Browsing by Subject "Humanizing pedagogy"
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Item Designing critical, humanizing writing instruction : exploring possibilities for positioning writers as designers(2019-05-10) Land, Charlotte Lee; Skerrett, Allison; Bomer, Randy; Maloch, Anna E.; Wetzel, Melissa R.; Spinuzzi, ClayThe purpose of this study was to better understand how teachers across elementary, middle, and secondary grade-levels (re)imagine possibilities and translate them into critical, humanizing writing instruction. Across the study, I drew on sociocultural theories of identity, learning, and language while considering perspectives on interdisciplinary design, humanizing pedagogies, and teachers as curriculum-makers. Following multicase study and participatory design research traditions, I met with four teachers in a cross grade-level inquiry group and followed them into classrooms for one academic year. I generated data through recording conversations and teaching, creating fieldnotes, collecting artifacts, and conducting interviews with teachers and students. I analyzed data using inductive qualitative analysis and then, using theory alongside emerging findings, selected examples to closely examine using discourse analytic methods. The following questions guided this study’s design and analysis: How do teachers in a cross grade-level inquiry group (re)design humanizing writing instruction together? What aspects of writing and writing instruction are most visible in teachers' discussion about design and writing? And how do teachers’ discussions of design and writing translate into their classroom practice? Analysis revealed that teachers’ inquiry group discussions explored connections between design and writing while reflecting on current writing instruction and ways teachers and students were positioned within schools. Co-constructing this “figured world” made space to reimagine possibilities and reframe constraints as design conditions. As teachers took up design work, they also appropriated narratives of students that illustrated the “love, faith, and humility” Freire (1970/2005, p. 91) noted as necessary for collective effort towards humanization. The findings also highlighted the emergence of purpose and audience as central concepts for rethinking writing and writing instruction. These terms were redefined within the group space to include embedded subject positions for students as active designers. In classrooms, one teacher used these tools to transform units to center purpose and audience for writers; another used them as entry points into new practices and subject positions within her growing critical, humanizing writing pedagogy. Overall, findings contribute to understandings of generative, humanizing teacher learning experiences for teachers and for researchers/teacher educators. Additionally, findings suggest tenets for enacting critical, humanizing writing instruction.Item Latina teachers’ conversations on cultural identity, language ideologies and humanizing pedagogy(2014-05) Rubio, Josephine Martha; Palmer, Deborah K., 1969-This paper presents a pedagogical inquiry on the impending need for teachers of underserved students to be conscious of their own cultural identity and language ideologies. The paper also inquires on the possible effect such realization has on teachers’ practices, specifically on their usage of humanizing pedagogy in their classrooms. From a Freirean standpoint three bilingual, Latina teachers were invited to enter into a dialogue in order to identify each other’s cultural identity, language ideologies and to make evident how this may have an impact or how it influences their teaching practices. Using data from interviews and other informal interactions the article examines and argues the need for teachers to enter in this type of reflective and conscientious dialogue in order to learn from each other ways to include and increase humanizing practices in their classrooms. Several themes that surface in this inquiry are 1) the importance of teachers becoming aware of their own cultural identity and language ideologies, 2) the need for formal opportunities in which teachers explore these matters in order to build a community that causes change in the educational system, and 3) the presence, if any, of humanizing practices in these teachers’ classrooms and how they can influence each other to improve the opportunities they provide for their students to succeed.Item Step by (HS)STEP : figuring humanizing social studies teacher education pedagogy & social justice teacher identity(2022-05-06) Robinson, Heath Tyler; Salinas, Cinthia; Brown, Anthony L; Blevins, Brooke E; Magill, Kevin R; Payne, Katherina AWithin the field of teacher education, critical and social justice-oriented social studies education researchers call for teacher preparation aiming to transform traditional, neoliberal-oriented day-to-day practices of classroom teachers. Accordingly, if the social studies is to be a site of civic education concerned with democracy, equity, and social justice, classroom teaching must move from a critical/humanizing pedagogical stance. Theoretical scholarship supports this view, while empirical research underscores the challenges novices encounter as they learn to navigate unjust neoliberal school landscapes and negotiate affordances and constraints at the intersection multiple figured worlds pertaining to social studies teaching. Humanizing social studies teacher education pedagogy represents one framework for aiding preservice social studies teachers (PSSTs) in the development of a critical/humanizing pedagogical stance. This critical qualitative case study examined preservice social studies teacher (PSSTs) responses to humanizing social studies teacher education pedagogy through a practice theory of identity and agency lens, paying particular attention to how they learned to interpret and socially negotiate multiple figured worlds in the process of producing humanizing teacher identities. This study underscores the significance of particular organizational structures of teacher preparation conceptually framed by humanizing social studies teacher education pedagogy. Such structures afforded PSST conceptual and identity formations which in turn aided efforts to