Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices : Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts 9781787545380, 9781787545373, 9781787547193

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SELF-STUDY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERACY TEACHER EDUCATION PRACTICES

ADVANCES IN RESEARCH ON TEACHING Series Editor: Volumes 1
11: Jere Brophy Volumes 12
29: Stefinee Pinnegar Recent Volumes: Volume 19:

From Teacher Thinking to Teachers and Teaching: The Evolution of a Research Community

Volume 20:

Innovations in Science Teacher Education in the Asia Pacific

Volume 21:

Research on Preparing Preservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals

Volume 22A: International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part A) Volume 22B: International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part B) Volume 22C: International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part C) Volume 23:

Narrative Conceptions of Knowledge: Towards Understanding Teacher Attrition

Volume 24:

Research on Preparing Inservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals

Volume 25:

Exploring Pedagogies for Diverse Learners Online

Volume 26:

Knowing, Becoming, Doing as Teacher Educators: Identity, Intimate Scholarship, Inquiry

Volume 27:

Innovations in English Language Arts Teacher Education

Volume 28:

Crossroads of the Classroom: Narrative Intersections of Teacher Knowledge and Subject Matter

Volume 29:

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power

ADVANCES IN RESEARCH ON TEACHING VOLUME 30

SELF-STUDY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERACY TEACHER EDUCATION PRACTICES: CULTURALLY AND LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE CONTEXTS EDITED BY

JUDY SHARKEY University of New Hampshire, USA

MEGAN MADIGAN PEERCY University of Maryland, USA

United Kingdom
North America
Japan India
Malaysia
China

Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2018 Copyright r 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78754-538-0 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-78754-537-3 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-78754-719-3 (Epub) ISSN: 1479-3687 (Series)

ISOQAR certified Management System, awarded to Emerald for adherence to Environmental standard ISO 14001:2004. Certificate Number 1985 ISO 14001

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Stefinee Pinnegar for her enthusiastic support and encouragement for this volume. Generous and gracious with her time and insight, Stefinee believed in this project from the beginning. Thanks also to Mary Frances Rice for her willingness to review chapters (along with Stefinee) and her insightful comments. Sarah Jusseaume and Sumeyra Go¨k, doctoral students at the University of New Hampshire, provided excellent assistance with a variety of administrative and logistical tasks. Finally, thank you to all educators dedicated to improving their practices so that our schools and communities are more inclusive, participatory, and socially just.

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CONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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ENHANCING TEACHER EDUCATION FOR AN INCLUSIVE PLURALISTIC WORLD: A SHARED COMMITMENT ACROSS MULTIPLE LANDSCAPES Judy Sharkey and Megan Madigan Peercy

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PART I: TEACHER EDUCATOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN CULTURALLY AND LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE CONTEXTS: A LIFELONG PROCESS THE ACCIDENTAL TEACHER EDUCATOR: LEARNING TO BE A LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATOR WITHIN DIVERSE POPULATIONS Shawn Michael Bullock

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USING SELF-STUDY TO EXAMINE OUR RESEARCH AND TEACHING PRACTICES AS EFL TEACHER EDUCATORS IN COLOMBIA Amparo Clavijo Olarte and Maribel Ramı´rez Galindo

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GETTING DOWN TO IDENTITIES TO TRACE A NEW CAREER PATH: UNDERSTANDING NOVICE TEACHER EDUCATOR IDENTITIES IN MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION TEACHING Vy Dao, Scott Farver and Davena Jackson

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DISCURSIVE RESOURCES IN A MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION COURSE Laura C. Haniford and Brian Girard

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CONTENTS

DEVELOPING AN INQUIRY STANCE IN DIVERSE TEACHER CANDIDATES: A SELF-STUDY BY FOUR CULTURALLY, ETHNICALLY, AND LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE TEACHER EDUCATORS Amber Strong Makaiau, Karen Ragoonaden, Jessica Ching-Sze Wang and Lu Leng REFRAMING OUR USE OF VISUAL LITERACY THROUGH ACADEMIC DIVERSITY: A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY COLLABORATIVE SELF-STUDY Bethney Bergh, Christi Edge and Abby Cameron-Standerford

