"We Can Do Something With Our Words": Constructing Humanizing Pedagogy in Reading and Writing Conferences

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 15

Abstract

The theoretical case for humanizing approaches to education is well-founded, necessitating research that examines how teachers and students might construct a humanizing pedagogy in their daily interactions. This study explores conferring as a space for humanizing pedagogical practice in the midst of and in tension with dehumanizing discourses circulating in an urban elementary school. It uses critical and reconstructive approaches to discourse analysis to examine literacy conferences conducted across six months of ethnographic data collection in three classrooms in a single school. This analysis identifies how teachers discursively built humanizing pedagogy through four interrelated elements: present-oriented educational purposes, horizontal teacher-student relationships, tailored curriculum, and strength-based instruction. These findings suggest how humanizing pedagogy might be locally constructed within dehumanizing educational contexts.

Author

• Laura A Taylor, Rhodes College