"On the Edge of Something": Exploring the Intimacies of Learning to Be Teacher-Researchers

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Remaking the Word to Rewrite the World: A Convergence of Diverse Practitioners and Literacy Practices

Abstract

Objectives
This paper explores the ways teacher candidates, who are explicitly positioned as “co-teachers/learners” and “co-researchers” in our project, grapple with what Gallagher (2008) describes as the “tension between standing apart and being fully involved” (p. 67) in the teaching/research encounter. We examine the ways teacher candidates negotiate their roles as co-teacher-researchers as they explore “sensitive” and “controversial” topics with middle school students in two literature circle discussions about the young adult novel, The Hate U Give (2017).

Theoretical framework
Gallagher (2018) reminds us that qualitative researchers face the “perennial dilemmas of distance and proximity to research ‘subjects’, be they people or constructs” (p. 91). Practitioner research traditions, which inform our literacy teaching and research methods, seek to close the gap between researchers and subjects by mining existing social relations and “capitalizing on the tensions between research and practice, researcher and practitioner, conceptual and empirical research, local and public knowledge” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, p. 94). Building on Gallagher’s (2008; 2018) reflections on proximity, alongside Cobb’s (2012) and Whitlock’s (2012) writings about intimacy, this paper explores how teacher candidates move between reading, teaching, research, and practice.

Methods and data sources
Data for this paper are drawn from two hour-long literature circle discussions in response to The Hate U Give, which involved five teacher candidates from Author 2’s literacy teaching methods course, nine middle school students, and members of our research team. Transcripts of these discussions, along with the teacher candidates’ written and verbal reflections, analytic memos, and final inquiry projects, were analyzed using a constant comparative approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

Results
As teacher candidates participated in and reflected on their discussions, they simultaneously adopted roles as readers, teachers, students, and researchers. For those who read it, The Hate U Give raised difficult questions about the persistence of anti-Black racism—questions in which participating teacher candidates had various stakes. Reflecting on those discussions, one teacher candidate told us they were “worried about some of the [book’s] more mature content” and wondered how to support students to grapple with “sensitive” and “controversial” topics. Another candidate admired the “grace with which students talked about racism and cultural appropriation,” even as they expressed uncertainty about when and how to insert themselves into the dialogue. Others felt less satisfied with the discussions, feeling that “there was some resistance to getting into these more difficult topics.” “Sometimes it felt like we were on the edge of something,” one candidate told us. “I was hoping to get a little bit further.”

Scholarly significance
This paper attends to the intellectual and affective labour that emerging teacher-researchers engage in as “the borders between inquiry and practice are crossed” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, p. 94). As emblems of what Author 2 et al. (2019) call a “cosmopolitics of reader-response,” the discussions teacher candidates shared with youth offer points of entry to consider how intimacy and proximity shape the teaching-research encounter and generate productive tensions from which teachers learn to adopt more fluid and responsive roles.

Authors

• Ty Walkland, University of Toronto

• Rob Simon, University of Toronto