A Case of Generativity in a Culturally and Linguistically Complex English Language Arts Classroom

This article examines an ESL English language arts teacher’s conceptions of linguistic diversity, literacy learning and her role as teacher in a culturally and linguistically complex classroom. It further examines her processes of learning about, and developing curricular and pedagogical innovations to meet, her students’ learning needs. The successes and paradoxes of, as well as constraints to, those efforts are explored. The paper uses Ball’s theory of generativity and recent research on effective English language arts instruction in culturally and linguistically complex classrooms to facilitate analysis. It offers some implications for teachers’ development of generativity for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students.     

Teaching English language learner students in US mainstream schools: intersections of language,pedagogy, and power

This study explored to what extent two groups of mainstream teachers in the Midwestern region of the USA with differing degrees of English language learner‐specific university preparation reportedly engaged in practices that incorporated the native languages of English language learner students in instruction. The study further examined specific strategies reported by mainstream teachers in promoting native language use in instruction as well as challenges identified in implementing this practice. The study used a mixed‐method design that included analyses of survey data from a quantitative study (n = 227) and qualitative analyses of teacher discourse from course documents and open‐ended survey questions. Findings indicated that while both groups of teachers reportedly engaged in practices that promoted native language use in instruction to some extent, teachers with at least three courses of English language learner‐specific university preparation appeared to engage in these practices to a much greater extent than those without such preparation. This paper explores the implications of results from this study for teacher education programmes in the USA with the responsibility of preparing teachers effectively to serve growing numbers of culturally and linguistically diverse student populations.     

Impact of Course and Fieldwork on Multicultural Beliefs and Attitudes

This study investigated preservice teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students when progressing through specially designed courses. Data were collected using the Teacher Multicultural Attitude Survey and semi-structured interviews. Analyses indicated that preservice teachers who received more multicultural preparation held more positive attitudes and based their attitudes more on academic preparation than on personal experiences. Preservice teachers who completed the multicultural course and English for speakers of other languages field placement had a more in-depth understanding of how to help culturally and linguistically diverse students.     

Inviting conversation: meaningful talk about texts for English language learners

In Canada, as in other anglophone countries, classrooms are becoming more diverse as the number of English language learners (ELLs) increases. More and more teachers are faced with the task of meeting the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. In this article, I share excerpts of dialogue between ELL students, native English‐speaking children and their teacher during guided reading events. Excerpts will illustrate how conversations around texts during reading activities can shape and extend the construction of meaning for the benefit of all, but especially for ELL students. Based on Vygotsky's (1986) proposition that learning is socially situated, I suggest four ways for teachers to structure meaningful conversations: through questioning, teaching vocabulary, engaging in collaborative talk and recognising that the culture and identity of the child are important to literacy learning.     

Becoming a literacy teacher: approximations in critical literacy teaching

The new literacy studies (NLS) is a tradition of research that includes ethnographic work on literacy that has many applications for classroom teachers. The NLS include explorations of local literacies and critical literacy as well as the notion of literacy itself. When teachers draw on the NLS, students are able to draw on their practices in critical and transformative ways. However, NLS perspectives have not been used to examine how teachers are prepared in pre‐service programs and the ways critical literacy practices develop. This paper examines how two pre‐service teachers learn to take up definitions of local literacies in their work with students from racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse backgrounds in practicum settings. They use approximations in literacy teaching to design practices with students, demonstrating the process of becoming a teacher of literacy. I conclude with recommendations for teacher educators who are interested in supporting such approximations.     