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PART II: PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES AND POLICIES RELATED TO LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT PREPARING TEACHERS FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS IN RURAL SETTINGS Kathleen Ann Ramos

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FACILITATING PRESERVICE TEACHERS’ TRANSFORMATION THROUGH INTERCULTURAL LEARNING: REFLECTIONS FROM A SELF-STUDY Roxanna M. Senyshyn

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IMPACTING CLASSROOMS AND OURSELVES: A SELF-STUDY INVESTIGATION OF OUR WORK WITH AND WITHIN AN INDIGENOUS PUEBLO COMMUNITY Cheryl Torrez and Marjori Krebs

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SIFTING THROUGH SHIFTING SANDS: CONFRONTING THE SELF IN TEACHING BILINGUAL EMIRATI PRESERVICE TEACHERS Patience A. Sowa

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Contents

CYCLES OF RESEARCH: A SELF-STUDY OF TEACHING RESEARCH IN A SHELTERED ENGLISH INSTRUCTION COURSE Elizabeth Robinson TOWARD A COHERENT APPROACH TO PREPARING MAINSTREAM TEACHERS TO TEACH LANGUAGE TO EMERGENT BILINGUAL LEARNERS: SELF-STUDY IN TESOL TEACHER EDUCATION Laura Schall-Leckrone, Lucy Bunning and Maria da Conceicao Athanassiou

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MOVING BEYOND “TRE`S BIEN”: EXAMINING TEACHER MEDIATION IN LESSON REHEARSALS Francis John Troyan and Megan Madigan Peercy

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INDEX

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Maria da Conceicao Athanassiou is Adjunct Faculty at the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She worked as a Bilingual Educator and ESL Practitioner in public schools. Her research focuses on preparing teachers to adopt a culturally responsive pedagogy that supports the needs of all diverse learners. Bethney Bergh is Associate Professor of Education at Northern Michigan University where she teaches online graduate courses in administration and supervision. Dr Bergh serves as Director of the Educational Administration and Education Specialist Programs in NMU’s School of Education, Leadership and Public Service. Her courses emphasize mindful and reflective practices as a means of enhancing the educational experiences of both teachers and students. Dr Bergh’s research interests include the development of school culture, ethical leadership, school safety, online teaching, and the use of self-study methodology to grow in one’s practices. Shawn Michael Bullock is Senior Lecturer in the History of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. Prior to this appointment, he was Associate Dean of Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Dr Bullock’s current research program explores the intersections between the history of education and teacher education. Lucy Bunning is Assistant Teaching Professor at NU Global at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. She has taught English for speakers of other languages in university, private, and community-based programs. Her research focuses on pedagogies that support multilingual learners joining new discourse communities. Abby Cameron-Standerford is Associate Professor of Education at Northern Michigan University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in special education and serves as Director for the Graduate Learning Disabilities program. Within the Learning Disabilities program, Dr Cameron-Standerford designs and teaches research-based courses on topics such as trends in special education, positive behavior supports, and methods for teaching content area subjects to students with learning disabilities. Her research interests include teacher preparation with purposeful and embedded universal design and xi

