Preparing Preservice English Teachers to Responsively Enact Socially Just Instruction Within Complex Relationships and Systems

• In Event: Developing Equity-Oriented Educators

Abstract

Learning about socially just English language arts instruction fosters preservice teacher (PST) commitment to enacting equitable instruction. Challenges arise, however, when PSTs work to apply their learning in “real world” secondary classrooms where relational and systems complexities threaten their ability to act on commitments. Thus, questions persist about how to help PSTs navigate these complexities so that they do not perpetuate inequitable practices or personal biases. Drawing on data from five years of study, we identify concrete methods for teaching PSTs how to frame and reframe emergent challenges, or sticking points, through everyday interactions within specific classroom cultures and systems. Efforts to teach this transferrable negotiation process support PST development of a skillset for responsively enacting socially just instruction.

Authors

• Danielle Lillge, Illinois State University

• Maggie Morris Davis, Illinois State University

• Eliana Ladas

• Kaitlyn Blake, Illinois State University