Emergent Understandings of Relationships in Literacy Instruction: Preservice Teachers' Analysis of Their Language-in-Practice

• In Event: 28.090 - MTCC Roundtable Session Nine
  In Roundtable Session: 28.090-10 - Learning to Language: Preservice Teachers' Examination of Their Own Language During Literacy Instructional Interactions

Abstract

Propose(s) and Perspective
The purpose of this paper is to examine how preservice teachers explore the languaging of mutuality and personhood within one-on-one literacy interactions. It builds on work in pre-service teacher education that focuses on analysis of classroom language to inquire into classroom instruction (Rogers & Mosley-Wetzel, 2014a; Rogers & Mosley-Wetzel, 2014b; Wetzel et al., 2015; Schieble, Vetter, & Meacham, 2015). Further, our perspective denominalizes the constructs of literacy, language and relationship to consider them as inseparable, mutually constitutive processes (Bloome & Willis, 2013). In light of these understandings, we believe it is crucial to explore with pre-service teachers how to create opportunities to language literacy such that students feel a sense of mutuality and togetherness as they learn to engage with language and literacy practices.
Methods & Data Sources
This line of analysis examines interactional data between preservice teachers in one-on-one literacy instructions and preservice teachers’ reflections on those interactions. More specifically, for a literacy methods course the preservice teachers recorded themselves conferring with a student. They then selected and transcribed a moment in which they recognized mutuality and relationality between themselves and their student. They were also asked to write a written reflection on the interaction guided by a set of questions.
Results
Analysis suggests that while the preservice teachers, with the support of the instructor, could identify moments of mutuality within their literacy instruction, when asked to reflect on those moments in writing they seemed to objectify students. That is, within the transcripts, preservice teachers seemed to identify moments where they and their students connected in what we argue were I-Thou orientations to personhood, (i.e. recognition of common humanity) (Buber, 1970). However, as the preservice teachers wrote about these moments, we noted a shift in relational orientation to a more objectifying I-It orientation (Buber, 1970). One way the preservice teachers indexed this shift was by drawing on jargon like student-centered and feedback, and when they discussed planning future events where they focused on "draw[ing] out the student's personality," rather than on the relational and mutual interaction between them. Interestingly, in informal conversations with the instructor pre-service teachers talked more expressively about their relationships with students in ways that reflected an arguably more I-thou orientation. These patterns make us wonder about how preservice teachers understand and take up the "genre” of reflection and the concepts of relationality and mutuality.
Within this alternative format session, attendees will be invited to examine these transcripts and respective reflections to consider how preservice teachers orient themselves to different conceptualization of personhood, rooted in Buber’s (1970) I-It/I-Thou definitions of relational personhood.
Significance
This paper reveals the complexities in facilitating a perspective of classrooms as relationally languaged into being. This work demonstrates how engaging in the reconstruction of classroom life through the study of language reveals hegemonic and normalized structures and understandings about the teaching and learning of literacy that may hamper efforts to shift toward a different way of "doing" being human together in classrooms (Janks, 2005).

Authors

• Faythe P Beauchemin, The Ohio State University - Columbus

• Michiko Hikida, The Ohio State University - Columbus