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modeling differentiated instruction, multimodal literacies, online learning, and self-study methodology as a framework to improve teaching and learning. Amparo Clavijo Olarte is Professor of Literacy at Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose´ de Caldas, Bogota´, Colombia. Her most recent research focuses on Community Based Pedagogies and Literacies in Language Teacher Education. She has published articles and book chapters about Colombian public school teachers using community pedagogies with students to inquire about social and cultural issues that affect their neighborhoods. Vy Dao is a Doctoral Candidate in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Employing individual-social dialectics, Vy investigates the pedagogy of teacher education, focusing on multicultural education teaching practices, both inside and outside the US contexts. Vy employs ethnography and auto-ethnography as methodological lenses in her research. Christi Edge is Associate Professor of Education at Northern Michigan University, where she teaches undergraduate secondary education methods courses, graduate K-12 reading and literacy courses, and where she is Extended Learning and Community Engagement Scholar. In 2016, she received the university’s Excellence in Teaching Award. Presently, she serves as the Self-study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices Secretary (2016
2018). Her research addresses teachers’ classroom literacy, teachers’ meaning making, becoming teachers, and learning from experience. Scott Farver is a Doctoral Candidate in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education at Michigan State University. His work focuses on critical examinations of race, especially Whiteness, within teaching and teacher education. Scott is a former 5th grade teacher and a returned Peace Corps volunteer. Brian Girard is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Secondary Education at The College of New Jersey. He earned an MA and PhD in Educational Studies from the University of Michigan. A former middle school teacher, his research focuses on teaching and learning history. Laura C. Haniford is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education, Educational Leadership and Policy at The University of New Mexico. A former middle school English teacher, her research focuses on the discursive construction of teacher identities, and the use of self-study methodology. Davena Jackson is a Doctoral Candidate in Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on critical examinations of racial literacy, race, racism, and antiblackness among teachers and students within teaching and English education. Davena is a former middle and high school English Teacher.

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Marjori Krebs is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education, Educational Leadership and Policy in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico. Dr Krebs teaches both undergraduate and graduate students in teacher preparation. Her research focuses on teacher preparation, service-learning, and project-based learning. Lu Leng is Assistant Professor in Department of English Education at Jinan University, China. She holds a PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dr Leng has done extensive research on Philosophy for Children approach to education and psychological and cultural analysis on educational/behavioral phenomenon. Megan Madigan Peercy is Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on preparation and development of teachers throughout their careers, as they work with linguistically and culturally diverse learners. Her recent research appears in Teaching and Teacher Education, Action in Teacher Education, and International Multilingual Research Journal. Karen Ragoonaden is Director of the Summer Institute in Education and Professional Development programs at The University of British Columbia. Her teaching, research, and service reflect her commitment to provide educational leadership in conceptualizing culturally responsive approaches, curriculum design, and innovation. Fluently bilingual in English and French, her academic interests span the breadth of scholarship of teaching and learning with a focus on French Education, Contemplative Practices, and Aboriginal Education. Bridging the gap between narrative inquiry and action research, her work in the area of Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) has proven to be an important component of developing practitioner inquiry. Maribel Ramı´ rez Galindo teaches English and Spanish Language Arts at Institucio´n Educativa Alfonso Lo´pez Pumarejo, Bogota´, Colombia. She is a former Lecturer in the MA in Applied Linguistics Program at Universidad Distrital Francisco Jose´ de Caldas, Bogota´, Colombia. As a PractitionerResearcher she focuses on critical literacies and community-based pedagogies. Kathleen Ann Ramos is Assistant Professor in George Mason University’s Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse and Exceptional Learners (TCLDEL) graduate program. A lifelong Educator, Kathy supports teachers nationally and internationally to serve English Learners (ELs) and their families with excellence and equity as culturally responsive, globally competent educators. Elizabeth Robinson is Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department and the director of the Education Studies Program at Suffolk University in Boston,

