Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Building A Beloved Community Of Literacy In Professional Spaces, Elizabeth Petroelje Stolle, Jennifer L. Vanderground

Michigan Reading Journal

This article shares the experiences of two literacy teacher educators who sought to create a beloved community for both themselves and the teachers with whom they work within their professional spaces. The authors emphasize the importance of fostering safe, collaborative environments that promote personal and professional growth. Drawing from the principles of the Beloved Community, popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the authors discuss the value of embracing a growth mindset when building such communities. Specifically, the article delves into two different professional development models as effective frameworks for cultivating beloved communities: Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and Learning Labs …

Understanding The Virginia Literacy Act, Candace Bechtold, Kimberly Bridges, David Naff, Joan A. Rhodes, Valerie Robnolt, Tara Davison, Suzanne Alexandre, Michael Crusco, Karli Johansen, Amber Butler, Allison Yandle, Jennifer Askue-Collins, Jean Samuel, Sharrie Merritte, Regina Frazier

MERC Publications

This research and policy brief from the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) offers an overview of the Virginia Literacy Act. It is structured to explore the following questions: 1) What are the recent trends in reading achievement in Virginia? 2) What are the policy implications of the VLA for Virginia school divisions? 3) What does the research say about Science of Reading (SoR)? 4) What core instructional programs are approved to meet the VLA? It concludes with a series of key takeaways and recommendations.

A Study Of Preservice Teachers' Preparedness To Teach Reading, Kelli Williams-Page

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

Only 35% of fourth graders in the United States can read at the proficient level, and only 34% of eighth graders can read proficiently (National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP], 2022). The purpose of this study was to determine how preservice teachers (PSTs) describe their experience of the methodology of teaching reading in their literacy courses. In addition, what specific strategies for teaching reading do PSTs describe as the focus for their teaching reading preparation, and how do PSTs describe the potential of the strategies learned in their coursework to help them teach reading in their future positions? This study …

Toward A Theory Of An Integrated Theoretical Approach Of Literacy For Black Boys, Aaron M. Johnson

Michigan Reading Journal

In the education landscape the literacy of Black boys is viewed from deficit framing. Often, educators, politicians, and laypeople point to scores on standardized assessments such as the MSTEP, NAEP, ACT, SAT, and NWEA, these tests only tell a part of the story. The part of the story that those assessments do tell is the abject failure of schools’ ability to engage Black boys in school-based literacy and catapult them into proficient and advanced proficient reading levels. The part of the story that those assessments do not tell is the literate lives that Black boys lead. Furthermore, schools do a …

Teacher Candidate Self-Efficacy And Ability To Teach Literacy: A Comparison Of Residency And Traditional Teacher Preparation Models, Doreen L. Mazzye, Michelle A. Duffy, Richard L. Lamb

Journal of Global Education and Research

This comparative study explored self-efficacy and ability for scientifically-based literacy instruction between a traditional and residency model of teacher preparation. Pre-/post-survey data was collected using the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy for Literacy Scale. Mentor teachers completed a modified version of the survey on candidates’ abilities. Data were analyzed using paired sample t-tests, independent sample t-tests, and a trend analysis. Results revealed that candidates in the Residency Model held higher levels of self-efficacy for literacy instruction than in the Traditional Model. Mentor teachers rated candidates in the Residency Model as more able to teach literacy than those in the …

“How Come There’S No Spelling?”: What Spontaneous Comments Teach Us About Student Thinking During Vocabulary Learning Tasks, Susan J. Chambrè

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Vocabulary development remains an active and robust research area, yet little is known about what students, particularly young students, think during vocabulary learning. A commonly held assumption is that young learners employ few, if any, cognitive and metacognitive strategies when engaged in literacy tasks. Conversely, decades of research confirms that older learners with active metacognitive tools are better equipped to make meaning from text, of which vocabulary is a crucial component. To better understand the strategies and metacognitive actions young students make when learning vocabulary, student comments (N = 35) spontaneously produced during two experimental vocabulary learning tasks were reviewed …

Wakanda: Opening The High School Classroom To Afrofuturism, Carrie M. Mattern

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Afrofuturism has a solid place in high school classrooms thanks to the current work of Ryan Coogler, but also to those who have been in this work for decades including the Mother of Afrofuturism herself, Octavia Butler, adrienne maree brown, dream hampton, and a litany of Black poets and artists. This article leaps inside an Afrofuturistic unit curated for high school seniors with feedback and insight from their teachers and also the students who buckled up for a journey through time, space, and place.

