We Sing this Together?: Using Jazz Aesthetics and Portraiture Methodology to Explore First-Year Teachers’ Experiences

• In Event: Straight, No Chaser: Critical Explorations of Endarkened Experiences in a Teacher Residency Through Jazz Aesthetics

Abstract

Objectives
Given the significance of initial teacher induction on retention and quality (e.g. Feiman-Nemser, 2010), we explored the influence of first year team teaching, a unique component of this teacher residency that was instituted to increase teacher retention. Utilizing portraiture methodology and jazz theory, we analyzed a range of data to render a multivoiced account. We ask: What are novice teachers’ experiences in the first year? How are elements of the teacher residency, namely the team-teaching, influencing the novice teachers’ experiences?
Theoretical Framework
Jazz as an endarkened epistemology (Dillard & Dixson, 2016) provides a theoretical framework for understanding socio historical instincts, acts of collaboration, responsivity, creative adaptation, and participatory storying across diverse contexts of practice, especially in education. Jazz theory, because of attention to tension, call-and-response, musical break and improvisation at the cross-roads is helpful in accounting for dynamics of teacher induction. Meacham (2001) describes the crossroads as a definitive moment of challenge or crisis and a fundamental cultural concept underlying all jazz improvisation. Through jazz theory, we analyze the teachers’ experiential “crossroads” during their induction year as impacted by the residency and team teaching.
Methods
We utilized elements of portraiture methodology (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005; Dixson et al., 2005) to shape our study. Given dominant deficit narratives around children of color, a critical element of portraiture methodology is the “search for goodness” (Lightfoot, 1983). It was imperative that we framed our research through a search for strengths while simultaneously analyzing challenges.
Data & Analysis
We focused on nine racially diverse teacher residents that we, two racially diverse professors, previously taught. Data collection (Spring 2022 to Spring 2024) included focus groups, individual and paired interviews, classroom and program observations, as well as teacher program coursework artifacts. To frame the analysis, we used Jazz theory (Dillard & Dixson, 2016; Meacham, 2001) and the “search for goodness” (Lightfoot, 1983). We engaged in a recursive process of thematic analysis (Saldaña, 2015) across the data sources to understand the teachers’ experiences and the influence of team teaching.
Findings
Jazz provided a framework for understanding the teachers’ broader experiences of growth and development with relation to facing complex conditions during their induction into the teaching profession. Each experienced a crossroads, or break, that unsettled them. It is here that Meachum (2001) describes the crossroads as a teacher “with an empty sonic landscape… faced with some uncertainty” that leads to improvisation and then affirmation that is analogous to “new level of consciousness” and patterns of enactment. Our findings highlight how team teaching both supported and challenged their progression through crossroads.
Significance
First, we follow Eve Tuck’s plead to researchers to “suspend” this damage-centered research – “research that intends to document peoples’ pain and brokenness” (p. 409) without robust reference to markers of strength and resilience. Second, we argue that new educators and those that support them must find novel ways to navigate challenges while holding accountable how new teachers come to be effective in supporting their students’ optimal outcomes.

Authors

• Renata Love Jones, Georgia State University

• Cori Salmerón, Georgia State University