Becoming Teacher Researchers: Resistance, Inquiry, and Appropriation

• In Event: Looking Inward as a Critical Pathway to Teaching Excellence

Abstract

This paper examines the socialization of four cohorts of teachers to become teacher researchers. Through a University-urban district partnership, teachers and researchers engaged in co-participatory action research to improve learning for ELs. The participants designed and implemented units that integrated mathematics and science curriculum grounded in funds of knowledge. They drew on sociocultural views of learning, including discourse analysis to reflect and refine how they organized learning. Through this process teachers moved from novice to expert teacher research identities. This paper examines the complexities and contestations of how teachers shift epistemologically, ideologically, and practically in becoming teacher-researchers.

Authors

• Aria Razfar, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Joseph C. Rumenapp, Judson University

• Ambareen Nasir, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Zayoni Nidia Torres, University of Illinois at Chicago