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Teacher Education and Professional Development

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

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Critical theory

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Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Education

Quality Content Teaching For Multilingual Students: An International Examination Of Excellence In Instructional Practices In Four Countries, Kara Viesca, Annela Teemant, Jenni Alisaari, Johanna Ennser-Kananen, Naomi Flynn, Svenja Hammer, Sara Routarinne Jan 2022

Quality Content Teaching For Multilingual Students: An International Examination Of Excellence In Instructional Practices In Four Countries, Kara Viesca, Annela Teemant, Jenni Alisaari, Johanna Ennser-Kananen, Naomi Flynn, Svenja Hammer, Sara Routarinne

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Observations of Pedagogical Excellence of Teaching Across Nations (OPETAN) is a mixed methods observation study of 31 content teachers, most nominated for their excellence in teaching multilingual students in Germany, Finland, the US, and England. The study relied on an observation rubric that operationalizes seven Enduring Principles of Learning grounded in critical sociocultural theory and pedagogy. Findings revealed excellent teachers emphasize complex thinking, language use, and modeling. Teacher use of small groups, contextualization, and equity-focused practices were areas of potential growth. International research holds promise for understanding and improving K-12 content teaching and teacher education for teachers of multilingual learners.


Disrupting Evasion Pedagogies, Kara Mitchell Viesca, Tricia Gray Jun 2021

Disrupting Evasion Pedagogies, Kara Mitchell Viesca, Tricia Gray

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

As we have researched in schools and reflected on our own teaching, we have come to recognize the lie and our untruthfulness that permeates many of our cultural scripts (Gutierrez et al., 1995) and practices as teachers. It is within these cultural scripts and practices that inequity is perpetuated and humanizing learning evaded. Thus, what we term evasion pedagogies, serve to sustain the status quo and are powerful tools to maintain oppressive projects like white supremacy, heteronormativity, gender binaries, patriarchy, ableism, classism, and linguicism. In this piece, we examine the notion of evasion pedagogies as a powerful lie in practice …


Three Reading-Intervention Teachers’ Identity Positioning And Practices To Motivate And Engage Emergent Bilinguals In An Urban Middle School, Jung-In Kim, Kara Mitchell Viesca Jan 2016

Three Reading-Intervention Teachers’ Identity Positioning And Practices To Motivate And Engage Emergent Bilinguals In An Urban Middle School, Jung-In Kim, Kara Mitchell Viesca

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study investigated three urban middle-school teachers’ practices with respect to motivating and engaging emergent bilinguals in reading-intervention classrooms by exploring the teachers’ identity positioning. The three teachers’ sociocultural and sociopolitical positioning of their students (e.g. students as individuals, as monolithic learners, or as problems) was found to be related to their practices for motivating and engaging the students (e.g. hybrid, calibrated, or imposed practices). The teachers’ historical and current resources partially shaped how they positioned their students. The findings support that teachers should not only learn motivational practices but also reflect critically on positioning processes in the classroom.


Skirting Around Critical Feminist Rationales For Teaching Women In Social Studies, Mardi Schmeichel Jan 2015

Skirting Around Critical Feminist Rationales For Teaching Women In Social Studies, Mardi Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Feminist practices can provide firm theoretical grounding for the kind of social studies that scholars promote, especially in relation to efforts to include women in the curriculum. However, in P–12 social studies education, neither women nor feminism receive much attention. The study described in this article was a discourse analysis of 16 recently published lesson plans that did include women. Through this examination of the rationales and language used to promote teaching about women, the author sheds light on some discursive obstacles inhibiting attention to gender issues in critical feminist ways and argues that by shifting norms in the field, …