Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States 9781350032019, 9781350032040, 9781350032026

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

REINVENTING TEACHER EDUCATION Series Editors: Marie Brennan, Viv Ellis, Meg Maguire, Peter Smagorinsky The series presents robust, critical research studies in the broad field of teacher education, including initial or pre-service preparation, in-service and continuing professional development, from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives. It takes an innovative approach to research in the field and an underlying commitment to transforming the education of teachers. Also available in the series The Struggle for Teacher Education, edited by Tom Are Trippestad, Anja Swennen and Tobias Werler Also available from Bloomsbury MasterClass in English Education, Sue Brindley and Bethan Marshall Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning, Mary Hamilton, Rachel Heydon, Kathryn Hibbert and Roz Stooke Transforming Teacher Education, Viv Ellis and Jane McNicholl Testing English, Bethan Marshall

Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

Donna L. Pasternak, Samantha Caughlan, Heidi L. Hallman, Laura Renzi, and Leslie S. Rush

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2018 © Donna L. Pasternak, Samantha Caughlan, Heidi L. Hallman, Laura Renzi, and Leslie S. Rush, 2018 Donna L. Pasternak, Samantha Caughlan, Heidi L. Hallman, Laura Renzi, and Leslie S. Rush have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-3201-9 ePDF: 978-1-3500-3202-6 ePub: 978-1-3500-3203-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: Reinventing Teacher Education Cover design by Catherine Wood Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletters.

Contents Series Editors’ Preface Foreword Acknowledgments Permissions

vi viii xiii xv

Part 1  English Teacher Education in the United States 1 2 3

Portrait of English Teacher Education across Time: An Introduction to the Field English Teacher Education: A Portrait of the Field Today Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements

3 23 40

Part 2  Challenges and Changes Facing US English Teacher Education 4 5 6 7 8

Standards and Assessment: Tensions between Utility and Critique Literacy Instruction: Methods for Integrating Reading and Writing Teaching Diverse Learners: Methods to Address Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Technology Integration: Essential but Inconsistent Content Commitments and Change: Future Directions for ELA Education in the United States

Appendix A: Research Study Design: A Mixed-Methods Study of English Teacher Education Appendix B: Books and Other Resources Appearing Five or More Times in Syllabus Collection References Index

67 91 108 130 154

177 187 191 211

Series Editors’ Preface Teacher education is currently one of the most pressing and topical issues in the field of educational research. Around the world, in a range of countries, there is strong interest in how teachers are prepared, in the content of their preservice education and training programs and in measuring and monitoring their effectiveness. In all this reforming work, there is a fundamental questioning of the role and function of what makes up the “good” or successful teacher in society. There are questions about the place of ethical and moral judgments in teachers’ practice, about the introduction of corporate methods and about the role of teachers in innovation. Associated with such questions, government policy agendas around the world address whether and how teachers should be educated or trained as teaching comes to be seen, in some jurisdictions, as a short-term mission rather than as a professional career. The “Reinventing Teacher Education” series makes a timely and important contribution toward exploring these questions drawing on international experiences and expertise. For sometime now there has been an international concern to reform programs of preservice (or initial) teacher education. This movement has been driven by a belief that raising standards in education and raising attainment in schools will only be managed effectively if teacher quality is improved. The best way to reform the teaching profession, according to this policy movement, is through changing their teacher education programs. However, as these reforms are being enacted, contradictions in policy, practice, and curriculum design in preservice teacher education are increasingly apparent in different national settings. These contradictions are, in part, related to the underlying cultural identity of teaching (as a profession, for example) as well as the distribution of wealth within and across these different societies. In some countries, teacher education is seen as a vital tool in the building of national, educational, scientific, cultural, technological, and economic infrastructures. In others, teacher education has become a means by which those countries’ human capital can be improved, economic competitiveness leveraged, and status as knowledge economies ensured. Yet, while many of the drivers are common across these

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contexts, the direction of policy and how policies are enacted in practice vary considerably, and the roles of higher education and schools in teacher preparation are often a significant source of diversity across countries. The “Reinventing Teacher Education” series presents robust, critical research studies in the broad field of teacher education, including initial or preservice preparation, in-service education and continuing professional development, from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives and from different national perspectives. This series will explore teacher education reforms across phases as well as from different disciplinary perspectives. It has an underlying commitment to transforming the education of teachers and aims to support innovative approaches to research in the field. This volume is the second book of the series, a cowritten text, based on a largescale study of secondary English teacher education in the United States, by Donna Pasternak, Samantha Caughlan, Heidi Hallman, Laura Renzi, and Leslie Rush. The highly politicized field of English teaching, here placed under both historical and contemporary scrutiny, offers much to scholars and practitioners of teacher education and English teaching in other countries. We see an in-depth exploration of how a particular domain of teacher education has met the challenges posed in most countries by standards and standardization including testing, accreditation, the place of new technologies and the growing diversity of the school student population. The study—using a large sample of syllabi from across the country, a questionnaire and focus groups—gives important insights into teaching in teacher education in the context of such challenges. The editors see much value in replicating the design of this study in other domains of teacher education and in other countries, providing important baseline studies and opportunities for comparative teacher education research. The appendices provide both an overview of the research design and further references that would be useful for such purposes. Of particular interest is the final section, which includes real engagement with future directions for development of the domain of English in secondary teacher education. These new directions not only follow from the study’s specific setting and findings, but demonstrate engagement with the wider context of global issues for higher education, particularly within teacher education programs. This study’s contextualization of its findings should help readers see the importance of recognizing the shifting politics surrounding education that underpin so many of the options for teacher education in the future. Marie Brennan, Viv Ellis, Meg Maguire and Peter Smagorinsky Series Editors

Foreword A couple of years ago, when we formed our editorial team for this Bloomsbury series on Reinventing Teacher Education, I knew at inception which book I wanted to recruit for my first volume in the series. I had been aware of the project undertaken by Donna Pasternak, Samantha Caughlan, Heidi Hallman, Laura Renzi, and Leslie Rush for several years, and had attended and at times been on panels where they presented the research reported in this archival study. Their focus is on how the central university English education course in learning to teach the discipline of English/Language Arts is taught: the methods course. Although this research is centered on English education in the United States, it has relevance for other national contexts. The domain of literature, writing, and language is not exclusive to the United States. Many nations have a correlate discipline focused on literature as a medium for passing down national heritage. Globally, this discipline is perhaps not as contested as that in the United States, where the dominant literary canon has been for many years both critiqued for its orientation to dead White males (Applebee 1993) and defended by those who are dedicated to perpetuating Eurocentric culture (Stotsky 1999). These values have been extended to writing and other forms of composition, again caught between masculine Eurocentric traditions of essayist textuality (Farr 1993) and current notions of multimodal composition (Smagorinsky 1995); and to language use, which has traditions both of “standard” language use (Johnson 2006) and respect for language variation (Smitherman 2000). This emphasis on learning a national language, culture, literature, and set of traditions and conventions appears to be a global concern. Learning how such a discipline is taught in a major national context thus provides teacher educators worldwide with an understanding of how the components of the domain are conceived of and how novice teachers learn to treat them pedagogically. I had taken a special interest in this study for personal reasons. In 1995, the Conference on English Education of the National Council of Teachers of English published a study I did with Melissa Whiting (Smagorinsky and Whiting 1995) of syllabi used to teach the English methods course. Our study was relatively primitive, compared to the elaborate study in this volume. We had limitations in personnel (one assistant professor, one graduate student; compared to five

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tenured professors and many graduate students), funding (none; compared to lots), and data-collecting ability (no internet; compared to internet). Those simpler times produced a study that seems quite modest in comparison to what this robust team and the affordances of online data collection have been able to accomplish with the study reported in this book. The result is everything I have hoped for, both for a second-stage study based on our prototype, and for my first project through the Reinventing Teacher Education series. This study goes beyond the original in too many ways to enumerate. It’s not simply an updating, but a great expansion of the breadth of the research. In addition to the core data provided by course syllabi, the researchers have developed survey instruments that were widely distributed via the internet, and conducted focus group sessions with volunteers from the survey pool. The result provides inferences that were not available from simply studying syllabi. The authors have used a large assemblage of mixed research methods to elicit rich perspectives on the state of English education, drawing on the responses of professors who teach the methods course and often serve in program administration as well. Readers thus are privy to the voices behind the syllabi, with this work providing insight into the challenges and perspectives that motivate faculty decisions about how to conceptualize the discipline, how to navigate the complex contexts of twenty-first century teacher education, how to select texts that prepare teacher candidates for successful field placement and careers, what to emphasize from among competing pedagogical traditions, how to form relationships with cooperating schools in field placements, and how in general to undertake their work. Even though this volume is specific to the domain of English education and the national context of the United States, its situated perspective will enable people interested in teacher education, regardless of disciplinary or national orientation, to learn much about how to think in relation to emerging challenges of preparing teachers for classrooms, and how to construct a course and syllabus to guide students through their learning process. In addition to the innovations in this volume related to research method and scope, the authors report findings that surpass our original study in many ways. The world has changed since 1995, and our profession has grown in relation to our surroundings. The authors have used their more expansive research tools to explore topics that our study could not take into account. They are able, for instance, to report data on field experiences, those school assignments involving observation and teaching in live classrooms, both as exemplars in observation and experimental zones for teaching. Field experiences are both necessary and

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problematic. Some educators believe that they are far more important than anything done on campus. Yet the data here show field experiences to create complications for the constructivist pedagogies learned on campus. Often, it turns out, teacher education and their host classrooms are at odds in many ways, and the aspiring teacher can be torn between competing visions of how to teach. Although the authors cannot resolve that conundrum with this study, they alert teacher educators to the problems that follow from outsourcing the mentoring of teacher candidates to school sites and teachers who may or may not be aligned with university values. Do field experiences serve to assimilate beginning teachers into values and practices that are far more formalist than constructivist teacher educators prefer? And if so, how do teacher educators help teacher candidates to manage these conflicting experiences in satisfying ways? If you figure it out, please let me know. I’ve been wrestling with this one for almost 30 years. The authors also study the integration of technology into English education programs. Technology is central to recent conceptions of literacy, helping to expand the compositional tool kit from print to digital forms. Is that good? Most people assume so, viewing fluency with computer applications to be critical to success in emerging job markets and playthings. That being the case, how is technology use taught in English education? I’m reminded of an old research chestnut from one of composition’s most important studies: Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, and Schoer’s (1963) study of writing research from roughly 1900 to 1962. Technology was not a big feature of the educational landscape at the time, beyond watching movies on televisions. But the authors offered the provocative idea that “now that the overhead projector has been tried out with reported success in a number of large lecture situations, it seems time for a new experiment in size of class, using lay readers and the overhead projector as aids to composition instruction” (p. 46). Today’s technology fills tomorrow’s closets. Which, then, of the technological marvels continually unveiled are worth emphasizing in teacher education, and which are headed for the dust bin? Who teaches technology, and in what courses? Toward what end is technology usefully put? Does technology promote learning, or is it just another way to give students a worksheet? The authors take a pretty deep dive into this critical topic, and they help teacher educators recognize and appreciate the difficulties of providing comprehensive integration of literacyoriented technology education across the program’s purview. The authors also tackle the challenges of teaching for racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Back when we did our original study, I remember people

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saying things like, “The instruction that I’ve studied has proven effective. Now I’d like to see how it works with inner city kids.” In other words, diversity issues at the time were rather muted. The professoriate itself was almost uniformly White, a situation that continues through today. But the texts that Whiting and I reported being used for teaching the methods course were also status-quo reinforcing, written by White authors about White students. Often, they took an a-cultural perspective, with one widely assigned author (Probst 1988) urging readers to resist culture in order to provide the most personal reading possible. Few today would say that such a stance is possible, yet it characterized the predominant individualistic conception of the child of the day, grounded in Rousseauian romanticism, one who can stand outside culture to read independent of social influence. In the work of Pasternak et al., however, social and cultural mediation matters, as reported by teacher educators concerned with human diversity. Their study both reports on how diversity is addressed in English education and how it might benefit from continued reflection and refinement. The authors also consider the notion of literacy in the content areas outside English. English has often been considered the place where kids learn literacy skills that they then apply in other classes and settings (Smagorinsky and Smith 1992). This belief has long guided thinking in school, even as such fields as genre theory, writing in the disciplines and professions, community of practice, and related sociocultural perspectives have asserted that writing literary criticism for English provides little preparation for writing historical analyses or scientific reports (see Smagorinsky 2014). What role, then, do English teachers have in literacy education as it relates to other subjects? A final new area of inquiry in this study concerns the role of standards in both teacher education and teaching practice. Our 1995 study collected data from before the great standards movement began. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the International Reading Association (IRA) standards (1996) were published after our volume appeared, and were part of a national disciplinary movement to create universal standards for each subject. Although there had been periodic issuances of Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of English Language Arts (2006 and many others) from NCTE, their impact seems minimal. At least, they rarely seem to come up among English educators I speak with. The myriad standards projects that have flooded the field in the last two decades, however, command much greater attention, because they have such greater consequences. Teachers whose students are poor producers of standardized test scores, mandated just about everywhere to assess teaching

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effectiveness, are subject to being fired without recourse. Understanding this policy context, then, matters now more than ever. The authors use their various data collection tools to expose how standards are addressed in teacher education, and how beginning teachers are taught how to negotiate their presence in seemingly every aspect of school life. These features are just a few of the many that await this book’s readers. Rather than droning on, I’ll step aside and let you get to what you paid your money for. I’m proud to introduce this book as one of the first volumes in this series. I think it’s one of the best studies of our field yet produced, and hope that it finds wide readership and impact. Peter Smagorinsky Series Editor, Reinventing Teacher Education Series

References National Council of Teachers of English. (2006). Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of English Language Arts. Urbana, IL: Author. Retrieved February 17, 2017 from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Groups/CEE/NCATE/Guidelines_ for_Teacher_Prep_2006.pdf National Council of Teachers of English & the International Reading Association. (1996). The Standards for the English Language Arts. Urbana, IL & Newark, DE: Authors. Retrieved February 17, 2017 from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/ Resources/Books/Sample/StandardsDoc.pdf Probst, R. E. (1988). Response and Analysis: Teaching Literature in Junior and Senior High School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Smagorinsky, P. (Editor) (2014). Teaching Dilemmas and Solutions in Content-Area Literacy, Grades 6-12. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Smagorinsky, P. and Smith, M. W. (1992). The nature of knowledge in composition and literary understanding: The question of specificity. Review of Educational Research, 62, 279–305. Available at http://www.petersmagorinsky.net/About/PDF/RER/ RER1992.pdf Smagorinsky, P. and Whiting, M. E. (1995). How English Teachers Get Taught: Methods of Teaching the Methods Class. Urbana, IL: Conference on English Education and the National Council of Teachers of English.

Acknowledgments A nationwide study of this breadth requires intellectual, financial, and infrastructure support from a number of constituencies. We would like to acknowledge the following contributions: Peter Smagorinsky and Melissa Whiting for their 1995 study that is the foundation to our work. In addition, Peter Smagorinsky for his guidance and critical eye throughout the various stages of the study. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE): Our partners at the Conference on English Education’s (CEE) Commission on Methods who helped us envision the creation of this study and assisted us in developing the contact list; Kent Williams, who provided encouragement and made the resources of NCTE available to us; Kristen Suchor of NCTE who formatted and disseminated the questionnaire; CEE’s Research Initiative Grant; Dr. Louann Reid, Colorado State University; Dr. Marshall George, Fordham University; and the 17 teacher educators from across the United States who voluntarily participated in the pilot of the study. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM): UWM’s Research Growth Initiative Grant and the anonymous external reviewers who saw the potential in funding this study; UWM’s School of Education; UWM’s Graduate School; UWM’s Office of Undergraduate Research; UWM’s Consulting Office for Research and Development; Graduate student researchers Danielle Hartke DeVasto, Angie Henegar, Hannah Meineke, and Molly Ubbesen; and undergraduate student researcher Erica Shavon Woods. Michigan State University (MSU): MSU College of Education and their In-House Grant program; Dr. Brian Silver and Dr. Frank Lawrence of Michigan State University's Center for Statistical Training and Consulting; graduate research assistant Cuong Huy Nguyen. Special thanks to Michael Frisby, Associate Director, Indiana Statistical Consulting Center. The University of Kansas School of Education and West Chester University College of Arts and Humanities. Ms. Alexandra Heuer and Dr. Todd Reynolds at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Bruce E. Spitzer, Dean, School of Education, Associate Professor of Education, Quincy College; Dr. Melissa Schieble, Associate Professor of English

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Education, Hunter College of the City University of New York; and Dr. Nelson Graff, San Francisco State University. The anonymous reviewers who helped us hone and sharpen our arguments at Bloomsbury Publishing, Emerald Publishing, SpringerNature Publishing, English Education, Contemporary Issues of Technology and Teacher Education, and Review of Research. We acknowledge our families without whom an undertaking of this magnitude would be without joy: Stanley B. Shulfer, Steven Brown, John Mattes and the Hallman Mattes children, Jacob Keener, and Mark A. Jernigan.

Permissions Excerpts within Chapters 1 and 2 previously appeared in Pasternak, D. L., Caughlan, S., Hallman, H., Renzi, L. and Rush, L. (2014). Teaching English language arts methods in the United States: A review of the research. Review of Education, 2(2), 146–85. Copyright by John Wiley and Sons. Used with permission. Excerpts within Chapters 1 and 2 previously appeared in Caughlan, S., Pasternak, D. L., Hallman, H. L., Renzi, L., Rush, L. S. and Frisby, M. (2017). How English language arts teachers are prepared for twenty-first-century classrooms: Results of a national study. English Education, 49(3), pp. 265–97. Copyright by the National Council of Teachers of English. Used with permission. Excerpts within Chapter 2 previously appeared in Pasternak, D. L., Caughlan, S., Hallman, H. L., Renzi, L. and Rush, L. (2017). Preparing English teachers for today’s context: Researching effective practice through the methods course. In Hallman, H. L. (ed.), Innovations in English Language Arts Teacher Education, pp. 27–39. Copyright by Emerald Publishing. Used with permission. Excerpts within Chapters 3 previously appeared in Caughlan, S., Pasternak, D. L., Hallman, H. L., Renzi, L., Rush, L. S. and Frisby, M. (2017). How English language arts teachers are prepared for twenty-first-century classrooms: Results of a national study. English Education, 49(3), pp. 265–97. Copyright by the National Council of Teachers of English. Used with permission. Excerpts within Chapter 6 previously appeared in Hallman, H. L. (2016). Learning to teach ELLs in the ELA Methods Course: Findings from a national survey. In L. deOliveira and M. Shoffner (eds.), ELA Teachers and ELL Students: Preparing English Language Arts Teachers to Teach English Language Learners, pp. 61–78. Copyright by Palgrave Macmillan. Used with permission. Excerpts within Chapter 7 previously appeared in Pasternak, D., Hallman, H., Caughlan, S., Renzi, L., Rush, L. and Meineke, H. (2016). Learning and teaching technology in English Teacher Education: Findings from a national study. Contemporary Issues in Technology Education, 16(1). Retrieved from http://www. citejournal.org/volume-16/issue-4-16/english-language-arts/learning-andteaching-technology-in-english-teacher-education-findings-from-a-nationalstudy. Used with permission.

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Part One

English Teacher Education in the United States

2

1

Portrait of English Teacher Education across Time: An Introduction to the Field

This book reports on changes in English teacher education occurring in the United States. While firmly rooted in that context, we recognize that the challenges faced in the United States are common to teacher educators in many countries. These challenges include neoliberal pressures on universities to make them both more accountable and more entrepreneurial, the growth of regimes of standards-writing and aligned assessments, the higher percentages of culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms as a result of global migrations, and the impact of changing technologies on texts and teaching. This close look at a single context and the response of English educators to challenges in that context can serve as a model for examining teacher education across locations and disciplines. The changing context for the teaching of English language arts (ELA) in the United States, and its resultant changes to content, called for an updated portrait of the field of English teacher education. In 1995, Peter Smagorinsky and Melissa Whiting published a national study of English teacher preparation in the United States that has been guiding the field for over twenty years. This and other large studies from this period (e.g., Applebee 1993; Nystrand 1997) provided accounts of how secondary English teaching operated in the United States that are still cited as definitive accounts of how English language arts content is learned and taught today. In this chapter we present a discussion of how the teaching of English and the preparation of English teachers in the United States has changed across time, underscoring the need for an updated study of how teachers are prepared to teach the discipline of English: the academic field involving the study of literature and other texts, writing and other forms of composition, and the study and use of language conventions. In subsequent chapters, we share the findings from a national study of English teacher preparation programs

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and their methods courses1 that address how English language arts teachers are prepared to teach English in US classrooms. Prior to this national study of English teacher preparation, Smagorinsky and Whiting’s (1995) study stood as the only large-scale research study on English language arts teacher preparation in the United States in the past fifty years. The authors published the results of a national study of English methods classes, which were examined through collecting and analyzing methods course syllabi, providing a snapshot of US ELA methods courses during the 1992–93 school year. Smagorinsky and Whiting’s study was an unprecedented accomplishment in an era before the internet was widely used to collect and contextualize information. They contacted, by mail, over 300 instructors of undergraduate secondary English methods courses and requested copies of their syllabi. They analyzed 76 syllabi for organizational and theoretical approaches, activities and assessments, and theories and professional issues, as well as read all of the books assigned in these courses. The result is a comprehensive and credible picture of “how English teachers got taught” at that time. In the twenty-plus years since the Smagorinsky and Whiting (1995) study, English teacher education programs and coursework have developed in contextually dependent ways that often have been driven by institutional, economic, social, and political considerations (Pasternak et al. 2014). More recently, in the United States as well as in other countries where English is the dominant language of communication, the discipline has acknowledged the need to prepare teachers for students who are more racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse than those who have historically entered the teaching profession (presently about 82 percent White [NCES 2012a] and 76 percent female [NCES 2012b]); to address how new technologies and new literacies are changing communication practices; to understand literacy practices at the middle and secondary levels; to understand K-12 content standards, their associated assessments, and their impact on teaching practices; and to engage in field experiences that align with methods courses (Goodwyn, Reid and Durrant 2014; Hawthorne et al. 2012). In response to the changes in the educational landscape in the United States and abroad that have transpired over

The English language arts (ELA) methods course is defined as follows: ELA methods courses focus on the representation and teaching of ELA content and involve the inquiry into the beliefs or opinions of its participants regarding concepts of ELA at the secondary (US grades 9–12) and middle (US grades 6–8) school levels, the planning of lessons or courses of study and classroom management related to the subject-area methods.

1

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the past twenty years, professional organizations, like the US-based National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the UK-based National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE), and the International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE), have circulated policies and positions on methods of instruction that would accommodate the changing landscape, although these positions seem to have gained little traction in policy circles. As research is limited on the effectiveness of teacher preparation (CochranSmith and Zeichner 2005), much of what the field values comes to the discipline from a vision of what should be, not necessarily what is, occurring in English teacher preparation. A review of the research (Pasternak et al. 2014) shows a lack of a comprehensive view of what is considered effective English teacher preparation, which would support our investigations of innovation in the field. A range of reviews of research on teacher preparation indicates that the great majority of research done in developed countries consists of small, qualitative studies of some aspect of an individual course or program (Cochran-Smith and Villegas 2016; Cochran-Smith and Zeichner 2005; Furlong 2013; Wilson, Floden and Ferrini-Mundy 2001). English education research certainly fits this description (Pasternak et al. 2014). Although these studies provide valuable resources for English teacher educators, the scholarship does not persuade other education researchers, policy-makers, or other stakeholders that English education has an identity as a scholarly discipline responding in academically rigorous and purposeful ways to current challenges (Furlong 2013). Moreover, research in English education does not connect effective teaching practices to state accreditation and teacher preparation standards. The field also lacks comprehensive information regarding how new teachers are prepared to address current demands to educate increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse students, to incorporate new technologies and new literacies into the curriculum, to more effectively support struggling readers and writers, and to address the constraints and affordances of state and local content standards. Even though NCTE has issued many policy and position statements that address the teaching of English, these recommendations are not supported by portraits of the field as a whole in the research literature. While English educators around the world see the need for a more robust research agenda, the current situation in teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities in England, New Zealand, and the United States (Hawthorne et al. 2012), in particular, makes it increasingly difficult to mount the research projects the field needs. As government funding has been radically cut by elected bodies, colleges and schools of education face reductions in funding, competition from

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private and school-district-based preparation programs, and their relegation to second-class status within their own universities (Christenbury 2014; Ellis and McNicholl 2015). The larger policy actors on a national and international scale tend to funnel research resources into large-scale quantitative studies by economists and sociologists that align with the assumptions of neoliberal reformers (Cochran-Smith and Villegas 2016). In the remainder of this chapter, we discuss the birth of English as a disciplinary content area, the evolution of English as a school subject, and the emergence of English teacher education as a university course of study in the United States. We look particularly at how definitions and purposes reflect both consistency and change over time. We then consider recent political shifts and the pressures they put on English to narrow its scope to serve economic imperatives. Finally, we preview the remaining chapters of this volume.

A brief history of the teaching of English and English teacher education in the United States Not all countries where English is the dominant language of communication define the instructional discipline of English in the same manner. Other countries define the teaching of English as a discipline that focuses on language acquisition, awareness, and proficiency. This content is often identified in the United States as residing under teaching English to English Language Learners (ELLs) or teaching English as a world (i.e., foreign to the United States) language. When describing the teaching and learning of a native language, the oftentimes contentious terms “mother tongue,” home language, or L1 language education are sometimes used not only to indicate language acquisition, awareness, and proficiency, but also to identify the mastery of literature and a wide body of diverse texts, composition, linguistics, culture, humanities, and oratory as well as the skills of reading, writing, listening, critical thinking, and speaking. (See, e.g., the European journal L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature, which its webpage describes as a journal that serves “The international L1/ Mother Tongue Education Research Community.”) Countries across the world provide mastery in similar content in comparable disciplines in the language of instruction used in that country. For example, a course on Chinese Language and Literature in China, French Language and Literature in France, Hindi Language and Literature in India, or Modern Greek in Greece include content in language, literature, and composition

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specific to that country, perhaps with slight variations across cultures: in China, calligraphy or characters might also be taught in this course; in Haiti, a course in Kreyol Language and Literature might include instruction in voodoo culture; while in South Africa, with its eleven official languages, only a few might provide literature for the school curriculum (Smagorinsky, personal communication 2016). In the United States, the terms language arts, English studies, or, simply, English are used to identify the teaching of the various topics, skills, and content of the ELA at the secondary level (Hook 1962; Randel 1958; Scholes 1998; Smagorinsky 2015). The teaching of English then is one specialty within the broader field of teacher education in the United States. Peel, Patterson and Gerlach (2000) observe that the teaching of English in England, Australia, and the United States has undergone many name changes over the last 100 years as its emphasis has been refocused over time. Davies argues (as quoted in Peel, Patterson and Gerlach 2000) that the inability to distinguish between the teaching of general literacy and the content of English has created incoherence inside and outside the field. The movement of change in the school subject of the English language arts2 in the United States has been recursive. English teaching in the United States has historically served a variety of purposes, ranging from shaping values, to creating a democratic citizenry, to developing cognitive abilities, to preparing students for college and careers, and to enable students to strive toward other societal goals (Applebee 1974; Brass 2015; Common Core State Standards 2010; Gere et al.1992). English as a content area has been conceptualized in a number of different and complementary frameworks throughout its history. Applebee (1974) points out that at the end of the nineteenth century there were three strands to the school subject English which were already in place, “an ethical tradition which placed its emphasis on moral and cultural development, a classical tradition of intellectual discipline and close textual study, and a nonacademic tradition more concerned with ‘enjoyment’ and ‘appreciation’” (p. 1). Since the 1880s and 1890s, these and other themes across English education have dominated its curriculum and instruction in school settings, including an emphasis on studying classic texts as defining American culture, and an

The term “language arts” was embraced by elementary school teachers in the 1930s, as it suggested the integration of skills and experiences. The term “English” is used usually at the secondary level and suggests a reference to subject matter (Squire 2003).

2

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emphasis on English instruction as contributing to a student’s “personal growth” (Dixon 1967). More recently, issues of educational equity and social justice have emerged as salient (Morrell 2015). However, though themes have emerged and reemerged, important markers within the trajectory of the ELA curriculum allow an identification of key shifts in the way English has been considered as a school subject, and these have both prompted and reflected changes in the way English teachers have been prepared. In this section, we will briefly review some of these frameworks, and then describe how current policies have attempted to narrow the scope of what counts as English language arts, in ways that parallel trends in the other countries where English is the dominant mode of communication.

The development of secondary English pedagogy From colonial times into the early years of the common school movement (the seventeenth through the early nineteenth century), education in the United States served not only to provide a utilitarian approach to basic literacy and numeracy skills for citizens, but also to promote tradition of moral and ethical values related both to developing and enlightening the mind, and to improving the morality of the public, particularly the working class (Hunter 1988; Miller 1997). Precursors to English as a discipline included the study of rhetoric and literacy taught through sacred texts and readers for children that were based on moral teachings (Brass 2015; Miller 1997). English, as a school subject, emerged in the 1890s, and continued its emphases on both promoting humanistic values and developing citizens’ morality. The study of literary texts later in the nineteenth century worked to foster a classical discipline that emphasized intellectualism and the close study of texts (Applebee 1974). This tradition was particularly honed in secondary schools and colleges where the study of grammar and rhetoric were employed. Interestingly, both of these perspectives were applied to the study of literature, where the cultural value of literature started to provide a justification for the school subject of English. Finally, during that time, the enjoyment and appreciation of texts became incorporated into the school subject of English (Applebee 1974). There are few sources available on the preparation of secondary English teachers around the turn of the twentieth century, and there are good reasons for this. It is important to note that high schools served a minority of the population, with only 560,000 high school students attending in the 1889–1890 school year, and most of these in the northeastern United States. Even though this population

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9

might seem to be an elite group, only 10 percent of high school students intended to go on to college (Atkinson 1897). Although the history of teacher preparation emphasizes the growth of normal schools in this period, normal schools mostly existed to prepare elementary school teachers (Herbst 1989; Kafka 2016; Sedlak and Schlossman 1987). Atkinson, writing in 1897, points out that of the 1136 high school teachers in six New England states, 56 percent had college degrees, 21 percent had normal school or high school preparation, and 23 percent had not completed high school. Over half were women. Those secondary teachers coming out of normal schools who took the advanced track (the basic being reserved for elementary level teachers who were predominantly women) were qualified only to teach high school in one subject, or in a “subordinate position” (Atkinson 1897, p. 33), more as assistant teachers (also, predominantly women [Herbst 1989]). However, although normal school preparation was insufficient to prepare “higher teachers” (predominantly men), Atkinson complained that the universities were not preparing high school teachers in pedagogy, even in those few universities that had education coursework (22 of 430 universities in the United States at that time). Colleges long resisted teaching how to teach: The opinion of most college presidents and subject matter specialists was that the only requirement for teaching was subject matter knowledge (Atkinson, 1897)—a view that persists even today in some quarters (Kramer 1991). Several universities experimented with departments of education and the occasional pedagogy course off and on during the mid-nineteenth century, but it was 1870 before the University of Iowa started teaching classes in didactics, and began expanding its normal program into a post-graduate set of offerings. These courses were largely about education history, systems, and principles of pedagogy, but there was no opportunity to practice, as there was in normal schools. Lectures on pedagogy by specialists in the disciplines were taken at the undergraduate level by those preparing to teach high school. Other universities developed similar programs in the 1880s and 1890s, such as Michigan, Harvard, and Cornell. For the most part, the education courses focused on studying classic education texts (e.g., Bain, Comenius), and lecturing on comparing national education systems, psychology, and pedagogy. Some courses, such as several at Iowa and Harvard, included supervised observation of K-12 classroom teaching (Atkinson 1897), though few teacher candidates in the United States ever had such experiences, as only 5 percent of colleges and universities offered any pedagogy courses at all.

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

The evolution of English as a school subject This picture of high school teachers as emerging out of a theoretical, textbased, university context helps the field understand why the English language arts curriculum, as conceptualized within the discipline of English language arts, has often been equated with a particular, preconceived domain of knowledge, stressing knowledge that stands apart from the learner. In the English language arts, the “great books” of Western culture have been a typical starting point for how curricular subject matter is understood. The White men at the prestigious universities who supported what they deemed as great books endorsed the conception of a “Great Conversation” in terms of learning (e.g., Adler 1940; Hutchins 1952). They offered “one true” vision of the world that celebrated Western culture as the pinnacle of civilization, a movement and worldview that would be revisited a number of times over the next 75 years. However, the establishment of NCTE in 1911 reflected educators’ dissatisfaction with the static and limited high school curriculum aimed at preparing students for college (Gromman 1968). There has always been a Deweyan, progressive strand in English, although it has always been a minority project (Applebee 1974). And although the attempts at subject matter reform coming between 1892’s Committee of Ten, in which Charles Eliot prescribed English as a study from elementary school through college, and 1917, when the National Joint Committee on the Reorganization of English in the High Schools (NJCRE) published its final report, had little to say about English teacher education, there are indications that subject-specific preparation in English was gaining ground (Gromman 1968). Textbooks on how to teach English began appearing as early as 1895. Carpenter, Baker, and Scott’s textbook, in print from 1903 until 1927, contained a section on how English teachers should be prepared. Early writings on this topic were often lists of content areas in which teachers needed to be expert (e.g., American literature, rhetoric, history of the language), and on the personal characteristics of teachers (Gromman 1968; Kafka 2016), rather than on any explicitly defined theory of pedagogy. The NJCRE report contained both information about how existing teachers were prepared and recommendations for their preparation. A 1915 NCTE study with 450 respondents found that 90 percent of English teachers had college degrees, more than the average for high school teachers over all (Sedlak and

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Schlossman 1987, 50), and of those teachers, 50 percent had special courses in teaching English, which they reportedly found more helpful than their other education coursework (Gromman 1968). Such courses were apparently the market for those textbooks on teaching English, described above. The report recommended that all preparation programs include “a course on the application of educational principles to the teaching of English in high schools” (as quoted in Gromman 1968, p. 493), supervised practice teaching, and robust preparation in the areas of British and American literature, rhetoric and composition, as well as requiring that all graduates be effective writers and speakers. They provided, as an example, a program at the University of Southern California that included a fifth graduate year, during which the student took three hours of English methods weekly, two hours of school management class, and student teaching for four periods a week. The movement to focus ELA classrooms on conversations surrounding great books abated somewhat between the world wars, during the Depression. Since there were few jobs to be had, people who might otherwise have dropped out remained in school. This situation created a need to design a general education curriculum whose “single purpose [was] helping the student achieve a socially adequate and personally satisfying life in a democracy” (Progressive Education Association’s Commission on Secondary School Curriculum; quoted in Applebee 1974, p. 139). During the Second World War, the Armed Forces promoted the need for a skills-based general education curriculum which it defined as reading, writing, speaking, and listening, because military personnel “must be able to understand the orders they give as well as the orders they receive” (quoted in Applebee 1974, p. 140). However, teacher preparation did not always keep up with changing views of what English teachers should do. Dora V. Smith, studying New York programs for teacher preparation in 1939, pointed out that many programs did not require teacher candidates to take courses that they needed in order to teach the high school curriculum (e.g., speech, American literature, adolescent literature) (Gromman 1968). As by that time over 85 percent of high school teachers had bachelor’s degrees, teachers were being prepared at colleges and universities (Sedlak and Schlossman 1987). These occurrences in teacher education did not necessarily align with the world events over the next 20 years that created a “new band of students for whom neither vocation nor collegepreparatory training would be appropriate” (Applebee 1974, p. 139). Teenagers remained in high schools longer, while veterans entered colleges and universities on the GI Bill.

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

The emergence of English teacher education as a  university course of study The 1960s were a time of great ferment in the English language arts across the globe. On the one hand, the movement in the United States in the late 1950s to make all subject areas more rigorous led in English to the development of the College Board’s Advanced Placement system of courses and exams for upperlevel secondary students. The focus in their literature exams on individual close reading of literary texts has effectively enshrined New Critical methods within the K-12 curriculum long after their replacement by more critical theoretical tools in college departments of English (Applebee 1974, 1993). There was a concomitant push to professionalize teaching through, among other things, establishing standards for teacher preparation in the various disciplines, led by the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC). The Modern Language Association (MLA) held a Basic Issues conference with NCTE and the College English Association that called for departments of English in colleges to take ownership of teacher preparation. They further recommended that, whenever possible, the English education faculty should be housed in the Department of English (NCTE 1968b). Between 1965 and 1967, the NCTE English Teacher Preparation Study did a wide-ranging examination of how English teachers were prepared, and published the first comprehensive set of guidelines for English teacher preparation. The Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of English (NCTE 1968a) were prepared by representatives from NASDTEC, NCTE, and MLA, who over two years, four regional conferences, and a national meeting, and at least 20 drafts, finally put forth their recommendations in 1967. The traditional divisions of literature, composition, speaking, and listening are listed, although the document makes clear that English is a unified discipline. Not surprising were expectations that teacher candidates have a knowledge of American and British literature, of rhetoric as it relates to composition, of child development as it relates to learning language and literacy, and of clear written and spoken expression. However, there were also expectations that teachers get a solid grounding in adolescent literature and in teaching reading. Besides a balanced major in the areas of English, teachers needed to have a methods course, including methods of teaching reading at the secondary level, supervised teaching, and provision for a fifth year of study in English and English education. Besides the ability to plan and implement lessons and units, teachers were also to be able to use

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a variety of instructional media and be able to target instruction to children of differing abilities, cultures, and interests (NCTE 1968b). One has to look hard at the 1967 Guidelines (NCTE 1968a) to find traces of the ideas promoted by the Dartmouth seminar held in 1966. Fifty scholars from Great Britain, the United States, and Canada met at Dartmouth College to discuss alternative conceptions of the English language arts curriculum (Dixon 1967; this meeting also spawned the precursor of IFTE). The scholars identified three main models of the English language arts curriculum: the skills model, the cultural heritage model, and the personal experience model—sometimes called process model. The skills model is concerned with the acquisition of “correctness” while the cultural heritage model, which we refer to above as only celebrating Western culture, is concerned with unifying an English curriculum through the study of classic literature. These models have remained salient (Squire 2003) and somewhat parallel to the framework Applebee (1974) identified from the late nineteenth century, as discussed above. In opposition to the skills and cultural heritage models, the Dartmouth scholars advocated for the process model in the form of the personal experience agenda, stressing that the individual learns language through the process of doing—it is learned through action (Dixon 1967). In this Piagetian, rather acontextual and acultural model (Smagorinsky 2002a), students are encouraged to share their life’s experiences by building their “own representational world[s] and work to make this fit reality as [they] experience it” (p. 13). This model also speaks back to the “experience-based” curriculum of the 1920s and the work of John Dewey (e.g., 1899), as it values and promotes the learning of students through experience. Evidence of Dartmouth inheres in the 1967 NCTE Guidelines in the expectation that teachers “have studied and practiced ways to foster creativity in the speaking and writing of his students” (NCTE 1968a, p. 536). Over the past five decades, conversations have continued about the nature of curriculum in the discipline of English language arts. A coalition of US associations, including NCTE, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the MLA, and others, met during the summer of 1987 to assert the importance of process in learning language and responding to literature (Squire 2003). Subsequently, scholars in the field of English education— including Applebee (1996); Bickmore, Smagorinsky and O’Donnell-Allen (2005); Marshall (1993); and Smagorinsky (2013) have addressed ELA curricular models in their respective work and have argued for new conceptualizations

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

when thinking about curriculum within the teaching of the English language arts. Specifically, they have cited that the models guiding the field, including those specified in the Dartmouth seminar, produce a nexus of theoretically competing curricular paradigms. A set of studies in English education published in the 1990s provided a strong sense of how secondary English teachers taught in our nation’s schools, findings that could be juxtaposed with the aspirations of the abovementioned scholars. Applebee’s (1993) study of how literature was taught in secondary English classrooms reported that teachers still largely relied on the literary texts they were taught in middle/secondary English classes, and described which pedagogical approaches were used with those works and why. The majority of lessons observed followed conventional choices; few used small group work, employed classroom dramatics, or made space for student interpretations in writing about literature. Later in the decade, Nystrand (1997) published the results of observations of hundreds of English and social studies lessons in the upper Midwest that substantiated the continued dominance of lecture, recitation, and seatwork in English classrooms. These findings were similarly confirmed in a later study (Applebee et al. 2003). Citing English language arts as a discipline in which multiple, and conflicting, visions and frameworks of curriculum have remained prominent in classroom practice despite their inherent differences, Applebee (1996) argues convincingly that models of curriculum that dictate desirable content and skills for students sit as decontextualized, apart from surrounding traditions of knowing. Noting that this way of viewing curriculum is “oriented toward the teaching of information” (p. 32), Applebee asserts that this view does not support learning through what he refers to as knowledge-in-action, knowledge that supports participation in dialogue and engagement with the traditions of knowing that shape the discipline. Smagorinsky and Whiting’s (1995) study of US ELA methods courses helped to ground the study of English teacher education by categorizing the theoretical stances evident in the assigned course readings and activities. The methods courses studied occupied several forms (i.e. survey, workshop, experiential, reflective, and theoretical) and the assessments used in those courses most frequently aligned with the course format. For example, workshop courses usually included an extended project—such as an instructional unit—that was collaborative in form. Smagorinsky and Whiting provided a categorization of the theoretical stances evident in the assigned course readings, although they

Portrait of English Teacher Education across Time: An Introduction to the Field  15

noted the contradictory nature of some theories evident in those readings. In addition, they pointed out that, to a great extent, the 1967 Guidelines had largely been enacted. The methods courses they studied tended to promote a studentcentered classroom (variously defined), were grounded in a holistic view of the language arts, often had a field component of some kind, and attempted to model the teaching methods they taught (Smagorinsky and Whiting 1995). Almost two decades later, the above-referenced studies still frame education’s understanding of how English is being taught in middle/secondary schools in the United States and how English teachers are prepared for these contexts and these students, underscoring the pressing need for a new study that takes into consideration the changing contexts and content for the teaching and study of English.