“What Do We Know about Elementary Social Studies?”: Novice Secondary Teacher Educators on Learning to Teach Elementary Social Studies Methods

This collaborative self-study examines the critical friendship of two doctoral students charged with teaching a methods course in elementary social studies. The authors formed a critical friendship in Fall 2010, initiated by participation in a teacher educator community of practice that encouraged collaboration. With limited experience in elementary education, the authors created a space to investigate the limitations and opportunities in teaching a course outside their educational expertise. The result was a space of support in three forms: pedagogical, affective, and intellectual. Pedagogical support was provided through the process of curriculum development and the sharing of classroom strategies, affective support resulted from the validation of feelings related to status and time, and intellectual support allowed the authors to uncover personal philosophies for teaching elementary social studies and to analyze how program structures influenced their instruction. Findings suggest that novice teacher educators could benefit greatly from critical friendships that may help them become more reflective and better navigate the process of learning to teach teachers. In addition, the authors found that critical friendships can minimize the feelings of being an outsider and allow for collaborative insights into the inner workings of teacher education.     

“If Carmen Can Analyze Shakespeare,Everybody Can”: Positions,Conflicts, and Negotiations in the Narratives of Latina Pre-Service Teachers

This study, focusing on the life stories of three pre-service Latina teachers in the United States, explored how they positioned themselves as learners of English and teachers of Spanish in their oral narratives, and how their past experience as minority students shaped their current professional identity negotiations as language teachers. Positioning analysis of their narrative accounts indicated that these female teachers, throughout their education, felt different or isolated because of their ethnic identity, language background, and socioeconomic class. They negotiated memberships in different communities across settings in their lives. Understanding the conflicts and struggles that they experienced and unique strategies that they used to overcome them will hopefully provide insights for all teachers and teacher educators in linguistically and culturally diverse contexts.     

Inside a beginning immigrant science teacher’s classroom: an ethnographic study

Teaching is a highly personal endeavor shaped by ‘funds of knowledge’ and beliefs about teaching, learning, and students. This case study examines how one Asian immigrant teacher’s personal expectations and beliefs influenced his expectations of students and the teaching and instructional strategies he employed. His expectations of students’ behavior and their failure to conform to his expectations influenced him to utilize more traditional, didactic instructional practices and responses to classroom management dilemmas. It is generally assumed that immigrant and minority students will benefit from exposure to teachers from similar backgrounds, and that ethnically diverse teachers can better prepare minority students for the multicultural workplace and global economy. This study focuses on the role a teacher’s background and experiences play in development of their beliefs about teaching and learning, their expectations of students, and the instructional decisions they make regarding teaching and learning. This study suggests that teachers draw on their personal histories and cultural understandings to create classroom practices which are molded by microcosms of personal ‘funds of knowledge’ and beliefs about teaching and learning. In contrast to conventional wisdom and unquestioned myths, this study emphasizes the importance of knowing that teachers’ cultural backgrounds do not necessarily qualify them to provide the most appropriate instructional environment for students from similar cultural backgrounds. This study suggests that all teachers need to learn to recognize and negotiate the unique social elements culturally diverse students bring to the classroom.     

Constructing critical autoethnographic self-studies with white educators

Autoethnography was used as a tool for white in‐service elementary teachers to examine their racial identity from a Critical White Studies (CWS) perspective. Two white in‐service teachers participated in two yearlong university courses focused on teaching linguistically and culturally diverse students. Each teacher collected their own data at their school site and used autoethnographic methods to critically analyze their own teaching experiences and personal reflections. Results from the study illustrate the ways in which autoethnographic study can be used as an instrument for white teachers to frame their own critique of their white racial identity, as it relates to their classroom instruction.     

Multilingual primary classrooms: an investigation of first year teachers’ learning and responsive teaching

This article draws on the analysis of 26 interviews with newly qualified primary teachers (NQTs) in one multilingual city in England, towards the end of their induction year. Interview analysis focused on three themes: developments in pedagogic practice, collaboration with colleagues, resolutions for change or development. Detailed thematic analysis confirmed that NQTs were engaged in reflection about how to respond to diversity, in some cases building on awareness raised in teacher education. Learning on the job was a frequent theme but five respondents still expressed lack of confidence about their approaches. Twenty-one NQTs believed that they had begun to develop responsive forms of teaching, aided by support from and collaboration with other colleagues, including teaching assistants, many bilingual. Implications of the study are that both teacher education and educational research programmes need to give further time to the study and development of linguistically responsive forms of teaching.     