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Massachusetts. Her research focuses on preparing teachers to work with ELs the use of participatory research methods in schools, and teaching for justice. Laura Schall-Leckrone is Associate Professor and Director of TESOL and bilingual education at the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She worked as a Bilingual Educator in public schools. Her research focuses on preparing teachers to teach linguistically diverse students and pedagogy that promotes critical literacies. Roxanna M. Senyshyn is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics and Communication Arts and Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, Abington College, where she teaches TESOL education and intercultural communication courses. Her research interests include intercultural and transformative learning in teacher education, intercultural competencies for academic and professional purposes, and second language writing. Judy Sharkey is Associate Professor in the Education Department at the University of New Hampshire. Before becoming a teacher educator, she taught English as a foreign language for 10 years in countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Her research focuses on teacher and student learning in multilingual/pluricultural urban communities. Her recent work has appeared in Journal of Teacher Education and Language Teaching Research. She is the editor of the Teaching Issues section of TESOL Quarterly. Patience A. Sowa is Senior Research Education Analyst with Research Triangle Institute International’s (RTI) international education division. At RTI, she works in the areas of upper primary literacy in middle-to-low income countries. Prior to her appointment at RTI she was an Associate Professor of Teacher Education. She serves on the editorial review boards of Teaching and Teacher Education and The Reading Teacher. Amber Strong Makaiau is Director of Curriculum and Research at the University of Hawai‘i Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education and Associate Specialist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa College of Education Institute for Teacher Education Secondary Program. Cheryl Torrez is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education, Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of New Mexico. She taught elementary school for 11 years and served as Distinguished Teacher in Residence at CSU-Sacramento. Her research interests include teacher education, school-university partnerships, and clinical preparation. Francis John Troyan is Assistant Professor of World Language Education at The Ohio State University in Columbus. His research and teaching focus on language teacher development in immersion education and world language education in the United States and plurilingual education in France.

About the Authors

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Jessica Ching-Sze Wang is Full Professor at the School of Education, National Chiayi University (Taiwan). She is the author of John Dewey in China: To Teach and to Learn (2007). Her major work is to pre-service teachers for inquiry-based learning, to work with in-service teachers to implement philosophy for children Hawaii (p4cHI) in elementary schooling, and to innovate new ways to make p4c more attuned to societal challenges and cultural needs, which includes using Chinese philosophy to do p4c.

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ENHANCING TEACHER EDUCATION FOR AN INCLUSIVE PLURALISTIC WORLD: A SHARED COMMITMENT ACROSS MULTIPLE LANDSCAPES Judy Sharkey and Megan Madigan Peercy ABSTRACT In this chapter, we introduce readers to the volume, a collection of 13 inquiries that employ the methodology of self-study in teacher education practices (S-STEP) in culturally and linguistically diverse settings across the globe. After sharing the purpose and origins of the project, we provide an overview of the volume’s organization and brief summaries for each study. As a whole, the collection addresses two pressing yet interrelated challenges in teacher education research: understanding teacher educator development over the career span and how these scholar-practitioners prepare teachers for an increasingly diverse, mobile, and plurilingual world. Keywords: Self-study in teacher education practices (S-STEP); teacher education; cultural and linguistic diversity; second language teacher education (SLTE); teacher educator development

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 1
14 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030019