The changing context of the teaching of English After the 1990 studies were published, the percentage of teachers who selfidentified as female, White, and middle-class grew larger, while more students of color and children of immigrants entered classrooms, even in communities across the country that traditionally had seen little demographic diversity (Baber 1995; Boutte 1999; Burbank et al. 2005; Landis et al. 2007; Nieto 2003; Sleeter 2001; Villegas and Lucas 2002). Similar mismatch between teacher and student demographics were evident in countries across the rest of the world (Bubb and Porritt 2008; Fenech, Waniganayake and Fleet 2009; Vegas 2007). Changes in information technology prompted changes in textual production and consumption in private, civic, and working life. Technology use in schools lagged behind that in the outside world. Therefore, similar to the Great Depression and the Second World War, the 1990s formed another “new band of student” who needed to be taught differently. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, public school enrollment in the United States increased by 19 percent. In 1993, there were 41.6 million children attending US public schools (NCES 2001) and by 2013 that number had increased to 49.5 million (NCES 2015). During this period, readiness for college enrollment became an expectation instead of a possibility with the “open access” movement that underscored that “college was for all,” while tracking students into vocational fields diminished (Rosenbaum 2001). Since the 1990s, teachers in the United States have been asked to educate a more linguistically and culturally diverse student population, directly support

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

struggling readers and writers in disciplinary literacy, and integrate technology into their practices to address the new literacies changing the ELA curriculum. Changes to the ELA curriculum have also occurred to accommodate the “new band of student” emerging after the 1990s. There has been a heightened awareness of literacy in its many forms (digital literacy, media literacy, etc). With the increased attention to literacy skills, there has also been a change in the pedagogical strategies used in reading in secondary classrooms. Although NCTE has recommended that teacher candidates learn to teach reading to adolescents since the 1960s, high schools had been slow to embrace the role of literacy teacher. Prior to 1995, teaching “reading” was mostly relegated to teachers certified to teach at the early childhood (prekindergarten to third grade in the United States) and elementary levels (kindergarten to eighth grade in the United States). Few content area middle or high school teachers, English or otherwise, considered it their responsibility to teach the academic reading skills necessary for success in secondary and postsecondary education and work life, perhaps because of a misguided presumption on the part of many teachers that all students should be competent, independent readers by the time they reach seventh grade. Due to the current acknowledgment that reading should continue to be taught in the upper grades, and the fact that English teachers are held responsible for reading instruction by their colleagues (Wilson 2011), English teacher education has had to increase attention to teaching literacy skills (see Chapter 5).

Standards and accountability movements in the United States The abovementioned challenges would indicate a need for competent professionals in education to lead the way in finding solutions to these problems. Research indicating that teaching quality has a larger impact on student achievement than other school-based inputs (Darling-Hammond 2000; Kane and Staiger 2008; Wright, Horn and Sanders 1997) has resulted in more attention paid to teaching and how teachers are prepared in policy circles, although the extent of teachers’ influence on achievement is hotly debated in educational circles (Berliner 2014). However, the government-imposed discourse of standardization and accountability that has constrained teacher autonomy and decision-making in many countries has resulted in educators at the K-12 and college levels in the United States and elsewhere struggling with imposed dictates regarding the definition of professionalism and the apparent need of

Portrait of English Teacher Education across Time: An Introduction to the Field  17

politicians and corporate executives to control both the nature of educational work (e.g., curriculum and pedagogy) and the workers themselves (Gray and Denley 2005; Pitman 2007). For example, although Ontario, Canada created the Ontario College of Teachers as a professional body that would oversee teacher standards, credentialing, and promotion, from its founding, it has had to contend with legislation that interferes with its independent functioning (Pitman 2007). This situation was not unique to Canada. In the United States, the standards movement was initiated during the Reagan administration with the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk (NCEE 1983), which claimed that US schools were shortchanging students and endangering the national economy. In response, the National Governors Association instituted a series of policy statements and programs under which states have written and revised English content standards (often with very little input from English teachers and teacher educators), distributed curriculum frameworks, and established regimes of test taking (Caughlan and Beach 2007). Two US presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, were active in these efforts while they were governors of the states of Arkansas and Texas, respectively, and promoted federal inducements and regulations to support such efforts as precedents. At the federal level, 15 years of hortatory policies and inducements (McDonnell 2004) by both conservative and centrist administrations were capped by the 2001 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This collection of requirements and accountability measures known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the second Bush administration’s attempt to hold schools and teachers accountable for student achievement, has since converted to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top and, now, the newly revised version of the ESEA, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The reactions to these measures by districts and individual classroom teachers have been mixed, but teachers and administrators are operating under a different set of circumstances and rules from the ones under which classroom practices were studied in the 1990s. Textbook companies market packages guaranteed to help teachers and their students “meet” state standards as indicated in the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI 2010), an initiative across the United States to standardize career and college readiness expectations in the ELA and in mathematics. Under the current political environment in the United States and in other countries where English is the dominant language of instruction, neoliberal policies enacted by various levels of government in attempts to regulate traditional programs of teacher certification are eroding universities’ gate-

18

Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

keeping function in relation to the profession (Christenbury 2014; Ellis and McNicholl 2015; Pitman 2007). University programs coexist with alternative and emergency certification routes that proceed on the “received wisdom” (Kennedy 1999) that teaching is learned in the classroom and that university preparation is at best an expensive distraction. Innovations in pedagogical preparation and the integration of field and coursework by university programs are ongoing, but such innovations do not receive the attention from the media and policymakers that accountability measures do—a situation that is evident in England, as well, with its expansion of alternatives to university-based certification with programs such as “School Direct” (Ellis and McNicholl 2015). In contrast to the situation in England, however, and despite the feeling of threat provided by policy changes, as of 2015, 94 percent of US teachers were still being prepared in higher education institutions (HEIs), as we discuss in Chapter 2. This situation may change with the new federal administration. In parallel with such critiques of traditional teacher preparation, increasing standardization of English teacher education is occurring through national and state accrediting processes. With the increased scrutiny given to teacher quality and effectiveness and the focus on new methods of “measuring” effectiveness (Baker et al. 2010; Kane and Cantrell 2010; Kane and Staiger 2008), attention has turned to providing evidence for the effectiveness of teacher education programs. The consolidation of accrediting bodies in the United States into the Council of Accreditation of Teacher Preparation (CAEP) has resulted in new accreditation guidelines, including the controversial requirement that programs demonstrate a teacher candidate’s positive impact on prekindergarten to twelfth grade student learning as part of developing a “culture of evidence.” While questioning how short-term guests (i.e., teacher candidates) in a classroom can have a significant impact on K-12 student achievement, teacher preparation programs are required by these regulations to develop batteries of assessments to measure candidates’ impact and other factors, or investing resources in products such as Pearson’s edTPA, a standardized performance assessment for initial teacher licensure implemented by 34 states and the District of Columbia (AACTE 2016), and review processes such as NCATE/ CAEP’s Specialized Program Assessment (SPA) through NCTE (NCTE/CAEP 2012). Although some universities have resisted the intrusions on professorial judgment and autonomy such moves imply the majority of universities in the United States and England have been slow to do so (Christenbury 2014; Ellis and McNicholl 2015). Some have even embraced partnerships with Teach for

Portrait of English Teacher Education across Time: An Introduction to the Field  19

America/Teach First and other short-term alternative programs to increase enrollments (e.g., Georgia State University 2017) (Furlong 2013). Although the external governing, regulating, and accrediting bodies have increased the pressure to devise standards and assessments that indicate the effectiveness of teachers and teacher education programs, the changes in education have not all been political. The newest challenges to teacher education have been economic: The international economic downturn has reduced the resources available for both teacher preparation and K-12 schools since 2008, and the political climate since that time has turned increasingly against support for public education. An international survey on the impact of the global economic crisis on education was conducted in 2009 through Education International (Education International, n.d.). Results showed that many European countries had experienced cuts to education funding, and that European, Central American, South American, and African countries were facing teacher shortages. A 2012 analysis indicated that, internationally, teacher preparation has not kept pace with demand created by population increases (Nordstrum 2012). Data collected yearly by the US government show steep drops in enrollment in schools of education over the past few years (Sawchuck 2014). New teachers in the United States face increased class sizes and reductions in district and building support that make the work of student teaching and the induction period even more challenging. These conditions, the attacks on teacher education reported above, and the low morale of public school teachers have combined to make teaching look less attractive, and enrollment in teacher education programs has dropped precipitously nationwide since 2009 (Berry & Shields, 2017). Because of the high numbers of retiring teachers and the high incidence of attrition, teacher turnover appears to be a self-perpetuating spiral. Even before the current downturn, attrition among novice English teachers appeared higher than that among teachers as a whole (Scherff and Hahs-Vaughan 2008). These many factors suggest the need for an update of Smagorinsky and Whiting (1995) that takes into account two decades’ worth of change in school and society and how that shifting landscape has changed the manner in which US English language arts teachers learn to teach in university programs. Given how the United States embodies the tensions facing the global educational context and, in turn, plays a role in constructing that context, a study of the United States has the potential to inform teacher educators worldwide about the shifting dynamics in which their work is situated and how US teacher educators have responded to them.

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

Overview of chapters This book presents findings from a national study of English teacher preparation programs and their methods courses conducted over multiple years as a description of the varied means of current ELA teacher preparation in the United States. Considering subject-specific methods courses as the primary location where secondary teachers develop subject-matter-specific pedagogical content knowledge (Ball, Thames and Phelps 2008; Shulman 1987), we focused much of our study on ELA-specific methods courses. However, recognizing that such courses operate within a programmatic and institutional context, we gathered information about where and when teacher candidates are offered various opportunities to learn and to put that learning into practice. In examining how methods courses operationalize new concepts and practices, we provide insight into how instructors achieve a balance between conceptual knowledge about (or awareness of) new ideas, and application of that knowledge in teaching practices. In Chapter 2, English Teacher Education: A Portrait of the Field Today, we provide an overview of our national study, programmatic data from a national questionnaire, and conclusions regarding English teacher education programs. A discussion of the subject-specific methods course and its place in the teacher education program serves as the foundation for identifying tensions in the field of English education, which will lead to a research-based insight as to how future English teachers are prepared at institutions of higher education in the United States. Throughout the book, we use pseudonyms to identify all our respondents and their universities or colleges (see Appendix A, Table AA.4). These names are consistent across all the chapters. If we do not identify a respondent, that comment came from the open-ended responses from the questionnaire portion of the study. In Chapter 3, Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements, we ground our discussion of tensions in the field of English teacher education in data collected through focus group interviews with English teacher educators and analysis of methods course syllabi. This chapter highlights the voices of teacher educators who wrestle with emerging issues in English methods courses and describes how these issues play out in field placements. These data indicate that English methods courses enact a tension between raising awareness of current issues in the classroom and creating opportunities for teacher candidates to apply what they know in real or simulated teaching situations. The conclusion of Chapter 3 will preview

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Part II of the book, in which each chapter takes a focused view of a strand within the data. Part II: Challenges and Changes Facing US English Teacher Education. In the second section of the book, we dive deeper into the data from the national study, looking at the topics raised in our review of the literature on English teacher education (Pasternak et al. 2014), including (a) K-12 standards and assessment; (b) literacy instruction; (c) instruction for English language learners and diversity; and (d) technology instruction. Each chapter addresses the external pressures applied in this area, existing tensions, and program commitments to change, based on analyses of data from the questionnaire, focus groups, and methods course syllabi. Each of the chapters in Part II opens with a case study that provides a thorough description of an English teacher education program that is committed to addressing the issue at hand and for which we present multifaceted data. The first chapter in Part II is Chapter 4, Standards and Assessment: Tensions between Utility and Critique. This chapter, as described above, will open with a case study and provide information about how English teacher education programs and methods courses are responding to external pressures related to K-12 standards and standardized assessments. Chapter 5, Literacy Instruction: Methods for Integrating Reading and Writing, will have a similar structure but will focus on how English teacher education programs and methods courses provide opportunities for candidates to learn how to teach reading and writing skills, particularly for those K-12 students who struggle with school literacy practices. Chapter 6, Teaching Diverse Learners: Methods to Address Cultural and Linguistic Diversity, will provide information on the ways in which English teacher education programs and English methods courses prepare candidates to work with students who are learning English while also learning the content of English language arts. The chapter also considers connotations of “diversity” within teacher education. Chapter 7, Technology Integration: Essential but Inconsistent Content will give a sense of how English teacher candidates are being prepared to address new literacies and new media and to use technology for teaching and learning in classrooms as it relates to the ELA. Finally, in Chapter 8, Commitments and Change: Future Directions for ELA Education in the United States, we discuss the pressures on English teacher education programs coming from external sources (e.g., regulatory and financial pressures) and internal sources (changes in what counts as English education), and the tensions between commitments and change experienced by

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our respondents. We provide recommendations for English teacher education programs and methods instructors for increasing program coherence, better integrating university coursework and field instruction, and regaining control of a discipline from actors who lack expertise in English education. Two appendices are provided in the book, as follows: Appendix A: Research Study Design: A Mixed-Methods Study of English Teacher Education. This appendix provides a clear description of methods used to collect and analyze data for this national study. We have placed it in an appendix so that readers may engage immediately with the study’s content. Readers are welcome to read it out of order if they like. Appendix B: Books and Other Resources Appearing Five or More Times in Syllabus Collection. This appendix provides a table of the commonly cited methods course textbooks from our analysis of syllabi submitted in the study.

2

English Teacher Education: A Portrait of the Field Today

As described in the first chapter, our study purposefully focused on US secondary English teacher education rather than the broader field of teacher education. We recognized that English methods courses operate within a programmatic and institutional context, not only in the United States but in other countries as well (Peel, Paterson and Gerlach 2000), and we felt it important to provide opportunities for participants in our study to express the way these contexts influenced possibilities and challenges for English teacher education in the United States. Particular components of our study also sought information about this broader context as a way to capture participants’ views of the changing landscape of teacher education in the United States. Our choice to focus on the English methods course arose from our belief that the methods course is positioned as the primary site for English teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (Ball, Thames and Phelps 2008; Grossman 1990; Shulman 1987), a space where prospective teachers develop knowledge, skills, and aptitude for teaching within their content domain. Both our review of scholarship (Pasternak et al. 2014) and our findings from our questionnaire identify the methods course as paramount to English teacher education, and situate our five key topic areas as influential in changing the landscape of the English methods course (field experience; preparing teachers for racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity; new technologies and new literacies in English education; teaching reading and writing skills; and K-12 content standards and associated assessments). In presenting a view of current US-based English education programs, our study provides grounding for larger studies, as well as support for claims made in smaller studies of English teacher education. We anticipate other fields within teacher education may pursue similar studies as ways to forefront the unique facets of their content area domains. In this chapter, we do just that: present the unique

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

facets of our field of English teacher education, as located in US colleges and universities. We begin with the programmatic context, attempting to highlight, on a national scale, how English teachers are taught and by whom they are taught. From here, we move into a discussion of features of the methods course itself. Finally, in concluding this chapter, we describe the place of the field experience in the larger programmatic context. Early and diverse field experiences have been touted as one of the keys to successful teacher education programs (DarlingHammond 2006; Feiman-Nemser and Buchman 1987; Sleeter 2008; Zeichner 2010), although some point out that more field experiences are not necessarily better, particularly when the values of the school and the teacher education program come into conflict (Barnes and Smagorinsky 2016). The topic of field experiences was perhaps viewed as the most complex and context-specific of the areas of emphasis that our study investigated. In Chapter 3, we address those aspects of field experience most closely related to the English methods course.

Situating the methods course in teacher education In the process of identifying English education programs in the United States, we discovered that tension exists between two schools of thought regarding teacher preparation: one school considers that learning to teach is a process of acquiring general rules and routines for organizing learning experiences, while the other suggests that each specific discipline dictates which teaching methods are effective. Both schools of thought have developed routes that require coursework in the subject area and placement for student teaching or internship in a subject-area classroom; but, in the first, general methods courses are considered sufficient preparation; in the second, one or more subject-areaspecific methods courses are required by the state or program. Complicating this situation, scholars argue over the extent to which a secondary school subject can be considered specific to its discipline. Certain critical theorists focus on the role of schooling in normalizing behavior and preparing docile citizens by transforming contentious disciplinary content into unambiguous knowledge (Bernstein 1996; Giroux 1988; Popkewitz 1998). The school subject becomes a means for merely accomplishing the goals of schooling, rather than promoting disciplinary knowledge. Other scholars promote the view that school subjects reflect the epistemologies and discourses of the disciplines, knowledge of which is required to enter those communities as literate members (Applebee 1996; Gee 1996; Langer 2011; Moje 2008; Shulman 1987). Even if

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schools have turned disciplines into subjects, these scholars assert that teachers should strive to teach disciplinary ways of knowing, identifying, and solving problems, spoken and written genres, and relationships with the real world in the pursuit of student engagement and more equal life chances. Scholarship around pedagogical content knowledge (Ball, Thames and Phelps 2008; Grossman 1990; Shulman 1987) also creates a space for the teacher as possessing disciplinary expertise that the layperson does not have. The methods course is where the teacher candidate develops knowledge of content for teaching, student development and misconceptions specific to the disciplines, and means of representing core concepts. From this perspective, lecture, discussion, and other instructional approaches are adapted to specific disciplinary practices, so there are no “general” methods.

Defining the subject-specific methods course In the questionnaire, we defined methods course as primarily focusing on the representation and teaching of English language arts content. A methods course often also involves inquiry into the beliefs or opinions of participants regarding concepts of English language arts at the secondary level, the planning of lessons or courses of study, and classroom management related to content-specific methods. Courses providing background in English content for teacher candidates should not be regarded as methods courses for the purposes of answering these questions if the focus is not on how to teach that content.

We maintain that recent scholarship supports the importance of subject-specific methods, especially in relation to constructivist and social constructivist theories of learning, theories that apply to both learning to teach and the learning of teacher candidates’ pupils. Teachers must understand their subject matter both as disciplinary adepts and as their students experience it, with the goal of moving students toward mastery of relevant academic performances (Darling-Hammond and Bransford 2005; Dewey 1902). It is important that teachers use their relatively brief time in professional preparation to develop metacognition and effective practices specific to the disciplines they will teach in their classrooms. However, as this assumption is not shared by a number of alternative and emergency certifying programs, as well as by entire states that provide generic secondary certification, collecting data on the prevalence and makeup of methods courses is a first step toward studying the difference such courses make in preparing new teachers.

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

The methods course in English teacher education programs bears the key responsibility of helping teacher candidates address current issues in ELA and classroom contexts. The English methods course is where teacher candidates take the content they have learned about literature, linguistics, writing, etc., and turn the focus of that content on the teaching of secondary students. At the time of the publication of Smagorinsky and Whiting’s study (1995), ELA programs predominantly had one three-credit methods course that was required of their certification teacher candidates, in a few cases abetted by specific courses about the teaching of writing, literature, language, young adult literature, and related topics. The default was a comprehensive, subject-specific methods course that covered the teaching of all aspects of ELA content: literature, composition, language, and linguistics. Now, programs vary as much in their requirements of methods courses as they do in the types and numbers of programs they have in general.

The Conference on English Education Methods Commission national study This mixed-methods study encompassed a national, multiple-choice and openended questionnaire of English teacher educators about their English education programs; analyses of English methods course syllabi collected from those who completed the questionnaire and volunteered their syllabi for review; and focus group interviews with English teacher educators who provided data for the two earlier stages of the study and volunteered their time for this stage. Our aims across all of our data collection and analysis methods were (a) to provide a current portrait of English teacher preparation, both at the level of the methods course(s) taken by teacher candidates and at the level of the program within which these courses are housed; and (b) to trace the changes in concept and practice that have taken place in English teacher education programs since 1995. In Chapters 2 through 7 of this book, we include data and analysis from this study to draft our portrait of current approaches to preparing secondary English language arts teachers in the United States. For a more detailed description of the study design, see Appendix A. The design for this survey emerged in meetings of the US-based National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Conference on English Education (CEE) Commission on the Teaching of ELA Methods, and in a working

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 27

group of the current authors and interested colleagues who attended the 2011 CEE Conference. In preparation for designing the questionnaire, we did the preliminary review of research and commentary on the English methods course since 1995 described above (Pasternak et al. 2014). This review prompted our focus on five areas: field experience; racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity; literacy; technology; and K-12 content standards.

Design of the questionnaire The questionnaire consisted of four sections and included multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Section I focused on how programs are structured and included questions on types of courses taken; the extent and nature of field experiences offered; what subject-specific methods courses are required and who teaches them; and what programs are offered among bachelor’s, postbaccalaureate, master’s, and alternative routes to certification. Section II asked how methods instructors were addressing literacy instruction, content-area standards, changing demographics, and changing technologies. Section III asked how programs are responding to two types of changes: conceptual and curricular changes in the field (e.g., addressing the needs of English language learners, responding to changing conceptions of teaching and learning) and political and institutional changes ranging from new program assessments to financial challenges. Section IV collected information about our respondents’ teaching experience and roles in their respective English teacher education programs. At the end of the questionnaire, respondents were invited to submit methods course syllabi. The questionnaire allowed participants to skip sections not relevant to their programs. Most respondents did not have to answer all the questions, because some colleges and universities certified teachers at only one level (e.g., bachelor’s or postbaccalaureate). Responding to the questionnaire took 20–45 minutes, depending on the nature and levels of certification of a program. To circulate the questionnaire, we developed a contact list of English educators and English teacher certification programs across the United States. Over the course of one academic year, we developed the survey; piloted it for clarity, comprehensiveness, and length; and refined it. Thus, our timeline for the study involved us in creating a contact list of English educators across the United States and performing a literature review of research on English language arts methods courses in year 1. In year 2, we designed the questionnaire and pretested it, administered the questionnaire and collected syllabi, and analyzed questionnaire

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

data. In year 3, we designed and pretested focus group questions, administered the focus group interviews, and analyzed syllabi and focus group data. We identified over 1,000 programs at HEIs preparing English teacher candidates for certification, although only 747 of these provided identifiable contact information. Over the course of the 2012–2013 academic year, we administered the questionnaire three times to 942 faculty and instructors. This distribution resulted in usable survey responses from 242 institutions from 47 states for analysis, a return of 32.4 percent (see Figure 2.1) (AAPOR 2011; Sheehan 2001). The data pool was thus roughly three times the sample studied by Smagorinsky and Whiting (1995), with a comparable response rate, suggesting that the database for the study is sturdy enough for durable conclusions. We included both partial and completed surveys in our analysis. Only 205 of the 242 respondents made it to the end of the survey, not unusual in a survey of this length (Blair, Czaja and Blair 2014; Porter 2004). The report of our findings contains the number of respondents for particular questions. The “missing data” indicated in table captions refer to participants who provided no response to an

Figure 2.1  National distribution of survey respondents

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 29

individual question or set of questions. Particulars of survey analysis, including treatment of missing data, are available in Appendix A. Although we sent questionnaires to HEIs that included subject-specific methods courses in their English education programs and those that did not, only respondents who indicated they required English methods courses answered the questionnaire. It could be that sending the questionnaire out under the auspices of NCTE made leaders of general secondary programs feel the survey lacked salience for them. In addition, we found that owners of private teacher preparation programs and non-HEI-affiliated alternative programs did not follow norms of transparency common on university websites. Therefore, information about required courses, workshops, texts, and assessments for candidates was not evident on such websites, many of which only included contact information for application to the program. The websites also lacked any contact information for specialists in ELA. However, the most recent available report on sources of newly prepared teachers indicates that 94 percent of new teachers in the United States are prepared at HEIs (U.S. Department of Education 2015), making it reasonable to study only university and college programs preparing secondary ELA teachers.

English teacher education programs: Contextual descriptions from questionnaire data English teacher education programs in both public and private higher education institutions across the United States offer certification to teach English at the bachelor’s, postbaccalaureate, master’s, and alternative certification levels (see Table 2.1).1 Table 2.1  Number of institutions by program type

Has program Does not have program Missing response

Bachelor’s

Postbacc

Master’s

Alt. Cert.

186 46 10

151 77 14

113 110 19

34 186 22

Note: Group counts out of 242 responses.

In US teacher education programs, both master’s and postbaccalaureate programs occur after a bachelor’s degree has been earned in a field. However, postbaccalaureate certification programs only require enough credits after the bachelor’s to earn certification and not a master’s degree.

1

30

Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States Table 2.2  Number of programs offered by participating institutions Frequency Percent No programs reported Exactly 1 Exactly 2 Exactly 3 Exactly 4 Total

18 60 83 66 15

7.40 24.80 34.30 27.30 6.20

242

100.00

Note: “No programs reported” refers to respondents who did not confirm having a program at a particular level.

As in the 1990s, the default program is still the bachelor’s degree with certification (Smagorinsky and Whiting 1995); however, most institutions have more than one program for certification (see Table 2.2). We posit that the proliferation of programs reflects higher education’s increasing tendency to appeal to a wider range of clients, particularly in education, where “nontraditional” teacher candidates seeking a second degree or career are becoming more common, and where state governments are opening up teacher preparation to alternative preparers and moving state education into a market economy (Chouliarki and Fairclough 1999; Zeichner and Hutchinson 2008). Programs vary in size, with some not necessarily certifying any completers in a particular year while others certify over 80 completers per year, with a mean of 16.2 completers across our respondents. For most programs across all certification levels, more than 34 credits in English content (literature, linguistics, language, and composition) are expected for certification. In the US context, a typical course consists of 3 credit hours. Each credit hour is typically represented by one hour of course time per week. In a semester-based program, then, a 3-credit hour course consists of 45 hours of course time, meeting 3 hours per week. For postbaccalaureate and master’s level certification, an overwhelming majority of programs expect an undergraduate degree in their major or content areas. More than half of the programs are housed in departments of English, and those programs tend to be larger in size than the ones housed in education. The default of one subject-specific methods course, common in earlier generations and assumed in the design of Smagorinsky and Whiting’s study (1995), is no longer the standard. In the era of our research, bachelor’s programs, as well as the other levels of certification, require four or more credits of methods courses (see Table 2.3). Although a greater percentage of bachelor’s programs

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Table 2.3  Number of credits of ELA methods required Number of credits Other 0 1–2 3 4–6 7–9 More than 9 Total responses

Bachelor’s

Postbacc

Master’s

Alt. Cert.

2.81 1.12 4.49 17.42 30.90 26.97 16.29

8.89 2.22 3.70 20.74 31.85 20.00 12.59

7.69 1.92 3.85 25.96 25.96 20.19 14.42

8.00 16.00 4.00 44.00 12.00 4.00 12.00

178.00

135.00

104.00

25.00

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted.

require seven or more hours of ELA methods, only alternative certification programs deviate from this standard, with some not requiring a subject-specific methods course at all. This shift may be indicative of how the program defines a subject-specific methods course, as discussed above. In addition to an increase in the number of hours spent in a methods class since the early 1990s, time in the field also increased across various pre-student teaching practica and most types of certification programs while in program, as we discuss in Chapter 3. Across the majority of programs, student teaching experiences ranged from 12 to 15 weeks with alternative certification programs following a different pattern of shorter times in the field. About 50 percent of the content-specific methods classes are housed in the Department of English, with about 37 percent housed in education. Another 14 percent of programs jointly offer methods classes. These classes are taught predominantly by tenure-line faculty with about a quarter of the programs employing instructors and an eighth of them using graduate students to offer this content. More instructors have degrees in an English content field than in education: literature, composition and rhetoric, grammar and linguistics, etc. Who teaches the course and where it is housed do not vary as much as the content of the actual methods course.

English teacher education methods courses: Description from questionnaire data The ELA methods course primarily focuses on the teaching of ELA pedagogy, rather than the content of ELA. With frequencies above 92 percent, respondents

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

ranked the following content as essential to cover in the methods class: pedagogical content knowledge, teaching methods and materials, lesson and unit planning, and assessment practices. Other common categories on which there was less agreement included teaching philosophy (71 percent), subject matter (69 percent), micro-teaching or simulated practice-teaching (58 percent), classroom management (47 percent), and other (24 percent). In the “other” category, respondents equally stated that specific literary and language content (e.g., the classics, adolescent literature, American Sign Language) was as essential to being a prepared ELA teacher as learning to integrate technology and understand multiple literacies. Respondents also mentioned content that addressed equity, diversity, and differentiation in ELA, the integration of fieldwork and the methods content, policies and trends in ELA, specific pedagogical content (e.g., questioning, discussion tactics, write-to-learn strategies), and standards alignment. This list of essential content is representative of the tensions in the field: What is the canon and who decides what books should be taught? Should a methods course cover ELA content or just pedagogy? Should methods instructors teach the standards, and if so, which ones? To what extent is teaching English a political act? As indicated above, 100 percent of respondents indicated that their program requirements included an ELA content-specific methods course. Respondents listed the specific courses required for each program level as part of the survey (see Table 2.4). Across the majority of the programs, no matter the type or level of certification, the default was a comprehensive methods course that covered the teaching of all aspects of ELA content: literature, composition, and language. Programs were twice as likely to offer such comprehensive methods courses as courses that focused on narrow ELA content, such as a specific class on the teaching of writing or the teaching of grammar (see Table 2.4). Many of the comprehensive methods courses were offered in a two-semester sequence (e.g., The Teaching of English Methods, I and II; Introductory and Advanced Methods). When programs offered methods courses for specific ELA content, the offerings included writing (composition) methods, literature methods, the teaching of adolescent literature, content area literacy, grammar, language, ESL, inclusion, technology or multiple literacies, and speech and communication. As might be expected, our findings from the questionnaire data indicate that ELA teacher preparation in the United States differs from that reported 20 years ago (Smagorinsky and Whiting 1995). The methods course remains an important location to address ELA pedagogical content knowledge; in fact, the stand-alone

39 21 9 7 5 4 4 3 2 2

4 Other

Comprehensive Writing Literature Adolescent literature Content area literacy Reading & literature Reading Grammar Technology Multiple literacies

Other

8

40 21 8 7 5 4 3 2 2 Other

Comprehensive Writing Literature Adolescent literature Reading ESL Content area literacy Grammar Technology Reading & literature

Comprehensive Writing Reading Literature Adolescent literature Inclusion Content area literacy Reading & literature Grammar or language Technology Language 8 Other

43 18 9 6 5 3 2 2 2 2

36 15 11 7 5 4 2 2 2 2 2 12

% Master’s % Alternative % (n=97; 236 courses listed) (n=28; 55 courses listed)

Note: Open-ended question; percentage out of total number of courses listed by respondents for each program type. Across categories, categories listed as “Other” were indicated 1 percent or less: ESL, speech and communication, grammar, linguistics, language, multiple literacies, differentiation/inclusion, assessment, none, and does not know.

Comprehensive Writing Literature Adolescent literature Content area literacy Reading Reading & literature Language General methods

% Postbacc (n=138; 339 courses listed)

Bachelor’s (n=183; 473 courses listed)

Table 2.4  Required specific methods courses in programs by level/type

English Teacher Education: A Portrait of the Field Today  33

34

Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States Table 2.5  Length of Student Teaching/Internship Bachelor’s Postbacc Master’s Alt. Cert. Fewer than 8 weeks 8 to 12 weeks 12 to 15 weeks Full public school semester Full public school year Total responses

0.57 11.36 60.80 23.30 3.98 176.00

0.74 7.41 57.04 21.48 13.33 135.00

2.04 3.06 60.20 21.43 13.27 98.00

12.50 12.50 25.00 25.00 25.00 24.00

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted.

three-credit methods course that was the default option has been replaced in most programs by multiple courses, often aligned with field experiences (see discussion below) that address different aspects of teaching English. Teacher candidates spend many more hours in the field now, and much of that time is connected in some way with education coursework (see Chapter 3).

Connecting field experiences and English education programs Understanding the terminology related to field experiences and student teaching in the United States is sometimes difficult, as terms not only differ from those used in other countries, but vary widely across and within states and programs in the United States. For example, in US teacher education scholarship, the following terms are used across programs in different universities to refer to either those engaged in student teaching or in field experiences, as we have defined them: “student teacher,” “intern,” “teacher candidate,” “teaching assistant/assistant teacher.” Throughout teacher education programs, candidates are provided opportunities to observe and work with K-12 students in classroom settings. These opportunities are referred to by teacher education programs by various names: field experiences, practicum, student teaching, and internships. For the purposes of our study, we have defined field experiences as an experience required by the program outside the university classroom in which candidates observe, teach, and/or engage with students with university or K-12 supervision. Field experiences often build from observations within several classrooms or one specified classroom, to leading small group work, to teaching small groups or whole class instruction (Conference on English Education 2008). Student teaching is a sustained daily placement (see Table 2.5) in which candidates

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are expected to assume all teacher responsibilities in the classroom for a predetermined amount of time. The field experience, as discussed here, differs from student teaching as the candidates are not expected to plan and lead classroom instruction for an extended period. Rather, they are expected to assist, coplan, instruct small or large groups, complete university coursework assignments, and reflect on their field experience to connect theory to practice. These field experiences should “provide good emotional and instructional support focused on issues of teaching and learning” (Zeichner and Conklin 2008, p. 275). Although field experiences are universally considered an important part of the teacher candidate’s experience in teacher education programs, there has been little research on the connection between the subject-specific English methods course and the application of that content in field experiences. Pasternak et al. (2014) found that there is a vast amount of work to show the importance of field experiences when addressing areas of multicultural and social justice issues (e.g., DeStigter 1998), as well as exploring teacher belief systems; however, these studies either do not connect the field experience to coursework or, if they do, that course is not a subject-specific methods course. There are also studies that explore the partnerships that teacher education programs and local school districts engage in to instruct teacher education students as well as provide professional development for K-12 schools (Cercone 2009; Smith and Anagnostopoulos 2008; Zigo and Derrico 2009). These studies engage in conversation and discussion about the partnerships, but again are not necessarily connected to an Englishspecific methods course and to the pedagogies that are used in that course. Zeichner and Conklin (2008) cited four elements that influence the effectiveness of field experiences in teacher education programs: (a) number, length, and placement of field experiences in the curriculum; (b) connections between field experiences and other aspects of the program; (c) teaching responsibility provided in the field experiences; and (d) the extent to which they build on prior field experiences (p. 276). Our study explored both the field experiences candidates engaged in throughout their program of study including student teaching, and the field experience specifically connected to the contentspecific methods course(s), which will be discussed in Chapter 3.

Programmatic field experiences and student teaching Field experiences located throughout teacher education programs can vary widely from institution to institution. The majority of respondents in our study

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States Table 2.6  Hours of field experience before student teaching Bachelor’s None Fewer than 40 40–60 61–100 More than 100 Total responses

Postbacc

0.56 6.70 19.55 36.31 36.87 179.00

3.05 12.21 32.82 27.48 24.43 131.00

Master’s Alt. Cert. 3.85 15.38 26.92 21.15 32.69 104.00

25.00 29.17 12.50 8.33 25.00 24.00

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted.

Table 2.7  Opportunities to practice teaching prior to student teaching

Micro 1 on 1 After School Summer Field Exp. Other Total Responses

Bachelor’s

Postbacc

78.77 54.75 44.69 4.47 93.30 17.32 179.00

70.80 45.26 32.85 5.84 83.94 21.17 137.00

Master’s Alt. Cert. 68.57 47.62 34.29 15.24 85.71 20.95 105.00

44.00 20.00 12.00 20.00 52.00 32.00 25.00

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted.

stated that their teacher candidates have opportunities to practice teaching prior to student teaching, with 73 percent of bachelor’s programs having over 61 hours of field experiences before student teaching (see Table 2.6). Only 50 percent of postbaccalaureate and master’s programs provide field experiences of over 61 hours. By comparison, 25 percent of Alt-Cert programs that responded to the survey do not require field hours before student teaching. Opportunities to practice teaching during field experiences provide a place for candidates to engage K-12 students and begin to work with the daily experiences of teaching. These experiences can vary in focus and size, as well as candidate responsibilities (see Table 2.7). Micro-teaching and field experiences were the most commonly provided opportunities for teacher candidates to “teach” before their student teaching experiences. One-on-one tutoring and participation in afterschool programs were also opportunities for teacher candidates to practice teaching and build confidence with students before their student teaching experience. Overwhelmingly across the United States, teacher candidates are placed in public schools for student teaching. Alternative, charter, and private schools

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Table 2.8  Placement of student teachers

Reg. Public Alternative Charter Private Other Total Responses

Bachelor’s

Postbacc

98.32 35.75 29.05 35.75 8.38 179.00

98.53 41.91 35.29 38.24 8.82 136.00

Master’s Alt. Cert. 95.28 45.28 36.79 37.74 10.38 106.00

80.77 26.92 30.77 23.08 30.77 26.00

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted.

are also used for student teaching but at a far lower percentage (see Table 2.8.). Most student teaching experiences consist of 12–15 weeks at a school site, although there are some programs that place teacher candidates for the duration of the public school’s academic semester or year, the latter usually reported by postbaccalaureate, master’s, and alternative certification programs. This construct for student teaching is similar to that in which a teacher education candidate is placed in the same school during both the methods course field experience and the student teaching experience, making it a yearlong experience in the same setting. Per our findings, helping teacher candidates develop the knowledge and skills needed for current contexts is carried out largely through readings and discussion in the methods course, although 71 percent of respondents reported programs that had a field component connected to the ELA methods course. Unfortunately, the information and assignments from the field requirement were most often omitted from the syllabi we collected. This missing information may have been provided to teacher candidates in supplemental documents or in course management systems, a circumstance that reveals a flaw common to using syllabi as the sole means of data (see Chapter 8). When reported for the field experiences, the hours varied widely. Also, varying widely is the opportunity in those experiences to apply what has been learned in the methods course.

Changing contexts in English teacher education since 1995 Our data have revealed changes in institutional contexts and disciplinary expectations since Smagorinsky and Whiting’s (1995) study; although in some ways, conditions have changed little. Tenure stream faculty are still largely responsible for teaching the methods class, although few of them have degrees

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

in English education. As to the content, the methods course is still a place for teacher candidates to learn how to plan, learn disciplinary instructional practices, and begin to develop their teacher identity. However, many methods courses address the five focal areas to some extent, which will be discussed in more detail in the subsequent chapters. In contrast, the number of programs in which teacher educators work has exploded, as bachelor’s programs coexist with postbaccalaureate, master’s, and university-based alternative certification programs. This trend is likely due to the university trends in recent years to serve more and varied markets. Programs at the different certification levels are surprisingly alike but those certifying postbachelor’s degree tend to require fewer credits of methods courses and fewer hours in the field. Why this change occurred is outside the scope of this study, but these changes may be a result of the greater number of returning students, some of whom have full-time jobs, which could influence how programs develop. However, programs, overall, have increased the number of field hours required in schools both before and during student teaching, even though research does not indicate an optimal length of service, and doubts have been raised regarding the quality of field experiences.

Mapping the changes in English teacher education across five focal areas The remaining chapters address the following questions using data collected in the study: 1. How do teacher educators prioritize the needs of their teacher candidates to teach in schools for today and tomorrow? 2. How do the needs in teaching in today’s and tomorrow’s classroom manifest as content in the methods course syllabi? 3. How do those needs transfer from theory to practice (or awareness to application)? 4. Which external forces affect how teacher educators prioritize the content taught in the methods course and practiced in the field experiences? In Chapters 3 through 7, we build on the findings from the questionnaire, adding analyses of collected syllabi, and focus group interviews. We depart from Smagorinsky and Whiting (1995) in this regard, as they relied solely on syllabus

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analyses and a questionnaire that they acknowledge was developed informally and without testing, but we find that syllabi in this century are inadequate maps of the territory that teacher candidates traverse on their voyage to become teachers. We discuss in more detail the limitations of syllabi in Chapter 8, as we found all too many syllabi that were incomplete, idiosyncratic, and opaque. This observation is not a criticism of their authors, but an acknowledgment that the purpose and the attributes of the genre have changed. In an era when reading lists, assignment descriptions, and course calendars can be more easily posted and updated on course management systems, it is no longer necessary to spell all that information out in a print document. In Chapter 3, we explore the requirements involved in field experiences connected with the methods course and the integration of these field experiences across required coursework. Connecting the field experience to the methods course has created some tensions through and across programs, especially in regard to finding opportunities for teacher candidates to practice the theory they learn in their methods classes and to move beyond awareness of current practices in the discipline. Per Rush (2009), theory and practice are often thought of as two different concepts in teacher education, with theory “comprised of ideas or concepts, and practice referring to strategies, how-to’s, or instructional techniques” (p. 205). Rush finds this dichotomy between theory and practice discouraging, because it is the teacher candidates who are often the ones who must make the connection from the content learned in the methods class through readings and discussion to the practices they will engage in during the field experiences. Throughout the book, we use the concepts of awareness and application in a similar vein, but one that avoids the cliché of theory as useless abstraction. Awareness is a positive concept, but not sufficient: if teacher candidates leave their teacher education programs aware of the issues teachers face, but not knowing methods for addressing them, or having opportunities to apply those methods, they are understandably frustrated.

3

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements

At Heartland State University, the English education undergraduate certification program has a two-course methods sequence. The same cohort of students take the first methods course in the spring of their junior year, and follow together into the second methods course in the fall of their senior year, the semester before their student teaching experience. Curriculum Principles: Secondary Language Arts 2 is the second methods course of the sequence which is concurrently taught with a practicum experience in which teacher candidates work in a secondary English classroom three days a week. This course’s focused connection to the field experience is seen throughout the readings, assignments, and calendar for the course. In explaining the purpose of field experiences, the instructor, Jessica Mosconi, stated in the open-ended survey question that “it is the only way novice teachers can understand why, how, and to what end the methods they are learning about work.” The second methods course comprises four units, two of which are explicitly focused on the practicum experience teacher candidates are involved in concurrently when enrolled in Curriculum Principles: Secondary Language Arts  2. One unit in this class, “Unit #2: The Teacher-Ethnographer: Paying Attention” focuses on developing teacher candidates’ ethnographic perspective towards and methods of inquiry into their practicum setting in order to help them understand how classrooms and schools operate. Specifically, teachers will develop deeper understandings of how and why students do and do not engage in the English Language Arts. Issues such as classroom management, building rapport between teachers and students, and motivating and engaging students will be discussed throughout this unit (and the entire course).

The focus on developing the ethnographic perspective is designed to acculturate the teacher candidate into the K-12 school environment. This

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements 41

assignment and the discussion creates a connection between field experience and the methods course. With the discussion, this ethnographic perspective can teach teacher candidates to step back and reflect upon what they are seeing in their field experience. Without the integration between the field placement and the methods course, the discussion in the methods classroom facilitated by a teacher educator can reinforce negative stereotypes, ineffective teaching practices, and in general negative attitudes toward students and education in the K-12 classroom. Focusing explicitly on the practicum experience, Unit #4 is titled “Practicum Presentations.” This unit focuses on the practicum presentation, which is a course assignment that counts for 20 percent of the final grade, and is undertaken in conjunction with the teacher candidate’s practicum partner, another teacher candidate placed at the same field experience site. There are multiple assignments associated with this course that are in some way connected to the practicum experience teacher candidates are engaged in throughout the semester. They include the following: 1. Class Blog Postings: This set of assignments involves “[continual] reflection regarding the alignment of one’s philosophies and practices (or achieving praxis)” and “ongoing growth as you move through your first teaching experience.” 2. Ethnographic Research and Evolved Informed Position Statement: This assignment involves “time understanding and analyzing your site” including, what it looks like, who participates in it, how these participants communicate with one another, how time and space operate, how power functions, what implicit and explicit messages (about race, class, gender authority, school) are sent and received, and so on. This project asks that you survey your practicum setting in order to develop a deep understanding of how and why students do and do not engage and achieve in their schoolwork. 3. Co-Teaching Facilitation: For this assignment, teacher candidates are asked to “select a Co-Teaching topic focus and formally plan a 50 minute lesson/ facilitation. You will coordinate this project with your practicum partner.” 4. Practicum Presentation: This assignment is designed for teacher candidates to “develop a formal presentation with your practicum partner that provides the cohort with a ‘window’—offering us a range of commentary/reflection/ revelations about your practicum experiences and growth.” 5. Final E-Portfolio: This assignment has students to synthesize and reflect on their emerging beliefs about teaching ELA: “Why we do it, what it is, and how we do it.”

