Decentering "Academic" Writing: Teacher Solidarity as Fertile Ground for Axiological Shifts (Poster 5)

• In Event: Rising Education Scholars Interrogating Research-Practice Partnerships in Pursuit of Truth and Justice

Abstract

Dominant public and scholarly discourse about “academic” writing implies that equitable writing pedagogy involves disproportionate attention to improving “academic” writing skills, leading to recent increases in demands to teach ‘academic’ writing (National Governor’s Association, 2010; Flores, 2020). However, Flores (2020) argues that the ideological construct of academic language is not stably tied to objective empirical linguistic practices. Instead, he argues, in school settings, racialized and language-minoritized students are framed as linguistically deficient by the “white listening subject” and raciolinguistic language ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Flores, 2020).
Some white teachers report a perceived tension between preparing students for “academic” and career-based writing demands, versus teaching writing that is “joyful” (Lane, 2021; McCarthey et al., 2014). Indeed, language arts and writing spaces can be joyful, healing, caring, and humanizing sites of learning (Dutro, 2013; Winn, 2014; Garcia & Wei, 2014). But the current neoliberal emphasis on standards (Apple, 2000) narrows curricula (Gutiérrez, 2008) and makes authentic writing in school challenging (Dyson, 2020). Further, recent Covid-19-related learning loss discourses have increased, all while teachers have reported primarily wanting to support children through crises (Reich & Mehta, 2021a&b; Northey et al., 2021).
The present study was designed to address these tensions using participatory design methodologies (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010), including a framework of teacher solidarity (Philip et al., 2022) in order to collectively design a learning environment (Ishimaru et al., 2022) focused on more-just experiences of school-based writing. In efforts to resist raciolinguistic ideologies of language, a translingual language ideology has the potential to decenter the “white listening subject” and “academic” writing (Flores, 2020; Horner et al., 2011; García & Kleifgen, 2020). My partner teacher and I–both white teachers–studied these approaches as we worked to co-design writing instruction, resist raciolinguistic language ideologies, and see young people’s writing practices “anew” (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010). Our work aimed to create a space of mediated praxis to interrogate how translingual approaches could disrupt historically inequitable spaces of school writing. Specifically, I asked: how can collaborative research support expansive learning around what school-based writing can be?
My partner teacher and I collaborated for two academic years; data sources include audio-recorded and roughly-transcribed design meetings, semi-structured teacher and student interviews, classroom observations, artifacts, photographs, and student writing. Initial analyses from deductive- and inductive-coding and iterative memo-ing of selected data sources suggest our collaboration mediated a shift in axiologies of writing, from the centering of “academic writing” to prioritizing writing as a heteroglossic, relational, and translingual site (García & Wei, 2014) of meaningful participation (Espinoza et al., 2020): In November 2020, the teacher was focused on five-paragraph essays and student writing “look[ing] polished.” In June 2022, he noted that writing had served the purpose of supporting students in learning about themselves and helping him learn about them. Writing shifted from something defined by what Flores & Rosa (2015) call the “white listening subject,” centering so-called ‘academic’ forms, to a multilingual creative social practice (García & Wei, 2014; Vossoughi et al., 2021).

Author

• Erin Lane, University of Washington
  Presenting Author