Becoming Critical: Supporting Progressive Identity Development in Preservice Teachers Through Reflective Writing Practice

• In Event: 30.080 - Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: 30.080-9 - Promoting Critical Reflection in Teacher Education to Achieve the Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this study was to understand the potential of commonplace book practices (Sumara, 2002) to promote critical reflection and progressive professional identifications among mostly white and female preservice teachers (Jupp & Slattery, 2012). Along with Sleeter, I question whether direct and “heavy-handed” approaches to anti-racist and socially just education are uniformly best (while acknowledging this stance as a privileged one) (Sleeter & Jupp, in press). In order to forestall overt resistance, and the formation or reinforcement of race-evasive identities, this study inquires into the potential of commonplace book journaling and critical interpretative practices to support PSTs’ critical examination of their perspectives on race, white privilege, socially just education, and equity-driven literacy practices.

Theoretical Framework
Literacy practices, including interpretation, writing, and reflection, mediate constructions of self and identity (Moje & Luke, 2009; Sumara, 2002). While subjectivity is historically and discursively bound, and pure self-authorship without constraint a fiction, this study assumes that literacy practices can serve as agentive acts of becoming (in this case, progressive [white] teachers). Despite the potential obstacles of domesticated reflection and resistance to learning, this study positions (white) PSTs as capable of identifying as progressive, socially just, and race-conscious – as allies for change.

Data Sources & Analysis
This study occurred during a 15 week methods course for teaching English Language Arts at a university in the Southeastern United States. The course contained both a traditional academic component and a field component in local 6-12 public schools. Twenty-three PSTs and one teacher-researcher kept a daybook (professional journal) to create and store writing in varied genre, including (critical) reflective writing about various course texts and learning experiences in public schools. The data sources for this study include PSTs daybook writing about a range of topics, including, white teachers teaching other people’s children; color-blind and race-visible attitudes and pedagogies; culturally responsive teaching; and critical multicultural curriculum development. Data were analyzed using organizational coding -- combining inductive and deductive approaches -- to give space and voice to unpredictability and the unforeseen performative possibilities of writing (Maxwell, 2005).

Findings & Significance
Analysis of daybook journaling reveals PSTs performed critical reflection in various ways and were, to varying degrees, aware of these performances. Several students recognized that their writing contained the appearance, but not the substance, of critical reflection and progressive identifications (Atkinson, 2012). Many also recognized that they were hyper-focused on curriculum content (“we need a diverse curriculum of many voices”) as a placeholder and substitute for their inability or refusal to critically examine their deficit thinking and problematic attitudes related to difference. This study offers commonplace book journaling as a tool that teachers can offer students to become aware of their performances of reflection and, thus, the identities and commitments that underwrite them – so that we might live, act, and do better with other people’s children.

Author

• Brandon Lee Sams, Auburn University