Redefining ‘community’ through collaboration and co-teaching: a case study of an ESOL specialist,a literacy specialist,and a fifth-grade teacher

This article explores the development of a professional learning community through a case study of three teachers – an ESOL specialist, a literacy specialist, and a fifth-grade teacher – who engaged in co-teaching and collaboration. The emerging community of practice offered these teachers a space to learn and problem-solve by utilizing their specialized disciplinary knowledge of students and expanding the application of reading strategies during language arts. Concurrently, opportunities for revising curriculum and instruction remained unrealized, as teachers struggled to negotiate roles and responsibilities within the top-down administratively initiated collaboration that required redefining their professional community. Implications and recommendations are discussed.     

Telling Their Side of the Story: African-American Students' Perceptions of Culturally Relevant Teaching

An increasing amount of scholarship has documented the salience of culturally relevant teaching practices for ethnically and linguistically diverse students. However, research examining these students' perceptions and interpretations of these learning environments has been minimal at best. In this article, the author details the findings from a study that sought to assess African-American elementary students' interpretations of culturally relevant teachers within urban contexts. Student responses indicated that culturally relevant teaching strategies had a positive affect on student effort and engagement in class content and were consistent with the theoretical principles of culturally relevant pedagogy. The qualitative data revealed three key findings that students preferred in their learning environments (1) teachers who displayed caring bonds and attitudes toward them, (2) teachers who established community- and family-type classroom environments, and (3) teachers who made learning an entertaining and fun process.     

Practicing What We Preach in Teacher Education: A Critical Whiteness Studies Analysis of Experiential Education

In this article I problematize the reasons for and methods through which I incorporated an opportunity for experiential learning, via a Community Inquiry Project, into my own teaching. I take the stance of a teacher-researcher to closely analyze the specific documents and tasks used to introduce pre-service teachers to the project. I draw on sociocultural approaches to teacher development and literature on experiential education in teacher education to provide a background for the project and the self-study and offer critical whiteness studies as an appropriate lens through which to analyze the various elements of the project. Findings from this study suggest that the project limited the pre-service teachers’ characterizations of community, understandings of sociocultural approaches to learning, relationships to the community, and perceptions of the role of community in teaching. I draw on these findings to suggest that teacher educators share their reflective practices with their students and learn about the diverse experiences of the pre-service teachers themselves to better prepare them to inquire into and draw on knowledge of communities as they work with diverse populations of students.     

Better serving the needs of limited English proficient (LEP) students in the mainstream classroom: examining the impact of an inquiry‐based hybrid professional development program

In this study, the authors examine the impact of an English as a second language (ESL) professional development offering designed to meet this challenge: the Modular Design for English Language Learners (MODELL) instruction program. The authors were part of a team of faculty that designed and developed this hybrid professional development program to support classroom teachers challenged with assessing and addressing the educational needs of limited English proficient (LEP) students. The authors theorize that observing and describing the trajectory and complexities of the professional development process might offer significant insights for teacher educators regarding ways to prepare teachers for working in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. What was discovered through this study was that the teachers learned a lot about themselves and what they were capable of doing in the classroom; they learned that their peers struggled with similar issues and that out of this camaraderie, a solid support network could be established; and they learned that the multicultural classroom environment could be an asset to teaching and learning.     

“The music is why I teach”: Intuitive strategies of successful teachers in culturally diverse learning environments

This study explored the classroom learning environments and instructional strategies of four teachers in culturally diverse classrooms. All teachers were deemed successful by their school colleagues, including administrators and instructional specialists, at meeting the needs of their culturally diverse students. The teachers in the study, who were teaching in four different regions of the U.S.A. and who represented different grade levels, taught in schools that contained richly diverse student populations. Using the constant comparative method of data analysis, I conducted a cross-case analysis of the teachers' learning environments. A primary focus of the research was the relationship between teachers' biographies and culturally sensitive classroom instruction. Three themes about culturally sensitive teaching emerged during data analysis: reshaping traditional school curriculum, rethinking the role of the teacher, and acquiring and using cultural sensitivity. Implications for preparing teachers for culturally diverse learning environments are discussed.     

