducing a stratilingual society in Canada.     

Playful talk: the interspace between home and school discourse

The paper reminds readers of the importance of ‘playful talk’ in bridging home and school discourses. Through a number of excerpts of bilingual and monolingual children drawn from homes and classrooms over the past decade, it illustrates how school discourse may be taken home and transformed into ‘home talk’ through play. During this transformation, children take ownership of both the language and cultural practice of the classroom. Similarly, it shows the importance of providing the interspace for children to bring home talk into classrooms during socio‐dramatic play. The paper also illustrates the role of family members, particularly siblings and grandparents, in enabling young children to construct bridges between home and school during play activities. Finally, the paper stresses the importance of teachers in recognizing children's different linguistic and cultural resources in their classroom practices and provision.     

Teachers' Attitudes Toward Technology in a Two-Way Dual-Language Program

This study examined the attitudes of nine teachers in a two-way dual-language program in regard to using technology to support the linguistic and academic development of emergent bilinguals. Using a phenomenological, multiple case-study approach, teachers' perceptions about using technology in education and the potential of technology to advance the students' bilingualism and biliteracy were analyzed. Results showed that teachers had a positive outlook about the potential of technology as a tool to support the academic and linguistic growth of the students. However, several significant challenges were identified, most notably among them the scarcity of technological hardware at the school and the shortage of Spanish-language educational resources. The teachers' perception was that a greater availability of digital technologies, including resources in the Spanish language, would greatly enhance student learning.     

Representation of indigenous languages employing a religious screen for the discursive construction of students' postcolonial national identities: A curious case of ‘internal colonisation’ and ‘cultural invasion’ in Pakistani schools

This study problematises the discourses of Pakistan's national curriculum textbooks to investigate how they represent Pakistan's indigenous languages/cultures through the prism of religion to constitute secondary school students' particular postcolonial linguistic identities. It also draws on the perspectives of 12 teachers and 424 students to record their responses. Taking insights from Paulo Freire's cultural invasion, Robert Blauner's internal colonisation and selected postcolonial perspectives, the study notes a dynamic interplay of the sampled textbooks, schoolteachers and the school as a site of discursive social practices. Jointly, they position students within an exclusionary homogenous Urdu-loving group—a language which is represented as Arabic's tributary. Indigenous languages are recognised, however, as an adjunct to Arabic and Urdu, emphasising their role in the proselytisation of Islam in the region. Similarly, fine arts and indigenous cultural festivals are represented from a particular religious lens. The students strongly identify with this curious case of internal colonisation and cultural invasion, and support it. They exhibit self-righteousness and aversion towards linguistic/cultural pluralism and minorities, which entails implications for Pakistan's national cohesion and educational parlance of equity and inclusivity.     

Imaginary Community of the Mainstream Classroom: Adolescent Immigrants’ Perspectives

In this paper, I explore the perspectives of three adolescent Mexican English language Learners regarding their high school English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom experiences within an urban city in the southwestern part of the U.S. An additional purpose is to demonstrate how the three student participants did or did not invest their identities into the imagined communities of the mainstream program. The paper focuses on two major themes: (1) The ESL classroom provided a socially comfortable learning environment with little cognitively challenging material, and (2) The ESL class/program did not meet students’ expectations for their future careers. Due to the students’ disillusionment with the ESL program, despite its many strengths, they projected their hopes onto an imagined community of the mainstream program. This research can be of use to both teachers and researchers interested in understanding adolescent immigrants’ perspectives on their ESL schooling experiences.     

An exploratory study of early childhood educators' views on culture and play

Abstract

This study explored early childhood teachers’ views relating to culture and play by collecting information from them on cultural differences and parental perceptions of play, culturally appropriate play (CAP) practices and barriers in its implementation. The participants of the study were 14 early childhood educators working in long day care (LDC) or out, of, school, hours care (OOSH) settings located in Sydney, Australia. Children in the selected centers represented various cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Teachers in the present study reported noticeable differences in the play of children of diverse cultural backgrounds. However, they believed that the differences in children's play were attributable to the children's proficiency in English language and gender rather than to their culture. The teachers reported they had limited or no information on the children's cultural patterns of play at home. The lack of information on cultural patterns of play, perhaps, has led to difficulties in understanding the cultural origins of play or in accommodating cultural differences into programming. The results highlight the need for educators to have greater knowledge of the cultural bases of play to enable them to provide, in partnership with parents, culturally appropriate play experiences for children.     