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The course calendar provides an opportunity in every class session for teacher candidates to reflect upon, analyze, and discuss their experiences in their practicum setting. This opportunity is also coupled with the use of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) throughout the semester. Teacher candidates are grouped by subject matter. For example, all teacher candidates who are placed in practicum settings where they will be teaching American literature are grouped in the same PLC. The philosophy given is that one of the overwhelming aspects of teaching is the breadth and depth of the subject matter that teacher candidates are expected to know. The PLCs provide teacher candidates an opportunity to discuss specific pedagogical strategies with others teaching the same piece of the ELA curriculum. The course, Curriculum Principles: Secondary Language Arts 2, integrates the course material in teaching ELA and the field experience teacher candidates are engaged in throughout the course. Teacher candidates are asked to think about the context of their field placement and consider how these factors affect the learning of their students. They are asked to not just “tell” what is going on in their placement, but are asked to reflect both individually and jointly (both on the 50-minute lesson/facilitation and the practicum presentation) with their practicum partner, the teacher candidate assigned to the same field placement. Teacher candidates are also asked to work across practicum sites in their PLC groups to think about the content they are teaching through various contextual factors, while also placing all of these assignments into the theoretical framework for the course. This case provides an exemplar for how the theoretical and the practical of teaching ELA can be integrated into a methods course by using field experiences. Mosconi created the assignments of the course to connect the theory the students study in the methods course with the practical daily interactions with the secondary students in their practicum placement. With this case in mind, the chapter will now turn to defining the concept of field experiences by looking at the literature.

Defining the field and student teaching experience Although the case study above shows the connections that can be built when field experiences are attached to a methods course and field experiences are considered an important part of the preservice teacher’s experience in teacher

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements 43

education programs, there has been little research done on the connection between the subject-specific English course and the application of that content in field experiences (Pasternak et al. 2014). How those field experiences are set up, what teacher candidates observe, and when in their program these field experiences occur are often functions of the structure of each individual teacher education program. The discussion of what constitutes a field experience, and what should be done in field experiences, has been a long-standing conversation in teacher education. In 1945, the Committee on Standards and Survey of the American Association of Teachers Colleges conducted a study (consisting of a questionnaire and small focus groups) of what was occurring in teacher education programs at the time. One finding from this study addressed definitions for field experiences and student teaching as a way to create a common language among the committee members. Field Experiences were defined as “include[ing] all those contacts with children, youth, and adults (through observation, participation and teaching) which make a direct contribution to an understanding of individuals and their guidance in the teaching-learning process” (Edelfelt and Rath 1998, p. 322). The Committee on Standards and Survey of the American Association of Teachers Colleges also made recommendations, known familiarly as the Flowers Report (Edelfelt and Rath 1998), for field experiences within teacher education programs, including an outline of suggested field experience requirements. According to this report, field opportunities should include the following: (a)  implementation of basic concepts and ideas discussed in college classes, (b) support for teacher candidates to understand what they still need to learn and set up a professional development plan, (c) experience working with K-12 students, and (d) assessment of the teacher candidates’ ability to function effectively when leading teaching situations. These recommendations also included the idea that field experiences should be flexible, occur throughout the college teaching program, and continue after the student teaching experience when teacher candidates have a base of experience and background knowledge on which to attach more learning. Sixty years after the Flowers Report, teacher education programs are still working to create field experiences that are coherent and meaningful for teacher candidates. In a review of research on teacher education programs commissioned by the US Department of Education et al. (2001), it was found that “the research on clinical experiences is weak in several ways. Much of the early research focused

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on cooperating and prospective teachers’ attitudes. Although it is important to know how teachers feel about the benefits of field experiences, attitude surveys do not answer questions about what prospective teachers actually learn” (p. 196). The studies examined were small in scale, and findings from the review indicated the importance of field experiences to teacher education especially if they were well focused and well structured. However, the narrowness of the studies conducted prohibited other broad generalizations about the effectiveness of the field experience. Carpraro, Carpraro and Helfeldt (2010) had similar findings in a study that looked at differing field experiences in an elementary certification program. Across three groups of teacher candidates placed in either (a) a control group (a traditional experience), (b) a professional development school (PDS), or (c) an inquiry-based model of learning, findings showed that it was the structure of the activities and their connection to the concurrently taken methods course that was more significant to learning than where the teacher candidate was placed. Grossman, Ronfeldt and Cohen (2012) call for more research on the context of a field or student teaching placement to understand how that context affects the learning of teacher candidates in those settings. Interestingly, there has been very little to no research that looks at the effectiveness of the length of the field experience to change or influence teacher candidate effectiveness (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Grossman, Ronfeldt and Cohen 2012; Pasternak et al. 2014). For most programs, the minimum length of student teaching requirements is dictated or regulated by state certification requirements, with no research indicating what length is effective, if length indeed is a variable with consequences. Teacher educators have often assumed that the longer the field experience, the better the educational experience for teacher candidates. However, without research to indicate or support that assumption, the impact of the length of field experiences and student teaching remains an unanswered question. Zeichner and Conklin (2008) have determined that number, length, and placement of the field experience influences its effectiveness. They also found that connecting field experience activities with the methods class and prior experience, and providing some type of autonomy of the teacher candidate were also predictors of effectiveness. The study, however, does not detail the coherence of the programs examined, leaving unanswered the questions of how increased hours in field and student teaching experiences are integrated with methods coursework, and how the relationship between the placement schools and the university affects the quality of the student teaching experience.

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements 45

Awareness versus application: Translating knowledge into teaching practice One aim of our inquiry was to convey how the field envisions an updated image of English education today. Through our literature review (Pasternak et al. 2014) we began to construct a foundation for how the discipline has changed since the 1990s. Theoretically, we understood that teacher educators vary in their conceptions of the teaching of English; yet, our study unveiled findings related to what we view as a dichotomy of awareness of issues related to effective teaching practices versus application of concepts into a teacher candidate’s instruction. A differentiation between awareness and application helped us articulate how English teacher educators viewed their responsibility, and sometimes their capacity for addressing the new areas of emphasis we focused on in our study. We see this differentiation as corresponding with commonly held distinguishing differences in teacher professional development between teacher knowledge and beliefs or theory and teacher practice (Borko 2004; Borko, Jacobs and Koellner 2010). The two, awareness and application of belief and practice, must go handin-hand in order for the teacher candidate to be successful. Our data reveal that teacher educators consider the field experience as the main location to address the tension between teacher candidates’ becoming aware of issues and being able to resolve those issues through their teaching practices. Awareness has positive intentions and is related to the need for prospective teachers to possess an in-depth understanding of teaching, learning, and context. Although awareness of “new areas of emphasis” is important for teacher candidates as a way to be current with the field, we believe that these emerging educators need time and space to put new knowledge into practice, given the need for theory and practice to work conceptually, a developmental process that may take time amidst competing notions of effective teaching (Smagorinsky 2013). Application refers to the process of translating knowledge into practice and, in teacher education, one place where this often begins is located in the field component of programs. Although this learning movement from awareness to application is a complex learning process, and can continue far into a teacher’s career, the methods course and field experience play an important role in the beginning of this process. In the larger field of teacher education, a recent focus on researching developing practice, as opposed to developing theory, is gaining traction (Ball, Thames and Phelps 2008; Forzani 2014), although there is little scholarship on the topic in English education generally (but see Grossman and Thompson 2008).

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The questionnaire results from our study revealed that awareness of issues was promulgated in the methods course primarily through engaging students in readings, lectures, and discussions about particular topics. The addition of readings and lectures was especially true where changes in English education were addressed in the third section of the questionnaire that queried respondents as to how programs responded to conceptual and curricular changes in the field. Awareness of issues affecting teacher education signifies a traditional approach to learning in higher education that is often removed from practice. For example, awareness of teaching diverse learners and English language learners is oftentimes not connected to fieldwork if field sites with linguistically diverse K-12 students are difficult to obtain (see Chapter 6). Likewise, some respondents thought technology should be handson and practical, yet other respondents described either their universities’ or local schools’ lack of access to quality technology (see Chapter 7). The main home for application was the field experience connected to the methods course. Although there are examples in research (Smagorinsky and Whiting 1995) and in our questionnaire data of teacher candidates conducting lesson demonstrations, or teaching lessons for their peers in methods courses, the field experience again provides for the introduction of an authentic audience, the K-12 students. In the open-ended responses, respondents indicated the field experience component was the one area of the program where teacher candidates have the opportunity to practice their newly found pedagogical and content knowledge. For example, one respondent stated, “The practice of working in the field feeds students’ learning in the methods course and makes what they are learning more relevant and authentic.” The field experience, according to another respondent, provides an “opportunity to practice research based teaching [and] to disrupt some of the well-established teaching practices that do not significantly support learners.” Responses such as this one led us to infer that some respondents assumed that application was occurring in the field, but others indicated that teacher candidates were not always afforded the opportunity to apply their knowledge, as application depended upon circumstance and context. Promoting the awareness that classrooms are complex places with constantly changing dynamics has, at times, overshadowed links to practice. As prospective teachers experience the disjunction between what we see as awareness of issues and application to classrooms, they may risk essentializing student groups based on factors such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (Gay and Kirkland 2003). Though not the intention of teacher educators, awareness can become a proxy for understanding; the field experience accompanying a methods course is intended to support this understanding.

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements 47

Field experiences in English education The lack of research done in the past twenty years on field experiences connected directly to a content-specific English methods course for secondary preservice English teachers has provided some interesting conversations around the English methods course in today’s teacher education programs. There are studies that explore the partnerships that teacher education programs and local school districts engage in to instruct teacher candidates as well as provide professional development for K-12 schools (Cercone 2009; Smith and Anagnostopoulos 2008; Zigo and Derrico 2009). There are directives on what the methods course looks like or should be (Fleischer and Fox 2002; Pope 1999; Marshall and Smith 1997; Richmond and Whyte 2004), discussions of changing ideas of diversity and using multicultural literature (Margerison 1995; Rosen and Abt-Perkins 2000), and using simulated performances (Finders and Rose 1999). There are studies of field experiences in diverse settings (DeStigter 1998; Hallman and Burdick 2011) and in building partnerships (Cercone 2009; Smith and Anagnostopoulos 2008; Zigo and Derrico 2009). These studies engage in conversation and discussion about the partnerships, which appear promising as means for strengthening connections between university and field. There are a few possible reasons for this apparent lack of research delving into the connections between ELA methods courses and field placements. One possible reason is that the context of teacher education programs is so varied. This variation could be caused by (a) the lack of a field experience connected directly to a subject-specific methods course; (b) the concurrent offering of the methods course and student teaching in graduate programs; (c) the lack of a common language for field experience (as defined by the Flowers Report, 1948) such that the terms practicum, observation, intern, and student teaching are often used interchangeably in the scholarly research; and (d) the methods course’s lack of a shared framework among English teacher educators. In methods classes, as noted above, supporting teacher candidates to develop the knowledge and skills needed for current contexts is carried out largely through readings, discussion, and the development of lesson plans and other materials. Subject-specific methods classes face the challenge of integrating the large discipline of English language arts with the pedagogical theory of how to teach secondary English. In the subject-specific methods course, teacher candidates consider the elements of teaching reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing skills. Within these categories, there can be tens to hundreds more specific content areas taught in classrooms: vocabulary, critical thinking, fiction and nonfiction,

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research writing, persuasion, and other literacy-related practices. These strands are taught at various mastery levels from grades 7 to 12 to prepare adolescents for life after high school. How English teachers conceive of their content can also be affected by the socioeconomics of a community, the emotional and psychological support available in a school district, and the physical environment of a school. The subject-specific methods course is tasked with concurrently considering the community context of the school and classroom and the practical teaching of ELA content (Caughlan et al. 2017). To navigate the move from awareness to application, teacher candidates benefit from reflection. Many scholars (Brookfield 1995; Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1993; Hole and McEntee 1999; Shoffner 2008; Pasternak and Rigoni 2015) have discussed the need for reflection in teacher education programs. Reflective practitioners critically interrogate their role in the classroom, deciding on the best pedagogical strategies for the students in that context to enhance learning. Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993) argue that “only teachers themselves can interrogate their assumptions and their interpretive frameworks and then decide on the actions that are appropriate for their local contexts” (p. 64), a perspective that is contradicted by the policy environment that centralizes curriculum, instruction, assessment, and decision-making. The assignments in methods courses instruct teacher candidates to begin these reflective practices. With the help of reflection, the field experience is the place where teacher candidates connect the theory and pedagogical strategies they have learned throughout the teacher education program to their own teaching contexts and philosophies. Therefore, field experiences connected to a subject-specific methods course can connect theory and practice for teacher candidates. This portion of our study was designed to investigate how these experiences are connected to the other components of the teacher education program.

Context of field placements within methods courses Although field experiences have continued to be an important part of teacher education programs there is not always a transference from the knowledge or content being learned in the methods course to the field experience classroom, or a move from awareness to application. Although methods courses work to incorporate the K-12 classroom into readings, theoretical underpinnings, hypothetical lesson and unit planning, and even classroom management strategies, it is very difficult to simulate the secondary classroom in scope, pressure, adolescent audience, curriculum needs, etc., while still providing the necessary

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements 49

instruction in theory and pedagogy. Field experiences provide an entry point into possibly correcting what research refers to as the two-worlds pitfall (FeimanNemser and Buchmann 1987; Anagnostopoulos, Smith and Basmadjian 2007). The two-worlds pitfall speaks directly to the disjuncture between the practices teacher candidates are taught in the teacher education programs, and what they find in the K-12 classroom. This is further complicated by the position in which teacher candidates find themselves, concurrently being teacher and student. Our questionnaire asked respondents about the program’s use of field experiences during their subject-specific methods course, including if they had one, and how that experience was connected to their course. Seventy-three percent of programs reported having a field component connected to their ELA methods course as part of the overall field requirement (see Table 3.1), varying widely in number of hours required, with 35 percent reporting more than 30 hours of required field experience hours (see Table 3.2). However, these numbers were not reflected in the methods course syllabi. Forty-one percent of the syllabi that were submitted for analysis had no mention of field experiences. Open-ended questions from the questionnaire asked respondents about the purpose of the field experience. The responses could be classified into four different themes revealed through the data: Applying English Content, Learning the Social Context of Table 3.1  Number of programs with field experiences in methods course Field experience connected to course Yes No No specific methods course Did not answer

Percentage responding 73.1 15.3 1.7 9.5

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted; n = 242.

Table 3.2  Number of hours of field experience connected to methods course How many hours (methods course) 0–10 11–0 31–50 51–100 Over 100 Methods concurrent with student teaching Other

Percent responding 5.4 23.6 15.3 14.0 5.8 4.1 4.1

Note: Programs that have a field experience attached to methods course; in percentages; missing data omitted; n=161.

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Schools, Connecting Theory to Practice, and Reflection. These themes all speak to the movement of teacher candidates from the college classroom to the K-12 classroom, and the movement from awareness to application. When asked what activities teacher candidates engage in during field experiences (see Table  3.3), responses showed candidates moving from observations in classrooms to engaging in the learning environment with students by taking an active role as participant, not just observer. Respondents were able to check all that applied to their field experience, showing that programs are working to have teacher candidates in the field do more than observe. The “other” responses that were reported from programs included interviews, one-on-one work with students, and after-school experiences. Table 3.3  Expectations of teacher candidates in field experiences Activities in the field

Percentage of programs expecting activity

Observe Tutor Instruct small group Instruct whole group Occurs during student teaching Other

64.9 40.9 55.4 56.6 16.5 8.7

Note: Value as percent of respondents who chose each option (check all that apply); missing data omitted; n = 161.

The themes noted above are also consistent with answers to questions about the assignments that programs connected to these field experiences: observations, interviews, data collection, running records, literacy narratives, reflection, planning, instructing small groups and whole class, receiving mentor feedback, and videotaping (see Table 3.4). Table 3.4  Assignments linked to field experience Assignment type Reflection Lesson plans Cooperating teacher feedback Literature review or scholarly research Videotape and review of lesson Action research Other

Percentage of programs using assignment 64.9 55.0 42.6 19.8 26.4 3.3 11.6

Note: Value as percent of respondents who chose each option (check all that apply), missing data omitted; n = 161.

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements 51

Of the 73 percent of respondents who reported having methods course assignments connected to the field experience, 81 percent reported using more than one assignment (see Table 3.5). Yet, an accurate picture of how the assignment connects to the field is still difficult to tease out. By looking only at the syllabi and calendar, and without a full detailed assignment from most syllabi, it is difficult to know how the assignments integrate with the method coursework. Table 3.5  Number of assignments in field experience 1 2 3 4 5 6 Missing answers

7 10.7 21.1 17.8 9.1 0.8 33.5

Note: Value as percent of respondents who chose each option (check all that apply); n = 161.

We inferred that if the field experience is being discussed in the methods course or if there are assignments attached to the field experience, the field experience is likely to be integrated in the curriculum of the course or discussed in the syllabus (see Table 3.6). Distinctions were made between if the field experience was discussed in the syllabus, whether it was given attention to on the calendar, and whether there were assignments attached to the field experience. Table 3.6  Coding for syllabi Code

Explanation for code

1 2

No field experience mentioned throughout the syllabus Field experience requirement mentioned. Either concurrent course OR no further reference to the field throughout syllabus Field experience required. Assignments are either mentioned or explicitly described Field experience required. Assignments are mentioned or explicitly described AND there are dates attached for assignments and/or discussion Field experience totally integrated into the course. Integration of coursework and field experience is seen throughout the course on every level

3 3.5 4

Percentage of Syllabi w/code 31.61 24.26 34.55 5.88 3.67

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There were several issues when looking at syllabi that made it difficult to code for field experiences. Syllabi range widely in quality and amount of detail, ranging from those containing very detailed information about course purposes and expectations to those containing very little information (see Chapter 8). For the syllabi that did reference a field experience, there were other situations that made it difficult to code the syllabi. Rarely did a syllabus mention how many hours were required or where teacher candidates were conducting their field experience. Some syllabi indicated that teacher candidates would have access to “students” but the experience was not elaborated upon, and so coders were not able to decipher whether teacher candidates were engaged in a field experience outside their methods course, or if they were simply given access to student artifacts (such as writing or curriculum from the K-12 classroom) to assess or use to lesson plan. A few courses, all of which were labeled as graduate courses, were being offered while teacher candidates were student teaching (in some cases this was labeled as an internship). This situation raised a whole different conversation about the field experience, such as whether the teacher candidate was the teacher of record, if their supervision had oversight from the teacher education program, and how frequently they attended class at the university or college. Finally, some methods courses indicated that their teacher candidates were required to take a field experience course concurrent with their methods course. Because we asked respondents only for their methods course syllabi, the field course or field practicum syllabi was not included in our data set.

Moving teacher candidates from the “Apprenticeship of Observation” Developing vision of what is possible in the field and working out the complex relationships between specific school contexts, specific students, and theory and practice in our field. Without this, it’s too common for students to simply set aside what has happened at the university and start anew once they enter the school context.

In this section, we introduce four themes, Applying English Content, Learning the Social Context of Schools, Connecting Theory to Practice, and Reflection that reoccurred throughout the data. Each section begins with the voice of

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements 53

a teacher educator who had responded to the open-ended question about the purpose or goal of the field experience in his or her teacher education program. Teacher educators still struggle with creating field experiences that are meaningful and add to the theoretical perspectives of the teacher education program. This struggle is marked by tensions in the field, but also in the “apprenticeship of observation” (Lortie 1975) that each teacher candidate carries with them throughout their teacher education program. Lortie’s work found that K-12 classrooms (and some have argued well into their higher education coursework as well) socializes teachers into an idea or belief about what teaching looks like and how it should be conducted, often focusing on content without the theoretical or pedagogical knowledge to understand how they themselves learned. One legacy of Lortie’s work has been that teachers would rely on traditional pedagogical practices due to their own schooling. However, Smagorinsky and Barnes (2014) found that although teachers do inhabit an “apprenticeship of observation,” Lortie’s work is often cited without consideration of the changing pedagogies in K-12 schools. Smagorinsky and Barnes found that teacher candidates in 2014 could articulate practices in their past educational experiences that were both traditional (or teacher centered) and progressive (or student centered). Their research subjects were heading into their student teaching experience, and their beliefs about teaching were found to be more progressive than the assumed beliefs in Lortie’s study from forty years before. The apprenticeship of observation highlights the need for teacher candidates reflecting on their own education experiences, and teacher education programs facilitating those conversations. Without pedagogical conversations about why and how their own teachers created and structured their lessons, teacher candidates can enter into the classroom without an understanding of how theory plays into teaching practices. Ideally field experiences can help to connect a theoretical understanding to the teaching practices teacher candidates experience in their own education experiences, if they are coherent and coordinated with the philosophical underpinnings of their program, because they can show teacher candidates the theoretical underpinnings of the lesson they are observing. For example, in the exemplar found at the beginning of the chapter, the blog-post assignment was designed to have students look at the “continuous reflection and alignment of one’s philosophies and practices (or achieving praxis).” This assignment could

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be used to discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the lessons the teacher candidates are observing, and how those underpinning aligns or does not align with their own philosophy.

Applying English content It is important for students to see the connection between content and teaching skills.

Many English education students come to the profession because English is a subject they enjoy and/or excel at. But when it comes to understanding how content is used in the ELA classroom, how it is broken down to be taught, teacher candidates can be at a loss. Many questionnaire respondents stated a goal of focusing on the content of an English language arts curriculum, and connecting that content to pedagogy. The content of the ELA classroom ranges between school district and grade level, but includes the curriculum or material being taught within a specific course. This material can include, but is not limited to, literature, vocabulary, grammar, writing instruction, etc. This is considered the subject matter of the English language arts classroom. One way that teacher educators work to help teacher candidates understand how content is used in the classroom is by providing teacher candidates with assignments that focus on breaking down content into pieces that have an end goal or objective in mind. A frequently used assignment that was seen in the syllabi analysis that focused on English content was the lesson plan. Sample syllabi listed particulars for the lesson plans, including content that was to be used, grammar and vocabulary, and specific titles of texts. When participating in the focus group interviews, Mosconi, whose course frames this chapter, explained that her students collaborated in working groups around the content of the field experience classrooms, American literature, working to facilitate a broader knowledge base for the teacher education candidates. Multiple respondents brought up the use of scripted curriculum, or “binders,” in the K-12 classroom. During the focus group interviews, Mosconi stated preparing teacher candidates for scripted curricula is a struggle: Teacher candidates “walk into these environments where things are scripted for them.” She went on to relate how she works to build a relationship with the ELA coordinators of these districts, and how she brings them into the methods

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements 55

course to talk about expectations and standards with the teacher candidates. She continued, “We want them to know this is what’s expected of [teacher candidates], but we’re also teaching [teacher candidates] to try to negotiate [the scripted curriculum] in ways that makes sense, intellectual sense, and relationship sense for our students.” Programs look to support their teacher candidates as they adapt to the specific schools in which they are placed, but programs also want teacher candidates to negotiate which instructional practices are effective for student learning. Therefore, as noted by one respondent in the open-ended responses, it is important for teacher candidates to see the “connections between content and teaching skills.” Across the focus group responses, discussions about scripted curriculum and test preparation arose, as they did in the open-ended responses from the questionnaire. Judy Filipek voiced her teacher candidates’ concerns: “This is all well and good, all this stuff that you’re teaching us, but there are those tests, and we have this curriculum, and we have only so much time.” Filipek’s teacher candidates already feel the tension between the theory and methods they are taught in their program, and the reality of the classroom with its added stress and requirements from standardized testing and scripted curricula, again highlighting the “two-worlds pitfall” documented in research (Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann 1987). Jack Akers agreed with Filipek in that there are “some student teachers who never encounter any test prep whatsoever, but then some who have to stop for some standardized test.”

Connecting theory to practice Teaching candidates need scaffolding of their learning just like the students they will teach. We allow them to practice their teaching in the methods class, then ask them to practice in their classroom placements, as they work toward taking over complete responsibility for a classroom.

Tension over connecting the theory learned in the methods courses to the field experience appeared repeatedly in the open-ended responses throughout our questionnaire. Programs work to achieve this coherence between the theory they teach and the practices expected in the field experience in different ways. Focus group participant Alice McNamara stated that her program has the field experience in the same placement as student teaching. With their subject-specific methods courses occurring in the fall semester, this same

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group of teacher candidates then student teach in the spring. This organization allows the methods course to provide “the opportunity to have our students design activities, curricular units, materials that they’ll actually be able to implement as student teachers in the spring.” Being able to create materials in methods courses that teacher candidates will use in their student teaching placement provides not just a place for awareness in the methods course, but an application of those concepts for the teacher candidates. In comparison, Mosconi’s program has two methods courses that take place from spring to fall semester with teacher candidates’ student teaching in the spring. Although this group is assigned in different locations for their field and student teaching placements, they are placed in pairs for a practicum experience that lasts three days a week for a semester during their subject-specific methods course. This field experience allows the teacher candidates to discuss the methods being used in their practicum with their methods instructor. However, the connection between theory and practice (Rush 2009) can be more general when teacher candidates are placed in multiple contexts for their field experiences throughout their teacher education programs. In Filipek’s graduate program, she feels that teacher candidates “observe for a lot of hours, but the connection is not as specific because students are not placed in their student teaching field placement.” Although the placement can still provide an opportunity for teacher candidates to connect theory to practice in a field experience where the philosophy of the K-12 classroom aligns with the teacher education program, often the placement philosophy does not align with the teacher education program. This leaves teacher candidates in the confusing position of trying to understand not only a new context, but also how to enact the theories and pedagogies learned in their methods courses. Filpek’s teacher candidates are then faced with the prospect of a new context for student teaching without the direct connection to the methods course to help guide them. Questionnaire and focus group respondents expressed difficulty with finding mentor teachers who share the philosophy of the teacher education program. Often, these misaligned placements reinforce for the teacher candidate practices not supported by the program as effective or those that do not address twentyfirst-century literacy practices. Experiences such as these do not allow the teacher candidates to move from awareness to application. Steve Casey observed, “That’s what controls it [field experiences], the mentor teacher.” In response to Casey, Akers lamented that often what is taught or emphasized in methods courses is not what is being emphasized in the K-12 classroom. He runs his methods class as

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements 57 a reading and writing workshop. You’re reading something every day. You’re talking about what you’re reading. You’re writing every day. You’re talking about your writing. That’s what they do on campus, but then, again, they go into the schools, and sometimes the students don’t write for weeks. Sometimes they’re reading. They’re doing the popcorn reading of a play or of a novel or something. . . . We talk about a combination of text and image, whether it’s video or anything, but we do that on campus, but then I never see it in their practice, in part because their mentor teachers aren’t doing it either.

The open-ended responses indicated that the teacher educators did not feel they had control on the hands-on experiences of their teacher candidates when they are in the field. Comments such as “some of our students experience this,” or “of course it depends on the placement,” or “we HOPE our students are able to experience these types of experiences” reveal the tensions of these endeavors. Therefore, even when programs attempt to connect the theoretical to the practical in the field, the viability of the field experience is always dependent upon the partnerships that are built with the schools where the field and student teaching placements occur. Respondents who indicated existing or planned professional development school partnerships or coteaching with established partnerships made more positive statements about their students’ field experiences, while respondents from programs who knew less about the field placement’s environment did not respond positively about those situations. The interaction between the teacher education program and the field experience, whether in PDS schools or the coteaching model, creates a conversation between the teacher education programs and the cooperating teachers and administration in the field. Focus group participants expressed concerns that the “context of the field and student teaching [is] driving methods. What students need for their field drives the course [content].” Akers stated that “research-based practices that we practice in our methods class aren’t translating into the [teaching] practice [of the teacher candidates] for lots of reasons.” Bill Warner felt that the mentor teacher has the control in the field experience context, “that’s [who] controls it, the mentor teacher.” Focus group participants expressed some angst over whether teacher candidates are really able to observe and implement effective methods and pedagogical strategies that are taught in their methods courses. Connecting theory to practice causes tension in teacher education programs. As our respondents showed, the philosophy of the teacher education program is

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misaligned with the philosophy or teaching practices that are found in the schools where teacher candidates conduct their field experiences. This not only raises a tension between the teacher education programs and the field placements, but can cause confusion for the teacher candidates in understanding best practices in the classroom.

Learning the context of schools We want whatever we’re teaching in the methods courses to be meaningful in the context of the preservice teachers’ immediate experiences in schools. In other words, we’re trying to encourage our students to actively participate based on their field experiences in conversations about why we teach English and how best to do it.

The field experience integrates a new element of a teacher education program for the teacher candidate, the actual K-12 classroom. This classroom is filled with real students and real curriculum, and real consequences. Although teacher candidates have been working toward this goal, often their experiences, their apprenticeship of observation (Lortie 1975), colors their perceptions of the expectations of teaching. One respondent explained in the open-ended responses that the field experience is designed to “equip students to assess the needs of actual students, planning relevant, engaging lessons that will be used in an authentic setting.” The context of the K-12 classroom provides a live setting in which to observe K-12 students, assess their levels, and create lessons for that classroom. Another respondent observed that “the field experience provides context for designing lessons and units/lesson sequences with specific goals that are lined to this context. Students must show knowledge of this context—in particular knowledge of the students and their particular needs—when designing effective lessons.” Teacher education programs achieve this goal of helping teacher candidates to understand the context and job of teacher in various ways, and at various times in their programs. A respondent stated, “Our field experience exists in our introductory courses and has as its purpose to acquaint our students with the profession of teaching, the challenges in the field and the demands placed on teachers.” Other programs work to have teacher candidates understand the context of the school as a whole, including the community, the resources of the community, and its socioeconomic concerns. Mosconi expressed a concern with “trying to get her students to realize that diversity is not an appendage, but what

Awareness versus Application: Intersections between Methods and Field Placements 59

we ‘do’ as teachers.” However, the philosophy of the school building and the teachers mentoring the teacher candidates is often felt by the teachers in the schools to be subordinate to the philosophy of the teacher education program, thereby causing conflict for the teacher candidates. Again, the context of the field experience and the environment of the school building can add to or detract from the philosophy of the methods course without the proper support in the field. Grossman, Ronfeldt and Cohen (2012) state that more research needs to be done to fully understand the best contexts to place teacher candidates for field placements and student teaching. Some of our respondents’ programs place teacher candidates in field assignments that will lead to their student teaching placement. For other programs, teacher candidates spend many observation hours in the field, but then change contexts when it comes to their student teaching placement. The field experience provides context for teacher candidates to explore their own philosophical views toward education as well as to potentially see theoretical pedagogies enacted with K-12 students. However, the context of the field experience can often be at odds with the teacher education program, both in philosophy and in practice.

Reflection [The purpose of field experiences is] to help students directly apply and reflect upon the strategies and tactics they’ve learned in the program against the larger backdrop of their contextual realities of their placement classroom.

Reflective practice often is the cornerstone of connecting theory to practice in methods courses; it also plays a role in helping teacher candidates understand how the context of the school and community affect learning in the classroom. Field experiences provide an opportunity for teacher education candidates to learn the skills needed to think about how all of their classes and pedagogical learning can impact K-12 student learning in the classroom. Of the programs that list an assignment being linked to the field experience, 69 percent list reflection as a goal of at least one of the assignments. Cooperating teacher feedback (reflection on teacher candidates in their field experience) was included in 42 percent of the assignments. One respondent noted that

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“preservice teachers observe current practices in ELA in middle/high school ELA classes. Then they reflect on how what they are learning in the methods class intersects with those practices.” Another respondent stated that field experiences are “for students to synthesize their content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, philosophy and classroom practice, in preparation for their student teaching.” However, this attempt at synthesis for teacher candidates can often end in confusion and theoretical questioning because of the “two-worlds” in which candidates find themselves: the theoretical world of the methods classroom and the practical world of the K-12 classroom. Although reflection can provide an opportunity for teacher candidates to explore not only their own teaching philosophy, but also the theoretical underpinnings of the classrooms they are in for their experience, reflection is also a skill or practice that needs to be learned (Pasternak and Rigoni 2015). Without proper instruction and guidance, field experiences can reinforce poor understandings of pedagogical practices and theory.

Tensions between methods classes and field experiences Unfortunately, right now it [the field experience] is primarily to help meet an arbitrary state standard of 200 field experience hours prior to student teaching. Ideally, its objective should be (and hopefully is to some degree) an opportunity for preservice teachers to coalesce content knowledge, pedagogical theory, and practical experience.

Throughout the questionnaire and focus group responses, respondents discussed a variety of issues, demands, and pressures that affect the field experience for methods students. Many of these concerns were raised by more than one program and were seen by those respondents as a function or result of the field experience occurring outside the purview of the teacher educators who teach within a specified program. Respondents indicated that the more people involved in the placement and supervision of the field experience, the more complicated the field experience became. Location of field placements is one tension that was raised throughout our study. In the focus groups, Alice McNamara observes the following regarding this issue: “I think it’s sometimes difficult to teach a methods course when students are placed in myriad schools with myriad teachers.” This also raised the issue of a common context or common experience for teacher candidates

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to not only discuss but also problem-solve and build lesson plans around. The importance of context in teaching cannot be overlooked, and to plan for myriad contexts is difficult. For some programs the opposite becomes an issue. Casey expressed the problem this way: “We inundate the local schools so much because we have so many people in the program that we end up doing some—a lot—of external student teaching.” He continued to explain that because teacher candidates can move away from the teacher education program to student teach, an affiliate of the teacher education program, most likely an adjunct local to the field placement, does the supervision of the teacher candidates rather than faculty conducting the supervision. Other programs stated that there is only one local school district to place students and so saturation happens quickly, or for other programs they are located in an area with many teacher education programs and so even when there are large numbers of school districts it is difficult to find placements because of saturation. K-12 testing and the recent laws in some states requiring the inclusion of test scores in teachers’ evaluations has also affected teacher education placements in the secondary classrooms. Administrators and/or mentor teachers, feeling the pressure of test scores and curriculum needs, reject having teacher candidates in their classrooms. Some who accept a teacher candidate will only do so if the teacher candidate merely observes and does not teach. This situation allows the teacher candidate to observe particular practices, but often does not lead to a teacher candidate being able put in practice what they learned in their university coursework or their field placement. Another tension that was raised in regard to field experiences concerns the working relationship between departments of English and colleges of education. The interdisciplinary nature of education programs, including both English and Education as disciplines, provides the opportunity for collaboration across various programs and colleges across campus. Departments within the colleges of education, which could include special education, literacy, etc., all play a part in certifying a secondary English teacher. The communication among all parties involved in any teacher education program can either provide coherence among the various facets of the program, or can leave parties unsure of what is happening in parts of the program (see Chapters 2 and 8). Repeatedly, in the open-ended question responses about the field placements, respondents answered with, “we don’t take care of those” or “I’m not sure what the College of Education does with

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that.” These responses indicate a lack of communication causing a loss of coherence between the objectives of the subject matter methods course and the program’s field placement. The tensions that were raised by the respondents show the complexities of teacher education programs, and the importance of strong communication between teacher education faculty, content and discipline faculty, and the cooperating teachers in the K-12 classrooms. All parties involved in the preparation of teacher candidates, including state and federal government agencies, need to have clear established agreed upon goals for the coherency of teacher education programs.

Moving from awareness to application—discussion Field experiences are where teacher candidates begin to see how the content they have learned in their teacher education program classes translates to a K-12 classroom; where they begin to move from awareness to application. Respondents focused their field experiences on four areas: Applying English Content, Learning the Social Context of Schools, Connecting Theory to Practice, and Reflection. Assignments in the methods course connected to the field experience also exhibited these four areas of focus providing a foundation for teacher candidates. The connection or integration of the methods course and the field experience, as seen in our exemplar that frames this chapter, can begin moving teacher candidates from their “apprenticeship of observation” to a theoretically sound range of pedagogical practices that can be used to enhance student learning in the classroom. Although the hope or goal of integrating field experiences is this movement to more theoretically sound pedagogical choices, often this transition from “student to teacher” does not instantaneously happen in the methods course, or student teaching, but continues throughout a teacher’s career. Integrating the field experience into the methods course potentially provides an opportunity for teacher candidates to begin the process of moving from awareness to application. By providing assignments and instruction in reflection, coherent and structured field experiences, and strong communication between all parties involved, teacher education programs can provide teacher candidates with a strong foundation in learning to teach.

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In Part II, the range of tensions identified through our data will be further clarified, and at times complicated, by the ways that field experiences intersect with the other focus areas of this study. Each chapter begins with a case study of an exemplar methods course syllabus, set within the context of its program, that highlights the tensions and offers insight into how the focus area might be integrated into the methods course.

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Part Two

Challenges and Changes Facing US English Teacher Education

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4

Standards and Assessment: Tensions between Utility and Critique

Three English professors have developed and maintained the English education program at Western Mountains University (WMU) for more than a decade: Caroline Stewart, Laura Abramson, and Fiona Reading. They put utility and critique in juxtaposition as they guide their teacher candidates in designing learning experiences that are rich and engaging, and that help their own students meet the state standards. All three professors have been involved in English education since before the standards movement began in the mid-1990s, either as faculty or as secondary language arts teachers. Therefore, they work to prepare their teacher candidates with the knowledge and practices they believe will engage their own students in the ELA, keeping in mind the policy mandates they will have to navigate while doing so. The requirements and the syllabi provided in our data indicate that the program at WMU provides a comprehensive foundation for becoming knowledgeable beginning teachers of English language arts. Teacher candidates in all three pathways—undergraduate, post baccalaureate, and master’s—must have coursework in English that helps them meet the state’s content-area licensing standards and must complete the licensure sequence in the School of Education. Typically, the English requirement includes courses in literature as well as 15 credit hours of methods courses in reading, writing, adolescent literature, English grammar, and writing for public audiences about issues in literacy education. In addition, teacher candidates complete a licensure sequence in the School of Education that includes a comprehensive methods course taught by English educators, where they focus on content-specific curriculum planning. Teacher candidates generally spend more than 100 hours in the field before student teaching, although these experiences vary in quality. The semester-long student teaching experience follows a professional development

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school model, so teacher candidates ideally benefit from close collaboration between the university and their field placement. Caroline Stewart recognizes that her students are coming from the current generation of teacher candidates who went through their entire primary and secondary school experiences under K-12 state content standards and NCLB mandates: They have mixed background, but they have more acceptance than I think is healthy. We try to talk about what does it mean to teach to standards—What does it mean for curriculum? What does it mean for practice? What does it mean for teacher voice and agency?—and try to help them see the difference between being compliant, which could be one kind of implementing standards, and being an agent of change.

In developing a critical stance, Stewart and her colleagues provide opportunities to disrupt their “acceptance” of their state standards: teacher candidates compare the standards they will be working with in their state to the NCTE/IRA (National Association for the Teaching of English/International Reading Association) standards (1996). The syllabus points out that in defining six language arts (reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and visually representing), the NCTE/IRA standards go beyond their state standards. Teacher candidates are expected to “design assessment and instruction that will help secondary school students meet or exceed state standards” (from the comprehensive methods course syllabus). Professors and teacher candidates discuss the origins of standards, and the hybrid nature of the current document, born from the marriage of their state’s standards and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). However, critique is juxtaposed with utility in WMU’s approach. As Stewart points out, “All of the assignments incorporate standards. Employers want to know how students can teach to standards. The state regulators want to know how students can create standards-based assignments, and so on.” The expectation that teacher candidates will work with standards is exemplified in the syllabus from the collaboratively constructed Teaching Composition course, where teacher candidates are advised to print out and bind the more than 170 pages of the ELA standards for their state, as they will “need frequent access” to the standards: “You may be able to participate in some class activities with a printed subset of the entire document or even with online access, but the most reliable method will be to have a printout.” In the comprehensive methods course, teacher candidates are expected to teach to some state standard in every lesson,

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and to use standards to write their unit plan and their yearlong plan: “Articulate the grade-level expectations in reading, writing, and communication, according to [state Department of Education], and explain how your selection of methods and materials will enable students to achieve proficiency on standards.” An assignment that demonstrates WMU’s approach to standards in the Teaching Composition course is the Coherent Assignment Sequence. This approach to meeting specific objectives in writing instruction includes a “standards-based” rationale that explains why the target genre is important to teach, and identification of just those particular standards from CCSS that will be explicitly addressed. A series of six lessons, three of which must be completely written out, they must also describe the evidence outcomes that will show whether or not students have met the standards. This combination— identify specific standards, explain how students will meet them, and link assessment to standards—can be found in all of the planning assignments in the two WMU courses we examined, as well as in the scoring guides attached to those assignments. However, standards alone do not define the goals of teaching or the rationale. Standards are included, but other justifications such as psychological development, cultural or literary significance, civic awareness, and social relevance are more central to teacher candidate rationales (Smagorinsky 2008). The statements and materials from WMU’s program reflect the ambivalent attitude toward standards-based teaching that is very common among English educators in the United States. Although every planning assignment at WMU requires explicitly identifying the standards teacher candidates are teaching to, other writing assignments do not mention standards, and the assigned texts contain very few, if any, references to standards as important to planning and teaching in English language arts. In their syllabi, standards are referred to as “external expectations” and the reference to meeting “standards and my students’ needs” raises the question of whether meeting standards is something separate from meeting students’ needs (Teaching Composition). The introduction to the methods course states that the three strands of the course are “becoming a teacher, understanding the profession and the issues that constitute it, and using and evaluating materials and methods.” Although standards are involved in those last two, they are not necessarily central. At the center of these courses is a vision of the English language arts as fundamentally about coconstructing knowledge about language through reading, writing, and classroom interaction, and the standards run in parallel to this more important work—part of the current political and curricular landscape, but not defining it.

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Evolution of K-12 English language arts content standards in the United States The neoliberal reforms of the past 30 years in the United States have attempted to rein in local control and teacher autonomy in the name of raising and regularizing educational standards. A Nation at Risk (NCEE 1983), mentioned in Chapter 1, raised the alarm related to the standing of achievement levels of US schools in relation to the rest of the world, but the United States differed from other English-speaking countries in the extent to which state and local governance made it difficult to standardize curriculum and instruction. Because the federal constitution leaves the responsibility for providing and regulating education to the individual states, there are actually fifty school systems, and they vary in the extent to which local control is stronger or weaker. For example, statewide curriculum frameworks and assessments were in place in Texas and Florida before most of the states developed content standards in the nineties and early 2000s. In the upper Midwest, where states had strong traditions of local control, standards were first proposed as frameworks for discussion about curriculum, and only after they were drafted were statewide assessments publicly discussed (Caughlan and Beach 2007). The impetus for K-12 state content standards and assessments, including the more recent CCSS, came not from the federal government, but from the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The early standards documents reveal an assumption that the problem with uneven achievement within and between states could be solved if the goals of instruction were only clear to teachers and students, who would then work hard to meet the standard. However, the larger goal was systemic reform: the alignment of standards, curriculum, and assessments to keep districts and teachers accountable to higher expectations (Caughlan and Beach 2007; Smith and O’Day 1990). Such expectations rarely include acknowledgment that not all students in all schools have equal access to educational opportunity in our rather stratified state systems, but assume that the problems of achievement are problems with schooling (Duncan and Murnane 2011). Early state tests in the late 1990s were used to compare schools and districts, but outside influencing real estate prices, most states did not attach consequences to scoring higher or lower than neighboring districts. However, although the impetus came from the states, the federal Department of Education supported

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the development of K-12 standards through supplementary funding and other forms of encouragement. More recently, federal funding of special education and other programs has become linked to standards-based achievement tests through federal laws such as the 2001 NCLB Act, which required schools to be evaluated on their students’ performance on annual tests in math and reading, and the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, which maintains the basic NCLB framework while releasing more control back to the states. We discuss the development of English language arts standards at the national and state level against this backdrop of systemic reform.