Pre-service teachers’ use of tools to systematically analyze teaching and learning

Learning to systematically analyze the relationship between teaching and student learning is an important but difficult skill to engender in teachers. In this study, we examine how pre-service teachers who were introduced to a framework for analyzing teaching in a video-based teacher education course drew on this tool to analyze their own practice after the conclusion of the course. We conceptualize the framework as a conceptual tool that scaffolds pre-service teachers to learn to attend to particular dimensions of teaching and learning and to analyze how their teaching influences student learning. Using the Portfolio Assessment for California Teachers-Teaching Event of 14 English language arts pre-service teachers, we conducted a qualitative analysis to examine the extent to which they applied this framework to analyze their own practice after the conclusion of the course, as well as different strategies they adopted as they analyzed their teaching practice. Findings suggest that pre-service teachers made progress in using the framework to study their teaching, but development of sub-skills for all four facets are needed to develop more productive analyses of teaching and student learning. This study has important implications for the design of teacher education that intends to support pre-service teachers in developing tools for learning to learn from their teaching practice.     

Utilizing Community Cultural Wealth to Learn with Diverse Language Communities

Abstract

How to prepare teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students and families is an important aspect of teacher education as classrooms continue to diversify. Community-based approaches to teaching offer promising strategies for addressing this need. This article offers one example of an English as a Second Language literacy methods course that built preservice teachers’ understanding of and experiences with diverse language communities. Tara Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework provided a theoretical lens for the course and guided the preservice teachers’ teaching and reflections. The preservice teachers engaged in various activities that included literacy teaching, visiting places in their students’ communities, learning their students’ language, and creating narrative videos with the students and their families. The findings from this course show how the CCW framework can be a constructive method for identifying community assets when combined with a variety of activities for preservice teachers to engage with students and their families.     

How is cultural diversity positioned in teacher professional standards? an international analysis

Unprecedented levels of global mobility mean that culturally homogenous classrooms are now increasingly rare. This brings with it challenges for teachers and raises issues about what constitutes quality teaching and teachers. Professional standards are commonly seen as a key policy instrument through which teacher quality can be enhanced. This article presents an analysis of teacher professional standards from five of the most culturally diverse nations in the English-speaking world. Using critical discourse analysis, we examine how culturally and linguistically diverse learners and culturally responsive pedagogy are positioned, and what the standards stipulate teachers should know, and be able to do, in fulfilling their professional obligations. We conclude by raising concerns about how the official representations of teaching in particular national contexts fail to position culturally diverse learners and culturally responsive teaching as a priority.     

Redefining Interdisciplinary Curriculum: A Journey of Collaboration and Change in Secondary Teacher Education

When beginning to teach a secondary education course focusing on interdisciplinary curriculum together, four women teacher educators determined changes we hoped to make for the following semester. For example, we took up the notions of difference, arts integration, and collaboration all under the umbrella of interdisciplinary curriculum. We were in search of a model of interdisciplinarity that could incorporate our understanding of education and our teaching interests. We designed this model in order to guide our students into identifying themselves as educators rather than purely content-area specialists.Similarly, we saw this course as an opportunity to encourage collaborative practices. We could model team-teaching as our students planned interdisciplinary units together. Likewise, we could demonstrate to our students that transcending their own disciplines allows for more powerful teaching and learning. We saw redefining interdisciplinary curriculum as a route to encourage preservice teachers to teach for social justice and to show teaching's potential as a collaborative profession.This article narrates how we experienced the changes of crossing disciplines, co-teaching sections of the course, exploring arts integration, and providing practical experiences in four different voices. We use our varied voices as we hope the reader may then come to better understand our individual experiences as well as our collaborative journey. While we encountered several roadblocks on our travels, we also found that we offered opportunities for creating new knowledge among ourselves and our students.