Not just ‘sunny days’: Aboriginal students connect out‐of‐school literacy resources with school literacy practices

In this paper, I report on a school‐university collaborative research project that investigated which practices and knowledges of Canadian Aboriginal students not acknowledged in school may provide these students with access to school literacy practices. The study, which took place in a small city in Western Canada, examined ways to merge the out‐of‐school literacy resources with school literacy practices for minority language learners who struggle with academic literacies. Drawing on the third space theory, in conjunction with the concept of “funds of knowledge,” I explain how students' linguistic and cultural resources from home and community networks were utilised to reshape school literacy practices through their involvement in the Heritage Fair programme. I analyse a representative case study of Darius, a 10‐year‐old boy who explored his familial hunting practices for his Heritage Fair project. This illustrative exemplar, “Not just sunny days,” highlights the ways in which children's out‐of‐school lives can be used as a scaffold for literacy learning. In conclusion, I discuss implications for educators and researchers working to improve literacy learning for minority students by connecting school learning to children's out‐of‐school learning.     

Other Teachers' Teaching: Understanding The Roles of Peer Group Collaboration in Teacher Reflection and Learning

Although most innovative professional development encourages reflective dialogue among teachers, we still know very little about how such dialogue enables teacher learning. This study describes how teachers make sense of the conflicts among their intended goals and actual practices by responding to their peers' teaching. Four teachers in a large urban high school each taught, evaluated, and shared four lessons they designed to enact self-identified goals absent from their practices. Patterns across the critiques, questions, compliments, and self-critiques that the teachers used to respond to others' lessons indicate the different ways they used the peer context to diversify, personalize, or slow down their thinking about their own teaching, and cross-case patterns reveal how they all learned in ways that would have been less likely in non-peer contexts. The findings suggest why diverse reflective peer groups are crucial starting points for larger professional networks designed to support systemic changes in teacher practices.     

Creativity as capital in the literacy classroom: youth as multimodal designers

Many school literacy practices ignore adolescents' new digitally mediated subjectivity as it has been shaped by the new media age. Youth possess often unappreciated repertories of practice which allow them to use their imagination and creativity to combine print, visual and digital modes in combinations that can be applied to new educational, civic, media and workplace contexts. This paper reports on research in two middle years classrooms in New York City's Chinatown, where students' design skills were recognised and validated when they were encouraged to critically re‐represent curricular knowledge through multimodal design. The curriculum, rather than privileging print‐only representations, recognised the linguistic, social, economic and cultural capital that different students brought to school. The findings suggest schools should harness youths' creativity – that often manifests itself through their capital resources – as they integrate and adapt to the new digital affordances acquired through their out‐of‐school literacy practices.     

Meanings of success and successful leadership in Ontario,Canada, in neo-liberal times

The provincial government of Ontario, Canada, has committed itself to raising student achievement, closing achievement gaps, and increasing the public's confidence in public education. It has introduced many policies, including the Ontario Leadership Strategy (OLS), to support these goals. Our study examined how teachers, administrators, support staff, and parents in three elementary schools in Ontario understand and enact school success and successful school leadership within this (neo-liberal) context. Findings of a comparative analysis of Ontario policy texts and data from interviews with administrators, teachers, support staff, and parents in the schools demonstrate that the school-based participants defined success as academic learning, a positive school climate, and students' well-being. This definition differs from the definition prioritised by Ontario's government: high scores on standardised provincial and international tests. However, principals in the schools enacted leadership practices advocated by OLS to support locally defined notions of success.     

Creating procedural justice and legitimate authority within school discipline systems through youth court

Schools' ability to manage student misbehavior rests largely on students' perceptions of the discipline system and authority. According to the procedural justice perspective, when schools use discipline practices students perceive as unfair, they fail to see authority as legitimate, making them less likely to comply with rules and demand. Youth Court, a peer adjudication program, has been implemented in schools as an alternative to punitive policies. While effective, there is no current research that examines if Youth Court creates procedural justice and legitimate authority. Using qualitative data from three urban schools, this study investigates the fairness of Youth Court procedures within a procedural justice framework, as well as perceptions of primary discipline practices and authority. Findings revealed that each school still largely uses punitive policies that create procedural unfairness and undermine legitimate authority. Additionally, findings indicate Youth Court utilizes practices that allow for procedural justice that foster legitimate authority.