Ambitious Writing Instruction as Critical Witnessing: Learning From a Practice-Based Model of Literacy Methods Preparation

• In Event: 68.060 - Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: 68.060-16 - Enacting Literacy: Fostering Disciplinary Instructional Practices and Equity-Centered Dispositions in Preservice Teachers

Abstract

1. Rationale/Objective
This paper describes a practice-based model of elementary literacy methods preparation designed to immerse novice teachers in pedagogies of enactment and integrate critical theoretical frameworks with a focus on “core practices” of literacy teaching. Through analysis of course documents and interviews with novice teachers and children, we share what was afforded by the location, structure, content, and pedagogies of the course.

2. Theoretical Perspectives
Cochran-Smith and Villegas’s recent review of research (2015) calls for the field of teacher education to address gaps in knowledge through investigations of the “practices [novices] took up”; as they “actually learned to teach”; “the impact of particular mixes of teachers’ characteristics, school contexts, and program features”; and, inequity as “rooted in and sustained by larger societal inequalities” (p. 17). The model of methods preparation we describe speaks to each of these imperatives by immersing NTs in a learning cycle of observation, planning, rehearsal, enactment, and immediate video debrief of writing instruction (Kazemi, et al, 2009; McDonald, Kazemi, and Kavanaugh, 2013). Our paper and the course we describe are also grounded in theories and pedagogies of “testimony and critical witness”; critical, feminist, and poststructuralist theories of discourse, power, and affect (Ahmed, 2010; Cruz, 2008; Greg & Seigworth, 2010; Sandoval, 2012); and studies of the intersections of lives and literacy as embodied and affective (Blackburn, 2011; Jones, 2013; Winn, 2011).

3. Data/Methods
We share the design of this multilayered model of literacy methods preparation: the “flooding” model of working with one classroom; incorporating the learning cycle in each full day session; and integrating critical-affective pedagogies and frameworks. We draw on data including: 1) interviews with undergraduate NTs and children. 2) artifacts, including NTs’ lesson plans, reflections and instructors’ lesson plans, handouts, and slides. 3) videotaped course sessions and NTs’ instruction with children. We analyzed data using a) thematic coding to locate patterns as well as unique responses. b) critical and poststructuralist approaches to discourse and narrative analysis of participants’ language in the context of larger discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, relationship, emotion, teaching and learning (Bhattacharya, 2009; Fairclough, 2013; Weedon, 1997) .

4. Results/Significance
Our analysis suggests that this model supports 1) TEs’ and mentor teachers’ opportunity for active modeling, coaching, and feedback on both instructional practices and dispositions; 2) learning how relationships with children shape our instructional decision making. 3) collaborating to understand equity and social justice in the context of shared interactions and opportunities for modeling by mentors. 4) planning with specific students in mind, including how to design for positive participation for all students. 5) positioning a classroom teacher as teacher educator. 6) TEs’ opportunities to respond to NTs learning in the moment and over time. 7) positioning k-5 students as our teachers.
As practice-based approaches gain momentum, TEs need to design and learn from new models of literacy methods preparation that integrate knowledge of effective instructional practices with the critical and emotional commitments required to support and sustain children’s opportunities to invest in learning.

Authors

• Elizabeth M. Dutro, University of Colorado Boulder

• Ashley Cartun, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Ellie Haberl, University of Colorado - Boulder