Development of national ELA standards: A story 20 years old As states began developing standards in the content areas in the 1990s, national professional organizations developed content standards in an effort to support their state affiliates in guiding standards development. The NCTE and IRA were initially funded by the US Department of Education to develop ELA standards in the early 1990s, but this funding was withdrawn as it became clear that the committee’s standards were purposely vague and open to interpretation (Mayher 1999; Shannon 2001, 2013). However, this radical (for its time) insistence on respect for local control and the variety of approaches to the subject of English did not prevent some English educators from protesting the very idea of standards (Mayher 1999; Shannon 2001). On the other hand, the looseness of this version kept them from having much impact on the developing state standards, especially once states began focusing on writing measurable standards that could be tested. In fact, those states that did call on the NCTE/IRA standards as models were graded down on the “report card” of state standards issued by the Fordham Foundation, a conservative think tank (Stotsky 1997, 2005). States varied in the degree to which they engaged teachers and English educators in the standards drafting process, and standards also varied in their ideological assumptions and underlying theories of learning (Fuhrman 2001). For example, the early Virginia Standards of Learning were notable for their reliance on lists of information to be learned and then tested, promoting a transmission-based pedagogy (Duke, Butin and Sofka 2003). Alternatively, Kentucky, Vermont, and Minnesota attempted constructivist-based standards with accompanying performance assessments (Avery, Beach and Coler 2003). However, such models of teaching and learning were seen as difficult, abstruse, and expensive, and were generally abandoned or whittled away by compromise

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(Caughlan and Beach 2007; Placier, Walker and Foster 2002). In spite of the rhetoric regarding standards as research-based and rigorous, they are more accurately considered political documents than curriculum documents. Many reflected standards committee members’ memories of their own schooling more than current research in the field (Caughlan and Beach 2007). Some proponents approved the standards as a weapon against progressivism in the English curriculum (Carnicelli 2000; Stotsky 2000, 2005). As skills and facts about authors and periods are more easily listed and tested, many state standards enshrined the skills and cultural heritage models in their state standards. However, few states interfere with values of local control by dictating texts to be used in the classroom (Stotsky 2005), although the CCSS has released a list of much-criticized exemplar texts for each grade level (CCSSI 2010). Other models of teaching English, such as critical literacy, expressivist, or experiencebased, were less often supported by standards (see Chapter 1). State assessments often prompted instruction that went against what scholars and many teachers recognized as good practice. For example, in states that cut testing costs by replacing essay questions in most grades’ exams with multiplechoice questions on editing choices, less writing was assigned in English classes, and what writing was done often mirrored the five-paragraph essays that fit the testing rubrics (Applebee 2013; Hillocks 2002). Assessments were not always well aligned, but it was difficult for teachers to tell, as they were not allowed to review test questions. A large survey of coherence between content standards and state assessments across 138 paired examples (Polikoff, Porter and Smithson 2011) found that roughly 50 percent of the content indicated in standards was tested, on average, and roughly half of the material tested was found in accompanying standards. English educators also harbored suspicions about the role textbook and test publishers were playing in promoting state standards and implementing assessments. Such for-profit and nonprofit purveyors of textbooks, standardized tests, data-analytic software, and even teacher evaluation instruments as McGraw-Hill, Pearson, ETS K-12, and the College Board not only are engaged in creating products, but have close ties with the proliferating education policy organizations such as the National Center on Education and the Economy, Achieve, and the National Governors Association (Taubman 2009) involved in lobbying for and promoting standards (Zancanella and Moore 2014). As discussed below, such policy organizations, foundations, and test creators had a more central role in the development of the CCSS and accompanying tests.

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Common Core State Standards In several ways, the CCSS are the logical conclusion of the standards experiment in the United States. There was widespread dissatisfaction with the fifty separate systems of standards and assessment: standards varied widely in quality and in alignment with state tests, and states also differed in their approach to defining cut scores for “Basic” or Proficient” levels required by federal law through NCLB (Applebee 2013). The National Governors Association (NGA), in association with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), sponsored the writing of K-12 content standards in ELA and mathematics that would be “fewer, clearer, higher” (Gates Foundation 2010). The standards were largely written by staffers from Achieve, ACT, and the College Board, with input from educators in the development groups and from university educators in the feedback groups (Applebee 2013; CCSSI 2010). The goal was for states to adopt the CCSS, with minimal adaptations, across the country. If statewide standards make expectations clear within a state, these “national” standards were written to make assumptions and expectations clear across states. This initiative was generously funded by a range of nonprofits and foundations, including the Gates Foundation (Gates Foundation 2010). However, the process of adoption was accelerated when, in the midst of an economic downturn, the US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, made adoption of college and career-ready standards one criterion for states applying for Race to the Top grants. Although only a few states won the grants, 45 adopted the CCSS 2009–2010, although several have reversed that decision in years since. Forty-two states are currently members of the initiative, although not all have signed on to join the consortia that developed to write summative and formative assessments aligned to the CCSS: The Partnership for Assessment Readiness for Colleges and Careers (PARCC) and SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium. At the time we collected our questionnaire and syllabi data in year 2 of our study, the CCSS had been released, and were widely discussed, but they were in the process of being implemented in place of existing standards in most states. The aligned assessments were still in development. By the time we conducted our focus group interviews, these processes were further along, but there was still quite a bit of uncertainty about how these standards would play out. Although there are those who consider the ELA Common Core State Standards as an improvement over earlier state standards (Calfee and Wilson 2016; Shanahan

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2013), others either find them limited (Beach Thein and Webb 2012) or more of the same (Larson 2013). On the more positive side, a number of educators consider the CCSS successful in defining what students need to learn to be college and career ready, and applaud the elevation of writing instruction, the focus on more complex texts over grades K-12, and the focus on writing from sources (Applebee 2013; Calfee and Wilson 2016; Shanahan 2013). Some see openings for more progressive and/or constructivist pedagogies, calling on the invitations written into the introductory material that offer teachers and districts autonomy in how to meet the standards. For example, Calfee and Wilson (2016) promote project-based learning as the best way to meet the standards, while Beach, Thein and Webb (2012) promote teaching based on what they call “literacy practices” to not only meet but exceed the CCSS. The phrase “meet but exceed” occurs frequently in the writing of authors who wish to help teachers address these new requirements while holding onto the richness of the full discipline of English. Such authors engage in an open reading of the standards, taking advantage of the lacunae built into the framework. However, such an optimistic reading can quickly fall apart when looking at the rest of the document and the early moves in its implementation. First, the move from setting out anchor standards and overall goals to defining grade by grade standards for reaching those goals is supposedly based on research, but often appears as an arbitrary listing of certain skills taught in certain grades, or adding a little complexity to expectations by raising the number of types of evidence used in writing (Applebee 2013; Pearson 2013). The assumption that the holistic goals of the anchor standards can be broken into simpler bits does not come off well (Larson 2013). Second, although some like the focus on “rigor,” and find the definition of reading comprehension better than in previous standards, others find the definition of literacy to be narrow and in conflict with current thinking. The CCSS have revived the formalist practice of “close reading” as the core of literacy instruction, and the Publishers’ Criteria (Coleman and Pimentel 2012) make it clear that the intended focus of instruction is a close examination of the text itself, and pedagogy based on “text-dependent” questions, constituting a movement away from viewing reading as a sociohistorically situated interaction among text, author, reader(s), and intertext (Smagorinsky 2001). Coleman and Pimentel’s ideal of the text as an autonomous source of meaning, to be unpacked by the reader with as little consideration as possible of prior knowledge or previous experience, goes against most current thinking in literacy education (Larson

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2013; Nystrand 1986; Pearson 2013; Zancanella and Moore 2014). However, it bodes well for creating standardized tests of reading. The treatment of writing is similarly constrained; although the CCSS encourage more attention on writing than did policy under NCLB, the focus on a narrow range of types of academic writing, and the potential for distortion into perfunctory and formulaic writing, is cause for concern (Applebee 2013). When looked at more broadly, focusing only on college and career readiness—and on the almost complete neglect of sociocultural, critical, or expressivist orientations toward ELA—indicates to many that not much has changed in moving to CCSS. The neoliberal project of education as a marketbased commodity is alive and well with standards whose stated purpose is to prepare workers to compete in the global economy (Beach, Thein and Webb 2012;Larson 2013; Shannon 2013). The focus on accountability and the active engagement from the start of test vendors and large publishers in the project, who are well positioned to make large amounts of money from this retooling of math and language arts (Zancanella and Moore 2014), has resulted in some of the resistance we discuss in the rest of the chapter.

Program approaches to K-12 content standards: How they play out in syllabi, open-ended comments, and focus group discussions The ambivalence and resistance to standards evident in the English education scholarship is echoed in our findings. In spite of the questionnaire result that 100 percent of bachelor’s and alternative programs and more than 99 percent of postbaccalaureate and master’s programs address standards somewhere in the program, fewer than half place the main responsibility for learning how to use standards on the content-specific methods course, although most of the rest claim they are addressed “throughout coursework,” indicating some responsibility for standards in the methods course (see Table 4.1). This distribution may help explain why 22.2 percent of the syllabi we analyzed made no explicit reference to K-12 content standards at all, and another 32  percent mention them, but do not appear to require students to use them actively, in planning or teaching. This finding contradicts the questionnaire data: When asked how K-12 standards are addressed in their methods courses, 96 percent of 202 respondents indicated teacher candidates were required to actively apply standards in their planning and teaching

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States Table 4.1  Where are K-12 standards addressed? Where addressed

Bachelor’s

Postbacc

0.00 4.60 44.83 45.40 5.17 0.00 174

0.74 6.67 48.89 39.26 4.44 0.00 135

Not addressed Separate coursework Throughout coursework Methods course Field experiences Extra-curricular activities Total responses

Master’s Alt. Cert. 0.97 4.85 56.31 34.95 2.91 0.00 103

0.00 16.67 50.00 29.17 4.17 0.00 24

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted.

Table 4.2  Evidence of use of K-12 content standards in ELA methods course syllabi How K12 content standards are encountered by teacher candidates Standards are required reading Two or more sets of standards are examined Standards are a discussion topic in the course calendar Standards are used in completing course assignments Standards are an integral part of the course, utilized in assignments, read, discussed in class and in course readings Standards are actively used by teacher candidates in planning lessons, teaching, etc., but are not integrated throughout Standards are mentioned or read, but not necessarily used actively Standards are not mentioned in the course syllabus

31.9 31.9 44.4 43.7 6.7 31.9 39.3 22.2

Note: Indicated as percentage of syllabi analyzed; n = 135.

(Caughlan et al. 2017). However, as we indicate elsewhere (see Chapter 8), syllabi no longer provide a clear representation of work done in courses, often referring obliquely to calendars and assignments addressed more thoroughly in course management sites.1 To take a closer look at how standards are treated in methods courses, we did an analysis of how and when they appeared in the syllabi. Many syllabi made mention of teacher preparation standards where the syllabus addressed course goals and objectives, but teacher education standards were not relevant to this analysis. Table 4.2 indicates that only 32 percent of courses explicitly listed K-12 content standards as course readings. In 30 syllabi, standards are

Note that fifteen syllabi, or slightly over 10 percent, included no calendar while another ten offered only a very sketchy calendar that did not provide weekly topics for the semester.

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not mentioned in course objectives, calendar topics, required textbooks, or the brief assignment descriptions or lists included. And only nine (fewer than 7 percent) demonstrate an explicit integration of content standards throughout the methods course, where standards are assigned to be read, scheduled to be addressed in the course calendar, and worked with in planning and/or teaching assignments.

The place of standards in course readings A surprising finding needing further investigation is that in year two of the study, when these syllabi were collected, the great majority of required readings did not have much to say about using standards in planning or teaching. The NCTE/IRA standards had been published in 1996, and NCLB, a law that made high-stakes standardized assessments supposedly based on state standards universal, was passed in 2001. Looking at those books, articles, and web pages assigned that were published after 2001, we find that many do not mention standards at all (they are even absent from the index); others make brief mention of standards or standardized tests in the beginning of the documents, in introductory material linking the rest of the text to urgent requirements of a testing regime, or in relation to teachers’ situation vis-à-vis state or district frameworks and requirements, but afterwards barely mention them. Only a few authors of course readings consider the fact that classroom teachers may have to deal with standards in their everyday teaching lives, and seriously discuss how to responsibly read and use them. For example, Jim Burke’s English Teacher’s Companion, a popular text (see Appendix B), provided in 2008 sample standards (reading, writing, listening, technology, etc.). Sometimes he presented standards from more than one source, or suggested that readers look into another set. He also included standards-based design in his planning chapter. In the 2012 edition, Burke updates these discussions to address the Common Core. However, in his 2010 text, What’s the Big Idea? (listed as required reading in several syllabi), the inquiry-based, conceptual mode of teaching Burke discusses seems to be divorced from any particular externally imposed set of standards. It is not completely surprising that assigned readings do so little with content standards. First, many texts and articles assigned in methods courses are written by university English educators, including some of our respondents, whose ambivalence toward standards has already been noted (Burke, our counterexample above, teaches high school English). Second, books are written for a national audience, and standards are written state by state; the difficulties

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of addressing fifty distinct educational systems has always been a challenge in the United States. Recently, publishers have reacted to the promises of a larger market in the CCSS era by promoting texts claiming to address those standards, but time will tell whether those books sell better than those that continue to disregard standards. Finally, as so many sets of ELA standards, including the CCSS, are not seen as offering coherent models of the discipline, educators may still not feel compelled to make them central to the methods curriculum. We were interested in the number of standards listed in syllabi, because comparing standards to each other is one way to help teacher candidates think about alternative ways of conceptualizing the English language arts, and juxtaposing them critically is necessary to considering the assumptions underlying standards (Caughlan and Beach 2007). Two-thirds (67 percent) of syllabi listed no or only one set of standards, usually either the specific state’s standards or the CCSS. Of the remaining syllabi, most (23.7 percent of the 135) compared two sets of standards, either the state standards and the NCTE/IRA standards, or the CCSS and the state or NCTE standards. Only 11 out of the 135 (8 percent) had students read three or more sets of standards, occasionally including state ESL standards and technology standards. The one syllabus that listed four sets included the state standards, the CCSS, the NCTE/IRA standards, and the College Board standards. Standards as a dedicated calendar topic appeared in just under half of the syllabi. Topics related to discussing the standards included discussion of particular standards (with CCSS leading the way at 26 mentions); the use of standards in planning, teaching, and curriculum; critique of standards (including comparing different standards); and standards in relation to ELA elements such as reading, writing (most commonly mentioned at 15), and speaking/listening. Nineteen topics were coded as “general discussion,” because standards are either announced or required reading, but the class focus is not described. These brief meeting titles do not give much indication of how standards are discussed in the classroom. The focus group interviews and open-ended questionnaire responses provide more of an indication of what those conversations look like. For example, Sean Prinsen’s syllabi did not explicitly indicate how standards were addressed in his curriculum, but in a focus group interview he described at length his discussions with students in his methods class: I think one of the things that I pretty consistently do, and I know this is true for at least a couple of other of our instructors, is that we do tend to approach the standards with I think a healthy skepticism . . . like identifying to our students

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the origin of these standards, some of the claims that they make for themselves and are made about them. We interrogate those and we try to connect the standards as one dot in a larger constellation of school reform so that our students understand the context of their emergence. We do recognize, I think, their value in terms of—the way I usually put it is providing us with a language to talk about what our objectives are, okay?

He went on to describe how they compared standards in a critical way, the standards’ underlying assumptions about teaching and learning, and how they can be productively used in setting objectives. As Prinsen’s comments suggest, teacher candidates encounter standards whether or not they are mentioned in course readings and syllabi. Therefore, methods instructors should discuss them in relation to what is occurring at the schools in which the teacher candidates are placed, at the very least. Given that reality, it seems apropos that this material would be covered in the professional literature that candidates are introduced to in methods courses. Otherwise, the methods course could be misaligned with current instructional contexts experienced by teacher candidates.

The place of standards in course assignments Teacher candidates frequently used standards actively in course assignments. Almost all survey respondents who answered the relevant questions reported using standards in planning and teaching assignments (see Table 4.3). Fewer of the syllabi claimed use of standards in assignments (see Table 4.2), but by far the most frequently mentioned assignment related to planning (74 out of 103 assignments listed). Most of these assignments related to short (lesson plan) or long-term planning (units and courses). Lesson and unit plans included lists of appropriate standards, but how those standards were chosen was usually not evident. Few of the course readings provided guidance, either. It could be that some consider the field experience or early employers as the location to learn standards application; however, we expect that, as we find in Prinsen’s remarks and our analysis of WMU assignments, the protocols for productive use of standards are distributed over time and space in each program. Only six syllabi mentioned assignments to plan a course, a year’s instruction, or a map of curriculum related to standards. Other instruction-related assignments found in syllabi included using standards to develop assessments or in assessing student work (nine mentions), and using standards in selecting or analyzing course materials.

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Table 4.3  How ELA state content standards are addressed in the ELA methods course Course Application Related to Related Other Not Median Readings (lesson plans, professional to field addressed number and microroles and experiences of Discussion teaching) responsibilities options chosen 85.6

96

71.3

79.2

3.5

2.5

3

Note: Values as percent of respondents who chose each option (check all that apply); n = 202.

Fewer syllabi listed assignments related to reading and responding to standards (ten syllabi); however, survey respondents indicated that most address standards in course readings and discussion (Table 4.3), so we assume that went on when the calendar indicated standards and/or their uses were to be addressed. Only two syllabi explicitly assigned teacher candidates to compare sets of standards. One had teacher candidates compare different generations of standards, while another had teacher candidates compare their state standards with those of another state that had a very different approach. These assignments suggest a more critical orientation to standards than does the application of them to lesson plan assignments. Also, in the open-ended response to questions about class activity in the questionnaire, individual respondents indicated they did open the conversation about how standards are used in real classrooms. One brings in the ELA curriculum director from a local district to discuss why and how they use standards. At another institution, teacher candidates are required to attend the state English teachers’ conference and attend sessions related to standards. The remainder of the assignments listed in syllabi (seven) were more traditional class assignments: short or longer research projects, exams on the standards, and writing assignments paralleling the K-12 standards categories. One writing course organized itself according to the CCSS writing categories; for each mode of writing, students examined the associated standards and presented a curricular plan for teaching them.

Tensions surrounding addressing K-12 content standards in the methods course Open-ended questionnaire and focus group data indicate a range of tensions underlying the presence and absence of standards discussed above, and provide

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some insight into instructors’ rationales for their choices, in addition to external pressures, discussed below. Tensions discussed here include utilitarianism versus critique, the status quo versus the English ideal, and generational tensions between NCLB-raised teacher candidates and baby boomer teacher educators.

Utilitarianism versus critique The choice between utilitarianism and critique is not an either/or choice for programs. Note that in the exemplar that frames this chapter, WMU refers to standards as external restraints and provides opportunities for teacher candidates to read them critically (critique), but also requires their application in all assignments (utilitarianism). However, comments taken from the questionnaire and focus groups sometimes show clear divisions among avoidance, resistance and critique, and utilitarianism in relation to K-12 standards. The syllabus analysis and questionnaire comments indicate that most instructors take a utilitarian stance toward the standards. When asked in the questionnaire: “What is your understanding of the appropriate place of standards in the ELA methods course?” the majority provided practical or technical reasons to include them. Knowing the standards and how to use them in planning was something teacher candidates needed as part of their professional education. The commitment to this mandate varied. At one end, program faculty asserted that “we must prepare students for the Common Core and get them associated with NCTE Standards,” where basic knowledge about standards seems to be the goal. Others believe that standards should guide teachers planning: “As teachers develop and arrive at the intended learning outcomes for the course the standards should serve as a guide and teachers should use backward design to create assessments and daily planning which scaffold toward and accurately assess the CCSS and the teacher’s own goals for the course.” Other respondents were openly resistant or critical of the standards movement. One participant wrote, “Methods courses should not merely promote and include standards, they should critically situate standards in their socio-historical contexts, so that teachers are not deskilled by standards.” This critique places the standards as having a possibly harmful agency. Others referred to teachers’ autonomy, the necessity of putting their students’ needs first, and creating an awareness of the historical and political origins of standards. In an opposing definition of faculty professionalism to that in the previous paragraph, one respondent stated, “One of my jobs is to prepare students to resist and subvert institutional constraints.”

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Although it is difficult to interpret the absence of a response, there are indications that some choose to avoid the conflicts associated with addressing standards. Not only do more than one in five syllabi not make mention of standards, and fewer than half include them as discussion topics in the course calendar, there are indications in the questionnaire and focus group that students are to get guidance in addressing the standards outside the methods course. Dave Sommer, in a focus group discussion, referred to standards as a useful tool for articulating objectives, but felt that most of what his teacher candidates learned about either critiquing or using standards took place in other courses. Others in the focus groups indicated that schools addressed standards and testing in so many different ways that it was difficult to know how to prepare teacher candidates for that aspect of their placements.

The status quo versus the English ideal As indicated in Chapter 1, English professionals approach the curriculum from a variety of theoretical and pedagogical directions, so there is little consensus on the ideal English curriculum, but both our literature review and the comments of our respondents indicate that few see the standards as helping them to achieve it. The standards must be addressed, but there is also concern that they may interfere with what English educators see as significant aspects of the English curriculum, as well as with teacher agency and autonomy. Part of this concern comes from educators’ experience under NCLB, where teachers were often directed by state or district administrators to act in opposition to what they considered good practice (Calfee and Wilson 2016). Focus group participants described the difficulty in promoting teaching practices that align with sociocultural or constructivist or expressivist theories of teaching and learning, when teacher candidates encountered transmissionbased pedagogies in schools focused on preparing students for standards-based testing. In some locations, these local interpretations of what was required by standards resulted in counterproductive pedagogies. Amanda Reiter pointed out in her focus group interview: Just to give you a quick example, I have students who are told they have to basically organize all their lesson plans around this idea of close reading, right? These buzz words from Common Core. Their lessons plans have to include only close reading of text. Well, when you think about designing units of study, you’re designing lesson plans that are cohesive and rigorous and engaging for

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kids and you’re only able to focus on close reading because—you know what I mean?—because that was a directive from your school. I think it’s important to have conversations with new teachers about how to be advocates for themselves when implementation of the Common Core just does not make sound instructional sense.

Anthony Stolarz expressed the view that standards in general interfered with providing students with opportunities for self-expression, an important value for many English educators adhering to a personal growth model (Dixon 1967). Stolarz provided a strong critique of standardized testing: We should make mention of high-stakes testing. We should recognize the reality of high-stakes testing. But, we should not be part of the preparation for highstakes testing. High-stakes testing is legalized child abuse. No child should be left behind or be unable to graduate from high school because they have failed a state mandated examination. It is immoral and unethical. . . . Teaching is a profession based on relationships—and those relationships are unique for each teacher and each student. High-stakes testing makes a mockery of those relationships and we must avoid it all costs.

Although few phrased their condemnation so strongly, several raised the issue that preparation for standardized tests either had completely overtaken English curriculum in some schools, or frequently interrupted regular instruction. The word “deprofessionalization” was used several times in the focus group discussions and in the open-ended questions to describe the impact of standardized curricula and testing on teachers and teacher educators. Other respondents did not see standards as necessarily conflicting with good English teaching, but as complementary. Even those who strongly critiqued the focus on standards in the schools admitted that standards were useful in planning, particularly in thinking about objectives; they provided scaffolding to inexperienced teachers in articulating goals. Others pointed to the success they and others have had in developing challenging and engaging curriculum that aligns with standards. After discussing the origins of standards and the CCSS, and the issues that arise in schools, Reiter had her students: work in literature circle groups with different texts from people in English education and literacy studies who have really digested the Common Core in a way that stays true to the kind of instruction we want to see in our English classrooms. I do that so that my students have kind of a way to speak intelligently in their school placement about still implementing the kind of methods that we

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States teach in our courses and then having that suffice for what school leaders are looking for when it comes to complying with Common Core.

Our focus group participants often saw their job as exposing teacher candidates to philosophies and methods that went beyond the standards-based instruction they knew from their schooling.

Generational tensions: NCLB-raised teacher candidates versus teacher educators A repeated topic in the focus groups was the challenge of communicating the potentials of the English language arts curriculum to teacher candidates who had grown up under the NCLB regime of high-stakes testing of contentbased standards. In the view of our participants, this experience suggested to teacher candidates certain dispositions and ideas regarding what English teaching looks like. Such ideas could interfere with understanding how to motivate engagement with the English curriculum, the importance of choice, or even making the move from content-based to performance-based assessments. Prinsen could see the traces of their experience in their microteaching: I find their pedagogical range really, really restricted. To what? To precisely the kinds of close readings that you’re talking about. It’s like almost every one of the kids who has taught based on this young adult novel the class, what does it look like? It looks like, something like, okay—“Let’s take a look at this character. Find two or three descriptive words and then go to the text to find evidence that these are indeed accurate descriptions of this character.” It’s, like, okay—I get up there and I say, “Do you remember what we talked about, making connections between the text and the student? Do you remember what we talked about of making connections among the text, the student and broader social, cultural and political, economic issues? Please don’t forget that.” Okay? But there’s resistance to that. I can’t point to any concrete evidence, but my hunch is that more and more kids have grown up swimming in these waters, okay, these academic waters. This is what studying literature to means to them.

In response to what they saw as their students’ misconceptions of English, respondents described the questions they raised about what it means to teach English, the purpose of standards and how to use them flexibly and with purpose, and reflection on their own experiences with standards-based schooling.

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The influence of external pressures on program commitments In our analysis of influences on program choices and commitments, we found that a commitment to addressing standards, more than any other of our focal areas, was influenced by external pressures. We discuss this analysis more thoroughly in Chapter 8, but we found a correlation between “external pressures,” a composite variable we derived from survey questions about regulations, standards, exams, and other mandates that were a result of institutional or state policy, and the amount of time and resources a program expended on preparing their teacher candidates to address K-12 content standards. Time and resources were measured by number of assignments given, and the demand of particular assignments on faculty and student time (e.g., using standards in planning a unit is weighted more heavily than reading about standards in preparation for class discussion). External pressures explained more of the variation among programs in their commitment to addressing standards than any other variable we examined (see Chapter 8). What are the external pressures to address standards, and what did our respondents have to say about them? Table 4.4 shows responses to questions related to how programs responded to changes in state or local standards. With 200 replying to the question of what changes they made in their curriculum, requirements, or structure in response to changes in K-12 standards and testing regimes, the majority made changes in the readings in their courses. The next largest change was in student and program assessments. The attention to assessments likely relates to accreditation; the Council of Accreditation of Teacher Preparation (CAEP), the predominant national accreditation program for teacher education institutions, wants to see evidence that teacher candidates know the content they are responsible for teaching. The rest of respondents reported making more structural changes. More than one in five made no changes. Open-ended questions related to internal or external changes provided insight into how changes in standards and regulations impacted programs and methods courses. However, few of those responses related specifically to K-12 standards. For example, 68 responded to our open-ended query regarding how changes internal to the field had impacted their programs (e.g., changes in ideas about teaching and learning, changes in ELA scholarship). Most (54) mentioned changes in content, but only 7 of those explicitly mentioned standards (CCSS,

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States Table 4.4  Changes made in program curriculum, requirements, and structure when changes occur in K-12 standards and testing regimes (external pressure) Changes made No changes made New readings or assignments required New student assessments New program assessments New courses added or required Courses combined or removed Courses or content moved online

Percentage responding 21 62 45.5 35 20 13.5 13

Note: n = 200.

the change in standards for many at that time). In comparison, 33 discussed the impact of technology and new literacies, some going on at length about new initiatives. When asked how external (institutional and political) influences had prompted them to change practices, K-12 standards were mentioned twice, but more was said about the new edTPA student teacher assessment being piloted at that time. Programs were really feeling the strain of that reform, reconfiguring some courses to prepare candidates to pass the edTPA, or having faculty volunteer their time to hold edTPA workshops. We conclude from these results that, although most programs would respond to changes in K-12 standards, these changes are not seen as a central concern of English educators. This lack of concern aligns with the minor role standards play in course syllabi and professional resources. Although the adoption of the Common Core in so many states is currently sparking conversation and writing about standards, it is too early to tell whether methods course instructors maintain or increase attention to standards above the level indicated in our data. Increased attention to standards will likely depend on how K-12 schools respond to new expectations. Several respondents to both the questionnaire and the focus group interviews expressed concern about standardized testing’s deleterious influence on instruction, but districts have been responding to such legislated consequence of low scores as closing schools, state takeover of districts or schools, and teacher and administration reassignment or termination. Teacher educators are responding to the felt need of districts to put resources into test preparation, largely by modeling or discussing alternatives, but they see the tension between their approach and that adopted by some local K-12 schools in response to policy pressures as a recurring problem.

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How should English educators approach preparing TCs to address K-12 content standards? Considering the ambivalence toward ELA state standards and the CCSS language arts standards discussed in the literature and indicated by our data, it is not surprising that English educators feel that the need to address standards is imposed by others outside the field, and that many avoid dealing with standards more than is strictly necessary, if at all. However, there are models in the field of productive ways of addressing the standards, such as those described in the case that frames this chapter, and their synthesis of utility and critique. These models follow under three main categories: discussions of standards’ origins, purposes, authorship, and audience; practice in reading, analyzing, and using standards in planning and assessment; and working closely with districts in figuring out best approaches to using standards.

Generative discussions about standards As we noted above, teacher candidates and teacher educators differ in their experience with standards-based teaching and learning. Many instructors lived through the period when state standards varying wildly in quality were written and disseminated to a largely dismissive audience of educators, followed closely by the imposition of high-stakes tests that tested some standards and not others, with punitive results in many districts, to the present situation where policymakers have added the additional pressure of evaluating teachers and their originating programs using those same test scores. Teacher candidates lived through this same period, but experienced what school districts did in response to these pressures as how English is taught, as Prinsen and Stewart pointed out. Teacher candidates would benefit from study and open discussion of some key questions: Why were standards considered necessary in the last decades of the twentieth century? Who was behind the push for them? Who has benefited from the growth of standards and assessments? What does it really mean to be held accountable for our work? And to whom are we accountable as educators? What is the relationship between accountability and the relationship a teacher has with her students? What ideological traditions are embedded in the current standards movement, and which are not? Standards are sometimes compared with other standards; this practice should be assigned more often. Standards vary in their level of detail, in their ideological orientation, in the extent to which they define content, in the amount of

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inclusion of current concerns of the field (e.g., addressing linguistic diversity or digital literacy). Such comparative study enables teacher candidates to consider: What do educators want from standards? What is useful? What content should be enshrined in requirements, and what left up to individual teachers? What ideologies are assumed in the content that is found in standards? Are standards properly the floor or the ceiling of what is expected of students?

Using standards in planning, instruction, and assessment Often, using standards in university-assigned lesson or unit plans is like making a shopping list for a special dinner. You’ve decided what wonderful dishes you are going to serve, and you then go to the standards to see what ingredients work in your dish, and you list them. This is not how districts and English departments use standards. For them, the standards and, more urgently, the assessments that presumably align with the standards, define the menu. The shopping list approach is most likely to be used for single-lesson assignments, where the focus is on designing activities for a class session. Learning how to sequence and time activities is a useful skill. But standards are generally met over time. Any single class session may be an opportunity to introduce, develop, or assess progress toward mastering a standard, so teacher candidates need to see standards in the context of longer-term planning, and those types of planning tasks (considering curriculum across units or a year) were rare in our syllabus data. Although standards are often presented with the claim that they do not dictate instructional approaches, they make certain methods more or less likely. The CCSS revival of close reading of autonomous texts is a good example of this phenomenon. In using standards to plan lessons, both the goals of the standards and larger goals of teachers for their students need to be kept in mind. For example, the CCSS put learning the conventions of academic writing, such as spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, under language, separating them from the writing standards. However, meeting the 9–10th grade standard that students—“Use a semicolon (and perhaps a conjunctive adverb) to link two or more closely related independent clauses”—may at first glance seem to call for direct instruction and practice on worksheets. However, decades of research indicate that the teaching of grammar is best done in the context of writing assignments where such a convention might be useful, as in a compare/contrast essay or an explanation of complex ideas (Hillocks 1986; Weaver 1996).

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Working with teachers and districts to learn how standards work in schools When teacher candidates are not prepared to think seriously about standards, their lack of awareness can make their initial job quite difficult, a point Stewart makes above. They may be told that the texts and methods of instruction they are prepared to use do not fit the standards-based instruction in their district, and might not have the ability to respond in a productive way. They may decide that what they learned in the university was a waste of time, or feel they are trapped in a situation where they must act against their teaching philosophy. Some of our respondents addressed this issue through their relationships with local districts, and invited district educators (curriculum coordinators, English department heads, literacy coaches) to come to methods class and present on the role of standards in their curriculum. Mentor teachers can also be asked to address standards with their practicum students and student teachers, by opening up their planning process to teacher candidates, or by providing feedback on assigned lesson plans. Mentor teachers are teacher educators, also. However, even if a methods instructor does not have close relationships with practicum teachers (in the case of a large program, or one where other staff handle placements), teacher candidates can be assigned to observe, write about, and discuss how standards are addressed in their placement classrooms: implicitly or explicitly. Do K-12 students know what standards they are aiming for? Are the day’s standards written on the board? Why or why not? Such assignments open up to the methods class that there are multiple means of addressing standards.

Restoring balance in ELA by reclaiming ownership English educators in the United States have a different relationship with their K-12 content standards than do faculty in some other subject areas, or than do those in countries with national standards and curricula. In the United States, educators in science, mathematics and, to a lesser extent, social studies, are working with national standards developed by fellow educators, and they are seen to align with central concepts in the discipline, and with the ways in which students learn that content. In contrast, English does not have a recognized core of content that all students must master in a progression, although there are some skill areas showing a fragile consensus, as suggested by the NCTE/IRA

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standards, which do not approach the specificity and depth of newer national math and science standards. The field of literacy has contributed much of what is known about progressions in early reading and writing (Samuels and Farstrup 2011), about how students learn to write throughout the grades (Graham and Perin 2007; Smagorinsky 2006), and about how students learn an academic vocabulary (Neumann and Wright 2013). English educators generally have had little to do with the writing of state standards or the CCSS (Zancanella and Moore 2014), and our study of course syllabi indicate that factors other than the standards are considered more influential in defining what English teachers should know and be able to do, such as a teacher’s experience as student and teacher, their orientation toward such elements of the curriculum as appropriate and engaging literature, their perspective on how students learn to write, and their philosophy of language teaching and learning, particularly their orientation toward mastery of formal academic English. Any particular school of literary study (e.g., New Criticism, reader response, critical literacy) or writing instruction (e.g., formalist, expressivist, structured process, genre-based) has its adherents, its literature, and its professional organizations, such as NCTE, International Literacy Association (ILA), and National Writing Project (NWP). The state standards are late to this party, and standards that lean in any particular direction have been summarily denounced by opponents. Because English teachers’ orientation toward content and instruction depend on their theoretical leanings, there will be opponents from other perspectives, continuing many centuries of conflict over the purpose of education and which philosophical traditions inform different conceptions of teaching, learning, and schooling in general. However, standards are a political reality, imposed by legislative fiat on classrooms. Students’ success or failure in standardized tests have real-world consequences for districts, schools, administrators, teachers, and real estate values. The teacher educators in our study walked a tightrope, balancing among conflicting desires: their desire to prepare teacher candidates for the school contexts and challenges they would confront; their desire to communicate meaningful, engaging content and teaching methods; their desire to open teacher candidates’ minds to possible better future schools. In this balancing act, the standards do not have much weight, but they must be addressed if teachers are to move beyond them.

5

Literacy Instruction: Methods for Integrating Reading and Writing

We chose the methods course that frames this chapter because of its focus on integrating reading and writing instruction, its inclusion of specific instructional strategies, and its engagement of teacher candidates in field experience. The course, “ELA in Middle and Secondary Schools,” is a required course for teacher candidates seeking certification to teach English at the middle school or secondary level; the program is offered through the Department of English at Upper Plains Private College. Upper Plains Private College is a faith-based private college with a teacher education program that is traditional in that it requires coursework on content and pedagogy followed by a student teaching semester. The program had seven completers in ELA during the year of our survey. The program is a concentration within the Bachelor of Science degree in English, with teacher candidates taking 12 hours that include a multicultural literature course and two methods courses (including the one highlighted in this chapter) prior to the student teaching semester. The course description for “ELA in Middle and Secondary Schools” indicates that the course includes instruction in “composition, grammar, usage, and the study of literature” as well as an exploration of language arts curricula, materials, and assessment. Although the stated scope of the course reveals that it is designed to teach teacher candidates how to teach writing, the essential question in the syllabus for the course is much more broad: How can linking theory to practice change classroom instruction? A focus on preparing teachers to integrate both reading and writing skills is evident in the course through the choice of text and the assignments. According to the syllabus, the main text for this methods course is Olson’s (2010) The Reading/Writing Connection. This text, focused on integrating reading and writing instruction, includes practical demonstration lessons, K-12 student

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responses to instructional activities, sample literary selections, and reflection opportunities at the end of each chapter. These reflection opportunities, called “Learning Log Reflections,” also appear in the course syllabus as assignments for teacher candidates taking the methods course. Teacher candidates in the course regularly respond to their readings of the text through a series of online discussion board entries or journals. In the syllabus, these tasks are called Discussion Board Assignments, and they are completed through the Course Management System (CMS). Discussion Board Assignments ask students to apply their knowledge and experience to future classroom settings. For example, in Week 2, students write in response to the question, “How can we use Twitter and Blogs in the [language arts] classroom?” In Week 3, students respond to this question: “How can we let go of the guided tour for teaching and construct our classes in such a way that students construct their own versions of knowledge in new and personal ways?” These sample questions suggest that teacher candidates in the methods course are being asked to think through the potential applications of the knowledge gained in the course. Discussion Board Assignments also show the impact of the integration of reading and writing instruction. For example, in Week 8, the following Discussion Board Assignment is given: Most reading/writing workshops may be modified to fit the specific needs of students and they share a number of characteristics. Although a writing workshop may look like chaos at times, good planning is necessary for a successful workshop. An effective opening is necessary in a writing/reading workshop just like it is necessary in any other class. Please place several ideas for opening a reading/writing workshop on the Discussion Board for Week 8.

This Discussion Board Assignment requires teacher candidates to examine the workshop format for instruction in writing and in reading, and to develop ideas for opening such a workshop on the discussion board. As a result, the discussion ensures that teacher candidates will be given wide exposure to instructional ideas related to both the workshop format and the teaching of reading and writing skills. In the Content Knowledge Assignment, teacher candidates collect samples of K-12 student work, analyze misconceptions or misperceptions, and determine possible strategies for correcting the problem gleaned from their readings and research. Though this assignment doesn’t specify what kind of work samples will be analyzed, it seems to be open-ended enough that teacher candidates could collect K-12 student samples related to both reading and writing instruction.

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Finally, the Field Experience Journal requires teacher candidates to carry out 15 hours of field experience observing classes and/or working with a small group of K-12 students. Candidates keep a reflective journal, timesheet, and diversity log, in which they provide information on the ethnic, language, and special needs diversity of the K-12 students in their field experience classroom. The journal is evaluated on its connection with state standards as well as teacher candidates’ “personal growth and development, insights, and increased understanding of language arts.” This course, with its integration of reading and writing instruction through both texts and assignments, serves as an excellent focus point for thinking about this integration. This chapter now turns to the findings from our national study as they relate to preparing ELA teacher candidates to be teachers of reading and writing.

Preparing teacher candidates to teach reading and writing How do ELA methods classes prepare teacher candidates to teach reading and writing in their ELA classes in schools? The research that is currently available has only begun to examine how teacher educators prepare English language arts teacher candidates to teach reading and writing for K-12 students. Most of this extant research presents small-scale studies or studies focused on using a specific approach or technology (see Chapter 7 for more information). Several of these involve focusing on early-career English language arts teachers to determine how they make decisions about their instructional practices (Newell, Tallman and Letcher 2009), particularly examining how their thinking is mediated by environmental factors (Johnson et al. 2003; Smagorinsky, Rhym and Moore 2013). A small set of studies examines conceptual foci and instructional techniques used in English language arts methods courses that can result in improved teaching practices, both during student teaching and into the first years as a professional educator. These foci or instructional techniques include the use of dialogic reading instruction (Aukerman, Belfatti and Santori 2008); video reflection (Caughlan et al. 2013); pairing of preservice teachers and middle school students to discuss young adult literature in an online setting (Groenke 2008); teachers’ uptake of writing pedagogy from their teacher education programs (Grossman et al. 2000); the use of writers’ notebooks and writing workshop (Stockinger 2007); and fiction writing (Glenn 2007). This small body of research examines how conceptual tools can be combined with practical

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strategies to result in uptake during student teaching and into the induction period, particularly as related to instruction in reading and writing. Similar patterns hold in studies conducted outside the United States, in English-speaking countries, with ELA teacher candidates. For example, Anae (2014) presents the results of a study exploring an interdisciplinary approach to self-critical inquiry using creative writing with teacher candidates in Australia. Hennessy and McNamara (2013) trace the impact of standardized assessments and a culture of performativity on the teaching and learning of poetry, arguing that countering these forces requires a reorientation of curricular approaches and environments to one that values critical pedagogy. In a qualitative study focused on the work of a group of teacher candidates in the UK and Canada, Dymoke and Hughes (2009) examine how engagement in a multimodal wiki environment influenced teacher candidates’ perception of themselves as writers, particularly as poetry writers. These studies, like those carried out in the United States, are typically small studies focused on particular institutions and on particular techniques. Smagorinsky and Whiting (1995) provided findings related to the structure of the methods course in the United States, including survey, workshop, experiential, reflective, and theoretical structures, as well as the prevalence of the single methods course and the use of an instructional unit design as a final assessment for many of the courses. Building on Smagorinsky and Whiting’s framework, this chapter will provide data, in the form of questionnaire responses from our national survey of ELA methods instructors, as well as related focus group interviews and course syllabi, highlighting the role of instruction for improving the reading and writing skills of students in middle school and high school. The discussion section of this chapter will provide recommendations for practice, based on these data, and connections to the other strands and tensions included in this book.

Teaching reading and writing skills is the heart of English methods In the questionnaire, participants were asked to respond to the question, “What is the primary means used to address the needs of struggling readers and writers in the English teacher education program?” Responses to this question were recorded for programs that were coded as bachelor’s degree, postbaccalaureate programs with certification, master’s programs, and alternative certification programs.