What Counts As Literacy In The Polytechnic Hispanic Serving Institution? Culturally Sustaining Frameworks For Writing Assignments, Assessment, And Language Use, Lisa Tremain, Jill Anderson, Beth Eschenbach, Nicolette Amann, Kerry Marsden

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article theorizes and describes classroom pedagogies that support the development of students’ disciplinary literacies through culturally sustaining, socially just approaches. Drawing primarily from the framework of culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSP) (Paris, 2012; Alim, Paris & Wong, 2020), the authors suggest strategies for writing assignment and assessment designs that support students’ multilingual and multiliterate ways of knowing. These strategies intentionally invite and integrate students’ multiple ways of knowing and being in and outside of the polytechnic HSI. They also ask instructors to decenter the ways that whiteness operates in their curricula and programs. The authors conclude the article by arguing …

Critical Representation: Mattering & Belonging For Students Of The Global Majority, Rebecca E. Haslam

Middle Grades Review

Critical representation in literature and curricula requires an emancipatory agenda and examination of the ways in which people of diverse racial, cultural, linguistic, and other socially marginalized identities are portrayed, an assessment of how relevant, affirming, and accurate those representations are, and a consideration of the impact on a child’s sense of self and ‘other.’ This essay includes sample audit criteria for critical representation highlighting five sections: Storyline & Sense of Justice; Affirmation & Self-Worth; Relationships Among People; Author/Illustrator Background; and Language & Terminology, all with a focus on ‘mattering’ and holistic wellbeing of students of the global majority. Audit …

Infographic: Language And Cognitive Skills In The Early Years, Zoe Kaskamanidis

Teacher infographics

Results from the 2021 Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) collection cycle show that of all early childhood developmental domains, children’s language and cognitive skills have seen the most significant shift. Find out more in today’s infographic.

7 Hands-On Strategies For Struggling Readers, Elise Murray, Stacey Murray

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

Struggling readers are found in almost every classroom across the world. With differing learning styles and abilities, teachers are encouraged now, more than ever, to be innovative when teaching foundational reading strategies. Within this article, readers are provided with a literature review of research and educational literature that discusses how multisensory, hands-on activities promote engagement and active learning for all students. The recommended seven hands-on learning strategies that can promote learning and support for struggling readers during literacy instruction include Build the Words, Feel the Words, Whole Body Letters, Five Finger Retell, Sight Word BINGO, …

Responsible Classrooms: Unfinalizability, Responsibility, And Participatory Literacy In Secondary English Language Arts, Emma Jamilah Gist

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines participatory literacy practice in secondary English language arts classrooms. While literacy achievement in this context is often measured according to a student’s ability to receive and repeat predetermined information within the scope of mandated curricula and standardized tests, this study attends specifically to classroom literacy practice that centers authentic, unanticipated, dialogic student response. Within its consideration of literacy practice, this study applies the Bakhtinian notion of unfinalizability to consider those conditions that allow for learning experiences that are not predetermined but are rather uniquely, unpredictably, and unrepeatably co-constructed by individual students, student groups, and teachers. These unfinalizable …

Virtual Free-Writing Journal Portfolios In An Intensive English Program In Iraq, Charles Mckinney

MA TESOL Collection

Middle-Eastern English language learners (ELLs), specifically Iraqi students, are often not well equipped to succeed in university settings where English is the medium of instruction (EMI) for their intended graduate and undergraduate studies. Oftentimes, they are weaker in their academic literacy skills, when compared to listening and speaking, and need extra scaffolding and/or remedial instruction to develop their reading and writing dexterity for overall academic success. One way to support their writing development is to implement free-writing journal projects that will enable them to cultivate an original writer voice, to think quickly and critically in the L2, and to integrate …

Student Centered Language Teaching: A Focus On Student Identity, Rachel Mano

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is a compilation of essays that describe what the writer has come to see as essential topics in second language acquisition. It begins with a professional environment piece, and then a teaching philosophy statement focused on student identity and interaction in the classroom. This is followed by an essay on observations of teaching. The next two sections focus on pragmatic resistance among advanced learners and the importance of preparing learners for peer interaction. The portfolio concludes with an annotated bibliography outlining the main concepts associated with Communicative Language Teaching, a method that is commonly employed in second language …

An Evaluation Of Educator Preparedness In Content Area And Disciplinary Literacies In The High School Classroom, Lauren E. Bernat

Dissertations

A secondary education debate that currently exists between the content area and disciplinary literacy is how content area and disciplinary literacy strategies and educator preparedness to teach those components to fit together to further student achievement. The purpose of my study was to evaluate if educators are prepared to teach content area and disciplinary literacy in high school content area classrooms. The context of this evaluation was to seek information from teachers and administrators about how literacy is integrated within high school classrooms in various communities across the United States. My study demonstrated both quantitative and qualitative data that reflect …

