Digital Pausing: Cultivating Culturally Relevant Pedagogies in Preservice Social Studies Teacher Education

• In Event: The "Invisible" Resonance: (Re)Imagining Writing for a "Just Present" in Local and Global Technoscapes

Abstract

Writing has the potential to be transformative and liberatory for students (Chavez, 2021). However this is often unrealized in humanities classrooms, where writing instruction often centers language policing, reinforcing colonial, dominant norms (Chavez, 2021; Flores, 2016). This practitioner research study (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) examines what happens when pre-service social studies teacher candidates (TCs) “pause” (Patel, 2014) using digital tools to critically reflect on theories of language that undergird their visions of writing instruction. To understand the utility of these digital pauses, we ask: what intertextual traces from digital pauses appear in the writing instruction TCs design for their student teaching placements?
We theorize that “pausing” (Patel, 2014) might be one way to disrupt TCs propensities towards language policing and normative forms of writing (Flores, 2016; Mena, 2022), productively questioning the assumptions, values, emotions, and beliefs behind taken-for-granted ideas, and fostering the consideration of alternative, more culturally sustaining actions (Argyris, 1991; Paris, 2012; Schön, 1983; Zembylas, 2014). We developed a protocol for “pausing” (Figure 1) to interrupt TCs’ language policing and cultivate alternative action possibilities. We also draw on theories of intertextuality to study uptake and resonance among digital writing, multimodal composing, and oral classroom discussion (Bazerman, 2004; Olsen et al., 2018).
Context and participants. Our sample was a cohort of 6 social studies TCs enrolled in the same social studies methods course as part of a master's program at a large, mid-Atlantic university (See Appendix A for PST demographics).
Data sources and analysis. Primary data sources are from 4 class sessions in which PSTs “paused", responded to Padlets (n=4) and participated in discussions about the Padlets (n=4), as well as TCs' final interviews (n=6) and unit plans (n=6). To understand how pauses “traveled” into TC’s planning and enactment of writing instruction, final interviews and unit plans were analyzed using intertextual tracing across verbal and digital writing modalities (Author & Colleague, 2014; Fairclough, 1992; Olsen et al., 2018; Prior, 2015).
We report one finding through one PST, Daniel, from our first pause, which asked teachers to consider their own relationships to writing. In the reflective Padlet (Figure 2), Daniel describes how he perceives himself at times to have “great stories,” and uses “voice memos” while composing. In the follow-up discussion, the class questioned whether writing had to be written, what it means to write authentically in disciplinary ways, and the importance of teaching multiple genres. We see thematic traces in the modality Daniel's selected for his final unit assignment (a podcast) and its focus on genre and audience, which extend ideas raised in the Daniel's Padlet and subsequent discussion. Notably, these traces are related to culturally relevant pedagogy, and challenge normative ideologies related to writing.
We see digital “pausing” as directly responding to AERA’s call, supporting future teachers to destabilize normative writing ideologies that often function silently through language policing in humanities classrooms.

Authors

• Andrew del Calvo, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

• Amy Guillotte, University of Pennsylvania

• Tess Bernhard, University of Pennsylvania