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As can be seen in Table 5.1, similar patterns occur in the bachelor’s degree and postbaccalaureate with certification programs. In these two types of programs, the most frequent response to the question of where in the program the needs of struggling readers and writers were addressed was in the methods course (bachelor’s: 40 percent; postbaccalaureate: 40 percent). In the master’s and alternative programs, respondents were more likely to point to an integration throughout required courses as the location for instruction in meeting the needs of struggling readers (master’s: 47 percent; alternative: 33 percent). As master’s and alternative programs tend to provide fewer credits of ELA methods courses (see Chapter 2), it could be that programs tend to lean on integration throughout courses to meet those needs. In addition, the questionnaire asked participants to respond to an open-ended question, as follows: “What is your understanding of how the English language arts methods course should address the teaching of reading and writing skills?” Many respondents noted that this focus—preparing English teachers to teach reading and writing skills—is the central theme of the English methods course. For example, one respondent noted, “I assume this is the primary purpose of the English language arts methods course, and that the courses teach these in light of the best-regarded research on these topics.” Similarly, another wrote, “Reading and writing skills should be at the heart of English methods courses. Both theory and practical applications should be covered; integration of reading/writing should also be stressed.” However, a small number of respondents noted a distinction between literary instruction and literacy instruction. This distinction differentiates between focusing on literary texts as the content of the course and focusing on improving K-12 students’ abilities to read and write, regardless of the text. For example, one respondent noted, “We [in the Department of English] focus on the teaching of literature in the methods class. Students take 2 reading classes in the Department of Education.” When we examine these open-ended responses and the data from Table 5.1, we infer that respondents see the value of the ELA methods course as an important location for instruction in working with K-12 students who struggle with reading and writing skills. The centrality of methods in this role is also borne out in the focus group discussions that we held with ELA methods instructors. For example, Charles Bates, when asked whether instruction in reading and writing was unique to English classrooms or English education, or a cross-curricular endeavor, responded as follows: “I do see reading and writing as not unique to English or English education. However, I increasingly still

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Bachelor’s

Postbacc

174 0 20.69 33.91 40.23 4.6

135 0.74 17.78 36.3 40.0 5.19

Master’s Alternative 104 0.96 18.27 47.12 26.92 6.73

24 8.33 25.0 33.33 25.0 8.33

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted.

see it as the burden of English education.” Another participant, Joseph Shain, agreed with Bates, and followed up: “I believe that the English teachers are— [Bates] used the word ‘burdened’ and I would think that they get labeled as the instructors of reading and writing.” Whether the centrality of teaching reading and writing skills is viewed as a burden or simply a label, it seems clear that our participants view this type of instruction as central to the work of preparing ELA teachers. Examination of the methods course syllabi submitted by questionnaire participants also confirms the importance of instruction for reading and writing skills in English methods courses. Analysis of these syllabi was broad in focus, examining each syllabus to see where it ranked on a four-point scale, specific to instruction in reading and writing skills. See Appendix A for a full description of data analysis methods. Syllabi that were rated a “1” on the four-point scale had no evidence of addressing instruction in reading and writing skills, throughout the syllabus, nor did they include any reference to teaching reading and writing skills, in the course description, readings, assignments, calendar, or any other part of the syllabus. Syllabi that were ranked a “2” mentioned instruction in reading and writing skills at some point in the syllabus, but the syllabus contained no evidence of active application, other than response to course readings. Syllabi in this ranking showed that teacher candidates were engaged in learning about instruction for reading and writing skills, but were not applying this information. Syllabi that were ranked a “3” showed that teacher candidates were asked to do some level of application, with a requirement for application of knowledge about teaching reading and writing skills at least once. We classified this level of course as requiring minor active engagement for instruction in reading and writing skills. Syllabi that were ranked a “4” showed repeated mention of reading and writing

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Table 5.2  English methods course syllabi rankings for instruction in reading and writing skills Code 1 2

3 4

Explanation for code No evidence that the course addresses the twenty-first-century topic Topic mentioned in the course description, and/or in the course objectives; may also be mentioned in a calendar topic or set of readings, but no evidence of active application other than response to course readings (passively engaged) Applied at least once in planning, instruction, or presentation (minor active engagement) Seen repeatedly in course objectives, calendar topics, readings, and applied to more than one assignment. There is an explicit commitment to addressing this topic

n = 30, 22% n = 34, 25%

n = 33, 24% n = 39, 29%

skills throughout the syllabus, in course objectives, calendars, and readings. We also saw that teacher candidates were required to apply their knowledge of instruction in reading and writing skills in more than one assignment. As a result, we classified courses at this level as showing an explicit commitment to addressing this topic. Table 5.2 provides data from the course syllabi relative to instruction in reading and writing skills based on 136 syllabi analyzed for instruction in reading and writing skills. Results indicate that course syllabi are spread fairly evenly across the four rankings. Based on the data shown in Table 5.2, 78 percent of the syllabi that were submitted (n = 106) at least mentioned instruction in reading and writing skills in the course description or course objectives. Of the methods course syllabi, 53 percent (n = 72) show that students are required to make application of information about instruction in reading and writing skills to a variety of assignments, including lesson planning, presentations, class discussions, and other assignment formats. As a result of examination of these data— including survey responses, focus group discussions, and methods course syllabi—we can confidently assert that most respondents view instruction in literacy skills (reading and writing) to be an important focus of the methods course. This chapter will now focus on two important themes related to instruction in reading and writing skills across all of the data collected. These themes include (1) the integration of reading and writing instruction, and (2) instructional methods for preparing teacher candidates to be teachers of reading and writing skills in their English language arts classrooms.

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Integration of reading and writing skills Another finding focuses on the importance of integrating reading and writing skills, both in the methods course(s) and in English language arts teacher education programs as a whole. This focus on integration came through in responses to open-ended questions, in the focus group data, and in course syllabi. In response to an open-ended question about how the methods course should address the teaching of reading and writing skills, several responses were coded as “integration,” which we are defining as indicating a preference for instruction in reading and writing to be combined. For example, one respondent noted, “This semester I've been working a lot with the idea of teaching reading and writing as a way of entering into conversations—and building curriculum that promotes this perspective. We also talk about integrating reading and writing.” Similarly, another respondent wrote, “Students understand there is no singular way to teach reading and writing. Rather, reading and writing should be supported throughout all activities, discussions, and programs.” These comments, and several similar ones, indicate a preference for instruction in reading and writing skills that is integrated and for English teacher preparation to model this preference for integration by addressing both of these together in the English methods course. However, program structures seem to provide barriers to this integration, perhaps in the way that specific course requirements are built. For example, programs like Upper Plains Private College, the institution whose syllabus frames this chapter, may require separate methods courses in literature and in composition or rhetoric. This difficulty can be seen in one response: “Currently, our program splits reading and writing. I would like to see it integrated, as they go hand in hand.” The topic of integration between reading and writing, and the difficulty presented by programmatic structures, also came up in the focus group interviews. For example, in response to a question about how preservice teachers learn to teach reading and writing skills, Kristine Poindexter, a focus group participant, responded: We actually have two separate courses. We have a teaching reading in middle and secondary schools, and teaching writing in middle and secondary schools. I hate to say that because, of course, all of these skills are intertwined. The reading, writing, listening, speaking and viewing. Those are two separate courses, but then we have methods and we have an adolescent lit course. All those three courses incorporate everything that they’ve been learning. So that’s basically our structure.

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Poindexter notes that the structure of the methods courses at her institution doesn’t fit her thinking about the importance of intertwining instruction in reading, writing, listening, speaking, and viewing: the language arts. This lack of alignment between the course structure and its content also becomes apparent in terms of the split that occurs sometimes between English and Education. This split was described by Roxanne Hutson, during the focus group discussions, as follows: “Our setup is a little weird. They take, I believe it is either two or three courses in reading in the College of Education, and in our English department, we teach the writing course. Only one.” These comments from both Poindexter and Hutson indicate that there may be something in the structure—where programs are housed and/or how courses are offered—that is in conflict with the way in which the language arts are seen as integrated. This conflict can also be seen in our examination of the methods course syllabi that were submitted by survey respondents. An examination of the methods course syllabi that were rated as a level 4, that is, those that aspire to engage students in consistent practical application of knowledge to lesson planning or practice in terms of reading or writing instruction, causes this structural tension to become more evident. Of the 39 methods courses at this level (36 percent), 14 were designated as “comprehensive” methods courses, those that include both reading and writing instruction; 7 of the 39 methods courses at this level (18 percent) were designated as reading or literature methods courses, those that focused primarily on teaching reading and/or literature; and 18 of the 39 methods courses at this level (46 percent) were designated as writing methods courses, those that focused primarily on teaching writing. Analysis of these data show that course and program structure can sometimes advocate against a more integrated perspective on teaching reading and writing skills. The exemplar described at the beginning of this chapter is perhaps another example of the push and pull between integration and the separation of reading and writing. The course was, at one time, designed to focus on writing instruction, yet the instructor has chosen to focus assignments and readings on a more integrated perspective. In this case the instructor is working within the program structure to accomplish the difficult task of preparing teacher candidates in a particular way that the instructor values. In the following section, we highlight specific instructional methods that are being used in the data we collected to prepare teacher candidates to teach reading and writing skills.

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Instructional methods for preparing teacher candidates to teach reading and writing Respondents to the national survey were asked how reading comprehension and writing skill instruction were addressed in the English methods course. In Table  5.3, we present the percentages of respondents who selected each of the options, which include (a) readings, lecture, and discussion; (b) lesson and unit planning; (c) application such as tutoring; (d) other; (e) not addressed. Respondents to this question were able to choose as many of the responses as they wished. As is evident in Table 5.3, high percentages of respondents indicated that instruction in teaching reading and writing was carried out in English methods courses through readings, lecture, and discussion; and through lesson and unit planning. Application in an instructional setting was selected by close to half of the respondents. Only 7 percent of the respondents indicated that teaching reading comprehension was not addressed in the ELA methods class, and only 2.5 percent of the respondents indicated that teaching writing skills was not addressed in the ELA methods class. Open-ended responses from questionnaire and from analysis of focus group discussions and course syllabi provided more detailed and nuanced information about how instruction in teaching reading and writing skills is carried out in English methods classes. In participants’ responses to the open-ended question regarding how English methods courses should address the teaching of reading and writing skills, one important category of response was focused on instructional practices. Some of the responses provided broad generalizations about how such instruction was carried out, such as “We focus on pedagogical

Table 5.3  Methods of teaching reading comprehension and writing skills in the ELA methods class Readings, Lesson Application Other Not Mean lecture, and unit (e.g., addressed number discussion planning tutoring) chosen Teaching reading comprehension Teaching writing skills

88.5

84

41

24.5

7

2

96

92.5

51

31.5

2.5

2

Note: In percentages, n = 200.

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best practices and use books by authors (Jago and Smagorinsky to name two) that serve as foundational texts.” A large portion of these responses were classified as dealing with theory and application; these mirror the focus in the questionnaire responses of using class readings, discussion, and application to teach instruction in reading and writing skills. For example, one respondent said, “Methods courses should provide students with a sound theoretical foundation on which to build pedagogical content knowledge and practice applying this knowledge.” Another similar response was the following: “Students learn the method and theory foundations, then practice application in a real world tutoring or classroom experience.” Other open-ended responses that focused on instructional methods for English methods courses seemed to lean toward particular techniques, such as strategy instruction—an approach that highlights particular cognitive strategies that are designed to improve reading skills—or writing workshop, a method of writing instruction based on the work of Graves (2003) and Murray (2004) in which teachers provide coaching to support students as they explore the writing craft. One comment that addresses strategy instruction is as follows: “Methods class should teach teacher candidates how to find and articulate the types of strategies that expert readers and writers use in a variety of genres, for a variety of purposes, accounting for a variety of audiences.” A response that was coded as “instructional methods: writing workshop” is similarly illuminating: “Students should be introduced to literature workshop and writing workshop as well as more traditional classroom structures. Students should come away from both courses with a deeper understanding of how and why to model what they do as readers and writers for their students.” These responses, when taken in concert with the data in Table 5.2, indicate that respondents see the importance of helping teacher candidates to first develop an understanding of theory or foundations in reading and writing instruction—including genres, strategies, modeling, and other perspectives— and then moving them into practice. How this movement from theory to practice is accomplished is a topic best explored through examination of English methods course syllabi that were submitted by survey respondents. In order to provide some sense of the course content for syllabi that were coded as a level “4” for instruction in reading and writing skills, we provide some excerpts from that subset of collected syllabi, including how the courses were framed in the syllabi, sample readings, and sample assessments/assignments.

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Instructors at this level provided course descriptions that framed the course as directed to teaching reading and writing skills. For example, one syllabus included the description that follows: The best writing teachers see themselves as writers—and maybe painters, also. They understand that writing, like teaching, requires a “colorful palette” to create lively and memorable messages. They know that the elements that make a message effective in one context might not apply in another. They know that in the 21st century, “writing” means more than print on a page. But how do we teach such ideas to adolescents? How do we decide which parts of our palettes will have the desired effects? And, most importantly, how do we help our students to create their own “colorful palettes” and powerful messages? This course is designed to address those questions and more.

This writing-focused English methods course includes several important messages that serve to frame the course as focused on teaching writing. First, it clearly states that writing teachers should see themselves as writers, which is perhaps a reference to the recommendations and policy of the NWP, a federally funded, national network of university-based sites engaging K-16 teachers of writing in professional development for writing instruction at all levels (National Writing Project 2016). Second, the syllabus uses the image of teachers as painters whose role is to teach adolescents how to develop their own artistic style and message. The description ends with a clear statement that the course will be focused on these issues. Similarly, a second methods course that focuses on teaching literature provides the following course description: [Course number] is a course designed to help beginning teachers become acquainted with the closely related issues of reading comprehension and developing engaging plans for teaching literature. As you probably already know, many students, when reading a story or poem, feel completely lost: The words float around, the students daydream, and it feels like they are reading a foreign language. Why is that, and what can English teachers do about it? We will attempt to answer both questions in this course.

This course description lays out a common problem in the teaching of literature: that students “feel completely lost” and struggle. Again, this course promises to provide English teacher candidates with an explanation for this problem and some practical solutions for English teachers. The syllabus goes on to describe the work of the course as including the following: reading texts

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on the theory and practice of reading instruction, writing lesson plans, and developing materials for frequently taught literature. Course syllabi that were rated at a level 4 on our scale for reading and writing instruction tended to have reading requirements that specifically addressed the teaching of reading and writing skills. For example, the most common texts cited in syllabi at this level (see Appendix B) included the following texts: Baker, T., Hackett, J.D., and Wilhelm, J.D. (2001). Strategic Reading: Guiding Students to Lifelong Literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Gallagher, K. (2006). Teaching Adolescent Writers. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. Olson, C. B. (2010). The Reading/Writing Connection: Strategies for Teaching and Learning in the Secondary Classroom. 3rd edn. New York, NY: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon. Smagorinsky, P., Johannessen, L., Kahn, E. and McCann, T. (2010). The Dynamics of Writing Instruction: A Structured Process Approach for Middle and High School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

These texts provide a blend of theory and practice in teaching reading and writing skills. Gallagher’s (2006) Teaching Adolescent Writers provides a model for instruction that includes the importance of writing practice, teacher modeling of good writing, opportunities for K-12 students to read and study other writers, student choice of topics, authenticity of purpose and audience, and high quality feedback. Smagorinsky et al. (2010) provide instructional activities to support the writing process across multiple genres, basing their recommendations on George Hillocks’s recommendations for practice. Olson’s (2010) text, now in its third edition, provides instructional techniques for integrating the teaching of literature and the teaching of writing. And finally, Wilhelm et al. (2001), also indebted to Hillocks, provide comprehension and engagement strategies that will support a “learning-centered” approach to reading. Examination of the texts used in methods courses that seemed to focus on both reading and writing instruction provides a starting point for methods instructors who wish to carry forward this focus for their teacher candidates. We also examined the assessments in these syllabi that addressed teaching reading and writing skills. Although many of these assessments contained the typical lesson planning, unit planning, and demonstration lesson assignments that either included some aspect of reading or writing instruction or were wholly focused on reading or writing instruction, there were also some rather unique opportunities for English teacher candidates to learn instructional skills related to teaching reading and writing skills. Several of these assignments required

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English language arts teacher candidates to see themselves as writers or readers, echoing practices frequently espoused by those engaged in the work of the NWP and extending this practice to include both writing and reading instruction. The first of these—and perhaps the most common—was participation in a writing workshop. This type of assignment typically engaged teacher candidates in drafting several pieces of writing, receiving feedback from peers, and reflecting on the writing workshop model. The writing assignments varied from course to course, but the commonality here was the way in which teacher candidates were engaged in the workshop model, as part of learning to use this model in their own classrooms. A more unique example of encouraging teacher candidates to see themselves as readers and writers was the development of a writer’s notebook. Designed as an instance of the writer’s notebook (Atwell 1987), the course instructor in this case described it this way: “These notebooks will be reservoirs of lesson plan ideas, collaborative poems, great lines, words, story sketches, and drafts. They will get us in shape for writing (and reading) in many different ways.” Teacher candidates were encouraged to write in their notebooks through a series of writing assignments, including flash fiction, essay, and fiction and to write on a daily basis. Modeling this type of assignment, which can frequently be found in ELA classrooms, in the ELA methods course presumably increases the potential that novice ELA teachers will engage in this kind of writing instruction in their own classrooms. Other assignments encouraged teacher candidates to see themselves as readers, including reading response collection and literature circles. This set of assignments typically involved teacher candidates reading young adult literature and writing personal responses to it. In addition, several instructors assigned young adult literature—or less frequently, adult literature—and asked teacher candidates to participate in literature circles (Daniels 2002). Literature circles engaged teacher candidates in participating in a variety of set roles, such as facilitator, leader, scribe, summarizer, devil’s advocate, connector and then practicing reflection over how this might look in a K-12 classroom setting. A final set of assignments was field-based in nature. For example, classes participated in writing workshops on flash fiction or on multigenre writing at a local high school. In another class, ELA teacher candidates were asked to interview a student about writing, take notes, and bring those notes to class. Another example of a field-based assignment in methods focusing on teaching reading and writing is the “Autobiographical Action Research Teaching Project.”

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In this assignment, teacher candidates select an ELA topic, which may include anything related to one of the language arts, conduct a lesson, and then prepare a detailed, personal account in the form of a narrative regarding what occurred. The goal here is to tell “in story form the story of your teaching—what you learned, observed, and discovered—about a personal teaching experience with young people. This is the personal story of your discovery and what you believe to be valid and true.” Another field-based assignment asked teacher candidates to read and respond to student work, with the goal of developing an understanding of assessment and its potential for instruction. In the Oral Student Case study, teacher candidates collected a limited set of assessment data from a group or class during a twoweek field placement, typically three to four items, with the instruction that this assessment data must represent both formative and formal/informal assessment. Teacher candidates kept notes on the progress of the students in the group or class. Both the notes and the assessment data were then analyzed in class, with the teacher candidate leading the discussion during the methods course. Finally, an assignment called “Exploring Student Reading and Teaching Reading Strategies” engages teacher candidates in a two-part assignment. Here, teacher candidates work with a K-12 student to understand how the student reads and understands a literary text. They then identify a reading strategy that will support that student and create a lesson designed to teach that strategy. According to the syllabus, this assignment requires students to grapple “with what it means to understand literature and what makes literary texts difficult for students to read.” Focus group participants were also asked how the programs they represented managed instruction to support struggling readers and writers in English methods courses. Their first response was to push back on the notion of struggling readers and writers, citing contextual factors that interfere with students’ interest and capabilities. Along this line, focus group participant Lawrence LeBlanc noted, “Actually, it isn’t just struggling. It isn’t reluctance. It’s a whole host of conditions that make the activities of reading and writing just almost insuperable tasks relative to what the majority of students that I’m talking about face.” In addition, Philip Towner, another focus group participant, suggested that “all readers and writers, depending on the specific context, can be struggling.” According to Towner, most of the assignments that are required for students in his program “do privilege diverse and struggling students.” Towner described an emphasis on promoting choice for students, saying, “The students need to choose to write

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their topics they want to write about. They need to choose their books.” Towner sees this focus on choice as an antidote to the culture of the school, which tends to remove choice as an option for students, thus creating reluctant readers. Hutson in her focus group response echoed the need for student choice as well as student voice, saying, “for students to be successful with writing, they have to have choice, and they have to say something that comes from their own voice and their own purpose and their own needs.” These focus group participants discussed what they do in methods classes to support teacher candidates to teach reading and writing skills. Bates, for example, discussed encouraging cross-curricular assignments in unit planning, focusing on using young adult literature as the shared text. Hutson, during the focus groups, noted that the writing methods course instruction is modeled on that of the NWP, “where we spend the vast majority of time working on students’ own writing and then make connections to pedagogy.” Poindexter described how a number of program graduates come back to campus to participate in that program’s instance of the NWP. Poindexter described her instruction as including a two-week unit on at-risk or reluctant readers, in which teacher candidates examine “the cases behind their emotional problems that are impeding their academic progress,” including teen pregnancy, abuse, and other issues that may emerge from adolescent students. Reading and writing strategies were also mentioned by Hutson, who said, “the kinds of reading and writing strategies that you use with the so-called struggling readers and writers, if you’re using really good strategies, are actually good strategies for writers and readers, period.” LeBlanc and Towner discussed connections to the field experience that either stem from or are included in the methods course, particularly in terms of preparing teacher candidates to teach writing. According to LeBlanc in his focus group response, teaching writing is the most difficult challenge for these teacher candidates, and the university class “really doesn’t prepare them for the diversity, the range of ability levels, particularly when multiethnic, multilingual, and socioeconomic differences are brought to the fore.” Towner agreed, and noted that candidates do not experience in their college classrooms “the kind of writing instruction we’re trying to get them to do in practice.” Gary Wilkerson also made the connection to the field experience and the program’s structure, noting that the required literature methods course includes young adult literature and reading instruction, and is followed by a capstone methods courses that includes a field placement. According to focus group participant Wilkerson, this course is “used to bring together those different strands and move them forward

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into their student teaching.” Such course structures, which seem to mitigate against integration of reading and writing instruction, should be familiar from the discussion at the opening of this chapter.

Integrating reading and writing in English teacher education This chapter has examined three important themes that were developed from our data specific to providing ELA teacher candidates with tools they need to teach reading and writing skills in their future classrooms. These three themes— reading and writing as the heart of the English methods course, integration, and specific instructional methods—help to shed some light on how English methods instructors are thinking about this topic, as well as how the discipline might improve its work in this critical area. The syllabus discussed at the beginning of this chapter provides some specific ways to imagine all three of these themes. This exemplar manages to integrate reading and writing instruction and field experiences through its choice of text and assignments, a key portion of getting this part of methods as strongly functioning as possible. Although examination of methods courses will not help in reimagining program structure so that English and Education are more clearly integrated, beginning with an understanding of the need for such integration may be important. These forms of integration—integration of reading and writing instruction and integration of field experiences and reflective practices within the methods class—present a formidable challenge to ELA teacher educators. The use of workshop-oriented instructional techniques during the methods class has potential to serve as a mode of integration; another integration opportunity is to require a field experience that is focused on the development of simple skills while working with only one or two students at a time. Examples of this technique might, for example, require teacher candidates to interview a particular student, to shadow a student, or to examine student work and then to practice reflection about how instruction and assessment might be planned to meet the needs of the individual student. Implementing these recommendations requires difficult work across substantial borders, including borders between university or college departments, borders between universities and schools, and borders between those trained to teach literature and those trained to teach literacy.

6

Teaching Diverse Learners: Methods to Address Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

Research on students who are ELLs within the ELA classroom has been an area of growing attention in the past three decades (de Jong and Harper 2005; de Oliveira and Shoffner 2016; Lucas 2011), especially as this research relates to the growing population of school-aged children in the United States whose home language is not English. By the year 2030, it is estimated that over 40 percent of the K-12 population in US schools will be children whose first language is not English (US Census Bureau 2008). As Boyd et al. (2006) note, “In today’s increasingly diverse society and communicative contexts . . . English language arts teachers face even more complex challenges than the simple education of learners about the realities of language: they are simultaneously charged to teach all English speakers regardless of dialect and all second language users and learners, regardless of their early language experiences” (p. 9). Still, many mainstream teachers believe that teaching English language learners can be accomplished through good teaching. de Jong and Harper (2005) note that the reason mainstream content-area teachers (such as teachers prepared to teach English language arts) are unprepared to teach ELLs stems from the assumption that teaching ELLs is “a matter of pedagogical adaptations that can easily be incorporated into a mainstream teacher’s existing repertoire of instructional strategies for a diverse classroom” (p. 102). The idea that teaching practices for ELLs emerge from “just good teaching” (p. 102) practices is a myth that perpetuates a lack of attention to the linguistic foundations that constitute the basis for such practices. As this case study and chapter illustrates, knowledge of how to teach language learners must complement successful pedagogy in ELA. For several years, Amanda Reiter has taught the methods of teaching English course at Belleview College, one of eleven colleges within a large, citywide

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system of public institutions of higher education in New York City. Reiter stressed how the context of New York City itself provided an imperative for emphasizing culturally and linguistically responsive teaching within all courses in Belleview’s teacher education program. A program-wide commitment to preparing educators to teach in schools that are culturally and linguistically diverse anchored Reiter’s methods course firmly within such a framework. Currently, there are over 180 languages spoken by students who attend New York City public schools, with 41 percent of these students speaking a language other than English at home (New York City Department of Education). New York City schools also comprise the largest school district in the United States, serving 1.1 million students in over 1,800 schools (New York City Department of Education). Contextual factors like language diversity and school district size shape how Belleview’s teacher education program responds to students and schools. How, the faculty must consider, do the methods of teaching English course extend a commitment to teaching diverse learners and ELLs that addresses the contextual imperative (see Berchini 2017)? How are the texts, assignments, field experiences, and discussions undergirded by an ethos that values the diverse life experiences that students from a variety of backgrounds bring to school? The methods course at Belleview College is paired with a field experience of nearly fifty hours in which teacher candidates apply their learning to real contexts within New York City public schools. The School of Education’s conceptual framework focuses on both the integration of field experiences with coursework and the mission of educating a diverse student population: The School of Education provides its candidates with the critical skills and understanding necessary to be responsive to the multiple challenges of all learners: students with a wide range of backgrounds, cultures, abilities and prior knowledge. We teach candidates to create humane and ethical learning communities in their classrooms and schools. They gain the ability to collaborate successfully with parents, families, community members, school faculty and staff in order to provide this support.

As a response to the commitment to serve students from a wide variety of backgrounds, the methods of teaching English course places the teaching of diverse learners at its center. In lesson plan and unit plan assignments urban, diverse youth must be the intended student audience. Two particular goals of the course work hand-in-hand to conceptualize how the goals of teaching of diverse

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students and ELLs are to be accomplished. These two goals, as articulated on the syllabus, are as follows: ●●

●●

Build a repertoire of strategies (not a one size fits all formula) for working with culturally and linguistically diverse students. Foster critical engagement with texts through discussion and literacy practices related to equity and develop strategies for connecting students’ family, community, and schooling experiences to ELA.

One text that Reiter consistently used as a resource for working with diverse youth was Christensen’s (2009) text Teaching for Joy and Justice. Christensen describes the book as one in which reading and writing are defined as political acts and specifically highlights the importance of viewing the teaching of reading and writing as transformative, especially with students who come from backgrounds where access and opportunity to engage with school-based forms of reading and writing may have been limited. Christensen (2000) states, “People who lack reading and writing skills have difficulty expressing who they are. Their words are strangled and they learn to be silent . . . early in my teaching career I came to see literacy as a tool that students could use to know themselves and to heal themselves” (pp. vi– vii). Reiter views Christensen’s (2000, 2009) work as an important inclusion in her methods class, for she believes that the teacher candidates in her program need to embrace a view of literacy that values diverse experiences and perspective and use ELA curriculum as a way to help students act as agents within their social worlds. Also, as noted on the syllabus, building a “repertoire of strategies,” in Reiter’s mind, means that teacher candidates gain both the knowledge and the practical experience through the methods course to teach the students that they will encounter in the New York City public schools. Many of the teacher candidates themselves attended New York City public schools and are of diverse backgrounds, so they understand the context and see their future teaching as working with students with whom they identify. They also understand the challenges students in New York City public schools face when teachers and curriculum are disconnected from their home lives and community funds of knowledge. In addition to texts like Christensen’s (2009), which emphasized the social and cultural dimensions of learning, Reiter’s students also learn about concepts of differentiation, focusing on content, process, and product. Such resources (i.e., Tomlinson and McTighe 2006) that stress students’ different learning needs encourage teacher candidates to use a balance of multiple approaches to teach students. Reiter views this broad-based approach as providing a holistic picture of curriculum and instruction.

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Like other teacher education programs across the United States, Belleview College had worked in recent years to more fully address the teaching of ELLs. Reiter noted that graduates from the program had indicated that this was an area in which they felt underprepared. Because the teacher education program at Belleview College did not have a specific course to address the teaching of ELLs, throughout the past few years Reiter had collaborated with a colleague in the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) area of her department as a way to bolster teacher candidates’ understanding of this topic. Through collaboration, Reiter and her colleague were able to highlight different aspects of teaching ELLs: the linguistic foundations of L1 (first language) and L2 (second language) learning, the diversity of experiences that ELLs represent, the understanding of how academic and social languages differ, and the role that social, cultural, and political contexts play in the language learning process. This collaboration grew to include video analysis of pedagogies used to work with ELLs and a planning meeting involving candidates from both programs to support differentiation of unit and lesson plans for the ELLs at ELA candidates’ field sites. Reiter knew that collaboration with a colleague in TESOL would benefit her teacher candidates, as many of them came to the issue thinking that successful teaching of ELLs was merely constituted through a checklist of good teaching practices. Language and linguistic foundations that are needed to be successful while completing such tasks as working in small groups, taking notes while reading texts, or completing graphic organizers remain invisible. In some cases, teacher education programs can perpetuate the tacit assumption that all learners come to all learning situations with the oral and literacy base for engaging academic content (de Jong and Harper 2005). Therefore, it was important to Reiter to think about how to work within Belleview’s teacher education program to make changes in the ways that teacher candidates were prepared to teach ELLs and understand the realities of collaboration with school-based colleagues. Reiter also highlighted particular resources that were available for learning to teach ELLs. In particular, she cited Colorín Colorado, a national multimedia project that offers a wealth of bilingual, research-based information, activities, videos of teaching practices that support ELLs, and advice for educators and families of English language learners (see http://www.colorincolorado.org/). Reiter noted that students could continue to use such resources even after graduating from Belleview’s teacher preparation program. Despite her commitment to preparing teacher candidates for diverse classrooms, Reiter was aware that this emphasis, at times, competed with other

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emphases within ELA teacher education. As seen in recent literature (Barnes and Smagorinsky 2016), she noted the “pull” that English education now feels when she stated: One of the issues I am finding with being an English educator is just the competing conceptions of what it means to be an ELA teacher in our current times. What I feel very strongly about is students having meaningful experiences with language and literacy and literature and different forms of communication and how that is bumping against a lot of other conceptions that I think whittle our profession down.

Reiter’s commitment to preparing teacher candidates to teach diverse learners and ELLs resonates with the National Council of Teachers of English Conference on English Education’s (CEE) position statement (2005) on supporting linguistically and culturally diverse learners in English education. This position statement encourages English educators to become familiar with work in both multicultural education and bilingual/bicultural education and catalogs foundational concepts as funds of knowledge (Moll et al. 1992), language diversity (Smitherman 2004), culturally relevant pedagogy (LadsonBillings 2009/1994; Paris 2012), and critical orientations toward diversity (Morrell 2008, 2015; Villanueva 1993). Now, we turn toward situating the case study of Belleview College’s English methods course in the context of teaching diverse learners and ELLs within secondary English education in the United States.

Teaching diverse learners The phrase “teaching diverse learners” has a connotation in the United States that is intimately connected to multicultural education (Banks 2007). Multiculturalism and teacher education have a history that began in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when multiculturalists acknowledged that there was a gap between children’s life experiences and school experiences that was not often acknowledged in schools. Ladson-Billings (1995) notes that, sometimes, understandings of multicultural education have been superficial and reduced to trivial examples and artifacts of culture such as eating ethnic or cultural foods, singing songs or dancing, reading folktales, and engaging in other less-than-scholarly pursuits of the fundamentally different conceptions of knowledge or quests for social justice (p. 56). In many teacher education programs, a multicultural education class has been added to the curriculum, but the rest of the coursework has remained

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unchanged (Cochran-Smith 2003; Sleeter 2001). Therefore, a configuration of stand-alone multicultural coursework often presents teacher candidates with the idea that multiculturalism is about studying “other people” rather than about understanding social inequities (White 2012). Reiter aimed to integrate tenets of multicultural education into the teaching of English, therefore rejecting the idea of a “stand alone” multicultural education course. Other efforts in teacher education throughout the 1980s and 1990s included placing White teacher candidates in urban schools for practica or student teaching experiences. Throughout the past two decades, the percentage of teachers who self-identify as White has continued to grow at the same time that the percentage of children of color and children of immigrants has grown (Baber 1995; Boutte 1999; Burbank et al. 2005; Landis et al. 2007; Nieto 2003; Sleeter 2001; Villegas and Lucas 2002). This pattern has been seen in similar ways throughout the world (Bubb and Porritt 2008; Fenech, Waniganayake and Fleet 2009; Vegas 2007). In addition to thinking about the growing mismatch between teachers’ and students’ backgrounds and lived experiences, researchers and teacher educators must also examine the ways in which teacher education programs have addressed multicultural education. A component of multicultural education includes the study of teachers’ prior beliefs and experiences as a way to understand their orientation toward diversity. Such work has been considered an important component of planning for teacher candidates’ development of a multicultural ethos (Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1990; Lampert 1990). As we conducted our study of secondary English teacher education, we were aware that the aims of supporting both culturally and linguistically diverse students were distinct, yet overlapping. There remained a consistent view in English teacher education that culturally responsive teaching (Gay 2000) and culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings 2009/1994; Paris 2012) were the foundations of teacher candidates’ work with both diverse learners and ELLs. Gay (2000) describes culturally responsive teaching as the “cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them. It teaches to and through the strengths of these students. It is culturally validating and affirming” (p. 29). Teacher candidates’ knowledge and understanding of culturally responsive teaching supports all students’ literacy learning and development, reading comprehension, and writing abilities. Likewise, culturally responsive teaching provides a foundation for ELA teacher candidates’ approach to teaching ELLs that is firmly rooted in a framework that

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stresses equity perspectives on linguistic and cultural diversity, as opposed to historical deficit perspectives of teaching diverse students and ELLs. Culturally responsive teaching has been highlighted as a foundation for effective teaching of all K-12 students (Gay 2000, 2010; Gay and Kirkland 2003). Therefore, English teachers can use such a framework to reach diverse groups of students. The student population in the United States continues to grow in racial and ethnic diversity; yet, the racial diversity of teachers in US schools has stayed relatively the same throughout the past two decades, with White teachers comprising approximately 82 percent of faculty in elementary or secondary schools (National Center of Education Statistics 2012a). This preponderance of a White perspective makes it less likely for teachers to recognize how curriculum materials speak to their own culture more than those of students whose cultures are minimized by how the materials are organized and supported by curricular supplements (Berchini 2016). NCTE has recognized that the needs of ELLs differ from the needs of other learners and has supported the creation of guidelines for preparing ELA teachers in this area (CEE 2005; NCTE 2006). While recent research has been conducted about teaching ELLs in the context of teacher education programs more generally (Athanases and de Oliveira 2007; Lucas 2011), within the specific context of the English methods courses, the topic of teaching ELLs has received little research attention. Some recent accounts (Campano, Jacobs and Ngo 2014; de Oliveira and Shoffner 2016) have provided portraits of exemplary English education programs that are addressing the teaching of ELLs. How are the general population of US English teacher candidates prepared, in methods courses, to teach English language learners?

Teaching English Language Learners in ELA De Oliveira and Shoffner (2009) posit that the teaching of ELLs as addressed with future content-area teachers has generally resided under the umbrella of teaching diverse learners (p. 93). Yet, as classrooms in the United States become more linguistically diverse, they note that it is perhaps unwise to characterize ELLs within such a broad category, when the needs of ELL students include specific linguistic and cultural understandings on the part of teachers. Athanases and de Oliveira (2007) identify understandings that teachers must have in order to meet ELLs’ language needs related to literacy development, content-area knowledge,

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and oral language proficiency that extend beyond culturally responsive teaching. English language arts, as a field, must move toward such a vision of both culturally and linguistically responsive teaching when working with English language learners. The teaching of ELLs within ELA is often perceived by novice English teachers to be a redefinition of their role (Yoon 2007). Many teachers of English subscribe to a traditional model of the discipline, as previously articulated in the opening chapters of the book, and see the complexities of teaching ELLs as peripheral to their work as teachers of their discipline. De Oliveira and Shoffner (2009) note that “pre-service [English] teachers indicate that they are often nervous about teaching ELLs, concentrating on the difficulties posed, rather than the possibilities offered, by diverse learners in the classroom” (p. 100). Thus, it appears important to address differentiation and modification from an additive, asset-oriented perspective rather than a subtractive, deficit-driven standpoint when providing a foundation for teachers’ work with ELLs. This additive perspective undergirded Reiter’s syllabus and approach to teaching ELLs. As an increasingly important area of emphasis within ELA, the teaching of ELLs merits attention. In the following section, we describe how findings from the study capture English teacher educators’ understandings of how English teacher preparation programs address teaching diverse learners and ELLs. Next, we discuss particular features of syllabi that provide evidence of how methods courses can successfully engage these two focal areas.

Preparing teacher candidates to teach diverse learners and English language learners The questionnaire posed specific questions regarding the teaching of diverse learners and ELLs. One open-ended question asked respondents to comment on the relationship between the methods class and the teaching of ELLs. This question specifically highlighted language diversity: What is your understanding of the relation between language diversity and methods courses? Two additional open-ended questions asked respondents about recent programmatic changes that elicited responses related to teaching diverse learners and ELLs: (1) What changes have you made in response to changes in the field or to understandings of English language arts in the twenty-first century not addressed here that you think we should know about? (2) What changes have

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you made in response to institutional or political changes not addressed here that you think we should know about? Focus group participants were asked to respond to questions more specifically about the teaching of diverse learners and ELLs. Some of the questions included the following: (1) We have noticed, through our study, that the term “diverse learners” is quite broad. How do you conceptualize the term “diverse learners”? (2) Do you feel equipped to incorporate the teaching of diverse learners and ELLs into the methods course? Why or why not? (3) Does your program have a separate course that addresses diverse learners or ELLs? What do you think about that? From participants’ answers to the open-ended questions on the questionnaire and focus group questions, as well as through the analysis of course syllabi, four salient themes were found that related to the teaching of diverse learners and English language learners. These four themes were as follows: (a) defining separate aims: the teaching of diverse learners and English language learners, (b) understanding the configuration of programs and courses related to teaching diverse students and ELLs, (c) considering whether geographical location of teacher education programs matters, and (d) overemphasizing the awareness of diverse students (versus application of teaching practices in contexts with diverse students and ELLs). Findings from the questionnaire, focus groups, and syllabi analysis suggest that, in general, English teacher educators are prepared to teach an “awareness” of the needs of English language learners (Caughlan et al. 2017), but not necessarily to teach knowledge of pedagogy or assessment practices relevant to the teaching of ELLs. This finding underscores an interesting bind (Gort and Glenn 2010) that the English language arts methods course continually faces when thinking about addressing new areas of emphasis in English teacher education.

Defining separate endeavors: Teaching diverse learners and English language learners The term diverse learners, as used in the questionnaire, was a way to capture the nature of changing demographics in K-12 classrooms. The questionnaire did not provide respondents with a definition of diverse learners or English language learners (ELLs), assuming that respondents would apply a definition of these terms that was consistent with the way the field uses these terms. Responses indicated, however, that the field does not operate with a consensual understanding of these terms. As one respondent noted, “We understand ‘traditional’ diversity, but also discuss that everyone is diverse, depending upon with whom they happen to be

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at any time.” This broad version of diversity perhaps led respondents to see the term itself as difficult to define, and, as a result, the open-ended questionnaire responses sometimes clarified what the term diverse meant in respect to specific teacher education programs. One questionnaire respondent noted: “Our program added a self-contained course focused on English language learners as well as two special education courses, required by the state.” Responses often grouped the terms diverse, ELL, and special education into a single set, signaling that these topics were often clustered together under a large umbrella labeled diversity. Perhaps the respondents also looked to teacher education accrediting bodies’ (principally, CAEP and NCATE) definitions of diversity, which includes both ethnic and language diversity, but also includes students classified in special education. Responses often stressed what we identified as new areas of emphasis in teaching English language arts, exemplified by a respondent’s explanation that the program “added a reading comprehension methods course and reading in the content area, as well as ELL in methods course.” This type of response was fairly common across open-ended comments on the questionnaire and reiterated that the addition of new areas of emphasis within English teacher education programs was a goal for many teacher educators. Yet, as Gort and Glenn (2010) caution, this approach can sometimes yield courses with broad coverage but little depth. Few respondents envisioned the teaching of ELLs as fitting within the area of language diversity, a topic that has long been included and addressed within the teaching of English language arts. Instead, it was common for respondents to delegate this topic to other faculty members who had more expertise in the area of teaching ELLs. Focus group comments also illuminated the connection—and sometimes conflation—of the aims of teaching diverse learners and teaching ELLs. Participants in focus groups elicited a discussion of the term “diversity” by pointing to its many connotations and emphases within a teacher education program, therefore making the comment that, although a separate course devoted to the teaching of ELLs was often not included in a certification program, a diversity course was. Leila Small made the following comment about a lack of coursework that focused exclusively on the teaching of ELLs: “That’s the case in [my state] as well. No separate certification for ESL. We do have a heavy push on diversity, even though, frankly, there’s not a lot of diversity in [my state].” The so-called “heavy push” for diversity that this participant noted was a common sentiment echoed throughout the open-ended responses on the questionnaire. On the questionnaire, the term “diverse learners” was used to capture the nature of changing demographics in K-12 classrooms, yet this term

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likely had a connotation with a very wide range of students. This broad version of diversity led respondents to see the term itself as difficult to define, and, as a result, the open-ended questionnaire responses allowed participants to bring their own meaning to what they saw the term “diverse” encompass in respect to their teacher education programs. Participants in focus groups outlined that learning to teach ELLs was wholly absent from the teacher certification programs at their respective institutions. Gary Wilkerson commented: Basically, there is no course in our program for any of our certification programs for ELL. I do think that’s an enormous deficiency. We’ve had those discussions at the departmental level about adding that, but probably the same as with you, for any course that we want to put in, something would have to come out. We simply don’t have any room in our certification programs even for electives for our English teaching candidates, so we don’t really know what would have to be eliminated, so like [Philip Towner], the claim is we try to stream that type of instruction through a number of other courses, but I don’t think it’s done very well. I think it’s done very inconsistently across the program, and so I don’t think we’re doing our candidates a great service with that.

