Writing for Social Justice: Preservice Teachers Creating Space for Agency and Power

• In Event: 25.086 - Sheraton Roundtable Session One - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 25.086-4 - Approaches to Critical and Powerful Writing Practice

Abstract

In an educational climate with limits on what counts as learning, it is important for educators to critically assess the ways in which they teach against the grain (Cochran-Smith, 1991). In this interpretative, single case study (Thomas, 2016), we explore how parallel writing workshops focused on writing for change influence preservice teachers’ enactment and envisionment of writing and the teaching of writing. We draw upon critical literacy (Lewison, Flint & Sluys, 2002) and writing as praxis (Yagelski, 2012) to understand the data. In examining the experiences of preservice teachers in language arts methods course, findings support an expansive view of writing, tools of empowerment and agency, and understanding of tensions when teaching writing for social justice.

Authors

• Erica Steinitz, The University of Texas at Austin

• Susan Tily, The University of Texas at Austin