A review of critical literacies in preservice teacher education: pedagogies,shifts, and barriers

In literacy teacher education, a small but important group of studies have addressed how teachers can be prepared for enacting critical literacies pedagogies in K-12 classrooms. In this review, we argue that, more than ever, these efforts have a place in the field of teacher preparation. After providing a brief review of how critical literacies are conceptualized in the field, we review the approaches of teacher educators across the reviewed work. We identify approaches in coursework, including text-based and non text-based approaches as well as approaches to preparing teachers through experiences with students. We also identify the barriers that teacher educators face when preparing teachers for critical literacies pedagogy, and finally, provide recommendations for future studies.     

Learning to teach,learning to act: becoming a critical literacy teacher

Critical literacy requires an exploration of privilege and social justice. This includes an exploration of power and action in one’s “inner” and “outer” lives. This qualitative case study illustrates the ways in which Jonah, a preservice teacher, navigates social practices and actions in his roles as a student, activist, and literacy teacher. Through critical discourse analysis, we conceptualize social action in relation to critical literacy teaching, using a framework of discourses of, discourses as, and discourses in action to construct a nuanced understanding of social action in relation to critical literacy. Given the demands of a standardized curriculum on teachers’ autonomy, this is an important illustration of how social action can be enacted and embodied through the act of teaching.     

“Asking,Learning, Seeking Out”: An Exploration of Data Literacy for Teaching

Abstract

The current study explored preservice and inservice teachers’ perspectives on data literacy for teaching. Semi-structured interviews were employed with 12 teacher candidates in elementary and special education. The findings revealed participants’ misconceptions regarding formative and summative data; their understanding of the value of formative data; perceptions of challenges related to data literacy for teaching including time, making sense of data, and reliability and validity; and candidates’ preferences for authentic data literacy instruction.     

A narrative of teacher education in Canada: multiculturalism,technology, bridging theory and practice

This narrative paper investigates a number of enduring and emerging themes reflecting teacher education in Canada over the past 40 years, including changes in information and communication technology, bridging gaps in theory and practice, English as a second language, French immersion and multicultural teacher development. Canadian teacher education programmes have become famous for their long-standing commitment to public education and social welfare. This paper examines the way in which over the past four decades such a commitment has led to effective leadership, multiculturalism, racial tolerance and global citizenship education, as well as comprehensive curriculum, teaching and learning, all figure prominently in Canadian teacher education.     

Assessment of the practicum in teacher education: advocating for the student teacher and questioning the gatekeepers

This paper reports on research that suggests a new view of assessment of the practicum in teacher education. By transcending the stereotypes of “failing” student teachers who do not achieve traditional benchmarks, this new lens highlights the complexity, diversity and inequality of experiences through listening to the voices of the student teachers and their mentors. By valuing context and focusing on progress and development rather than absolute attainment, teacher educators are challenged to reflect on their own role as mentors and educators through guiding principles of practicum learning. These guiding principles of practicum learning are the result of significant observation in the practicum classroom followed by critical analysis of data provided as narrative. A more humane, trusting and respectful attitude towards assessment is suggested.     

Capturing the Complexity of Practice: A self-study in the context of engineering education

This article is based on a project in which a teacher educator, acting as a critical friend, worked with six engineering teachers in a Masters program in Machine Engineering in order to stimulate their reflection on their own teaching and learning as a way of developing their scholarship of teaching. The article draws particular attention to ways of expressing the learning from self-study in order to illuminate the complexities of teaching and to begin to encourage the articulation of the scholarship of teaching as a consequence of a collaborative experience. The results highlight how making teaching visible through the use of self-study offers new ways to capture the complexity of practice, which in this article is considered to be an important aspect of developing the scholarship of teaching.     

Teacher collaborative inquiry in the context of literacy education: examining the effects on teacher self-efficacy,instructional and assessment practices

This case study research reports on elementary (grade 8) and secondary school (grade 9) teachers’ participation in job-embedded, professional learning and engagement in collaborative inquiry. Teachers constructed an inquiry-oriented media literacy unit following the collaborative inquiry model. The current study sought to investigate how collaborative inquiry influenced their self-efficacy in literacy instruction, instructional and assessment practices. Qualitative data sources included researchers’ anecdotal notes, teacher interviews, and professional learning blog conversations. Inductive analyses of the data generated six major themes comprising enhancements to teachers’ literacy instructional and assessment practices, which were evident in their adoption of the backward-design model, use of success criteria, and greater emphasis on diagnostic and formative assessment. With respect to teachers’ self-efficacy, data analyses also revealed increased levels of intrinsic motivation, professional satisfaction, and reflective practice. This study provides evidence for the transformative potential and characteristics of school-based teacher collaborative inquiry and the resultant impacts on teacher learning.     

