Agency, Audience, and Symbolic Bootstraps: Entries Into Critical, Humanizing Writing Instruction

• In Event: Critical and Social Justice Inquiry Through Curriculum Practices in the English Language Arts Classroom

Abstract

Writing instruction, particularly in schools serving marginalized communities, is often decontextualized and dehumanizing, and teachers are rarely given space to examine philosophies and tensions embedded in the instruction they are given. To work against these injustices, researchers should look closely at professional learning contexts that support teachers in transforming practice. This study examined how teachers across elementary, middle, and secondary grade-levels (re)imagined possibilities for writing instruction in an inquiry group. In this particular paper, I used sociocultural theories of identity to analyze data from one ninth-grade teacher’s interviews, inquiry group participation, and classroom instruction, elucidating how her participation in the inquiry group translated to critical, humanizing writing instruction and, ultimately, her altered identity as a teacher.

Author

• Charlotte L. Land, Pennsylvania State University