The emphasis on both an “absence” and an “integration” of teaching English language learners caused an interesting dilemma for the participants in the focus groups, as they appeared unable to fully articulate this topic’s presence or absence within their program. Still other focus group participants noted that, although learning to teach English language learners within teacher education was an important topic, the sheer lack of time or opportunity was an obstacle. Towner said: “I may not see my secondary candidates until the last semester of their senior year, so that’s a really compressed time. My focus is mainly on confronting that deficit perspective to prepare them to go into a population of students unlike themselves.” As this statement indicates, English teacher educators felt that an awareness of the topic of English language learners was perhaps the most feasible reality concerning how this topic was addressed in teacher education. However, there was little mention of how learning to teach diverse learners may be different from learning to teach ELLs. Several course syllabi offered possibilities for framing the teaching of diverse students and ELLs as a focal area of the English methods course. For example, one syllabus immediately framed the course through a focus on teaching ELLs: The purpose of our English Methods sections this fall will be to introduce you to classroom practices suited to the teaching of English at the middle and high school

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Syllabi that had aims directed at teaching diverse students and ELLs included readings that emphasized these topic areas. And, the California context makes attention to ELLs more critical than does that of most states.

Configuration of programs and courses for teaching diverse students and ELLs Findings from the questionnaire indicated that most English teacher preparation programs addressed the subject of teaching diverse learners, as well as teaching ELLs. Yet, the majority of respondents saw these new areas of emphasis as residing under the purview of teacher education programs, more generally. One question on the questionnaire asked, “Where are changing demographics addressed?” In crafting this question, we intended to see whether English teacher educators viewed learning to teach diverse students and ELLs as part of the English methods course. Table 6.1 shows respondents’ answers. When asked where changing demographics are primarily addressed, the majority of respondents reported that this topic was “integrated throughout” their respective teacher education program. As Table 6.1 shows, respondents largely felt that the teacher education program, as a whole, bore the responsibility for educating novice teachers about diverse students and ELLs. The majority of respondents noted that the responsibility for teaching about these topics was integrated in multiple courses throughout a teacher education program. Between 23.7 and 25.0 percent of respondents selected that the topic of “changing demographics” was addressed in a “separate course,” while the fewest respondents selected that the topic of changing demographics was addressed in the methods course.

Table 6.1  Where are changing demographics addressed?

Separate course Integrated throughout Methods course

Bachelor’s (n = 173)

Postbacc (n = 135)

Master’s (n = 104)

Alternative (n = 24)

24.9 52.6 15

23.7 56.3 11.1

25.0 59.6 9.6

25.0 54.2 8.3

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted.

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As a follow-up question to the question featured in Table 6.1, respondents were asked, “How are the topics of teaching diverse learners and teaching English language learners addressed in the Methods class?” Respondents articulated that traditional college course activities (e.g., readings, lectures, and discussions) were the most common way that the methods course addressed the topics of teaching diverse learners (87 percent) and teaching ELLs (75 percent). Yet, respondents also indicated that the topics of teaching diverse students and ELLs were addressed through application (see Table 6.2). A high percentage (75 percent) of respondents indicated that teacher candidates were given opportunities in the English methods class to discuss the teaching of ELLs. Alternatively, respondents did not suggest that teacher candidates had abundant opportunities to apply knowledge about teaching ELLs to practice, and “application” of this topic to practice was affirmed by only 25 percent of respondents. From these data, one might surmise that a “separate course” within a teacher education program might be a methods course specifically designed to address the teaching of ELLs, or it might be a single course or multiple courses that addressed a broad view of “diverse learners” (e.g., students receiving special education services, as well as culturally and linguistically diverse learners). Responses indicated that the topic of addressing changing demographics occurred the least frequently within the English methods course itself, perhaps suggesting that the English methods course still was primarily the site for the teaching of ELA content more than it was a site for understanding the teaching of particular populations of students. In the comments from the questionnaire that addressed this theme, some respondents noted that a solidified division remained between the concepts of curriculum and instruction, with the English Table 6.2  How are the topics of teaching diverse learners and teaching English language learners addressed in the methods class? Readings, Lesson Application Other Not Mean lecture, and unit (e.g., addressed number discussion planning tutoring) chosen Teaching diverse learners Teaching English language learners

87

70

75

4.5

 3

3

75

42.5

25

5.5

17

2

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted.

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methods course remaining a site for learning about curriculum within the domain of English language arts. Still others were critical of where changes came from, with some respondents noting that changes in teacher education coursework were not prompted by the field itself, but by changing state regulations. One respondent wrote bluntly as a response on the questionnaire: “This program has not changed according to the field; it has changed according to California’s state teacher performance standards, which have emptied it of all critical literacy content.” Though several responses indicated a similar sentiment, others affirmed that the teacher education programs in which they worked were moving to address the new areas of emphasis in ELA that the questionnaire identified. One respondent wrote, “Interestingly, these are all areas we’ve moved to address in the last three to five years.” Beyond an individual course, participants in focus groups often spoke either about “stand alone” courses devoted to the teaching of ELLs or program-wide goals that infused this content. In terms of discussing a “stand alone” approach, participants highlighted the silo effect that departmentalization had in students’ pursuit of teaching ELLs. Philip Towner noted, “One of our master’s degree options is an ELL/TESOL, but my secondary English people don’t generally choose that one. To me, it’s—we’re way behind because our community that we serve directly around our university has a huge influx of ELL students, so I would say we’re inadequate.” Other comments echoed the mismatch between the practical realities of a particular institution and the preparation that teacher candidates have available to them. Gary Wilkerson said, I will say, too, on our campus, there was a graduate certificate for TESOL that was available. Unfortunately, the enrollment was relatively low, and the faculty member who was responsible for spearheading that program retired a couple of years ago and sort of took that program with her. No one has really picked that up since she left, which is unfortunate because like many of you, we’re right outside of Chicago. We have an incredible amount of diversity in our field sites, and I don’t—I guess don’t think we’re preparing our candidates as well as we could be for that.

Wilkerson’s statement expresses an unsure sentiment about whether the program is preparing teacher candidates for the realities of the field, which was frequently expressed in the focus groups. Preparation for the realities of the field was expressed by another focus group participant, Kristine Poindexter, who stated, “We’re actually studying

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teen pregnancy and abuse and all this stuff, and stuff that might come out in reader response journals and whatever and how to handle it because they’re not guidance counselors. They’re English teachers.” Even with their role as English teachers, Poindexter argued that teacher candidates must understand the social and emotional contexts of young people’s lives. She also noted that she urges her students to “[look] at the causes behind [students’] emotional problems that are—that are impeding their academic progress.” Poindexter’s comments also encourage educators to consider what role poverty takes in the lives of children. As the poverty rate among children in the United States continues to increase, and 20 percent or more of children in 30 states and D.C. now live in food-insecure households (Gunderson et al. 2016), programs may be increasingly called on to examine the relation between poverty and learning. We valued how comments like these pointed to the education of the whole child. Another trend related to the issue of program coherence around teaching ELLs and diverse students was participants’ adamant use of the term “infuse” or “infusion.” Through focus groups, though, comments about “infusion” of content related to the teaching of ELLs did not indicate any specificity regarding whether linguistics was addressed. Instead, the term “infusion” became a term used to indicate the idea of coverage, with little specificity about what such coverage was. To us, this ambiguity suggested an absence of content—or, a lack of knowledge concerning content—as Lawrence LeBlanc’s comment expresses: I don’t know whether this is true of other states, but in California, there actually is no certification for teaching English language learners. It is infused into multiple and single subject certification, but you can’t be an ESL teacher in California. I don’t know whether that’s unique to the state or whether it’s just a trend that’s national, but the whole idea is that you learn better if you’re learning in relation to a subject matter.

LeBlanc’s comment places the teaching of ELLs within the teaching of content. Though perhaps not intentionally, this comment reinforces that learning does not require additional teaching methods other than the ones employed in the teaching of content. At their core, these types of comments reinforce an ideology about the teaching of ELLs that relegates the teaching of this population of students as secondary to content matter. These comments also referenced particular locales and states and prompted us to consider geographical location.

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Does geographical location of teacher education programs matter? As shown in Table 6.2, 75 percent of respondents noted that teacher candidates were given opportunities in the methods class to discuss their understandings of teaching ELLs. Fewer respondents (25 percent) noted that teacher candidates were presented with opportunities to apply their knowledge of teaching ELLs to work in the field. Application of knowledge was not necessarily tied to whether a program was situated near schools with high populations of ELLs. A teacher education program situated geographically near schools with high percentages of diverse students or ELLs did not necessarily lead to increased application of knowledge to practice. Rather, open-ended responses revealed that partnerships between teacher education programs and local schools were the key for successful application experiences (see Chapter 3). This is an important finding, especially in relation to the case study of Belleview College featured at the beginning of this chapter. Though Reiter’s comment that New York City’s context provided an imperative for teaching diverse students and ELLs, the study found that partnerships were more key to fostering teaching practices with diverse learners and ELLs than a contextual imperative alone. Therefore, in order for teacher candidates to have opportunities to work with diverse groups of students, solid, working relationships with local schools must be in place. As open-ended responses indicated, partnerships between school districts and universities/colleges facilitated access to schools for people traditionally associated with the university (teacher candidates, supervisors, and faculty). Finally, in characterizing such placements, a wide spectrum of opinions existed in the questionnaire and focus group respondents’ views of where teacher candidates learned to apply their knowledge of working with diverse students, from traditional high schools, to community-based sites, to programs for adult ELLs. This wide spectrum of sites for application of knowledge of teaching ELLs likely reflects the field’s notion of diversity, as various programs seek to prepare their students to view diversity in complex ways (Morrell 2008). Several respondents, in response to open-ended questions on the questionnaire, underscored the fact that it is faculty and school personnel who often facilitate arranging these opportunities for teacher candidates. One respondent wrote, “We have worked harder to provide field experiences involving diverse school populations (which is difficult to do in our local area),” while another respondent noted, “My students and I fulfill our tutoring hour requirement through a youth

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outreach program in our small city community. We do this primarily because local schools are struggling and were not welcoming of university presence.” Other programs were more optimistic about the work of implementing ongoing changes within their programs; as one respondent wrote, “We have increased the quality and quantity of field experiences prior to student teaching with a series of field-based assessments. We are moving toward more content methods courses (instead of one general methods course); we are increasing emphasis on ELLs.” Open-ended comments on the questionnaire did not indicate that there was a likelihood that teacher education programs in locales with high numbers of English language learners were more apt to include teaching or tutoring ELLs within their program, suggesting that factors outside mere geography (such as the mission of the program, state regulations, or accreditation requirements) are much more influential on the decision of whether to include coursework and application about the teaching of ELLs.

Emphasizing the awareness of diverse students Perhaps one of the most salient findings from the questionnaire’s open-ended questions about teaching diverse students and ELLs was the emphasis on teacher candidates’ need for awareness of these issues, as opposed to concrete methods of addressing language diversity in the classroom. A tension, therefore, existed between what we, as the authors, considered to be awareness of issues and action on issues. One respondent wrote, as a response to the questionnaire’s question about what teacher candidates should understand about the relation between language diversity and methods, that instructors should teach “awareness and recognition of diversity, respect for students and their various language experiences,” while another respondent wrote that the methods course should “at least bring up the topic for student consideration.” The lack of commitment to taking a stance on the issue of teaching English language learners underscores vagueness in English teacher education on the topic of teaching English language learners. The results depicted in Tables 6.1 and 6.2 make it clear that ELA faculty have felt a push to educate teacher candidates in new areas of emphasis in teaching English language arts. Yet, the results are less clear about what such knowledge may look like beyond awareness: Are novice teachers urged to apply their knowledge, or is their awareness of these topics enough?

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One way that focus group participants noted that teacher candidates’ knowledge could extend beyond “awareness” was through collaborative approaches. Such collaborations, as articulated by respondents, recognizes that, in teaching ELLs, teacher educators must possess knowledge beyond what might be considered “awareness.” Faculty must have knowledge of linguistics, as well as the teaching of writing and reading for ELLs. Collaborative approaches, such as the one that Reiter fostered at Belleview College, do not remedy all issues, but perhaps do serve as a meeting place for addressing the goal of program coherence. Focus group participant Gary Wilkerson noted: We spend anywhere from two to four weeks, depending on the group, working specifically with readings and activities that are focused on ELL learning. I actually am able to pull over some colleagues from our writing center who have some specific expertise and training in those areas. They sometimes will come in and basically team teach with me on some issues that they see when they’re working with second language writers. It does help. Again, it’s not enormous preparation, but it’s the best that I can do, given the constraints of the course.

A collaborative partnership approach pairs awareness and informed practice, and sits at the crux of attaining and enacting a vision for teacher education programs. In aiming for a collaboration, respondents noted that it was a program’s ideology that spoke to the core of teacher educators’ and a program’s commitment to teacher candidates’ understanding of teaching ELLs. When asked about the types of conversations participants had with their students about teaching ELL students and other diverse learners, Towner stated: “Most of my focus is on confronting issues of deficit perspectives and rethinking sort of blanket ideas about any populations of students.” According to the focus group participants, a program’s ideology can assist teacher candidates in understanding students “unlike” themselves, and it can confront beginning teachers’ notions of ELL students as framed through a deficit perspective (Ladson-Billings 2009/1994). Researchers (e.g., Dall’Alba and Sandberg 2006; Nieto 2010) have noted that becoming a professional teacher begins with an examination of one’s own cultural assumptions and/or biases. Such experiences begin from our knowledge of and interaction with diverse groups, and our own student experience as part of a minority or majority population. All focus group participants agreed that there was difficulty of fitting in meaningful conversations about work with diverse students, especially given the amount of material expected to be covered throughout the methods course;

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however, these conversations were acknowledged as important. Attitudes and beliefs contribute greatly to confidence and self-efficacy in the classroom. Durgunoglu and Hughes (2010) argue, “Because attitudes and behaviors are related, one can predict that more negative attitudes are related to lower levels of preparedness and self-efficacy. If pre-service teachers have low self-efficacy regarding ELL students, they may attribute the low achievement of students to factors outside of a teacher’s control, particularly an unfavorable impact of parents and home environments” (p. 34). Therefore, it is important to pair experiences teaching English language learners with sustained reflection on these experiences.

Understanding the changing role of the teacher of English language arts Finally, in considering the teaching of diverse learners and ELLs within English teacher education, an embrace of the notion of a changing role for the English teacher in US schools must be sought. In English teacher education, the changing K-12 student demographics in US schools have prompted some (Boyd et al. 2006; Kirkland 2008) to call for a “new” English teacher education: one that, in part, acknowledges the multiple languages and literacies that K-12 students bring to the classroom. The role and identity of the teacher in the new English teacher education, then, must always be seen in relation to the middle/ secondary students they teach. A redefined role of English teacher can sometimes be at odds with a more traditionally defined role (see Yoon 2007). As noted previously, de Oliveira and Shoffner (2009) state that preservice English teachers are often concerned about the challenges a change in role will pose. Thus, it appears important to address differentiation and modification from an additive, rather than a subtractive, standpoint when providing a foundation for work with ELLs. The field of English teacher education provides an imperative for addressing the needs of diverse K-12 students in today’s classrooms (CEE 2005). Yet, there are currently few documented accounts (de Oliveira and Shoffner 2009; Gort and Glenn 2010; Portes and Smagorinsky 2010) of how the field should address the purpose of the English methods class with regard to teaching ELLs. NCTE/CEE embraced the position that the role and responsibility of English teachers must include the teaching of ELLs, thus preparing prospective English teachers also to support this

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role becomes part of the mission of the English teacher educator. As novice English teachers acknowledge language variances evident in classroom demographics, they must also address pedagogical change in the teaching of ELA.

Advocating for the teaching of diverse learners and ELLs within the field of ELA Findings from the analysis of the results of the questionnaire as they pertain to learning to teach ELLs made it clear that particular topics were still viewed as peripheral to the field of ELA and best addressed outside the ELA methods course. This approach, the stand-alone methods course in a particular topic area, can be questioned for its focus on addressing topics outside the contentarea domain. As it becomes more common to embrace a focus on collaboration and inquiry (Lucas and Villegas 2011; Nagle 2013), teacher educators must be cautioned against relying too much on a promise that such topics can be treated effectively in isolation or can be counted on to be covered when the task is vaguely distributed across a program’s coursework. English teacher educators may ideally envision a field that can more effectively collaborate across the areas of English language arts and TESOL. The field benefits from marrying awareness with application in hopes that this unification yields a more purposeful and principled practice (Smagorinsky 2002b). Rather than separating knowledge and practice, pairing awareness with application allows teacher candidates the opportunity to see knowledge in action while also learning about how such knowledge plays out in school and classrooms. One component of pairing awareness with application stresses the dissolving of “traditional” boundaries: content boundaries, disciplinary boundaries, teaching boundaries, and demographic boundaries. Traditional boundaries often constrain teacher educators, teacher candidates, teachers, and students in the way learning is addressed in the classroom. For example, de Oliveira, Lan and Dodds (2013) highlight the collaboration between a university professor, a doctoral student, and a fourth-grade teacher whose focus is on constructing a science curriculum that effectively addresses content learning and vocabulary instruction for mainstreamed English learners. Each collaborator, then, had a defined focus in strengthening the curriculum and learning. Through collaboration, success in creating curriculum for ELLs was found. Though this is but one example, it could serve as a model for program-wide initiatives.

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Another consequence of pairing awareness with application may be advocating for more meaningful literacy learning with ELLs. For example, teaching English language learners with a focus on teaching disciplinary literacy can move the teaching of literacy away from a “basic skills” approach and toward a view of literacy as situated practice. A focus on literacy as situated practice is promising and resonates with work in literacy studies throughout the past two decades (Gee 1996) that has redefined literacy as a practice developed within contexts as opposed to an isolated skill set. Through focusing on literacy as situated practice, teacher candidates learn the importance of advocating for meaningful literacy learning for all students. Moreover, a key to pairing awareness with application is drawing upon collaborative models (e.g., Lucas 2011; Nagle 2013) that emphasize ways English teacher educators can work with others who have more in-depth knowledge of linguistically responsive teaching. Through such collaboration, faculty will be able to broaden their conceptual and pedagogical knowledge and more successfully integrate an awareness of teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students into their syllabi and courses. The field of ELA may benefit from learning from others who possess a defined knowledge of more than mere awareness of diverse learners and English language learners. As the field moves forward in advocating for the inclusion of the teaching of English language learners, it will no doubt produce accounts of successful collaborations (e.g., de Oliveira and Shoffner 2009; Gort and Glenn 2010). As Gort and Glenn (2010) note, “How does one go about determining what’s worth keeping and what might be sacrificed to ensure inclusion of this new EL content?” (p. 68). Through analysis of the data from the questionnaire, this question may be on the minds of English teacher educators as they seek to include the teaching of ELLs as a new area of emphasis within the field of English language arts. The field would be wise to follow Gort and Glenn’s lead when they note that teaching ELLs does not necessarily “replace” existing content; rather, it reorients the methods course to address new relevant issues in the teaching of English language arts. Yet, the findings of Gort and Glenn’s study rested heavily on Glenn’s (an English educator) feelings of inadequacy in infusing ELL-related content into the methods course. As Gort and Glenn state, “This recognition of inadequacy was not resolved (and remains unresolved to date)” (p. 77). The authors also noted that, although the infusion of ELL-related issues into the methods course “raised students’ awareness of EL issues and provided them with classroom strategies, it would have been impossible for [Glenn] to

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include attention to all topics related to teaching ELs within a single course” (p. 77). Finally, it should be mentioned that the authors elaborate on how Glenn, an English educator, “was not yet versed in the cognitive components of EL instruction (e.g., language acquisition processes, role of language in learning, development of academic versus social language)” (p. 78), and the inclusion of this content would entail much risk for English educators and could, perhaps, expose a lack of knowledge on their part. The attitudes and opinions expressed in the study serve as a gauge of where the field of ELA currently resides with regard to the teaching of ELLs. In developing English teacher preparation for realities of US schools, the field must continue to reimagine the possibilities for teaching English, yet, at the same time, continue to understand our discipline’s past. As English teacher candidates prepare to work in the classrooms of today—and tomorrow—the field must reach beyond an awareness of issues to an implementation of culturally and linguistically responsive teaching for English language learners.

7

Technology Integration: Essential but Inconsistent Content

Designed by a full-time lecturer in English education with instructional design input from a faculty member with an Ed.D. in educational technology, the syllabus for Teaching Writing in the Middle and Secondary Schools prominently displays a “Commitment to Technology” statement, alerting the teacher candidates in the English teacher education program in the School of Education at Midwestern University to its emphasis in integrating technology into the teaching and learning of English. In this program, not only do the teacher candidates take two technology-infused English-specific methods classes, but prior to these, they take two separate technology courses that explore the rapidly changing communication and information technology in teaching and in the workplace. The School of Education at Midwestern University adopted a 1:1 laptop environment for all students enrolled in teacher education. The faculty who were teaching the methods classes were provided what was described as “ample” time for professional development an entire year prior to the 1:1 implementation. The professional development was to prepare the methods instructors for the teacher candidates who would be entering the School of Education under this new program. Teacher candidates from all disciplines were required to purchase laptops before taking the first of their two required technology classes. The semester that the teacher candidates enrolled in the second technology course, the university students concurrently took a general methods class that crossed all content areas that integrated the technology learned in their other two classes. Therefore, by the time the English teacher candidates enrolled in one of their content-specific methods courses, Teaching English Language Arts or Teaching Writing in the Middle and Secondary Schools, they were presumably demonstrably proficient with their laptops and the software used in the contentspecific methods course.

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Such a high level of commitment to having teacher candidates actively engage in technology and integrate it into their own teaching and learning is rare, and this English education program accomplishes this level of integration at the same time the program emphasizes lesson and unit planning, pedagogical content knowledge, assessment practices, micro-teaching, and field experiences. By this stage in the teacher candidate’s education, the teacher candidates were thought by the program director to be more proficient at technology integration than some of the faculty teaching in the English education program. The syllabus for Teaching Writing in the Middle and Secondary Schools details the assignments, readings, and communication modes necessary to navigate a school’s infrastructure, participate in instruction and/or the classroom community, and learn the discipline’s content. The program’s Commitment to Technology statement indicates: The School of Education at [Midwestern University] is committed to preparing preservice teachers who have the knowledge, dispositions, and performances needed to effectively use technology to help all students learn. Candidates are expected to incorporate technology throughout their coursework and clinical experiences.

The syllabus highlights policies that instruct the teacher candidates about the use of technology for both teaching and learning. Course objectives detail technology integration practices and alert the teacher candidates that they will “use [a] variety of learning skills and technology; [the course] teaches safe use of technology.” The course’s technology objectives align with specific technology standards from a US-based state education network, the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) (Council of Chief State School Officers 2011), the state content standards for teachers, National Council of Teachers of English/National Council for Accreditation for Teacher Education (NCTE/NCATE), and the state educator standards for ELA. Course assignments include five 20–30-minute multimedia presentations on the teaching of writing, the evaluation of websites used for research or teaching resources for the teaching of writing and/or grammar, and an online multimedia presentation on the teaching of writing. These multimedia presentations are integrated with the twelve 45-minute lesson plans required individually and collaboratively from the teacher candidates over the course of the semester. Each of the topics for these lessons is driven by the teacher candidate’s interests and teaching context.

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The teacher candidates’ integration of technology into their teaching and learning is evaluated through a rubric that assesses if the candidates “demonstrate . . . the use of a variety of learning skills and technology; demonstrate how [they] will teach students the safe uses of technology.” The plan is then graded per the following NCTE standards (2003):

Target

Acceptable

3.6.2 Use a variety of approaches for teaching students how to construct meaning from media and nonprint texts and integrate learning opportunities into classroom experiences that promote composing and responding to such texts 3.6.3 Help students compose and respond to film, video, graphic, photographic, audio, and multimedia texts and use current technology to enhance their own learning and reflection on their learning

Show an ability to Show little construct meaning understanding of from media and how to construct nonprint texts, and meaning from to assist students media and in learning these nonprint texts processes Incorporate technology and print/nonprint media into their own work and instruction

Unacceptable

Demonstrate limited knowledge of how to incorporate technology and print/nonprint media into instruction

Required materials include traditional print texts, such as Carol Booth Olson’s The Reading/Writing Connection (2010) as well as Kelly Gallagher’s Teaching Adolescent Writers (2005), in addition to more technology-based materials like YouTube videos and websites produced by professional, scholarly, practitioner, and for-profit entities on persuasion, writing tools, state and national standards, and policy and position statements. In this syllabus, technology learning is integrated throughout the methods course in that the teacher candidates use technology to open spaces for collaborative learning along with technology to support individualized learning or assesses that learning. Teacher candidates use technology to navigate instruction as well as to learn the content of the teaching of English. Technology teaching is integrated across the assignments in that teacher candidates are expected to integrate technology into their own writing lessons following guidelines without being assigned specific applications, selection of which is driven by teacher candidate choice and context. Thus, within this class, technology usage underscores the learning of conceptual knowledge, procedural

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knowledge, and attitudinal and/or value-based knowledge specific to that content as a discipline (Guzman and Nussbaum 2009). In this methods course, technology is a tool for learning (Gorder 2008; Harris, Mishra and Koehler 2009) that supports instructional practices (Ertmer 2005) and is integral to the learning process (Pierson 2001).

Technology’s impact on the teaching of ELA As mentioned above, such a highly technology-infused methods class was rare in the data we collected for the study (see discussion below). The class described above requires teacher candidates to actively engage with technology and integrate it into the English language arts with an extraordinary level of commitment. This dedication will no doubt be dependent upon each educational context, but it seems that technology integration into the English language arts in the United States will become more and more common as technology changes literacy practices with each new device and new application designed for future communication. Until the late twentieth century, it seems that being literate in the ELA classroom meant being proficient at reading a print text, understanding and using its information, and hand writing a response to it. Today, as exemplified by the requirements in the class above, being literate means being proficient at reading and writing print texts as well as digital texts, media objects, codes, images, sounds, social practices, and critical perspectives and producing responses to them which are as equally diverse (Bruce and Levin 2003; CEE Executive Committee 2008; Kinzer and Leander 2003; Swenson et al. 2006; Yagelski 2005). These new literacies and many of the technologies that create them now fall under the domain of teaching “English.” Therefore, teachers of English must now be proficient in understanding and teaching how multimodal literacies and technology integration are integral aspects of the discipline (CEE Executive Committee 2008; Hamilton et al. 2015), aspects that continue to change literacy practices with every adaptation of hardware and software, affecting not only the content of the ELA classroom but its instruction as well. If English teachers remain the secondary educators responsible for teaching literacy practices (Wilson 2011), then the discipline will be changing even more than it has in the recent past. These changes to the field are not unique to the teaching of English in the United States. Goodwyn (Hawthorne et al. 2012) predicts that the future

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of English teaching in England is “predicated on a model of English operating in a multimodal, digital environment in which students are fully engaged in a creative relationship with reading and writing all kinds of texts” (p. 299). The pressure to integrate technology into ELA, whether it comes from an understanding of changing literacy practices or from outside forces looking to corporatize aspects of education and its assessment, underscores a need for a critical approach to it. Therefore, advocates for technology integration have observed, To integrate technologies in a classroom without an understanding of context risks using technologies ineffectively or inappropriately, thus wasting opportunities for new learning experiences and, potentially, vast amounts of money spent on underutilized technological resources (Young and Bush 2004, p. 7).

The burden to effectively address the changes to literacy practices in the ELA was not a concern twenty years ago. In Smagorinsky and Whiting’s (1995) preinternet study, there was little mention of technology and its connection to ELA education in the syllabi they included as samples. Technology is not listed as a topic for a course meeting nor is it in the designated readings. Student requirements were submitted as papers, sometimes typed with carbon copies, but there are no instructions to create these submissions using word processing, spell checking, or online resources. Despite at least one syllabus specifying a requirement that microteaching be videotaped for self-evaluation and reflection, there was no evidence that this technology was taught in the methods course or might affect how ELA was studied. In the 1990s, the phenomenon of integrating technology into the ELA, as well as other disciplines, was just emerging (Landry and Stewart 2005). At present, to be current in the field and address what Morrell (2015) calls “doing tomorrow in today’s classrooms” (p. 312), ELA teacher educators need to know which new literacies, new media, and technologies integrate effectively into classroom practices so that the future teachers they educate can learn to support their own students to become literate members of society. This chapter highlights the findings from the study that examine how teacher educators prepare beginning English teachers to address the teaching of technology and new literacies in the context of ELA.

Technology and ELA teacher education Much of the research in the study of ELA technology education in the United States found in the “Annual Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching

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of English” underscores the question being posed by this study: When educating English instructors to support their own students to become literate members of society, what new literacies, new media, and technologies integrate effectively into classroom practices? The bibliography, originally published annually in print each November in the journal Research in the Teaching of English, expanded from 15 pages in 2003 to its most current version (2016) of 49 pages. The breadth of the bibliography has required the journal to exclusively publish it online. Its expansiveness has much to do with the increased numbers of studies that explore technology’s impact on the teaching of English (Beach et al. 2010). Nonetheless, the abundance of studies that address technology and the ELA rarely considers how technology is integrated into the ELA methods course and/ or across programs to prepare future teachers of English (Pasternak et al. 2014). The technology addressed in these recent studies can be divided into two groups: (1) technology that “opens” spaces for collaborative learning, such as wikis, blogs, discussion boards, and online tutoring; and (2) technology that “closes” spaces to support individualized learning or assess that learning, such as desktop applications, e-portfolios, and multimodal and multimedia software. Under both groupings, students learn technology to understand the content of the ELA. Moreover, instructors become responsible for teaching students to “develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology” (NCTE 2013, para. 2). Thus, technology not only supports the learning of the traditional content of the ELA (literature, composition, language, and oratory) but also becomes content when the software and/or hardware must be learned to engage the content of the ELA, expectations that are obvious in the course that frames this chapter. Studies that address using technology for collaborative purposes, what we labeled in the questionnaire as “open” technology (e.g., Dymoke and Hughes 2009; Garcia and Seglem 2013; Houge and Geier 2009; Lee and Young 2010; Matthew, Felvegi and Callaway 2009; Ryan and Scott 2008), explore how literacy practices change by creating or engaging in certain activities, such as online tutoring, but rarely address how these practices were maintained across programs or how the practices learned in programs were adopted into the teacher candidate’s own instructional practices. Similarly, studies that support individualized learning or assessment practices, what we labeled in the questionnaire as “closed” technology (e.g., Carlson and Archambault 2013; Chung and Van Es 2014; Figg and McCartney 2010; Lai and Calandra 2010; McVee, Bailey and Shanahan 2008; Ortega 2013; Schieble, Vetter and Meacham 2015; Seo, Templeton and Pellegrino 2008), explore the efficacy of

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an application, although it was not always clear whether the technology learned occurred in the ELA methods course or a stand-alone, cross-content technology class. Technology usage in changing communication practices in communities that can invest in it has been profound in altering how we read and what we read (Beach et al. 2010). This effect can be observed by charting recent changes to the ELA content teacher standards. George, Pope and Reid (2015) observed that technology usage was addressed in nine sub-indicators of effective practice in the 1997 NCTE content teacher standards. By 2012, the standards “saw the integration of contemporary literacies and contemporary technologies on such a regular basis that it seems safe to say that technology has been part of the ELA discipline itself, not just a tool for teaching and learning” (p. 9). The ability to read and compose multimedia texts may become as foundational to the ELA as the study of literature, composition, language, and oratory (George et al. 2015). As technology continues to impact modes of communication, English educators are now obligated to prepare ELA teachers to “integrate, infuse, and implement it in [their] classes” (George et al. 2015, p. 9). As is evident from the course that frames this chapter, most K-16 students will use some type of technology to communicate with instructors, navigate a school’s infrastructure, participate in instruction and school communities, and learn a discipline’s content knowledge and technology’s impact on transforming that knowledge (Gorgina and Hosford 2008). Therefore, when technology is integrated into a teacher education discipline or program, it addresses conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal and/or value-based knowledge specific to English studies. These concepts have been difficult to maintain across teacher education programs and their methods courses in the United States (Pasternak et al. 2016) as well as in other countries teaching English as a first and second language. Hawthorne (Hawthorne et al. 2012) observes that integrating technology into ELA classes in New Zealand occurs inconsistently, because teachers are not confident in their own use of technology. He notes that literacy practices supported through technology do not align well with assessment systems, a situation that complicates evaluating students’ proficiency with digital texts. Hamilton et al. (2015) provide more detail concerning this development when they observe that new literacy practices created through multimodality are marginalized in a number of educational settings due to assessment misalignment in Canada, the UK, Australia, and Sweden. Therefore, it should not be unexpected that English teacher educators and their teacher candidates in the United States also

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experience tension while learning to integrate technology and new literacies into effective teaching practices in support of doing tomorrow in today’s schools (Morrell 2015).

Awareness, application, and coherence: Tensions in technology integration in ELA Research on technology and the teaching and learning of the English language arts is significant (Pasternak et al. 2014), especially in terms of how technology is affecting literacy practices. Much of the research conducted in this area examines the efficacy of employing technology in K-16 classroom practices rather than its application in the methods classroom, although there are a notable number of studies that explore this work with preservice teachers (e.g., Carlson and Archambault 2013; Lee and Young 2010; Ortega 2013; Pasternak 2007). Despite the attention that technology has gotten throughout education research (Beach et al. 2010), respondents throughout our study acknowledged a need to define integration across a program’s context.

Technology: Essential other content for teaching and learning The interest in examining technology in the context of the teaching of the ELA is consistent with the findings from the questionnaire that indicate English educators find technology integration and the understanding of multiple or new literacies as essential “other” content that should be taught in the subject-specific methods class (see Chapter 2). The understanding that technology learning is important to ELA was mirrored in responses from the multiple-choice question, “How do programs address the rapidly changing communication and information technology in teaching and the workplace?” Respondents, across all certification levels (bachelor’s, postbaccalaureate, master's and alternative programs), indicated that technology was integrated across their programs and coursework as opposed to being taught in isolated instances in a stand-alone course or handled through readings (see Table 7.1). As the questionnaire did not provide a definition for the “integration of technology” for the respondents, it is unclear how the respondents defined this term. For the purpose of this discussion, we define technology integration as it is operationalized in the course that frames this chapter: as a tool to support instructional practices and address

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Table 7.1  How programs address the rapidly changing communication and information technology in teaching and the workplace Where addressed Not addressed Separate coursework Throughout coursework Methods course Field experiences Extra-curricular activities Total responses

Bachelor’s Postbacc Master’s Alt. Cert. 4.02 27.59 44.83 22.41 1.15 0.00 174

4.44 26.67 46.67 19.26 2.96 0.00 135

7.69 23.08 48.08 17.31 3.85 0.00 103

8.33 33.33 45.83 8.33 4.17 0.00 24

Note: In percentages; missing data omitted.

conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal and/or value-based knowledge. Our analysis of the responses to open-ended questions indicates that respondents were often unsure who was responsible for teaching and integrating technology across an ELA program. Despite the lack of specificity as to the meaning of integration, questionnaire respondents felt that it was provided to teacher candidates as integrated content more so than taught in a separate course. When respondents were asked if the methods course covered technology integration in the teaching and the learning of ELA, there was some consistency across two types of technology taught to preservice teachers as defined by the questionnaire: (1) ones that promoted “open spaces” for collaborative, active learning environments; and (2) ones that were used in “closed spaces” for discrete assessment purposes or for individualized learning (see Table 7.2). Table 7.2  How do methods courses address using digital technologies in teaching and learning? “Open” technologies (e.g., wikis, blogs, online tutoring): n = 177 To learn Design lessons for course Design lessons for field Median options chosen 74.0

63.5

43.5

2

“Closed” technologies (e.g., portfolios, multimodal software): n = 177 To learn Design lessons for course Design lessons for field Median options chosen 75.1

67.1

49.7

2

Note: Values as percent of respondents who chose each option (check all that apply)

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Respondents indicated that both open and closed technologies were used by teacher candidates to learn the content of the methods course, while somewhat fewer in each category had teacher candidates design lessons using technology to teach ELA content. There is a significant drop in the expectation that teacher candidates employ technology in their own teaching and learning once they are engaged in field experiences (see Table 7.2). In contrast to the questionnaire results that suggest that technology integration is studied by the teacher candidates primarily to learn the content of the methods course and less so to integrate it into their own practices, the syllabus analysis suggests that technology integration is addressed equally for both teaching and learning across programs. Few programs consistently required the teacher candidates to integrate technology into their learning and their teaching. The syllabi that focused on the use of technology for learning purposes required teacher candidates to learn it to navigate course materials themselves, such as accessing a CMS, like BlackBoard or Desire2Learn; downloading materials from a website; communicating with an instructor via some type of electronic application like email or social media; blogging with classmates; submitting work through an online portfolio system; meeting licensure requirements through an online system; or reading a book, article, or website about how technology has changed communication practices. When the methods class focused on technology for teaching, teacher candidates were required to incorporate technology into their own lessons, such as employing a CMS in a lesson, teaching a lesson on multiple or new literacies, creating a blog space for grade school students, teaching the purpose of technology, engaging in digital storytelling, having students electronically communicate through social media or email, or tutoring online. How frequently a methods course required a teacher candidate to study and/or perform technology-related activities implicitly expressed the program’s commitment to technology integration as content in the ELA methods course (see Table 7.3). The syllabus and focus group analyses agreed with and strengthened the number of tensions uncovered by the questionnaire related to how teacher candidates were supported to incorporate technologies into their practices. As indicated earlier, there is an awareness that technology integration is important content for both teaching and learning (see Tables 7.1 and 7.2). That technology usage is thought to be essential “other” content in the teaching and learning of English. This observation is further supported in that few syllabi excluded

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Table 7.3  Levels of commitment to integrating technology and new literacies into the teaching of ELA methods Technology integration that guided the syllabus analysis Code Explanation of code 1

No mention or evidence that the course addresses the integration of technology in the teaching and learning of the ELA. Awareness or passive engagement. The topic was mentioned in the course description, and/or in the course objectives. The topic may also be mentioned in a calendar topic or set of readings, but there is no evidence of active application other than as a response to course readings. Passive engagement included the writing of technology autobiographies, being told to use a course management system (CMS) or go to a website, or if the CMS was merely a submission system. If technology use was indicated as an option for a lesson, it was coded as passive engagement. Single application or minor active engagement. In addition to readings or discussion of technology, if teacher candidates were required at least once to address technology in their planning, instruction, or presentation of content, it was coded as minor active engagement. One activity done repeatedly would be coded as minor active engagement. Active engagement. The topic was repeatedly mentioned in course objectives, calendar topics, readings, and assignments (more than one assignment) and activities (blogs, presentation, online tutoring, etc.) Web-based courses were coded as active engagement since the teacher candidates had to use it for learning, but not necessarily teaching.

2

3

4

mention of technology in its content. These findings from the syllabus analyses deepen and complicate the authors’ understanding of how technology is taught as part of a methods course. Despite the questionnaire results indicating that technology integration is essential to other content in the teaching and learning of English, few methods courses move past teaching it through the awareness or passive engagement stage (see Table 7.4); the syllabus that frames this chapter is Table 7.4  Program commitment to technology integration based on syllabus analysis Level 1 2 3 4

Commitment explanation No mention or evidence of topic. Awareness or passive engagement. Mentioned in standards or objectives. Minor active engagement. One assignment or activity indicated. Active engagement. Multiple assignments or activities repeated.

Note: Values as percent of syllabi collected.

For learning: For teaching: n = 136 n = 136 6 71

9 68

20

18

3

5

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considered a rare example of active engagement in the use of technology to learn and teach ELA content. Tensions exist between providing technology-related content in the ELA methods course not only for learning the content of the methods class but also for incorporating technology-based content in the teacher candidate’s own teaching. As per the questionnaire findings, there is an awareness that technology, multiple literacies, multimodal texts, and digital learning are essential to other content in English language arts instruction. As noted earlier, 40 percent of the questionnaire respondents indicated that some kind of technology enhanced content was integrated across their programs. However, as is evident from the focus group conversations, engaged application of technology seemed to be student- and/or instructor-specific. Programs did not necessarily direct the integration of technology on a critical, actively engaged level. Charles Bates observed that his program engages in technology teaching and learning, “but it’s still primarily means Prezi and PowerPoint. It depends on the rare student, maybe ten percent, that are doing something really creative or engaging with literacy or a multimodal text. I think that’s still very, very slow and something we define as cutting edge or dynamic.” In contrast, Caroline Stewart felt that technology was appropriately integrated throughout the teacher education program in which she worked, a program that was jointly structured across both the Department of English and the School of Education, where technology was infused across coursework, but “not technology for the sake of technology.” In Stewart’s teacher education program, she felt that technology integration was not high stakes. Rather, it involved modeled practices that fit into a teacher candidate’s practice: We try to demonstrate [a] kind of seamless incorporation of technology, so not to call attention to using Skype, for example, but to use it for what it—what we want it to be used for, like interviews with authors in Adolescent Literature and that kind of thing. So that we’re not making it seem difficult to use by calling attention to it. We use, I just have to say, a variety of technologies. Students create weekly websites for their unit plans, for example . . . we try to incorporate technology seamlessly as a tool for greater goals.

In the focus group conversations, Dave Sommer observed that the essentialness of technology integration into ELA generated discussions about how the study of multimodal texts supports teacher candidates to think through a text and not just teach it by having them explore “videos, songs, websites, blogs—a variety of stuff, and really think . . . about how all of these different

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modes of textuality speak to one another,” underscoring technology’s impact on changing literacy practices. Correspondingly, other focus group respondents felt that the teacher candidates were pushing them for more technology integration, but the content they wanted was for teaching ideas that were current practices. Bill Warner explained, Our recent graduates tell us they’d really like to have more resources, more websites where they could draw teaching activities, more programs for—that they could become familiar with so that they could use them in the classroom. It’s just a never-ending growth area. Our students at least feel like they’re not keeping up with that. It’s hard. They’re going to college all the time and they’re using the things they have to use that are right in front of them; there’s a wide variety out there that they’re not aware of.

By extension, Joseph Shain warned about the complexity of integrating technology effectively into the ELA: “You need to combine your technology with your pedagogy with your content knowledge to create these meaningful moments of instruction for your students [teacher candidates and grade school students].” Despite many respondents, across all stages of the study, expressing value for integrating technology into the ELA, some expressed discouragement about mastering all that Shain felt was needed to effectively do so. They worried about balancing the teaching of technology with all the other content new English teachers need, especially in light of its rapid pace of change to affect how current the methods learned might be. Amanda Reiter observed, I often feel like I don’t have enough time in my methods course to really adequately address technology. We have two methods courses, but one of them is technically our Young Adult Literature course. I always feel like I could teach a whole course on ELA and technology integration.

Therefore, even in valuing technology integration into the ELA, there remains a tension with what to teach, how to teach it, and whether it should it be taught in the methods course.

