Building a Movement by Reading Together: Teacher Book Groups as Radical Professional Development

• In Event: 32.042 - Literature as Liberation: Culturally Responsive Teaching in Constrained Contexts

Abstract

This paper shares findings from an ethnographic study of a series of summer book groups sponsored by two teacher activist communities in a large urban area facing neoliberal reforms such as budget cuts, school closures, rapid charterization, and high stakes testing. The book groups allowed teachers to engage with a wide range topics such as immigration reform, mass incarceration, and emancipatory education. Interviews, blog posts, and meeting notes were analyzed using the frameworks of transformative learning and learning within social movements. Findings reveal how the book groups enabled participants to analyze their worlds, themselves, and their teaching. This study illuminates possibilities for transformative teacher professional development and discusses implications for teacher educators, teachers, and those responsible for teachers’ professional development.

Author

• Kathleen Riley, West Chester University of Pennsylvania