Those who can,teach: the academic quality of preservice students in teacher education programmes in Taiwan

Difficulty in recruiting high-calibre individuals into teaching is a perennial issue in the field of teacher education. In some countries, students in teacher programmes are in general found to be lower in academic standing than their counterparts in other fields, which might lead to belief in the old saying that “those who cannot, teach.” In contrast to such discouraging phenomenon, based on analysis of a nationally representative data set, preservice students in Taiwan are found to be academically more outstanding than their nonteaching peers. Underlying policy and sociocultural contexts of such a positive phenomenon of “those who can, teach” are explained and implications for educators are discussed.     

Teachers' environmental education as creating cracks and ruptures in school education: a narrative inquiry and an analysis of teacher rhetoric

This article discusses a narrative inquiry as a methodology for understanding and examining teachers' interpretations of their environment‐related teaching experiences. Focusing on the value of teacher stories for interrogating the discursive practices of schools as institutional contexts, four main rhetorical themes are identified to illustrate how teachers' engagements in practice and thinking with environmental education display ongoing identity work. Five Korean secondary science teachers' stories illustrate the dynamic processes and interplay between multiple discourses, such as the ‘proper’, ‘good’, ‘science’ teacher, and the cultural norms, resources and subject positions available to them, as they take up and explain their own and others' meanings and subject positions in science education and environmental education. The paper discusses the value of narrative inquiry to conceptualising teacher agency in ways that offer alternatives to conventional research perspectives in this field, and in taking account of the possible meanings of environmental education, the possibility of creating cracks and ruptures in the ‘sense‐making’ discourses and ‘sense that is made’ of experiences of environmental education and school education more widely.     

Stories of self,stories of practice: enacting a vision of socially just pedagogy for Latino youth

This narrative inquiry examines how one Latina novice teacher articulates and implements a vision of teaching for social justice within the contexts of her teacher education program and her practice as a bilingual resource teacher. Informed by Latino/a critical race (LatCrit) theory, the analysis traces connections between stories of self and practice, focusing on her development of an innovative middle school literacy course for Spanish speakers. This article highlights the ways in which she recruits her experiences as a member of a marginalized group and brings them to bear on practice in the crafting of a critical pedagogy that takes learners’ interests and concerns as central while encouraging social action. Findings are discussed in light of the following themes: critical questioning and resistance; analysis of systems of oppression and positioning; and encouraging social action and practicing democracy. This study has implications for teacher preparation committed to socially just pedagogies for all children, but especially for Latino/a youth.     

Technology,learning and instruction: distributed cognition in the secondary English classroom

In this paper, we analyse interactions between secondary students and pre‐service teachers in an online environment in order to understand how their meaning‐making processes embody distributed cognition. We begin by providing a theoretical review of the ways in which literacy learning is distributed across learners, objects, tools, symbols, technologies and the environment in modern English language arts classrooms. This is followed by a case study where we identify how programme values, textual resources and cultural schema function as distributed tools. In traditional schools, with an emphasis on taking standardised tests, the learning environment is designed on the view that learning is a transaction that happens solely ‘inside the head’. Unfortunately, this pushes many students to the margins of classroom engagement and participation. By analysing students' and pre‐service teachers' online discourse, we argue that virtual spaces can facilitate critical dialogue and can act as catalysts for a distributed theory of mind.     

Information Communication Technology (ICT) integration in a science education unit for preservice science teachers; students' perceptions of their ICT skills, knowledge and pedagogy

There is an expectation that new science teachers will be able to effectively use a range of information communication technology (ICT) related resources inthe science classroom in order to enhance student learning. All school systems in Australia are in the process of providing teachers with ICT professional development and infrastructure. This paper outlines a range of initiatives designed to integrate ICT in a compulsory science education unit for students enrolled in a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education. An action research model based on constructivist principles was used to evaluate the effectiveness of modelling, open-ended co-operative group activities and authentic assessment in enabling students to enhance their ICT skills, knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in a science education context. Multiple sources of data were generated including a pre and post unit questionnaire that was analysed using Rasch modelling. The questionnaire determined students' perceptions of their preparedness to teach using ICT. The findings of this research suggest that some skills warranted greater attention in the unit, but students' pedagogical knowledge and knowledge and critique of ICT resources were enhanced over the duration of the unit.     