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INTRODUCTION An Indigenous Pueblo Community in New Mexico, USA; a women’s university in the United Arab Emirates; a collection of public schools in lower socioeconomic barrios in Bogota´, Colombia; an immigrant serving public school in northern Toronto, Canada; and an online community created by teacher educators in Canada, China, Japan, and Taiwan represent less than half of the contexts included in this volume, a testament to how Self-Study in Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) contributes to the knowledge base for teacher education in and with culturally and linguistically diverse communities and contexts. The 13 studies assembled here represent the inquiries of 26 teacher educators, from novice and mid-career to senior scholars with decades of experience. Seven chapters explicitly address issues and challenges within second language teacher education (SLTE), thereby addressing the paucity of S-STEP projects in the SLTE literature (Peercy & Sharkey, forthcoming). Consistent with the epistemological and methodological definitions and purposes of S-STEP, the collection reflects the scholarly inquiry of teacher educators dedicated to investigating and opening to public scrutiny their efforts to improve their practice while recognizing the impacts of such efforts on their students and teacher education overall (Hamilton, 1998; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015; Zeichner, 2007). S-STEP researchers are “focused on the nexus between public and private, theory and practice, research and pedagogy, self and other” (LaBoskey, 2004, p. 818). The common thread in these S-STEP inquiries is the explicit attention to the ways in which culture, language, and race interact and affect teaching and learning. Our purpose in producing this volume was to contribute to the S-STEP literature overall while also demonstrating the ways in which S-STEP studies address two pressing but interrelated issues in teacher education research: the need for greater attention to teacher educator development and pedagogies overall (e.g., Knight et al., 2014; Loughran, 2014), and the challenge of preparing teachers for increasingly diverse, mobile, and plurilingual schools and communities (Carter & Darling-Hammond, 2016; Faltis & Valde´s, 2016; Kramsch, 2014). The two principal audiences for this book are SLTE scholars who may be new to S-STEP, and S-STEP scholars who may be unfamiliar with current challenges and debates in second language teacher education. Addressing issues of social justice and diversity has a notable history in the S-STEP literature (e.g., Griffiths, Bass, Johnston, & Perselli, 2004; Kitchen, Tidwell, & Fitzgerald, 2016; Schulte, 2004; Tidwell & Fitzgerald, 2006), but this focus is more critical than ever given the rise of anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, and racist discourse, actions, and policies across the globe and particularly heightened by the 2016 US presidential campaign and results. Despite the ongoing tensions and debates regarding language and immigration policies, we know that the future is mobile, fluid, and multilingual (Paris & Alim, 2014).

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In the remaining sections of this introductory chapter, we share the origins and rationale for the volume, explain its significance and contribution to the larger knowledge base, and provide a brief overview of each chapter.

ROOTS OF THE PROJECT: BRIDGING TWO PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES This project emerged from a spring 2015 conversation that began on the teacher education interest section (TEIS) listserv in TESOL1 (Teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages), a major professional organization for teachers and researchers whose work is related to English language teaching and learning in all the myriad contexts in which these activities occur. We are not sure who posted the initial question soliciting interest in developing a colloquium on S-STEP but the conversation connected Megan and Judy, the coeditors of this volume. Our shared interests in SLTE and membership in the S-STEP Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) led to developing two academic presentations in the spring of 2016: “Using Self-Study to Advance Research in TESOL Teacher Education” at the TESOL Convention in Baltimore, Maryland; and a structured poster session titled “Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices to Prepare Teachers for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Democracies” at AERA’s Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. Our principal motivation in designing the TESOL colloquium was the absence of S-STEP in TESOL
both within the professional organization and in the leading research journals of the larger field of SLTE (e.g., TESOL Quarterly, Modern Language Journal) (Peercy & Sharkey, forthcoming). We found this absence a bit puzzling because of the strong traditions of recommending reflective practice and action research (AR) for second language teachers (e.g., Burns, 1999; Farrell, 2013); and, starting in the late 1990s and continuing into the twenty-first century, the shift away from teacher education as focused on methods and techniques (Kumaravadivelu, 2001, 2002) to the role of teachers as learners and the impact of contextual factors on their pedagogies and practice (Freeman & Johnson, 1998). Furthermore, there were increased calls for more research on the pedagogies of SLTE (Wright, 2010); and greater acceptance of qualitative research, including narrative inquiry (e.g., Barkhuizen, 2011), and autoethnography (e.g., Canagarajah, 2012, 2016). Even in a monograph devoted entirely to a need for reflexivity among second language teacher educators in how their selves/pedagogies affect their teacher learners (Edge, 2011), the S-STEP research and literature was absent. During these more than two plus decades, S-STEP was gaining increased legitimacy in the general teacher education research community. Internationally, its scholarship had been published in top-tier research journals (e.g., Educational Researcher; Review of Educational Research; Journal of Teacher Education), it had

