Teaching Out Loud: Teacher Inquiry as an Intergenerational, Critical Community of Practice

• In Event: Finding (Y)Our Pack: Coming Together to Inform and Transform Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
Teacher professional development increasingly mirrors the U.S. educational policy environment with a disproportionate focus on testing, curriculum implementation, and accountability and little input from teachers’ themselves (Dana & Yendel-Hoppey, 2009). In New Mexico, for example, teachers have faced a punitive evaluation system (Author, 2017) and a lack of autonomy (Author, 2017) as the state now faces a record number of teacher shortages (Perea, 2018) and decreasing enrollment in teacher education programs. This paper documents a community of practice that evolved from these challenges - an intergenerational professional development initiative titled Teaching Out Loud (TOL)- that centers the voices of educators in designing their professional learning experiences. The group consists of six members: a Hispanic female pre-service elementary teacher; a White, female pre-service elementary teacher; a Latinx, Gay male pre-service English teacher; a Black male English teacher with six years of experience; a White, female 4th grade teacher with 13 years of experience; and a White, middle class university professor.

Theoretical framework
TOL is underpinned by critical literacy theory, focusing primarily on the concept of re-design (Janks, 2000) as the group created curricular and pedagogical classroom engagements that contrasted sharply with reform efforts underway in the state and offer alternate images of what teaching and learning could be for students from historically-marginalized communities.

Methods
We draw on teacher research methodologies and participatory action research approaches, acknowledging that both action research and teacher research centralize “working against the grain” (Cochran-Smith, 2004) and challenging business-as-usual in schools (Hulse & Hulme, 2012). Thus, we begin from the premise that teachers and other practitioners are generators of knowledge and that this knowledge is fundamental to the shaping and re-shaping of educational institutions (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999). Specifically, as practitioner researchers “theorize from the thick of things” (Simon & Campano, 2013, p. 22), they aim to construct counter-narratives that highlight students’ capacities and capabilities (Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti, 2005) in lieu of relying on deficit discourses (Comber & Kamler, 2004).



Data sources
Data was collected over the course of an academic year during which time the TOL participants met on a regular basis to design and implement critical inquiry projects in their respective classrooms and to share and analyze relevant data. Data sources include semi-structured interviews with participants, artifacts collected from classrooms- including lesson plans, field notes taken by individual teachers, student work samples, etc.- and field notes and audio recordings of the inquiry group meetings.
Results
Our findings suggest that the intergenerational space offered by TOL fostered collaboration and critical engagement in ways that seldom occur in mainstream professional development settings. By sharing vulnerabilities, problems of practice, institutional challenges, aspects of their identities, and innovative, critical pedagogies, participants in TOL built collective knowledge and challenged policies and practices that they deemed counterproductive to advancing equity for marginalized youth.

Scholarly Significance
We suggest that these types of co-created, collective spaces for both practicing and pre-service educators have transformative potential - specifically against the backdrop of neoliberal reform - as teachers imagine alternate possibilities in schools and classrooms.

Author

• Katherine Crawford-Garrett, University of New Mexico