Linguistic Awareness And Dyslexia Beliefs Among Teachers Of Students Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired., Nosheen Gul, Lindsay N. Harris, Alicia Larouech, Gracie Strohm

CISLL Publications

US students who are blind or have visual impairments do not read at the level of a third-grader with typical sight until, on average, halfway through the seventh grade. As a first step toward narrowing that gap, we investigated levels of linguistic awareness among teachers of students who are blind or visually impaired (TSBVIs) because research with general education teachers has demonstrated a link between teacher linguistic awareness and student literacy outcomes. We also examined the accuracy of dyslexia beliefs among TSBVIs and whether TSBVI linguistic aware- ness and dyslexia beliefs are associated with training and experience variables. A survey …

Culturally Relevant Teaching For The 21st Century: The Success And Challenges Of Pre-Service Teachers When Using Technology In Critical Ways, Virginie Jackson, Stacy Delacruz, Dominique Harry

Georgia Journal of Literacy

This case study examined pre-service teachers' use of technology as they implemented culturally relevant literacy lessons while tutoring elementary students in their field placement sites. As we enter a new decade, we want our students to be future-ready with technology skills. Here, we present an examination of how pre-service teachers integrated culturally relevant teaching with technology along with a discussion of the tools and devices their students used. Findings provided evidence that as pre-service teachers experienced authentic and engaging learning experiences within a supportive space, they emerged equipped to teach in culturally responsive ways that supported student learning and deeper …

We Are Each Other’S Breath: Tracing Interdependency Through Critical Poetic Inquiry, Karen Zaino, Jordan Bell

Publications and Research

In this paper, we utilize poetic methods that seek to surface, but not overdetermine, the unanticipated relational excess produced through literacy practices. Karen, a queer white woman, and Jordan, a cis-gendered heterosexual Black man, wrote a series of letters to one another throughout the Spring 2020 semester. We turned to critical poetic inquiry to analyze the letters, interested in poetry’s capacity to highlight literacy’s critical power and its emergent potential. We found ourselves implicated in each other’s lives in new ways; we found our relationship both strengthened and tested. Such relational indeterminacy creates methodological challenges in literacy research. We found …

Critical Awareness For Literacy Teachers And Educators In Troubling Times, Patriann Smith, S. Joel Warrican

Literacy Practice and Research

The field of literacy remains assailed by a persisting discrepancy between an increasing body of literacy research that honors the diversity in students’ practices juxtaposed against a persistent system of schooling and high-stakes assessment that has not been designed to draw from underrepresented students’ literate assets. This discrepancy has created a situation where teachers often receive well-intentioned instruction from literacy educators about how to address diverse literacy needs, but then, struggle to enact this instruction in the high-stakes testing environment of classrooms and schools where they have little autonomy. We argue in this essay that critical multilingual, critical multicultural and …

Elementary School Library Collections: A Content Analysis Of Science Trade Books, Sandra W. Watson, Sheila F. Baker

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

In this study, science trade books from the libraries of 10 elementary schools across the United States were evaluated using the modified Hunsader rubric for their overall quality pertaining to science content, literacy, and critical literacy criteria. Findings indicate that 62% of the books met the overall science content criterion, 99% met the overall literacy criterion, and 41% met the overall critical literacy criterion. The majority of science trade books in each school were life science books, and the majority of books across all schools were 18–23 years old, with many being much older. Implications and recommendations are provided.

Meeting The Needs Of Adult Language Learners: A Focus On Communication And Literacy, Jessica Hercules

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is a compilation of the author’s perspectives and reflections about teaching and language acquisition during her time in the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program at Utah State University. The portfolio includes samples of writing on a variety of topics surrounding second language teaching and acquisition developed through study and teaching experience.

This collection of papers begins with the author’s perspectives on teaching, including a description of her desired professional environment, a reflection on her experiences observing other language teachers, and the author’s teaching philosophy statement. In the second section, the author presents two research papers and …

Policies, Practices, Places, And People: How Elementary Preservice Teachers Learned Literacy Teaching, Chad H. Waldron

Michigan Reading Journal

This article features cases of how elementary education preservice teachers made sense of teaching literacy. Their contexts for teaching varied in policies, curricula, and demands for their literacy teaching, shaped their learning and understanding of literacy instruction and assessment as beginning teachers. The research featured in this article pushes upon conceptualizations of "good" literacy teaching and how mentor teachers serve a critical role in preparing the next generation of elementary literacy teachers. Recommendations are made on how to best support elementary preservice teachers in literacy instruction and assessment.

