Imagination as Discourse Awareness: Preparing Preservice Teachers to Navigate School Cultures

• In Event: 70.046 - Teacher Identity: Examining Perceptions of Race and Cultural Identity

Abstract

How does the creation of multimedia projects that engage real and imagined experiences of pre-service teachers make visible their negotiation of multiple discourses of literacy pedagogy and experience? Pre-service teachers enrolled in literacy methods courses in three Midwestern university contexts created first person narratives as digital stories that used images, music, and narration to construct understandings of literacy teaching and learning in an imagined future classroom. Framed by Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and ideological becoming (1981) and intricately related to visioning (Hammerness, 2006; Duffy, 2005), this study makes visible pre-service teachers negotiation of multiple discourses to maintain, disrupt, and create classroom contexts that accommodate their own understanding of these multiple and often conflicting voices in praxis.

Authors

• Jackie Sydnor, Ball State Unviersity

• Tammi R. Davis, University of Louisville

• Sharon Daley, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Linda Coggin, Indiana University