Developing Teacher Leadership in an Alternative Pedagogical "Second Classroom" Thinking Space

• In Event: Teacher Leaders and Collaborative Inquiry

Abstract

This study documents a group of urban elementary school teachers who created a ‘second classroom’ at their school site. The ‘second classroom’ they created was physically located on their school campus, however, intellectually it was a discursive environment. That is, it was an alternative pedagogical context, symbolically distinct from their ‘first classroom,’ or daily school contexts that were constrained by the rigid structures and conservative social norms of urban public schooling. Our study documents observations over the course of two years in this alternative space where teachers created an environment to study and critique their practice collectively and to have time and space to resist, subvert and contest the reductive and deprofessionalizing practices they faced on a regular basis.

Authors

• Sarah Capitelli, University of San Francisco

• Julie M. Nicholson, Mills College

• Anna E. Richert, Mills College