Foregrounding The Margins: A Dialogue About Literacy, Learning, And Social Annotation, Lauren Zucker, Jeremiah H. Kalir, Michelle L. Sprouse, Jeremy Dean

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Annotation, or the addition of a note to a text, enables readers-as-writers to make their thinking visible. This article, which is structured as a dialogue among four literacy educators, discusses the potential for social annotation to transform literacy learning, assessment, and teacher education. Collectively, the authors argue for social annotation as a vital and transformative practice in hybrid and post-pandemic education. The authors reflect on their personal and pedagogical uses of annotation, sharing related resources for educators across K-12 and higher education contexts.

Learning From Experience: My Time With Swim And Read, Aleksandra Tosic

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

My experiences at SWIM and READ have led me through many challenges and earned me many successes and have helped me to gain a variety of hard skills and soft skills while letting me improve upon some that I already had. Here, I got the opportunities to work on a book project called “20 Stories of Hope” and to spend a year teaching a young child literacy skills, both of which have given me valuable chances to both find and pursue new passions and to develop my career pathway towards teaching.

Preservice Teachers’ Use Of The Technology Integration Planning Cycle: Lessons Learned, Kristi Tamte Bergeson, Beth Beschorner

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Preservice teachers (PSTs) often feel unprepared to utilize digital tools in meaningful ways that support learning in the elementary classroom. It is imperative that teacher preparation programs provide support in this area so that children can learn to use digital tools to communicate in the 21st century. Previous research suggests that the Technology Integration Planning Cycle (TIPC) can support teachers in making wise decisions related to the use of digital tools to support a literacy goal. In the present study, the authors examined how the TIPC can be used with PSTs as they develop technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge and …

Embracing The New Normal: Infusing Academic Language And Technology To Empower Ells, Scott B. Freiberger

Journal of English Learner Education

This au courant, research-based article offers specific program ideas for teachers during this unprecedented time when supporting our ELLs is especially needed.

Within, Without, And Amidst: A Review Of Literacy Educators’ Perceptions Of Participatory Media Technologies, William T. Wright

Journal of Media Literacy Education

With strict no-cell phone policies in classrooms becoming commonplace, national and international electioneering campaigns eroding trust in social media platforms, and content posted years prior affecting students’ acceptance into the colleges of their choice, it is little wonder that educators often think twice about bringing participatory technologies into their instruction. This literature review seeks to address how literacy educators reckon with the risks and potentials of these participatory technologies in the midst of our current sociopolitical climate, through an examination of an array of factors and influences that shape and give rise to educators’ understandings of participatory technologies’ place in …

Review Of The Vulnerable Heart Of Literacy: Centering Trauma As Powerful Pedagogy., Zipporah Galimore

The Language and Literacy Spectrum

In The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy: Centering Trauma as Powerful Pedagogy (2019), Elizabeth Dutro provides educators with heart-felt, inquiry-based strategies for using trauma as pedagogy in literacy classrooms. This book describes how to situate both educators and children to provide testimony and be critical witnesses in an effort to allow life knowledge, empathy, and wisdom be brought to classroom learning experiences. Dutro uses classroom vignettes and student work samples to illustrate how the concept of trauma as pedagogy can be applied across genres. Experiences and examples of literacy instruction in children's work from several elementary classrooms, from second grade through …

Valuing Voices: Construction Of Meaning Through Discursive Interactions During A Critical Service-Learning Partnership, Jane Helen Noble

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As teacher educators strive to prepare preservice teachers for careers as literacy instructors and advocates of social justice in education, critical service-learning pedagogy has been considered as an approach for teacher education programs. Tenets of academic study, reflective practice, social change, and the development of authentic relationships between universities and communities outline the structure for critical-based field experiences. What are preservice teachers learning in these spaces? How do they grow as part of critical service- learning courses? How do community organizations and members interpret experiences in the partnership, and how do they describe their roles?

This study highlights the voices …

Teacher Expectations, Self-Efficacy, And Collective Efficacy In Three Tennessee Literacy Networks, Amanda Tinker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if there was a significant difference in the dependent variables- teacher expectations, self-efficacy, and collective efficacy among the three levels of the independent variable- membership in one three literacy networks in Tennessee- Leading Innovation for Tennessee (LIFT), Read to Be Ready Coaching Network (RTBR), and Tennessee Early Literacy Network (TELN)- and if significant correlations existed between the dependent variables for each network. The population consisted of 161 K-3 Tennessee teachers who had been involved in the work of one of the three networks. Participants responded to an online survey via Google …