The power of student resistance in action research: teacher educators respond to classroom challenges

The purpose of this research was to study the design and implementation of a newly developed, two‐semester, action research course in a Master of Arts in Teaching program. Over a four‐year period, we (the instructors) used action research methodologies for analysis and evaluation of the course. Throughout this study, students expressed varying reactions to the process of action research, ranging from enthusiasm and acceptance to continual and persistent reluctance to accept the process as ‘real research’. This resistance is the focus of our study. Four years of reflection on our data points to the following reasons for student resistance: lack of understanding about what action research is and its purpose; a discomfort with the emphasis of process over product and the associated investment of time and ability to multi‐task; and willingness to embrace the transformational process of action research as part of learning to teach.     

A case for critical literacy analysis of the advertising texts of menstruation: responding to missed opportunities

When Agnew found the same, largely negative, dominant discourses of menstruation present in classroom lessons that researchers have been identifying for over 30 years, she sought different approaches to menstruation education. In this article the authors highlight the power of the media to (re)construct dominant discourses of menstruation and the potential for teachers to use the texts of the media to make explicit constructions of menstruation. We present two excerpts from New Zealand research, which illustrate missed opportunities for teachers and students to deconstruct dominant discourses of menstruation using advertising texts. These extracts suggest that students may be more engaged if teachers work with the texts of advertising to discuss menstruation. We propose critical literacy as a powerful resource teachers and students can develop to analyse advertising texts in order to open up spaces for alternative discourses of menstruation to emerge.     

Too Important to Quit: A Call for Teacher Support of Art

The author argues that general education teacher candidates must learn to “­re-start” art to empower them with the skills needed to realize art’s promise within their future classrooms. Entry/exit surveys completed by candidates ­revealed that an art methods course corrected misconceptions about the nature of creativity and improved candidates’ confidence in their artistic skills.     

Policy Changes in Brunei Teacher Education: Implications for the Selection of Trainee Teachers

To improve quality, teacher education programs in Brunei were recently eliminated at the undergraduate level and changed to master of teaching degree courses. Prospective teachers are required to obtain content-rich initial degrees prior to applying for teacher training. This study argues that the high entry qualification to teaching may, in itself, not guarantee teacher effectiveness. This study was to determine if those in teacher training were good candidates for long and effective teaching careers.     

Visual narrative: a technique to enhance secondary students' contribution to the development of inclusive, socially just school environments – lessons from a box of crayons

This paper reports on a project that involved Australian secondary school students working as participatory researchers in collaboration with a researcher and two teachers. Research methodology using visual narrative techniques provided the students with a conceptual lens to view their school community. The examples of visual narrative shared in this presentation depict problems, contradictions of exclusion and celebrations of inclusion in the lived world of the students. Photographs combined with narratives represent students' views of their social, cultural and political environment. This project illustrates how the insights of students can help break down assumptions, values and meanings that block progress to achieving more socially just schools.     

Change,Changing, and Being Changed: A study of self in the throes of multiple accountability demands

Using the narrative inquiry research method, this self-study of my teacher education practices examines the influence of four simultaneous accountability reviews – a national accreditation review, a regional accreditation review, a university system review, and local campus review – on my personal experiences and identity within academia. The inquiry offers a public view of private practice, explores the hidden curriculum of the accountability phenomenon, reveals cover stories individually and collectively lived, and illuminates how my knowledge of accountability increased. Drawing on evidence excerpted from journal entries, work samples, historical documents and meeting notes, I reconstruct a series of changes concerning human subjects reviews, course syllabi requirements, student assignments, grading procedures and personal productivity. The self inquiry reveals individual and institutional compromises that were made to achieve acceptable measures of success as determined by external agencies. Most of all, hard lessons learned amid multiple accountability agendas are brought to the forefront for discussion and analysis. The accumulation of self-studies such as this helps to show the nature of the accountability phenomenon and its pernicious impact on teacher educators' work and personal images of teaching. Such studies demonstrate how desperately productive change is needed in the fields of teaching and teacher education.     

Living Un/Grammatically in a Grammatical World: The Pedagogic World of Teachers and Students

In my work with preservice teachers I face daily a dilemma. My student-teachers come to me with an urgent practical agenda: What do I need to know in order to survive in the world of school? In effect they want me to tell them how to fit into a world that they assume is structured like a grammar, with traditions and conventions and rules and patterns. They are seeking ways to conform to the pedagogic world as it has been written, but I hope they will seek ways to transform the pedagogic world, always written and always in the process of being written. I hope my student-teachers will seek ways to write, actively and deliberately and imaginatively, the pedagogic world of students and teachers. I want them to learn to live un/grammatically, to challenge the ways in which the world has been written for them, to know that they are not only written by the world, but that they also write the world. I invite my students to write the unwritten sentences, the sentences that interrogate and subvert syntax and semantics, the sentences that create spaces where my students can live un/grammatically.