Technology: Inconsistent content for teaching and learning Responses to the open-ended question “What is your understanding of how the English language arts methods course should address the integration of technology in the English language arts?” reveal opposing opinions about the value of integrating technologies into ELA. Some respondents assumed teacher

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candidates were already heavily using technology in their subject-area courses or presumed that, since technology was pervasive in teacher assessment and certification practices, it was out of their purview to augment that learning in their methods courses. With e-portfolio assessment seeming standard to the field for licensure purposes, other respondents expressed a strong commitment to twenty-first-century technologies as part of the ELA curriculum, for example, “Technology skills are an integral part of twenty-first century skills and, consequently, an important part of our ELA methods classes.” The extent and direction of commitment to teaching with and through technology was reportedly related to an instructor’s own expertise and comfort with technology. Some respondents indicated that they were unsure exactly where technology learning occurred in their programs since the respondent was housed in “English” but the program was housed in “Education,” or vice-versa, and expressed that they had no idea where technology was taught. As teacher educators vary in their conceptions of the teaching of English (Pasternak 2007), it is not surprising that teaching English through or about technology generated such contrasting responses. There may be a number of different factors that affect the decrease from how technology was employed in the methods class to the field experience (see Table 7.2). Some respondents stated that technology should be hands-on and practical, yet others described either their universities’ or local schools’ lacking access to quality technology and indicated that using technology to teach content was superfluous under these conditions.

Teaching and learning with technology Not only were there conflicting responses about technology’s value to ELA, but also the number of responses dropped significantly in the technology section of the study to 175 participants, where the norm for the other sections was consistently around 200. The lower number of responses in the technology section may be due to respondent confusion in some of the questionnaire language when we referred to collaborative technology as “open” and discrete technology as “closed,” although this confusion was not evident during the piloting of the study. The lower response rate may also be indicative of the respondents having less knowledge about technology teaching and learning than they did with the other four key focus topics of the questionnaire. This trend may be a result of technology classes often being taught separately from the methods course or

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having expertise in this focus area being dependent on the two-step process of being adept at the function (software) but also the device (hardware) that supports that function. Despite the majority of the questionnaire respondents indicating that technology is integrated across a program (see Table 7.1), this response may have been a presumption on the part of the methods instructor, although we could not corroborate this inference through the syllabus or focus group data. In the syllabus analysis, an overwhelming number of methods classes indicated that technology integration was taught for teaching and learning at the most basic levels. Only a small number of classes showed technology integration at the more complex or sustained activity levels (see Table 7.4). Mentioned by respondents at the different stages of the study, technology classes might be taught across disciplines by an instructor proficient in educational technology and not technology specific to the teaching and learning of the ELA. In the focus group discussions, the question was asked, “How can teacher candidates effectively integrate technology into their practices in a meaningful way after taking a course that does not apply it to ELA content?” Some respondents explained that the teacher candidates either took a specific technology course or had an educational technologist guest lecture in the ELA methods class for a one-time workshop. Dave Sommer acknowledged, “although we’re not directly providing [instruction] within our methods course . . . we’re certainly making space for it in our classes.” Both the open-ended questionnaire and the focus group responses revealed that when technology is applied in a lesson, it often tends to be driven by a specific teacher candidate's comfort with technology. One questionnaire respondent indicated that in her technology course, a topic is assigned, and it is up to the teacher candidates to find web-based tools, articles, and videos to explore its use. Another questionnaire respondent explained that he structures an environment for technology integration in that “I position myself as a student, and I actually have them create that blended learning lesson.” Therefore, it is up to teacher candidates to educate the methods instructor when it comes to technology. Alex Terrell confirmed that his teacher candidates take a separate technology class but are then required to “infuse” the technology learned in that class into the curriculum and lessons created for the separate methods class. According to Terrell, infusion tends to manifest in creating platforms for presentations or information gathering and it becomes the teacher candidates’ responsibilities to find opportunities to apply their learning from their technology class. In this

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situation, Terrell noted, “I don’t get the feeling that they’re having an opportunity to really fully utilize the technology to the degree that they could.” As indicated above, some ELA teacher educators express inadequate knowledge about technology to effectively incorporate it into the teaching and learning of ELA. Therefore, it seems understandable that most methods courses integrate technology on the awareness or passive engagement level (see Table 7.4). This situation becomes more complex in light of the high cost of providing cutting-edge technology to teacher candidates enrolled in teacher education programs, especially in an era of belt tightening for not only public universities but some private ones as well. Thus, it is unsurprising that many of the syllabi submitted for review indicated that the technology integration taught replicated the more traditional models of ELA education of lecture, recitation, and seatwork (Nystrand 1997): creating PowerPoints and Prezis to highlight lecture content, submitting digital analysis papers via CMS or email, accessing scholarship from the internet, locating content and teacher standards online, and writing technology autobiographies. Some assignments specified that the teacher candidates were to integrate technology “appropriately” into their lessons with appropriateness rarely being defined or quantified with a rubric, unlike the class that frames this chapter with its specific alignment to technology standards and descriptors. In all fairness, rubrics and standards might be documents distributed later in the course as the teacher candidates need them, which, of course, is a problem unique to using syllabi as the sole data source. Despite the unevenness of teacher education programs engaging in technology integration in an ELA methods course, Anita Vogel mentioned that teacher candidates are taking more and more digital literacy and media credits in hers. She said that they ask teacher candidates to explore literacy by examining its relationship to technology and the choices made in its application, such as in Schoology and in voice-over PowerPoints. We use it—I think we need to be more thoughtful and consistent about how we do it, but right now we’re using a lot of modeling. While we do our normal thing, we’re integrating in the technology as a means of expression and response and then reflecting on how that technology changed that activity. That happens in methods, it happens in the general methods course, and it happens in other places throughout the program.

Vogel observes that her program tends to model technology by asking teacher candidates to reflect on its usage but without applying it in their own ELA lessons.

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Technology policies According to NCTE’s 2007 Policy Research Brief on 21st-Century Literacies (2007), with new technologies shaping literacies, there are new opportunities for teachers to “foster reading and writing in more diverse and participatory contexts” (p. 2). However, the Brief advises that “effective instruction in twentyfirst-century literacies takes an integrated approach” (p. 4), an approach that can be seen in Midwestern University’s “Commitment to Technology” statement that frames this chapter. Moreover, technology’s stamp on higher education can be seen in the use of course management systems, which are widely available for assignment submission and communication across all colleges and universities. However, despite the glut of technology needed to navigate higher education systems, 24 out of 136 of the syllabi submitted for review articulated classroom technology policies. Some announced the course’s adherence to twenty-first century skills and experimentation (as in the case that frames this chapter) or alienation with technology as distracting and inappropriate in a college classroom (despite some of these same classes requiring the use of CMS and online access to reading material). Of the 24 statements, only three syllabi indicated a positive use of technology for teacher candidates during class time. One example pointed out, “This course fosters the use of technology by providing opportunities and expectations for using the Internet, computer applications and [a proprietaryuniversity-based CMS] for discussion, research, and development of an E-folio for sharing documents.” Conversely, the majority of the syllabi that had technology usage policies communicated tensions between its value as a teaching and learning tool and its detriment to a university instructor’s classroom management. One particularly strong policy, which seemed to be the university policy, echoed many others: Cell Phone and Electronic Devices Policy: Course instructors and staff of [university name] facilities may place restrictions on the use of wireless communication devices and electronic devices in their classroom or facilities. Ringing cellular telephones and laptop computers used for instant messaging, game playing, Internet surfing, and other such activities can be considered disruptive. After an initial warning, students who do not comply with the policy of the classroom/ facility may be asked to leave for the remainder of the class/day. If students are asked to leave class because of such a disruption, instructors are not obligated to allow makeup of missed work. Having a wireless communication device in hand or using earphones connected to one during examinations also may be grounds

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for charges of academic dishonesty. Using devices with video or photo features may result in charges of violating laws on intellectual property rights or invasion of privacy.

At variance with a policy such as this are course activities and assignments that require teacher candidates to not only access print media but also watch videos on YouTube, listen to podcasts from a number of professional sources, submit their assignments online, create lessons focused on technology integration or new literacies, conduct online tutoring sessions, participate in website analysis, maintain their own blogs, and create their own videos for teaching and learning. Technology policies like these that warn of its disruptive nature to the traditional college classroom may send a message to the teacher candidates that technology is harmful and discredits the possibilities available to teachers and their students that adaptive technology could ensure instruction differentiation. Policies such as these also communicate that technology is beyond classroom management approaches. In a focus group conversation, Dave Sommer observed, Every classroom, every high school classroom I go into, cell phones are just— they have to be dealt with one way or another. Whether it’s getting kids to put them away or getting kids to integrate them into the class—every kid pretty much is carrying around this really powerful pocket computer that’s got the answers to information questions all the time. One of the things I think we have talked about both in terms of classroom management but also in terms of integrating that powerful little computer that kids have—how do we use that in productive ways in a classroom? Even if it’s sort of an informal learning tool, how do we allow kids to use that? How do we make sure that there’s an equitable distribution when that—the phones are not equitably distributed? All those are questions I think that we do grapple with as well.

If technology is prohibited in the methods class, the teacher candidate will not learn how to manage it for learning, adapt it for equitable distribution, nor teach its power as a learning tool much less have opportunities to critically evaluate who is supplying it and for what purposes.

Technology: Content standards As discussed in earlier chapters, English educators have an uneasy relationship with standards (see Chapter 4). Therefore, it is not surprising that addressing

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Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States Table 7.5  Technology integration content standards used Technology standards used in English methods classes: Frequency table (n = 146) No technology standards taught State teaching standards NCTE/NCATE teaching standards NCTE twenty-first-century literacies NETS-T NETS-S

35.6 58.9 63.7 15.1 23.3 12.3

Note: Values as percent of respondents who chose each option. Check all that apply.

standards in the integration of technology is uneven at best. When asked which technology standards the respondents used to integrate technology into preservice teacher learning, the response was predominantly NCTE/NCATE, closely followed by state standards (see Table 7.5). Over a third of the respondents indicated that they followed no professional standards when asking teacher candidates to integrate technology into their instructional practices, illustrating a need to investigate the reasoning behind and influences for standards adoption in this and other areas (see Chapter 4). The high frequency for requiring no technology standards in teaching and learning is an important finding when considering that the national ELA teacher standards have increased expectations for English teachers to be proficient in their teaching through and with technology with each revision of the standards since 1997 (George, Pope and Reid 2015). In addition, it is worth noting that the number of respondents to the technology integration question about standards dropped from 177 for the other technology questions down to 146. This drop might indicate that even more programs teach without aligning to technology standards than the 35.6 percent in Table 7.5.

Technology: Field placements and partnerships Respondents reported that the availability and use of technology was often differentially distributed between the university and K-12 settings (see Chapter 3), with one respondent observing, “The public schools tend to have more technology money than the university does, so we struggle with [resources to stay current].” Conversely, other respondents felt their teacher candidates were well equipped to use technology but thought that “seeing more current practices

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in local schools that address teaching ELA with technology would be helpful.” Amanda Reiter expressed concern with a university that is technology-rich but a local school district that is not: I really make sure to have that conversation with students, and also to talk about how do you use technology in the classrooms when you have limited resources. Most of my students teach in schools that are very under-resourced and don’t even have very good internet access. We talk about ways to still use technology when you don’t have a lot to work with. That can be really challenging, and I’ve never really had a very good answer for that. Sometimes it’s encouraging students to use their own devices or to use their own resources when your school may not have those resources.

Similarly, underresourcing can be problematic when technology is used to collaborate with high school students. Collaborative applications can be haphazard and cause tension between the program and the field experience that may arise if the technology's use is not mutually beneficial to both the teacher education program and the K-12 school or it is just a convenient tool to connect a teacher candidate with a high school student. Sean Prinsen noticed, as I’m sure you guys know, any time you try to do this kind of inter-institutional thing, it’s just like a logistical nightmare, right? For my students to be able to work with their high school partners, and they [high school students] just throw everything up on Google Docs. They’re [high school students] like, “I’ll send it to her [teacher candidate] and she can edit it tonight,” or whatever.

In the response above, scheduling the collaboration and having meaningful contact between the high school student and the teacher candidate can be problematic at best. At worst, high school students might only have access to technology at their high school, while the teacher candidate might only have access while on campus, which could be one or two days a week. This limited window makes it difficult to maintain sufficient contact. Both scenarios leave many unanswered questions as to why a collaboration might not work under these inequitable circumstances. In contrast, questions arose throughout the focus groups as to which educational entities drive technology trends in ELA. Anita Vogel expressed concern that technology knowledge was driven by the school districts, the school systems are actually driving the increase in digital learning because they’re supplying student teachers, for example, with sets of tablets or iPads and saying, “You have to use these. Get going with them. We’re going paperless.” That’s really encouraged us to integrate more and more technology knowledge throughout our program.

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Dave Sommer expressed similar concerns about how high school placements are driving technology usage, causing tensions between the program and the field experience as to what to focus on: A lot of the schools that our students go into have Google Drive accounts. Students are using Chromebooks and they’re doing a lot of their writing, the high school students are doing a lot of their writing on Google Docs and sharing those with teachers and getting feedback from teachers that way and doing peer feedback that way. We do some modeling of that just through using Google Docs and Google Drive in our class. That’s a technology that when I was teaching I didn’t have, so I’m learning that along with them.

Joseph Shain agreed with Sommer in feeling left a little behind when outresourced by a field placement. As Shain noted earlier in this chapter, for technology to be meaningful content in an ELA methods class, “You need to combine your technology with your pedagogy with your content knowledge to create these meaningful moments of instruction for your students [teacher candidates and grade school students].” Knowing which technology applications to address in the methods classes can be specific to one field placement but not another. When the technology becomes content to teach content, Shain warned, I’m very frustrated because I’m losing class time because I’m teaching technology while I’m teaching a subject area. . . . Because as [Anita Vogel] said, I really feel the school district is driving the teacher education program. They put their policies in place, they spend a bajillion dollars on this technology, and now I have to teach that technology. Don’t get me wrong; we have a very close school district that’s referred to as the “corridor of shame” because of the poverty levels down there, and they have—they might have pencils in the classroom.

A tension between programs and school districts manifests in the inequity of the technology available across school districts. If the methods class integrates technology appropriate to the most well-funded school district, respondents felt this time may be ill spent when teacher candidates are placed in school districts with limited technology. Respondents questioned which technology purchases a program can even require of its teacher candidates. Some programs were able to purchase laptops, or require their teacher candidates to do so (as in the case that frames this chapter); others presume that their teacher candidates have technology or can borrow it from the university or public library. Some respondents felt that there was a disconnect between how English is taught at the college level, in that there is a tradition for lecture and seatwork,

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and what the teacher candidates find when they engage in their methods classes and their clinical placements. Joseph Shain was very explicit in addressing the tension among the university, the program, and the school districts when it came to how English and technology are merged in the secondary school classroom and how the teacher educators are expected to find ways to use the technology that the high school students seem to accept so casually: They [teacher candidates] walk into the classroom and they’re looking around and all the kids have technology. It quickly hits them that the way they were taught in their college education is not . . . the way they need to teach as a future high school teacher. This really makes them angry. Literally, it makes them angry. I have to put out fires because their expectations don’t match the reality and the technology and the infusing of technology into the curriculum is one of these issues. My students either stay angry through their entire internship and they make it through, or they embrace it. I’ve seen some very great ways that they’ve done that. . . . You get these cool moments of collaboration, but your question is technology . . . used to teach content, but also be content? Yeah, I agree with that, because you have to teach them how to use technology. They have to actually study technology. A stand-alone course won’t work. Teacher-educators who are unsure of how to actually do it then rely on that stand-alone course, and every time there’s technology they might get a couple extra credit points on a rubric, but that’s not really reinforcing it. How . . . do I make all that come together?

With the rapid change in technology and the inequity evident in funding it across institutions of higher education as well as K-12 schools, the onus seems to be on teacher candidates to apply technology to their teaching situations because their field experiences will vary and the methods course cannot account for those variances and inequities in placements. English teacher educators need to decide how to prioritize the integration of technology into the teaching and learning of English. As evident from this discussion, easy answers are not forthcoming to a profession struggling to define its essential content.

Technology: Corporatization As mentioned earlier, English teacher educators expressed a skepticism for standards but also of how those standards drive resources. Traces of these tensions can be heard in the discussion above about which internal and external entities drive technology integration. There is a concern with how technology

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might be affecting the ELA. Looking at technology integration critically, teacher educators want to know who provides funding for it or owns it, who promotes it, how it enhances or detracts from the ELA learning experience, and how it changes the role of the teacher. Sean Prinsen explains, We had a teacher from a local high school. Her graduate degree is in educational technology. She’s super smart and she put together just a wonderful presentation for our student teachers on the use of technology and how she uses it in a . . . public high school. I really loved the presentation, and yet this kind of just enthusiasm for technology—I wanted to have a conversation after that about the assumptions that are underwriting this kind of endorsement of technology. I mean, it’s tied to certain, a certain tradition. It’s tied to a certain epistemology. It’s tied to a certain economic paradigm. I worry about that sometimes.

Observations about the corporatization of technology in schools and universities for teaching and learning—from the use of standardized assessment applications that are domain specific to the purchase of teacherproof computerized lesson modules or reading programs—challenge what is known about the ELA and technology integration. Sean Prinsen worries “about the uncritical use of technology” because “there seems to be so much general enthusiasm for the use of technology in classroom[s] . . . who’s supplying this technology? What does this technology imply about the role of the teacher? What costs are—both literal and kind of figurative—associated with this technology?” These questions surely must be answered by the field as its standardized assessments are taken over by large, for-profit publishing houses and measurement firms.

Tensions in integrating technology into the teaching of the ELA ELA has changed from a field that defined itself through the teaching of literature, composition, and oratory (Dixon 1967) to one that now teaches the skills needed to study that content: reading, writing, listening, speaking, and critical thinking (Moje 2008). How will the teaching of technology and its interrelationship within the ELA continue to change the field? What tensions have arisen in the discipline that will affect those changes? The field acknowledges that the teaching and learning of technology is essential to other content in English, but English educators are skeptical as

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to what drives it and who sells it as technology changes the literacy practices English teachers must teach to remain relevant. Teacher licensure in the United States is now almost dominated by one company providing an E-portfolio assessment in Pearson’s edTPA being used in 35 percent of the states. Moreover, only certain large for-profit and not-for-profit conglomerates (e.g., Pearson, the College Board) are responsible for many standardized assessments at various grade levels across the United States. Without access to quality technology in these situations, assessments would not be possible. Over the past 30 years, national ELA teacher standards expect ELA teachers to show increased proficiency in technology’s application to the ELA content, but teacher educators are understandably at odds with the outside forces that seem to define what it means to be proficient and effective in its use and promotes it as a panacea to effective teaching and K-12 student engagement. Technology is inconsistently used to learn ELA instructional practices in the methods course. Expertise is a two-step process that requires English educators to be proficient in their field but also in software applications and the devices on which they run. Technology integration is considered essential to other content and attempts are ongoing to provide space in the methods class to explore its use. However, teacher candidates use technology even less frequently in their field and student teaching placements than in their methods courses. There is a belief that resources are inconsistently distributed between the K-12 schools and the universities preparing future teachers; therefore, dedicating time in the methods class to technology integration can often be time ill spent. The availability of technology in higher education, as well as in school districts, continues to be problematic and dependent upon a community’s commitment to it (Johnson 2016). To move forward, the field should continue its discussion as to what it means to integrate technology into learning and teaching practices both online and face-to-face—who pays for it, who wants it, and why it is being promoted as a panacea for education (US DOE 2016). Doing so will support English teacher education programs as they revise or redesign their methods classes to explore new ways to teach ELA methods that address the changing literacy practices affected by technology. As in our other focus areas, there is much to consider when integrating content across an English teacher education program, and the answers will have to be specific to the mission and vision of individual contexts controlled by external and internal pressures unique to each.

8

Commitments and Change: Future Directions for ELA Education in the United States

In the United States, as well as in other countries where English is the dominant mode of communication, the teaching of English has traditionally included the mastery of literature and a wide body of diverse texts, composition, linguistics, culture, humanities, and oratory (see Chapter 1). Operationalized throughout the twentieth century, this content structured how English as a subject was taught (Dixon 1967); yet, as the preparation of English teachers enters the current era, the field of ELA education has moved to include the teaching of the skills that cross all disciplines but are also specific to a discipline (Moje 2008)— skills such as reading, writing, listening, critical thinking, and speaking (see Chapter 5). Some may find this change in content a direct result of a push for national standards (CCSSI 2010; NCEE 1983), while others indicate that it is content that should have been taught for years (NCTE 1968a, b). In addition, the focal areas of aligning curriculum and instruction with standards (see Chapter 4), integrating technology and multimodal texts into ELA (see Chapter 7), and addressing the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse learners (see Chapter 6) can also be considered new content. This fluctuation in the content that defines the discipline can be seen in how teacher educators design programs that vary in philosophies, missions, visions, values, and foci. Content is often dependent upon a program’s resources, philosophies, location, and breadth of expertise. With a field as diverse and broad as the English language arts (see Chapter 1), quality programs can look very different from each other relative to their context and faculty commitments. Therefore, in Chapter 8, we detail what we learned from the study about our data sources. We explore how ELA programs address the content taught in them and examine the variables that affect how programs commit to providing that content to their teacher candidates. We draw together the broad themes addressed

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throughout this book by connecting those themes to external pressures on English teacher education programs in the United States. We detail the tensions between commitments and change experienced by our respondents and make recommendations for English teacher education programs and methods instructors to channel those efforts. As Charles Bates observes in discussing the variables affecting future English teachers, I still think sometimes our biggest challenge in the methods course is getting kids to define why they want to teach and what goals they want to accomplish when they teach those kids. If it is critical thinking through English literacies, we need to help them see and define that. I still see that even before they, just before, they student teach, they’re still struggling with that definition.

Thus, in Chapter 8, we provide suggestions for English educators to consider as they decide where they might put their efforts, monies, and expertise to support future teachers of English as they define the discipline for themselves.

Changing the landscape of the ELA methods course English teaching in the United States has historically served a variety of purposes, ranging from shaping values to creating a democratic citizenry, to developing cognitive abilities, to preparing students for college and careers (Applebee 1974; Brass 2015; CCSS 2010; Gere et al. 1992), to providing an awareness of issues of educational equity and social justice (Hallman 2017; Morrell 2015). Therefore, ELA has been operationalized through its various purposes; but, as we note throughout this book, current governmental and institutional policies, in the United States and abroad, attempt to narrow its scope and influence its trajectory. A number of themes emerged from a review of the research in English teacher education (Pasternak et al. 2014), which became important markers of the trajectory of the ELA curriculum in the present era. The review allowed us to identify key shifts in the way English has been considered as a school subject, and these shifts have both prompted and reflected changes in the way English teachers have been educated. What is taught in English teacher preparation has much to do with how teacher education programs operate within a programmatic and institutional context. These influences were articulated by Amanda Reiter in the focus group discussions:

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I think one of the issues I’m finding as program director—or just an English educator—is just the competing conceptions of what it means to be an ELA teacher in our current times. What I feel very strongly about is students having meaningful experiences with language and literacy and literature and different forms of communication and how that is bumping against a lot of other conceptions. . . . I’m finding it, if I think about challenges, just maintaining the focus of our profession and what we have always loved about our profession and passing that on to new cohorts of students all the time when they’re having these struggles in the school. . . . I think our content area, especially under Common Core, is subject to external pressures in terms of what it—the practices that we do in the classroom

In designing our study, we gathered information as to where and when teacher candidates were offered opportunities to learn specific content and to put that learning into practice. Was it in their Department of English content courses, their education pedagogical courses, their field experiences, or all three (see Appendix A)? Together, our review of scholarship (Pasternak et al. 2014) and the findings from our questionnaire (Caughlan et al. 2017) identified the methods course as the key location to learn the content of teaching English and situated our five focal areas as influential in changing the landscape of the methods course. In Chapters 3 through 7, we reported on the findings from the questionnaire, syllabi, and focus group data and discussed the pressures in English teacher education programs that come from outside the field, in the manner of regulatory and financial pressures, and inside the field, in the manner of the changes to the ELA curriculum since the last national study (Smagorinsky and Whiting 1995).

How teacher educators prioritize the needs of teacher candidates: Commitment to change As we completed the descriptive analysis of our survey data (see Chapter 2), we began to narrow in on more refined questions we wished to ask of the data. In particular, how are programs responding to changes in context and expectations? In other places in this book, we look at various ways in which English educators respond to challenges and changes. However, what in particular can be shown to prompt commitments to address one area of change over another? As we indicate above, the individual expertise and intellectual commitments of English

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teacher educators have a large impact, as indicated by syllabus content, focus group discussions, and open-ended questions. However, the analysis discussed here departs from that individual, internalized sense of “commitment” to refer to a statistical examination of how programs distribute resources. In looking at the data we had collected, it occurred to us that several key aspects of institutional context could influence the extent to which a program might put faculty and student time and effort into addressing a particular issue. After many conversations related to the tensions in the field (e.g., tradition versus reform; aspirations versus resources), and considering how our data could be mapped onto differences among programs, we came up with three factors that might influence choices: philosophy of a program or instructor, program size, and policy pressures. Policy research indicates that change made in response to policy demands and external change is not simple or determined (Anagnostopoulos 2006; Coburn 2001; Latour 2005). Change is mediated in our model by philosophy and by resources. When program change is prompted by policy, the way the policy will be interpreted and the change that will be chosen is influenced by a program or its designer’s existing philosophy on that topic or action. Interpretive policy analysis informs us that policy is not handed down, but taken up in different ways depending on people’s interpretation of that policy (Coburn 2001; Yanow 1996). Another way of thinking about this view of policy is that philosophy determines which changes are made, but the impact is mediated and constrained by resources and policy. What we are calling in our study commitment to change refers to educators’ tendencies to put time and resources into addressing particular issues. Rather than conceive of commitment as abstract or philosophical, the commitment to change in English teacher education provides a rationale to assign values that indicate where teacher education programs choose to put faculty time and institutional resources. The focal areas of change in English education we have discussed throughout this book (i.e., K-12 standards and assessment, literacy instruction, instruction for ELLs and diverse learners, field experiences, and technology instruction) provide variables for measuring programs’ commitment to change. We took the answers to questions in the survey related to how programs addressed changes in these areas and assigned numerical values to choices, with higher values going to those choices that required greater expenditure of time and resources for faculty and students. For example, reading a chapter on a particular literacy strategy received a lower value than did assigning/creating a lesson plan for how to teach that strategy, but the highest value went to actually

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requiring a teacher candidate to tutor a middle school student on a regular basis. In the latter case, both faculty and teacher candidate had to travel, to establish relationships with teachers and/or students, had to plan for the encounter, and implement or grade the lesson. We did a similar analysis of the choices offered in each area to create composite variables to use in our modeling of commitment to change. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed that “commitment” was a real factor that could be measured using our composite variables, according to good results on a range of measures of fit. We hypothesized that external policy pressures would have the most impact on commitments, followed by philosophy, followed by program size. We had not collected data regarding program philosophy, so we chose methods course location (department or college of education versus English department). Program size was indicated by number of completers, or number of teacher candidates who completed the program in 2011 in the Title II database (see Appendix A). Policy pressures were indicated by a composite variable we developed from responses to the external pressures questions, related to how programs responded to accreditation, changes in state regulations, etc. The more changes a program made in response to external pressures, the larger their composite score. Through structural equation modeling, we looked at the extent to which levels of commitment (overall commitment to change) varied with methods course location (English/education), program size, and external pressures. We also ran a multivariate linear regression analysis that looked at location, program size, and external pressures against each of our five focal areas, and one that measured their overall influence. The structural equation modeling established that commitment was a stable factor that could be measured, but also indicated that location and program size did not explain much of the variance in overall commitment. However, the commitment construct did help to explain the relation of each to our focal areas. For example, we found that having one’s methods course located in a department, school, or college of education rather than in a department of English (education was the reference) had the most impact on time and assignments associated with field instruction, a somewhat less significant impact on time and resources committed to addressing the needs of English language learners, and no significant impact on any other area. However, these impacts were all very small. Program size had similarly small effects, showing the greatest (although still minor) impact on technology use and integration.

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This finding is not surprising, considering the program size is likely related to the size of the overall university or program, and thus related to the size and extent of their technology staff and resources. The model that examined the effect of policy change (as represented by our external pressures variable) on where programs chose to commit resources to our target areas showed the strongest effect on all areas. It was particularly noticeable in the areas of preparing teachers for standards-based teaching, in preparing teachers to address reading and writing instruction, and in addressing the needs of English language learners, all areas where there has been both need for change and resistance to change at various levels of the education system. In the model that combined all variables, we found that location, program size, and external pressures together predict 14.2 percent of our respondents’ commitment to change, or tendency to prioritize one focal area over another. So, although policy constraints exert a measurable pressure on programs to make choices, there are other forces operating: institutional, disciplinary, and personal commitments that go beyond the data we collected. This result may indicate some latitude for professional autonomy for teacher educators, although such latitude is not always perceived in the present educational climate in the United States. Understanding of the commitment to change that affects English teacher education was enhanced by our collection of syllabi. This analysis allowed us to identify assignments, readings, and activities that the teacher candidates were required to engage in concerning the focal areas discussed throughout this book. Notably, what we first learned through this step in our study was how unreliable a source of data syllabi can be when analyzed in isolation, a finding that has consequences across teacher education and not just English education (e.g., NCTQ 2014).

Syllabi as sources of data regarding methods course content In collecting and analyzing syllabi, we learned that they are inconsistent sources of data. Since syllabi tend to be idiosyncratic, they might align to an instructor’s particular instructional philosophy or be dictated by a university or college; therefore, syllabi from different instructors or institutions will vary in what they reveal about what is taught in a course. Syllabi design can be restricted so that they adhere to certain length restrictions; formatting preferences, like employing tables instead of narrative; regulations that indicate the use of links; or preferences to detail assignments in supplemental documents. When

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Smagorinsky and Whiting (1995) performed their analysis of syllabi, the syllabus was a major repository for what was both promised and expected in a course. However, with the rise of course management systems (CMS), in addition to other considerations, some syllabi provide much less detail, because information may now be available in a CMS or through other supplementary documents. In designing our study, we felt early on that deriving our findings solely from the syllabi we collected would provide an inaccurate portrait of the field, although this assumption was as-yet untested. If we had only collected syllabi and considered them as complete artifacts, our findings would have been dependent upon the idiosyncratic nature of syllabi submitted for our review. Relying only on syllabi as sources of data also raised questions for us about the reliability and validity of other studies of teacher preparation that have used them to evaluate coursework and/or programs of teacher education. These kinds of inaccuracies can be seen in the results about quality education touted by the National Council on Teacher Quality (2014), an organization that has relied solely on collecting syllabi and treating teacher educators as hostile witnesses in their reports ranking teacher education programs (Reid 2014; Robinson 2014). However, our analysis of course syllabi served to deepen our questionnaire analysis and our understanding of what English teacher educators thought was being taught in their programs. We requested syllabi only from English teacher educators who participated in the questionnaire. Moreover, since we only included respondents in the focus groups who had participated in the questionnaire and submitted syllabi, we had an opportunity to pose clarifying questions to the focus group participants that would help us understand the data we did collect in a broader sense. Combining stages of study did lead us to find inconsistencies between the questionnaire and the syllabi. For example, 96 percent of questionnaire respondents reported requiring teacher candidates to call on standards in designing lesson plans (see Chapter 4), while fewer than half of the syllabi listed that as a requirement. We have no reason to doubt our questionnaire respondents, but the contradictory evidence from syllabi raise the issue of how important a practice might be in any particular course. Similarly, there was widespread reporting in the questionnaire that technology teaching and learning were integrated throughout programs, but many syllabi gave the impression that using CMS could be considered technology “integration,” a term not defined for the participants. Another case in point is the rich conversations that occurred in the focus groups that described teacher candidates creating lessons using Schoology, Google

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Drive, film, graphic narrative, smart phones, video conferencing tools, and other technologies to create lessons in the methods classes that were never articulated in the syllabi. Tying a focus area’s thread across data sources, from questionnaire to syllabi collection to focus group discussions, allowed us to follow up with individual respondents to construct the cases that frame Chapters 3 through 7, providing us with sharp portraits of methods courses and/or programs that taught the focal areas in exemplary ways. Our process of data collection allowed us to understand how teacher education programs commit to changes and formed our understanding of where the field of English education is heading in the United States today and tomorrow. The decision to require multiple stages of the study to clarify our data and provide a broad portrait of English teacher education supported our understanding of how English teacher education programs not only identified the issues of teaching in tomorrow’s schools, but applied those practices to their instruction.

Awareness versus application As the study has revealed, there is a disjuncture between awareness and application in English teacher education. This concept aligns somewhat with the “theory into practice” divide (Baldassarre 1997; Rush 2009; Voutira 1996) in that teacher candidates leave their methods courses, where readings and discussion are primarily how they encounter the focal areas (see Table 8.1), without learning how to apply that awareness of new knowledge to their teaching practices. The term awareness has a positive connotation. Teacher candidates come away from a methods course aware of the important concepts in teaching English. In contrast, the term theory has been called into question as irrelevant (Bickmore, Smagorinsky and O’Donnell-Allen 2005; Lortie 1975). We feel that teacher candidates require the time and space to implement their new knowledge into their practices and, optimally, this application should occur in the methods course and the field experience. Philip Towner expressed his frustration with covering new knowledge in the methods course under the conditions of his program, We have one ELA methods course, which is very brief because it is in conjunction with their major field placement. It’s really only four or five weeks of methods. A lot of mine are getting reading and writing instruction primarily through the textbooks and discussions, and then theoretically, they’re learning on the job.

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Throughout the study, the concepts of awareness and application have helped us understand a program’s capacity to address our focal areas. The methods course has been where this new knowledge can be explored, but as noted in each chapter, teacher candidates engage in new knowledge mostly through surface awareness of it by reading about the issue and not actively engaging or applying that issue in their lessons (see Tables 8.1 and 8.2) for a variety of reasons explored below. In the questionnaire portion of the study, participants were asked how their programs addressed changes in ELA content. Overwhelmingly, participants indicated that new content was taught by adding readings to existing courses (see Table 8.1). Similarly, when asked how a program responded to pressures external to it, programs generally added new readings to an existing course unless the pressures that came from university sanctioned testing or state or national accreditation regulations (see Table 8.2). Others have noted the disunion between providing awareness of instructional issues and application of them: moving from “theory to practice” may result from the tensions that seem to “permeate the work of English teacher education” (Whitney, Olan and Frederickson 2013, p. 184), from course organization to the methods texts chosen. However, this disjunction may also connect to the resources teacher education programs can commit to as positioned by how a program defines itself, and/or the expertise available at a university, or the location of the program within that university. Throughout the various stages of the study, tensions surfaced when respondents were asked to identify where the focal area content was provided. For example, if a respondent was housed in English, but the methods course was housed in education, responses were often vague or, at times, adversarial. Therefore, the location of the English teacher education program may affect its design, because its context may have different missions and visions for delivering content, regarding students, and providing instructor expertise. Teacher educators may feel isolated from their programs and their colleagues depending upon a program’s location. One respondent, when asked which methods courses were offered in the program, observed, “I cannot answer this, because I teach in the College of [Education] and do not know the specifics of what the English Department is doing.” Similarly, another responded, “I am unsure since these courses take place in the College of Liberal Arts ([Department of] English).” Another felt she could not respond to the question about where content was taught, because she was not the program director.

14.5 72.9 50.2 41.1

58.7 57.8

n = 207

n = 206

5 91.3

Lang. variation

Multiculturalism

45.1 46.1

11.7 75.2

n = 206

Needs of ELLs

12.6 61.2

3.4 94.2

n = 206

Content standards

Note: In percentages of respondents checking each choice (check all that apply); missing data not included.

No changes New readings/assignments in existing courses New courses added or required Changes in field experience locations or activities

How addressed

Table 8.1  Frequencies: How programs address disciplinary changes in English language arts

32.7 37.1

3.9 88.8

40.5 46.8

3.9 86.8

New conceptions of Multiteaching and learning literacies & information technology n = 205 n = 205

Commitments and Change: Future Directions for ELA Education in the United States 163

20.0 13.5 45.5 35.0

35.1 20.0 47.8 44.4

Note: In percentage responding; missing data omitted.

200 21.0 62.0

205 19.0 58.0

n Not aware of any change New readings or assignments in existing courses New courses added or required Courses combined or removed New student assessments New program assessment

Testing & assessments (K-12)

Changes in available technology

How addressed

16.3 12.8 41.8 41.3

196 38.3 32.7

Testing & assessment (university)

Table 8.2  Frequencies: How programs respond to external pressures

28.0 23.0 52.0 58.0

200 22.0 37.0

Changes in accreditation protocols

10.2 16.3 7.1 8.7

196 71.9 8.2

31.3 22.2 41.9 41.9

198 31.8 31.3

Financial Changes in state challenges teacher prep regulations

164 Secondary English Teacher Education in the United States

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In asking respondents to identify where content was taught in a program, we uncovered a layer of tension that may affect where programs assume teacher candidates apply theory to their practices or develop an awareness of a practice and find an opportunity to apply that practice and test it out. However, our finding that the focus areas that we explore in the study are predominantly learned through readings and not application manifested differently in each of the five focal areas. Per our quantitative findings, when standards were addressed in the methods course, they were mostly mentioned in course readings or through their required inclusion on a lesson plan. However, in the qualitative stages of the study, the respondents expressed a skepticism about content standards since they have often been written without the field’s input. One in five syllabi we collected did not mention the standards and fewer than half of the syllabi included them as a discussion topic in the course calendar (see Chapter 4). The absence of standards as a topic could be a result of the skepticism mentioned above. Alternately, this position could be an indicator of an instructor struggling with adding content to an already content-rich class. Some respondents chose not to address the standards in their classes, because they thought them harmful, politicized statements. Still others chose to create an awareness of their historical and political origins as political documents, so that teacher candidates should “resist and subvert” them. The data regarding technology integration indicated that teacher candidates most often used technology in service to their own learning of course content and to complete assignments, but fewer used it in planning, and fewer still in implementing instruction themselves (although opportunities to do so are often limited by forces outside a teacher educator’s control, such as university or district infrastructure, etc.). Only 5 percent of course syllabi reached the level of “active engagement” with technology in teaching and learning. Similar to the surface level coverage that technology and standards receive in the methods class, teacher candidates develop an awareness of the needs of English language and diverse learners also predominantly through course readings (see Chapter 6). Data revealed that some respondents appeared unable to fully articulate where the teaching of ELLs and diverse learners was covered or if this content was covered at all. The shortage of knowledge about this focal area might be an indication of the tension around program location, as mentioned above, where this content may be taught in English or education. It could also be due to lack of expertise or time or to impediments to access to students who are ELL through field placements.

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In contrast to the focal areas indicated above, the teaching of reading and writing was addressed across all the teacher education programs, repeatedly listed as content in course objectives, calendar topics, and readings. Seventy-eight percent of the syllabi mentioned reading and writing instruction in the course description or objectives, with 53 percent requiring some type of application of that information in their lesson planning, presentations, and class discussions (see Table 5.3). However, reading and writing were often taught separately, and rarely as an integrated concept, despite many of the methods courses being identified as comprehensive courses. Integration of content seemed problematic across all the focal areas due to the variety of purposes the teaching of English has served.

English language arts as victim to external forces: A discipline without a common core? Readers of this text from other disciplines may find it odd that we did not find more consistency in educators’ beliefs and practices. For example, the resistance to content standards in English is quite different from US science teachers’ respect for the Next Generation Science Standards. While science teachers are not a monolithic bloc, and there is tension between traditional and newer ways to teach, still there is general agreement that the standards reflect students’ learning progressions in the discipline, and that they are a legitimate framework upon which to build a curriculum (Richmond, personal communication, 2017). In contrast, teachers of English vary according to the extent to which they embrace technology as a legitimate focus for literacy instruction; teach writing with a formalist, expressivist, or sociocultural orientation; and include young adult literature as major texts, as bridge texts, or as leisure reading. More so than most secondary teachers, English teachers abide by the idea that teaching styles, methods, and commitments are personal choices based on individual teaching philosophies (Gere et al. 1992; Locke 2015). This orientation may partly be due to the sprawling nature of the field (Hallman 2017). English has been seen as home for everything from business writing to poetry, analyzing the symbolism in King Lear to creating personal digital narratives, and encompassing all aspects of language use: the academic, the aesthetic, the moral, and the utilitarian. It may also have to do with the position of English as embodying the pastoral mission of education at the secondary level. English

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class is the place where the discussion of character choices and morals acts as a proxy for considering students’ life choices (Caughlan 2004; Hunter 1988). Only in English and in the arts is personal appreciation and the inner life a legitimate focus for disciplinary discussion (Greene 1971; Rosenblatt 1983). As a result, English teachers and English educators are very cautious about telling others in the field what to value, and when that happens, sparks often fly (e.g., Graff 1992; Krashen 2000; Mulroy 2003; Scholes 1998). And to add to the confusion, educators often find themselves having to teach in ways that do not reflect their philosophies, due to such conditions as lack of resources, large class sizes, lack of time to respond to student writing, and external pressures to prepare for standardized tests of content or for certification (which may or may not be aligned to standards which, in turn, may or may not be written by disciplinary experts). However, the tensions described above do not mean that there is no agreement among English educators, and some areas see a growing consensus in beliefs, if not the capacity or opportunity to act on those beliefs. As early as the 1990s, the work of Nystrand (1997) and Applebee (1993), for example, showed that English teachers valued open disciplinary classroom discussions of literature with their students. However, empirical work (Applebee et al. 2003; Nystrand 1997) indicated that few teachers were successful at initiating and facilitating such conversations. Over the intervening years, many educators and researchers have worked on this conundrum (Aukerman 2012; Caughlan et al. 2013; Juzwik et al. 2008; Wilkinson et al. 2016), and currently there is a wide range of resources for teachers to address this difficulty (e.g., Juzwik et al. 2013; McCann 2014; O’Donnell-Allen 2011). Similarly, although there are wide variations in approaches to writing, most ELA teachers would stand by a process writing approach, where writing is not considered a simple transcription of thought, but a process during which the writer creates meaning, and which takes part over a process of thinking, planning, drafting, revision, and polishing (Applebee and Langer 2013). Although within that view there are differences in how much teachers structure and constrain the process, or the extent to which it is seen as a general or genre-specific or disciplinary-specific process, the general view rejects the old product-oriented model (Braddock, Lloyd-Jones and Schoer 1963; Hillocks 2006). Other broad areas of agreement include that it is important for students to read literary authors from a range of traditions and identity groups, that study

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of dramatic literature should involve some relation to performance, that at least some of the literature taught in school should relate to the experiences of the readers, and that students should read political and persuasive texts with a critical lens (although the definition of “critical” will vary widely). Unfortunately, the tendency of the field to focus more on its differences than on its commonalities has meant that those ancillary to the field have defined and structured what goes on in classrooms without its input. Process writing is sometimes difficult to reconcile with test preparation (but see Gere, Christenbury and Sassi 2005, for a counterargument), but many districts do expect English teachers to focus on preparing students for tests of “writing” based on multiplechoice editing items, or timed five-paragraph essays on generic themes (Hillocks 2002). Currently, teachers worry that the list of exemplar texts in the Common Core will become the curriculum (Watkins and Ostenson 2015), although the choice to stick with mostly public-domain writings for reasons of economy has resulted in a collection of authors from a narrow range of traditions, nationalities, genders, and ethnicities (CCSSI 2010, Appendix B). Our study of programs has illuminated for us both the variety and the commonalities of the field’s approaches to teaching English. In our focus groups, some speakers expressed frustration with seeing teacher candidates in the field expected to engage in practices that their professors, and even their mentor teachers, did not consider effective, but that fit the order of the day: the focus on test preparation, the codifying of “close reading” that divorces a text from the reader’s experience and prior reading and goes against what is known about how readers make meaning from text, and other formalist emphases that work against the generally constructivist values of teacher education and many practitioners. Teacher candidates need to leave their programs with a strong concept of sound instruction, and the ability to argue for it as knowledgeable professionals. Across the study, this concept seemed best to manifest in the concept of integrating content and was problematic across all the focal areas.