navigate constraining social studies teaching contexts and improvise aspects of humanizing social studies pedagogy as both preservice and in-service secondary social studies teachers. Ultimately, this study illustrates the significance of conceptual and procedural identity production via humanizing social studies pedagogy cultural resources to critical, social justice-oriented teacher preparation efforts. Furthermore, such efforts hinge on the facilitation of cultural resource production leading to the cultivation of critical consciousness and the development of dialogic images of teaching and a humanizing pedagogy frame of reference among preservice teachers.Item Teachers’ work toward humanizing secondary writing pedagogy and supportive response groups for writing(2019-06-24) LeeKeenan, Kira; Skerrett, Allison; Bomer, Randy; Maloch, Anna E; Wetzel, MelissaThe purpose of this dissertation is to explore how secondary English Language Arts (ELA) teachers support culturally and linguistically diverse students’ productive participation in classroom-based writing groups. Building on existing research on peer-based writing groups, this study defines writing groups as spaces for students to develop and share practices as writers, as well as share and respond to composed texts (Dipardo & Freedman, 1998; Loretto, DeMartino & Godley, 2016). I draw on sociocultural theories of language and literacy (Bakhtin, 1981; Cazden, 2001; Vygotsky, 1978), theories of learning spaces (Barton, 2007; Syverson, 1999; Goffman, 1973; Gutiérrez, 1995, 2008) and theories of humanizing pedagogies (Huerta, 2011; Freire, 1970; Salazar, 2013) to analyze the knowledge, practices and discourses central to the teachers’ pedagogy, and their students’ identities and development as writers in writing groups. My strategy of inquiry takes a qualitative ecological approach, which foregrounds the relationship between discourses and the world (Dobrin & Weisser, 2002). Drawing on ethnographic methods for data collection, my qualitative and discourse analysis elucidates four principles of humanizing writing pedagogy: 1) teaching with care; 2) teaching with respect for students’ time; 3) teaching toward independence and agency; 4) teaching through response. Collectively these principles work to support students’ learning and development as writers by respecting their needs as human beings. In my analysis of students’ participation in writing groups, I found writing groups to be learning ecologies full of contradictions. In the best of circumstances writing groups were spaces for students to develop identities as writers, which included being responsible and accountable to the other writers in their community. Students did this by resisting traditional classroom discourses that support hierarchical power, and developing their own counterscripts (Gutierrez et al., 1995) that were supported by their teacher’s humanizing writing pedagogy. However, despite and in light of the teachers’ humanizing writing pedagogy that emphasized students’ individual humanity, independence and agency, for some students, it wasn’t until they moved out of the teacher sanctioned writing group (either temporally or physically) that interactions with their peers around writing became meaningful. In sum, this study builds on current empirical scholarship by affirming previous research on humanizing pedagogies, the mediating role of talk throughout the writing process, and the efficacy of studying the role of contexts and power when working with culturally and linguistically diverse youth. The findings from this dissertation argue that students need other people to support their writing process, which includes teachers and peers responding to their ideas at multiple points during the writing process. These findings also suggest that studying writing from perspectives that foreground the varying contextual variables that shape students’ experiences in school is critical to understanding how students, especially those historically marginalized by school, learn and develop as writers.Item Teaching literacy during student teaching : a multicase study of asset-based and humanizing teaching(2019-05) Svrcek, Natalie Sue; Mosley Wetzel, Melissa; Hoffman, James V; Worthy, Mary J; Maloch, Anna E; Sorrells, Audrey MThis study focused on alternative ways of seeing students and engaging in asset-based and humanizing teaching pedagogies, what I call asset-based and humanizing stances, in teacher education. I argue that preservice teachers need experiences to construct students from a lens of what they “can” do and to design teaching pedagogies that focus on students’ assets. Two research questions guided this study: (1) What are the contexts of the student teaching classroom and how do they influence preservice teachers’ asset-based and humanizing pedagogies during student teaching? and (2) How do preservice teachers’ pedagogical enactments exemplify asset-based and humanizing stances of students? Drawing on multicase study design, this qualitative study explored the literacy teaching of three preservice teachers over the course of student teaching, the ways they drew on asset-based and humanizing of their students and the challenges they encountered. Data collection for this study took place during the final two semesters of the preservice teachers’ certification program. Data sources included: ethnographic field notes of literacy events, video and audio recordings of literacy teaching, classroom artifacts, semi-structured interviews, and informal conversations. In the findings, I discuss four asset-based and humanizing teaching pedagogies that were evident in the participants’ teaching enactments: positioning students as knowledgeable others; working to build community within the student teaching setting; using an inquirer’s stance to approach teaching; and teaching based on experiences with students. Then, in a cross-case analysis, I share how the preservice teachers’ teaching enactments exemplified their asset-based and humanizing stances towards students. This analysis suggests that student teaching is a generative space for preservice teachers to learn about students and enact asset-based and humanizing stances, illuminating the power of context and its influence on preservice teachers’ teaching.