Recommendations for English education programs and methods course instructors: Integration is key for the future The concept of “integrating” the focal areas’ content into the methods course recurs throughout the study, with the paradigm often in tension with what is actually happening. For example, ideally, as defined in Chapter 7,

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effective integration of technology should support conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal and/or value-based knowledge specific to English. However, technology integration as defined in this instance and as described in the case that frames Chapter 7 is rare in the methods class or across a program, and its use in teaching practices dwindles as teacher candidates move into their field and student teaching placements. Jack Akers observes the following about the technology practices in the school district local to his university: Schools are really well-equipped like no other district I’ve ever seen. They have everything in the classroom, including their own laptop to run the SMART board and everything, but in English I rarely have an intern or a mentor teacher who actually used the technology. Something we do in our reading and writing classes is we talk about multimodal composition. We talk about a combination of text and image, whether it’s video or anything, but we do that on campus, but then I never see it in their practice, in part because their mentor teachers aren’t doing it, either.

In considering awareness versus application in technology integration, then, the picture is complicated by the fact that teacher candidates may use technology for their own learning (a form of application that contributes to increased awareness), but it is not clear that they will use in their own teaching. It can be shortsighted for educators to assume that transfer necessarily occurs. Hence, new concepts should be explicitly modeled in a teacher education program. For content standards to be effectively integrated into the methods course, teacher candidates should read them critically, discuss them as historical and political documents, return to them periodically throughout the semester to evaluate their alignment with assessment instruments, and work with them in their planning and/or teaching assignments. However, fewer than 7 percent of the syllabi collected indicated that standards were an integral part of the methods course, despite over 31 percent expecting teacher candidates to actively use them in planning and teaching the lesson they designed (see Chapter 4). Thus, lessons that inquire into the historical and critical nature of content standards would help situate them for teacher candidates who so easily accept them as the status quo because of the context under which they went to K-12 school. The teaching of ELLs and diverse students concerned our respondents and produced conflicting answers regarding program integration. Some thought their programs integrated this content while others noticed its absence. Others felt their programs did not have the expertise or opportunities to address this content. When teaching about ELLs and diverse students, then,

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our respondents thought that effective integration meant collaborating with school-based colleagues or experts from other university departments in both multicultural and bilingual/bicultural education, language diversity, culturally relevant pedagogy, and critical orientations toward diversity. Therefore, integrating this content included making use of established resources that teacher candidates would access throughout their teaching careers. However, similar to technology integration, when asked how this content was taught in a program, respondents indicated that it was taught overwhelmingly through readings, lecture, and discussion (see Chapter 6). Therefore, inviting colleagues with areas of expertise outside the traditional purview of English educators to collaborate in English education programs would bolster the knowledge of teacher candidates to work with ELLs and diverse learners. Doing so would also unify programs spread thinly across a university. At variance with the findings from the other focal areas, the teaching of reading and writing was central to the syllabi we collected, although, as discussed earlier, it was not consistently taught in an integrated manner. Only 29 percent of the methods syllabi examined combine the teaching of reading and writing and demonstrated a commitment to addressing this topic, which was far more so than with the other focal areas. Despite an emphasis on the teaching of reading and writing in the methods class, focus group participants reported that teacher candidates often did not see integrated reading and writing instruction in schools. Respondents indicated that in the future, programs should address the integration of both reading and writing in the methods course not as separate skills but as combined concepts that “support activities, discussions, and programs” to be effective. As highlighted throughout this book, the circumstances with which a program can integrate the five focal areas vary widely. Some programs lack the depth of expertise to provide highly specialized content not often taught to English educators in their Ph.D. programs, like providing methods specific to ELA content for teaching ELLs and diverse learners or in technology integration. Some programs struggle with redesign as standards and accreditation regulations change, often playing catch-up to meet those new regulations. Some programs are so widely dispersed across a university that not all of their instructors are attuned to its vision because of their employment status (e.g., part-time instructor versus tenure-stream faculty) or location on a campus. Viola Mayer, a methods instructor in an English department, pointed

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out in the focus group interviews that working across a university campus can cause tensions and challenges: Well, I don’t know if this is a challenge at your universities, but we have some degree of challenge working with the education department, in terms of who owns the students. I mean I think we’ve tried to be very—tried to work together with them, but periodically it feels like they kind of come up with a new vision for their department. And we are not always included in it. Sometimes I feel like we’re just fighting a big battle in terms of, well, who’s in charge of the field experience, and who should have oversight? I don’t know. It feels like every few years we’re dealing with a different dynamic.

Under these circumstances, it is difficult to provide the depth of learning in all focal areas that constitutes application or, optimally, integration. Anita Vogel expressed concerns with the breadth of all that has to be taught in a methods class to support teacher candidates: Yeah, I mean, the English methods class is so packed it’s impossible to know what to focus on. You do end up having to drop some things. . . . I don’t want technology to be the content. I’m not teaching technology. I’m teaching students how to become teachers who are teachers of English, and primarily teachers of students, right?

Vogel’s concern that content has to be dropped in deference to other content speaks to the limitations of teacher education programs being set in course credits per hour. In this way, we have witnessed that ELA methods course designs may aim to help teacher candidates become aware of new areas of emphasis. Yet, when considering the application of this new knowledge, courses and programs sometimes fall short (Caughlan et al. 2017) for the reasons detailed above. However, if collaboration between departmental homes and instructional staff occurred, integration would potentially be more successful.

Integrating content throughout English teacher education The field experience has been the main home for application when it is aligned with the methods course (see Chapter 3). It is encouraging to know that 73 percent of our respondents indicated that there was a field experience connected to their ELA methods course with placement locations and lengths varying widely. However, 41 percent of the syllabi collected for analysis did

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not indicate a concurrent field experience. This finding is likely related to the idiosyncratic nature of syllabi creation and/or a program’s assumption that its teacher candidates are aware of this requirement and the concurrent class is not listed because it has a different course number. Since we did not request syllabi for field experiences, but only content-specific methods courses, few respondents provided syllabi related to field courses separate from the methods course. As noted in Chapter 3, field experiences serve the purpose of bringing the complexity of the living K-12 classroom into the methods course, where teacher candidates learn about theory, research, and methods consistent with that theory and research. Therefore, it is in the field experience where this complexity might be experienced, and where teacher candidates might apply English content, learn the social context of schools, connect theory to practice, and engage in reflective practice. Anita Vogel observed that students can learn all they want in the methods class, but if they don’t have a guide in the classroom to help them develop those ideas and who are consistent with those ideas it’s not going to go anywhere. We have a real range of experience out in our classrooms in our county. We don’t necessarily have great places to put our [teacher candidates] in all cases, in even many cases. They’re getting really mixed messages between what we’re trying to show them in the university courses and what they’re seeing—what they consider the reality of teaching in the classroom they’re in, because that’s the only place they know. Those are the students and that’s the teacher that they rely on to shape their identity as what can—as teachers who know what could be done. For us, that’s a real challenge that we’re working on.

Tensions similar to those described in the other focal areas arose in the field experience responses. However, these tensions came together across the four other focal areas in the focus group conversations, since the field experience is where programs attempt to connect the theoretical to the practical and integrate content that crosses ELA. English teacher education programs depend upon partnerships with schools to provide these connections. Yet, many field experiences exist outside the English education program, often arranged through a separate office that places the teacher candidates in schools that do not always align with the mission and values taught in the methods courses. In some programs, the methods course might be in one university location while the field experience office is in another and the two entities never align. Thus, some programs have little to no control over the placement of their teacher candidates and/or the permanency and expertise of their field supervisors.

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English teachers vary in their allegiance to the various purposes of English as a subject: conveying the Western literary heritage, reading for fulfillment, providing opportunities for personal development and expression, acquiring academic literacies, engaging in critical literacies, etc. (see Chapter 1). Their local contexts may also be dependent on federal, state, and local mandates sustained by their community. Therefore, when teacher candidates are placed at various schools with different teachers, tensions can arise between what occurs and is valued at the field placement versus what is taught through the program. Moreover, finding mentor teachers has become problematic in these times of using high-stakes assessments to evaluate teachers and, increasingly, classroom teachers who could be effective mentors reject taking on a teacher candidate or are not allowed to do so by their administration. Steve Casey observed this problem, The state standards have affected that in the sense that many teachers who get the so-called students that matter in terms of testing will not take a chance on [a] student teacher because they’re afraid they will not be able to cover the content sufficiently. Since they’re held accountable for student performance, they want it to be on their terms, not on—they don’t want their reputation, which scores based on what a student teacher might’ve done or not done. That’s been a struggle for us.

Thus, under these circumstances, it can be difficult to place teacher candidates in quality field experiences. With some placements, they do not have a forum in which to implement the practices studied in the methods class, further creating tension between the university and the K-12 schools and disrupting the trajectory of learning possible to a future English teacher. This tension may play out in a teacher candidate’s inability to use that field experience to apply awareness of an issue to teaching practice, even as that application potentially refines the teacher candidate’s awareness. This inability to apply theory disrupts the educational sequence designed by a teacher education program. However, creating partnership schools could alleviate this tension. Our findings revealed that maintaining professional development partnership schools or coteaching partnerships allowed respondents to feel more positively about their field placements, and ultimately about aligning theory and practice. In the ELA program at Alice McNamara’s university, they have created a collaborative partnership that seems to be effective: One thing that I think we’ve sort of done to help deal with that challenge is we have a limited number of school districts where our students are placed. If the teachers and administrators who are in those sites want to work with our

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students, then both parties, the school districts and the university or the School of Ed, sign a contract saying that we’re going to talk to each other, we’re going to collaborate, we’re going to really try to create a legitimate partnership that works both directions.

If teacher candidates are to become effective teachers, they need the space and time to implement practices that align with the philosophies of teaching they develop through the program. This space and time should be provided in the field experience with mentors and field supervisors who are well versed in the mission and vision of the teacher education program, professionals who understand what resources are available and where priorities lie.

One size does not fit all: Strengthening core philosophies in ELA Although we indicate several areas where programs could be strengthened, all programs in English teacher education cannot look alike due to available resources, locations, and philosophies, nor should they. The United States is not monocultural despite some forces pushing that agenda (e.g., Hirsch 2010). English teacher education programs need to identify their strengths and decide where they can focus their resources to support teacher candidates to develop what they value about the profession—a profession that has continually redefined itself since its inception. With the deprofessionalization of teaching currently occurring across the United States and elsewhere, it is incumbent upon the field to control the conversation about what has value in the teaching of English. Many of the focus group participants observed that recruiting new English teachers and supporting experienced ones to stay in the profession has become problematic in today’s hostile environment toward them. Caroline Stewart explained, I keep saying things change, you can read Teacher Wars and you can see the really long view. I’m having a little trouble encouraging people to still be enthusiastic about teaching knowing that there are fewer places—but there are still places, but there are fewer of them, though, then there used to be—where teachers will have some agency. Where teachers have the opportunity to grow, where they have the opportunity to thrive rather than just to comply. That’s a conceptual challenge for me.

In a different focus group, Jack Akers echoed Stewart’s sentiments about how bleak the prospects are in recruiting new teachers to the profession, saying, “We’re

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also finding it difficult to recruit students, especially teachers of color, and that was true in Idaho. That was true in Washington as well, that because teachers get hammered, just get hammered and hammered and hammered, and so no wonder we’re not recruiting.” To forestall the drain on the profession, teacher educators need to model being advocates for teachers and sound teaching practices. This modeling of advocacy should support teacher candidates in advocating for themselves and their students. When teaching with standards, Amanda Reiter says, “I think it’s important to have conversations with new teachers about how to be advocates for themselves when implementation of the Common Core just does not make sound instructional sense and is not in the best service of the students.” This idea could cross to the other focal areas we highlight throughout this study. In identifying their strengths, English teacher education programs would provide awareness of the issues that drive the field of English teacher education, allowing teacher candidates to integrate those issues into their practices to support critical thinkers, speakers, writers, and readers. It is up to the English teacher educators in the field to locate the change within English teacher education itself, rather than assuming issues will be addressed in other areas of a program. Programs need to be better at defining their terms, describing their context and what they are committed to in practice, and aligning those experiences from methods courses to field experiences. As the field stands today in the United States, the forces external to the discipline are attempting to dictate assessments, books, concepts that should be taught, and to identify who are effective English teachers, and who are not. Joseph Shain explained, “The issue is now [we’re] having political individuals telling us what we have to teach, and then we have to make these changes or we lose accreditation.” In aligning programs with the philosophies and available resources that undergird them, the discipline can work toward reclaiming the conversation about quality English teacher education that has been usurped by entrepreneurial forces that lack the expertise or knowledge about effective English teaching practices. By identifying English teacher education’s content and practices that have caused tensions throughout the field, the discipline might find the means to take control of tomorrow rather than merely reacting to the external pressures that have come to define English teacher education program design. We maintain the hope that, in the future, English teachers can leave their programs with what Anthony Stolarz acknowledged as their ultimate goal, “We impress upon [the

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teacher candidates] that writing and reading and speaking and listening are all part of one continuum where young people are on a personal journey towards self-discovery. We want our students to know that learning for learning’s sake was once a real and significant calling card for our profession.” The vision of integrated and coherent programs under the control of empowered English educators may seem fanciful in current times, but is a view worth pursuing as educators continually redesign the English language arts.

Appendix A: Research Study Design: A Mixed-Methods Study of English Teacher Education

This appendix provides methodological information, including data collection and analysis, for the study reported in this book. Table AA.1 provides a timeline for data collection and analysis of the study. Table AA.1  Study timeline Year 1

Create a contact list of English educators across the United States Literature review of studies of the English language arts methods courses Questionnaire design and pretesting

Year 2

Questionnaire administration and collection of syllabi Questionnaire analysis

Year 3

Focus group question design and pretesting Focus group administration Syllabi and focus group analysis

Questionnaire development, data collection, and analysis The design for the questionnaire came out of meetings of the National Council of Teachers of English’s (NCTE) Conference on English Education (CEE) Commission on the Teaching of ELA Methods and from a working group of the current authors and interested colleagues who attended the 2011 biennial CEE Conference. In preparation for designing the questionnaire, we reviewed research and commentary on the English methods course since 1995 (Pasternak et al. 2014). Results from the CEE meetings and the literature review informed the questionnaire design and prompted our focus on five areas: field experience; preparing teachers for racial, cultural and linguistic diversity; new technologies and new literacies in English education; content-area literacy requirements; and K-12 content standards and associated assessments. To aid in questionnaire distribution, we developed a contact list of English educators and English teacher

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certification programs across the United States, as none was then available. Next, over the course of one academic year, we developed the questionnaire; piloted it for clarity, comprehensiveness, and length; and refined it.

Designing and refining the questionnaire The CEE Methods Commission National Survey consists of four sections (Caughlan et al. 2012). Section I includes questions on how programs are structured, questions on types of courses taken, the extent and nature of field experiences offered, what subject-specific methods courses are required and who teaches them, and what programs are offered among bachelor's, postbaccalaureate, master’s, and alternative routes to certification. Section II includes questions on how methods instructors address disciplinary literacy instruction, content-area standards, changing demographics, and changing technologies. Section III asks how programs respond to two types of changes: conceptual and curricular changes in the field (e.g., addressing the needs of English language learners [ELLs], responding to changing conceptions of teaching and learning) and political and institutional changes ranging from new program assessments to financial challenges. Section IV collects demographic information about our respondents. Self-administered over the internet, at its conclusion, respondents voluntarily uploaded their methods course syllabi for analysis and provided their contact information if they wished to participate in a follow-up focus group interview. The 90 questions in the questionnaire are a mixture of fixed (multiplechoice), partially structured, and open-ended items, some of which were randomly distributed among participants. We reduced response burden in two ways. First, the questionnaire includes contingency questions so that participants did not have to answer questions not relevant to their programs; for example, if a respondent’s institution certified teachers only at the bachelor’s level, they skipped the 33 questions about master’s, postbaccalaureate, and alternative programs. Considering the 90-item length of the questionnaire, we felt nonresponse due to response burden (Barrett 2008) outweighed the chance that skipped questions influenced error rates (Manski and Molinari 2008). Second, we wanted qualitative data on our five focal areas, but considered that answering a large number of open-ended questions would have resulted in additional nonresponse or noncompletion. Therefore, we randomly distributed four open-ended questions among

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respondents, shortening response to the questionnaire to 20–45 minutes, dependent on the levels of certification of a program (Blair, Czaja and Blair 2014; Sheehan 2001). We piloted the questionnaire with 17 volunteer English educators around the country from a variety of program types. They provided feedback on the experience of completing the questionnaire and the time it took to complete it, and remarked on specific questions they felt were unclear or repetitive. With this feedback, we were able to correct errors or clarify wordings, add or reduce choices as required, and improve the questionnaire before sending it out to our complete contact list. We also learned that, for the most part, respondents felt they understood our questions, and found the questionnaire worth their time.

Collecting participant contact information In order to obtain contact information for English teacher educators and programs, the authors, along with student research assistants and volunteer faculty from around the country, created a database of ELA teacher education programs in the United States. This list was developed by consulting state lists of accredited programs and the US Department of Education’s Title II lists of secondary ELA program (US Department of Education 2012). Each program’s website was consulted to collect contact information for representatives from the over 1,000 programs preparing English teacher candidates for certification. Only 747 of these provided identifiable contact information. Consistently, alternative programs not associated with universities, whether private or public, posted neither programmatic details nor the names of faculty or requirements. This condition limited the number of contacts available in particular states, such as Arkansas and Texas. The contact information collected through the process described above served as the basis for the distribution of the questionnaire. The NCTE central office formatted the questionnaire and distributed it via email. Over the course of the 2012–2013 academic year, we distributed the questionnaire three times to 942 faculty and instructors at 747 institutions. When we received more than one response from an institution, we kept the response that was most complete; with two complete responses, we used the response from the program director (AAPOR 2011). We discarded questionnaires that we deemed incomplete if the respondent did not finish at least the first part of

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Figure AA.1  National distribution of questionnaire respondents Table AA.2  Questionnaire data collection inventory US programs certifying English teachers (Title 11, 2010) Programs with identifiable contacts Questionnaires distributed Responses received Responses rejected due to duplication or lack of completion Responses analyzed (rate of 32.4%)

1085 747 942 269 27 242

Section 1, indicating the location of the methods course, the status of instructors, and the content of a methods course. The national distribution of questionnaire respondents can be seen in Figure AA.1. Table AA.2 provides an inventory of questionnaire data collection.

Limitations of the questionnaire Survey research has inherent limitations, as researchers cannot member-check anonymous results for construct validity (Blair, Czaja and Blair 2014). We

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addressed this shortcoming in two ways: through our pilot study and through multiple sources in the larger study. In response to the pilot, we rewrote questions, dropped those that were too confusing, and added ones deemed necessary from respondents’ remarks. Researchers must also interpret missing data (Weisberg 2005). Based on our pilot responses and the questionnaire literature, our three main reasons for missing data are survey fatigue, lack of knowledge in particular areas, and skipping questions with negative answers (Blair, Czaja and Blair 2014). Although few respondents missed any of the first set of questions describing methods course content and teaching, by the final section 37 participants had dropped out. Such survey fatigue does not explain all of the missing data. We found particular questions not answered within sections where most participants were continuing to answer questions; we discuss this phenomenon in the preceding chapters. In addition, our nonrespondents included all programs we contacted that lack subject-specific methods courses. One reason for nonresponse might be a perceived lack of salience on the part of those who rely on general secondary methods courses (Groves, Singer and Corning 2000). The fact that the questionnaire was sent out under the auspices of NCTE’s Conference on English Education might also have increased the odds that faculty teaching ELA methods courses would answer the questionnaire (Groves, Cialdini and Couper 1992). We also found that the owners of private teacher preparation programs and non-HEI-affiliated alternative programs did not follow norms of transparency common on university websites. Therefore, information about required courses, workshops, texts, and assessments for candidates was not evident on such websites, many of which only included contact information for application to the program. These websites also lacked any contact information for specialists in ELA. We included data from both partial and completed questionnaires in our analysis as we inferred from open-ended questions that respondents answered questions where they were sure of their answers. Only 205 of the 242 (see Table AA.2) respondents made it to the end of the questionnaire, not unusual in an instrument of this length (Blair, Czaja and Blair 2014; Porter 2004). The report of our findings contains the number of respondents for particular questions. The “missing data” indicated in table captions refers to participants who provided no response to the individual question or set of questions.

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Questionnaire analysis We conducted a descriptive analysis of quantitative data (Johnson and Christensen 2014). Frequency data were tabulated for all questions, and variables were added for “check all that apply” categories to gauge the number of options chosen. Tables were created to compare answers to each question across groups based on program structure: bachelor’s, postbaccalaureate, master’s, and alternative. Frequency data from the remaining areas of the questionnaire were computed using the Multiple Response tool in SPSS, allowing us to continually account for changing numbers of respondents. Responses to open-ended questions were coded inductively (Bogdan and Biklen 2011), with each author taking responsibility for particular sections of the questionnaire. Open-ended responses were not double-coded, and were primarily used to illuminate quantitative results, and to expand the possible categories for analysis for later stages of the larger research project. We conducted an inferential analysis of the data to answer questions related to programs’ decisions to commit resources to particular areas. The commitment of resources, which we called “commitment to change,” was operationalized by numerically weighting questionnaire responses according to the amount of faculty time and institutional resources likely involved in any particular choice (see discussion in Chapter 8). Commitment to change is a latent variable modeled by proxies (our composite variables) that accounts for the amount of time and energy program faculty choose to put into adopting changing conditions in five key domains: addressing literacy in English classes, addressing the needs of ELLs, connecting to field experiences, integrating technology into teaching, and addressing local and national K-12 content standards. These domains were measured by a series of composite variables that were intended to reflect differing amounts of faculty time and institutional resources committed to a domain. Structural equation modeling revealed that “commitment” was a real factor that could be measured; a range of measures (RMSEA = 0.006; Chi-Square at 254.04, p-value 0.00, others) indicated very good model fit. We hypothesized that external policy pressures would have the most impact on commitments, followed by philosophy, followed by program size. We had not collected data regarding program philosophy, so we chose methods course location (English versus education). Program size was indicated by number of completers, or number of teacher candidates who completed the program in 2011 in the Title II database. Policy pressures were

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indicated by a composite variable we developed from the external pressures questions, related to how programs responded to accreditation, changes in state regulations, and so on. In our statistical models, commitment served as our dependent variable (both overall commitment to change in our simultaneous model and commitments within topics in our unitary models), and methods course location (English/education), program size, and external pressures served as independent variables. We ran a series of simultaneous regressions: a model with

a.  English/education as the independent variable, and ELL, K-12 Standards, Technology, Literacy, and field experience composite scores as the five dependent variables; b.  Program size as the independent variable; c.  External pressures as the independent variable; d.  A simultaneous regression with all three independent variables and the five dependent variables. The structural equation modeling established that commitment was a stable factor that could be measured, but also indicated that location and program size did not explain much of the variance in overall commitment. However, the commitment construct did help to explain the variance in individual areas. The models that looked into the individual commitment composites provided more information, as discussed in Chapter 8.

Course syllabi data collection and analysis At the end of the questionnaire, participants were invited to submit a document containing any course syllabi for English language arts methods courses in their programs. Once the data collection period was completed, course syllabi were masked by graduate assistants, so that the researchers could not identify the institution from which they came. Each researcher analyzed each syllabus in light of a specific focus area to see where that syllabus could be placed on a four-point scale. This four-point scale allowed the researchers to use a similar method of analysis, but to apply that method to a specific area of focus. The scale used to evaluate each methods course syllabi can be found in Table AA.3.

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Table AA.3  English methods course syllabi evaluation scale Scale Scale position description position 1 2

3

4

No evidence exists in the course syllabus that the course addresses the focal topic under evaluation. The focal topic under evaluation is mentioned in the course description, and/or in the course objectives; the topic may also be mentioned in a calendar topic or set of readings; however, no evidence of active application other than response to course readings exists in the course syllabus. Evidence exists in the course syllabus that students apply their knowledge of the focal topic under evaluation at least once in planning or instruction or presentation; in addition, students participate in reading or talking about the topic. Evidence of the focal topic under evaluation is repeatedly found in the course syllabus, course objectives, calendar topics, and/or readings; in addition, students are required to apply their knowledge of the focal topic to more than one assignment.

Each syllabus was read by a researcher and a graduate assistant to determine its placement on the scale provided above, and their interrater reliability was checked; disagreements were resolved by recoding by the researchers. Subsequently, frequency counts of syllabi at each level of the rating scale were tabulated within each of the focus areas. These frequencies and percentages were used to support findings within each of the focus areas. The syllabus analysis enabled us to identify examples of syllabi at different levels of integration in order to inform our description of programs for each chapter. We used syllabi at level 4 to identify programs to use for the case studies that frame each chapter. We also used the syllabi as sources of assignments, assessments, and assigned readings throughout the book.

Focus group data collection and analysis Analysis of the questionnaire data led to focus group interviews (Vaughn, Schumm and Sinagub 1996). (See Table AA.1 for data collection timeline.) These additional data were collected to avoid the limitations of straight survey research, including discrepant interpretations of questions and respondent fatigue (Blair, Czaja and Blair 2014; Groves, Cialdini and Couper 1992; Weisberg 2005), and the distortions of studies relying overmuch on publicly available materials and syllabi (e.g., NCTQ 2014).

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Table AA.4  Focus group participants Participant pseudonym Charles Bates Joseph Shain Anita Vogel Alex Terrell Lois Tupper Alice McNamara Viola Mayer Jessica Mosconi Judy Filipek Steve Casey Jack Akers Anthony Stolarz Dave Sommer Amanda Reiter Caroline Stewart Sean Prinsen Kristine Poindexter Leila Small Gary Wilkerson Roxanne Hutson Lawrence LeBlanc Philip Towner

Type of institution Public Public Public Public Public Public Public Public Private Private Public Public Private Public Public Public Public Public Public Public Public Private

Annual number of institution’s completers in English education 17 6 5 12 3 24 33 29 27 13 24 10 18 43 21 34 19 6 8 6 27 25

Questionnaire respondents were invited to provide their names and contact information at the end of the questionnaire, if they wished to participate in the follow-up focus group interviews. Participants in the focus groups were chosen to reflect a range of geographical locations, program sizes, and English and education departments. The semi-structured interviews were conducted by graduate assistants to ensure that the authors did not influence the conversations of the colleagues they knew. Table AA.4 contains participants’ pseudonyms, a description of the type of institution they represented at the time of the focus group interview, and the annual number of that institution’s completers in English education, as an indicator of the program’s size. Participants in the focus groups were randomly assigned to focus group times and to different sets of questions. Focus groups were held using video conferencing technology and were recorded for the purposes of transcription.

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Each focus group began by asking participants to introduce themselves and provide information about their institutions and their involvement with methods course instruction. Subsequent questions were designed to gain deeper information from participants on a particular aspect of the study. For example, the focus group for technology included questions about participants’ philosophy regarding the integration of technology and literacy, the way in which programs address changes in information technology, and the types of technology used in the program. Focus groups that centered on diverse learners and ELLs, standards, field experiences, and instruction for literacy included questions similarly focused on the participants’ and programs’ philosophy, modes of instruction, course structures, and program values. Each focus group ended with a closing question that asked participants to address other conceptual or practical challenges to their programs or methods courses. Each focus group recording was transcribed. After transcription, data were submitted both to deductive coding, to better link to the questionnaire and syllabus analysis, and to inductive coding to uncover issues that were not explicitly addressed by the previous analyses. The focus group interviews were designed to illuminate issues behind tensions uncovered in prior steps of the project: tensions between English and education departments, between raising awareness of challenges and being able to apply knowledge related to focal topics in the classroom, and the time-honored tensions between tradition and reform. To develop the material presented in the book in individual chapters about focal topics, we synthesized the results of data analysis carried out on the individual portions of the study, including the results from analysis of the questionnaire, syllabi, and focus group interviews. This synthesis enabled us to find themes that crossed the types of data, and examples from programs and teacher educators that expressed these themes, resulting in the chapters representing the focal topics (see Chapters 3–8).

Appendix B: Books and Other Resources Appearing Five or More Times in Syllabus Collection

One phase of our study included collecting syllabi from ELA programs that taught an ELA-specific methods course. These courses included teaching composition, teaching literature, comprehensive methods, field experiences, etc. The list below compiled titles of required texts and authors that appeared five or more times, throughout the 136 syllabi that were collected. Most books that were featured five or more times reflected a comprehensive view of teaching English language arts. Particular texts and authors (e.g., Romano, Tovani) featured a particular aspect of the teaching of English language arts (e.g., writing, reading) and their texts presented theory and strategies for addressing these aspects. Texts that appeared five or more times tended to incorporate strategies and instructional techniques from a variety of theoretical perspectives, therefore aiming to address a seamless movement between theory and practice. It is worth noting that there was usually no unifying theoretical perspective developed in the texts and authors that appeared frequently on syllabi. This, to us, suggests that the history of ELA has produced competing paradigms that generally reside alongside each other within ELA (see Chapter 1). We found that within our collection of 136 syllabi, many drew upon more than two theoretical approaches, making it challenging to categorize the textbooks that were required. How, though, might a newcomer to the field of ELA make sense of what texts to draw upon for a methods course? This question has no easy answers, but as this book suggests, selection of texts and resources is intimately connected to an English teacher education program’s commitments—commitments aligned to theoretical perspectives and worldviews. Commitments also are reflective of resources at hand and the contextual situatedness of programs. As Chapter 8 describes, fluctuation in the content of the ELA methods class can be seen in how teacher educators design programs that vary in philosophies, missions, visions, values, and foci. Texts drawn upon, and content taught, is often dependent

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upon a program’s resources, philosophies, location, and breadth of expertise. We would encourage all English educators to examine their commitments in relation to their program’s resources, philosophies, and location as a way to become reflective and generative about future possibilities and directions, as well as to explore how the texts selected for the methods course support or work against those commitments. In looking through the list of dominant texts and authors, we considered how the field of ELA has increasingly valued and advocated for the inclusion of diverse voices in the field, yet there was little representation of racial or ethnic diversity in either the texts or authors most frequently assigned in the ELA methods course. Further, the books were largely written by former teachers currently working in teacher education, with some exceptions written by school-based teachers. Other resources that appeared five or more times included journals in the field of English language arts and current standards documents.

Required texts Books Anderson, J. (2004). Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer’s Workshop. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. Atwell, N. (1998). In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing, Reading and Learning, 2nd edn. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Beers, K. (2003). When Kids can’t Read what Teachers can do: A Guide for Teachers, 6-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Burke, J. (2007). The English Teacher’s Companion: A Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession, 3rd edn. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Burke, J. (2012). What’s the Big Idea?: Question-Driven Units to Motivate Reading, Writing, and Thinking, 1st edn. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Christenbury, L. (2006). Making the Journey: Being and Becoming a Teacher of English Language Arts, 3rd edn. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Christensen, L. (2000). Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Christensen, L. (2009). Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-imagining the Language Arts Classroom. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Gallagher, K. (2005). Teaching Adolescent Writers. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Appendix B

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Kirby, D. L. and Covitz, D. (2012). Inside Out: Strategies for Teaching Writing, 4th edn. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Maxwell, R. and Meiser, M. (2004). Teaching English in Middle and Secondary Schools, 4th edn. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Milner, J. O., Milner, L. M. and Mitchell, J. F. (2012). Bridging English, 5th Edn. Boston, MA: Pearson. Romano, T. (2000). Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Smagorinsky, P. (2008). Teaching English by Design: How to Create and Carry out Instructional Units. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Smagorinsky, P., Johannesson, L. R., Kahn, E. A. and McCann, T. M. (2010). The Dynamics of Writing Instruction: A Structured Process for Approach for Middle and High School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Tovani, C. (2000). I Read It, but I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2006). Understanding by Design, 2nd edn. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Journals and other resources College Composition and Communication Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts English Journal Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Literacy NCTE/IRA Standards for the English Language Arts

Authors appearing five or more times across collected syllabi The following authors appeared five or more times across the syllabi collection. These authors ranged from writers like Nancie Atwell, whose work has been important to ELA since the late 1980s, to more contemporary authors. Again, although the field of ELA has increasingly promoted the use of diverse authors, there was little evidence of that diversity in the writers included in this list. Furthermore, university professors dominate the lists. Other authors appearing five or more times included Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, whose work is peripheral to ELA but important to the area of classroom assessment and constructivist teaching, increasing areas of focus in ELA throughout the past two decades. Much like the texts required in ELA Methods courses listed above,

Appendix B

190

Table AB.1  Scholars and authors recurring five or more times across syllabi Alsup, Janet

Gallagher, Kelly

Romano, Tom

Anderson, Jeff

Hillocks, George, Jr.

Smagorinsky, Peter

Appleman, Deborah

Jago, Carol

Smith, Michael W.

Atwell, Nancie

Johannesson, Larry R.

Sommers, Nancy

Beach, Richard

Kahn, Elizabeth A.

Spandel, Vicki

Beers, Kylene

Kirby, Dawn

Tovani, Cris

Burke, Jim

Maxwell, Rhoda

Weaver, Constance

Bush, Jonathan

McCann, Thomas M.

Wiggins, Grant & McTighe, Jay

Christenbury, Leila

Meiser, Mary

Wilhelm, Jeffrey D.

Christensen, Linda

Milner, Joseph O.

Daniels, Harvey

Milner, Lucy F.

the authors listed below largely feature scholars whose work aims to present a holistic vision of teaching ELA or one particular aspect (e.g., the teaching of writing) of it.

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Index alternative certification in teacher education  18–19, 25–9, 30–1, 37–8, 75, 95 Applebee, Arthur  3, 7–14, 24, 72–5, 155, 167 application: awareness vs.  45–6, 161–9; to field experiences 39–42, 46–50, 56–63, 171–3; of standards to practice 79–81; to teaching diverse learners and English language learners 116, 120–3, 127–8; to teaching literacy 96–100; to teaching technology 133, 137, 153 assessment: in relation to the Common Core State Standards  73–5, 81; in relation to K12 content standards 68–72, 75–9; in relation to teacher education programs and external pressures 18–19, 71–2, 85–90 awareness: vs. application  45–6, 161–9; of standards 79–81; of teaching diverse learners and English language learners 116, 120–8; of teaching literacy 96–100; of teaching technology 133, 137, 153 close reading: and codification of  168; in the Common Core State Standards 74, 82–3, 88; in examinations 12 closed technology. See technology Common Core State Standards (CCSS)  17, 68–9, 70–5, 87–8; and English educators 90; influence on publishing 78 commitment to change  156–9 Committee of Ten  10 Committee on Standards  43 conceptual tools  93–4 Conference on English Education (CEE)  26, 112, 114 Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP)  18, 85, 117

course management systems (CMS). See technology cultural diversity  112–14 culturally relevant pedagogy  112–15, 170 culturally responsive teaching  113–15 curriculum. See English Dartmouth Seminar  13 demographic diversity: of US teachers  4, 15; of US students 15, 108 Dewey, John  10, 13 disciplinary literacy  16, 128 diverse learners  112–19 diversity: definitions of  59, 106; of geographical context, 123–4; of teachers and K12 student population, 15, 108 ELL/ ELLs. See English language learners emergency certification in teacher education  18–19, 25 English: as content  6–8, 10–11, 26, 32, 54–5; curriculum 7–8, 10–16, 82–3, 110, 112, 114, 143, 155; development of pedagogy and English teacher education 8–9, 12–15; L1 language and literature 6; scripted curriculum 54–5; standards and curriculum 70–2; testing and curriculum 61, 168 English language arts. See English English language arts content. See English English language arts methods course. See methods English language arts pedagogy. See English English language learners  108–19 English studies. See English English teacher education. See English ESL. See ELL/ELLs Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)  17

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external pressures: as related to program commitments and change  153–76; as related to standards 81, 85–6; as related to teacher licensure 86; as related to technology 151 field experience: awareness to application  62–3; definition 34, 43; fields in methods 49; practice teaching 36; purpose of field experience 50–1; and reading and writing 96; reflection 59; research connected to methods 47; and standards 76; and technology 138; “two-worlds” pitfall 49 Flowers Report. See Survey of the American Association of Teachers Colleges; Standards Committee Great books of Western culture  10 guidelines for the preparation of teachers of English. See NCTE intern. See student teaching International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE)  5 internship. See student teaching and field experience K-12 content standards. See standards linguistic diversity  108–19 literacy instruction: and close reading  74; and commitment to change 157; as compared with literature instruction 95; and technology 166 literature: and English teacher education  12–14; in the history of English 6–7, 10–11; in the methods course 95, 102–3, 112; as part of the discipline of English 3; and secondary English pedagogy 8; and teacher candidates 84 metacognition  25 methods course: and addressing standards  75–82; and awareness of diverse learners 124–5; and

awareness vs. application 161–6; and commitment to change 158; and connecting theory with practice 55–8; and connection to school contexts 58–9; content and program requirements 32–4; definition 4, 25–6; as exemplar of addressing cultural and linguistic diversity 108–12; as exemplar of intersection with field placement 40–2, 55; as exemplar of reading and writing instruction 91–3; as exemplar of recognition of licensing standards 67–9; as exemplar of technology integration 130–3; general vs. subject-areaspecific 24–5; and impact from standards 85–6; and instruction for technology integration 138–47; and integration with field experiences 35–7, 46–52, 60–2, 171–3; and integration of reading and writing instruction 98–9, 107; location 31; in the NCTE English Teacher Preparation Study 12; number of credit hours required 30–1; and preparation for teaching diverse learners and ELLs 115–24, 127–9; as primary site for English teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge 23; and program requirements for technology integration 137–9; and reading/writing instruction 95–7, 100–7; and recommendations for integration 168–71; and recommendations for technology integration 153; and reflection 59–60; and representation in course syllabi 159–61; and research on preparation for teaching reading and writing 93–4; and role in data collection 26–9; as situated in teacher education 24–5; in the Smagorinsky and Whiting study 4, 14–15 micro-teaching: in methods courses  32; prior to student teaching 36 multiculturalism  112–13, 163, 170

Index multimodality: in composition  169; literacies and technology integration 133; and marginalization 136; and multimedia software 135; through a wiki 94 multiple literacies. See technology National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE)  5 National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)  18, 117, 131 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)  5; establishment and influence on the field 10, 12, 16, 71–2; guidelines and standards 12–13, 68, 81, 89, 114, 126, 132–2, 136; research brief on 21st century literacies 146; studies by 10 National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ)  159, 184 National Joint Committee on the Reorganization of English in the High Schools (NJCRE)  10–11 New literacies. See technology New media. See technology New technologies. See technology No Child Left Behind (NCLB)  17, 68, 71, 73, 75, 77, 81, 82; and teacher candidates 84–5 open technology. See technology pastoral mission of education  166 pedagogical content knowledge  23–5, 32, 131 pedagogy: and the development of secondary English education  8–11; in relation to the methods course 31–2, 54 practicum. See student teaching and field experiences preservice teacher. See teacher candidate process writing. See writing Professional Development School  44, 57 racial, cultural and linguistic diversity  108–19

213

reading: as connected with technology  133–4, 146, 152; as integrated with writing instruction 98–9; as part of the history of English and English teacher education 6–16; and preparing teacher candidates to teach it 91–107, 166, 170; as a required methods course 33; in standards 69; in testing 71; as transformative and political 110; workshop in methods course 57 reading skills. See reading role of English teacher  115 secondary English education  3, 4, 7–11, 14–15 secondary school disciplines  24–5, 61 Smagorinsky, Peter  3–4, 14–15, 26, 94, 160 standards  67–90, 114, 126, 165; Common Core State Standards (CCSS) 17, 68–9, 70–5, 78, 87–8, 90; connecting teaching practice to K-12 content standards 5; and curriculum 70–2; effect of external pressures 85; evolution of standards in the US 70–5; national standards 154; professionalization 12; and publishing 17, 72; resistance to 68, 70, 72–5, 81, 89–90, 147, 166; standards-based teaching and assessment 71, 159, 160, 169; standards movements 16–19; and teacher candidates 84; and teacher education 75–80, 87–90; teaching standards 18, 117, 131; technology 131, 132, 136, 140, 147–8, 153; testing 61, 168 standards and assessment. See standards standards movement. See standards strategy instruction  101 student teaching: challenges  19; concurrent with methods 47, 49, 50, 52; context driving methods 57; context and placement 37, 44, 55–6, 59; practice before 36, 60, 67; and technology 153; terminology 34–5; time in the field 31, 34, 37–8, 44

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Survey of the American Association of Teachers Colleges (Flowers Report)  43 syllabi  26, 37, 39, 47, 51, 145, 159–61 teacher candidate. See student teaching teaching assistant/assistant teacher. See student teaching technology: closed  135, 138–9, 143; as content 32, 133, 135, 137–45, 151, 171; corporatization 151–2; course management system (CMS) 37, 39, 92, 139, 145–6, 160; and field placements 148–51; integration 15–16, 32, 46, 93, 130–53, 158–9, 160, 165, 169; integration defined 132–4, 168–9; new literacies and new media 4, 5, 16, 32, 86, 126, 133–7, 139, 141, 147, 166; open 132, 135, 138, 143; policies, 16–19, 146–7; standards 78, 147–8; for teaching and learning 132, 137–43, 160, 165, 169 theory: beliefs  45; and application 165, 172–3; as irrelevant 161; to practice 35, 45, 48, 55–9, 91, 95, 101, 103, 162; and practice divide 161 Traditions of English. See English

US Title II  158, 179, 182 utilitarian: approach  8, 166; vs. critique 81–2 Whiting, Melissa  3–4, 14–15, 26, 94, 160 writing: Common Core State Standards  72–5, 88, 168; as political act 110, process writing 168; reading and writing integration 91–3, 98–9,107, 170; reading and writing skills 95–7, 167, 170; Standards 73, 86; Writing instruction 69, 100–7, 130–1, 161, 166 writing and Common Core State Standards  9. See also writing writing instruction. See writing writing integration. See writing writing as political act. See writing writing process. See writing writing skills. See writing writing and standards. See writing young adult literature: course in  142; and literature circles 104; as major text 166; and online discussion 93; as shared text 106