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been included in major handbooks on teacher education (Cochran-Smith, Feiman-Nemser, McIntyre, & Demers, 2008; Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005), it had spawned a series of methods books (Lassonde, Galman, & Kosnik, 2009, Loughran, Hamilton, LaBoskey, & Russell, 2004; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009), and a S-STEP-focused peer-reviewed journal, Studying Teacher Education, was established in 2005. By 2015, S-STEP was the largest SIG in AERA (Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015). Given the acceptance of S-STEP in the international teacher education research community and the increased calls for research on SLTE pedagogies (Borg, 2015), we were convinced that TESOL and SLTE at large would benefit from engagement with self-study methodologies. Building on the momentum generated by the TESOL colloquium proposal, we put out a call on the AERA S-STEP SIG listserv for a structured poster session for the 2016 Annual Meeting, coincidentally, what would be the centennial of the organization. We broadened the focus beyond SLTE and linguistic diversity to better address the meeting’s theme, “Public Scholarship to Educate Diverse Democracies” (AERA, 2015). In their call for proposals, the 2016 Program Committee intentionally drew parallels between the social, economic, and political unrest that characterized both the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the ongoing responsibilities of schools to address the resulting discord and inequities in their communities. The turn of both millennia have witnessed “unprecedented global migration, demographic shifts …. [and] the challenge of nations being both democratic and diverse” (AERA, 2015, p. 1). Thus, the structured poster session directly addressed the meeting theme but in a way that also explicitly attended to issues of linguistic diversity. Just as we had hoped to bring S-STEP to the SLTE research community in the TESOL colloquium, here, we aimed to bring to the S-STEP community a greater awareness of specific linguistic and language issues present under the umbrella term, cultural and linguistic diversity. A critique of the efforts to better prepare teachers for the changing demographics in the USA and Canada has been that only cursory attention has been paid to the specific needs of emerging and developing bilingual learners (Ghosh & Galczynski, 2014; Lucas & Villegas, 2010). The TESOL and AERA sessions were well received and well attended. They stimulated engaging and generative conversations as well as new lines of collaborative inquiry. Following up on this positive response, we used the two listservs to post a call for proposals for this volume. The guidelines in the call were informed by two salient critiques of or challenges to S-STEP: (1) single self-studies must be more than just a story of the process and generate knowledge about practice (Loughran, 2010) and (2) collections of self-studies tend to lack evidence of how they (i.e., the individual volumes) address particular pressing issues in the larger teacher education research base (Zeichner, 2007). Accepting these challenges, we invited chapters that explicitly addressed two guiding questions: 1. How can self-study be named and used in an intentional way by education professionals committed to culturally, linguistically, and racially inclusive societies to inform their own

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practice, the practices of other teacher educators and teacher education programs, and the broader knowledge base of teacher education? 2. How can self-study be used by education professionals to examine teaching and policy issues that impact diverse student populations and communities?

The response was greater than expected and we could not accept all the submissions. In the end, five of the studies here are based on the 2016 presentations; two are from attendees; and the remaining six are from the open call.

ADDING TO THE KNOWLEDGE BASE: THEMES AND ORGANIZATION Since its earliest days, S-STEP has focused on the intersection of teacher educators’ development, their analysis of locally generated problems of practice, and the implications for novice teacher learning and teacher education scholarship (e.g., Guilfoyle, 1995; Korthagen, 1995). And, while S-STEP scholarship has become more accepted as its own type of research genre (e.g., Cochran-Smith, 2005; Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005), it is only more recently that the larger education research community has called for greater attention on teacher educators as learners, practitioners, and scholars. For example, in a recent special topic issue, the editors of the Journal of Teacher Education identified what they called a gap in the teacher education knowledge base, noting, “While we are making gains in building that specialized knowledge base for teacher preparation and professional development, we have neglected the study of [and by] teacher educators” (Knight et al., 2014, p. 268). While this is not a new phenomenon for S-STEP scholars (see e.g., Korthagen, 1995; Pinnegar & Russell, 1995), the call points to the valuable contribution S-STEP makes to the larger knowledge base. This S-STEP volume addresses the call put forth by Knight and her colleagues, focusing on teacher educator professional development as occurring across the career span but with a focus on cultural, racial, and linguistic diversity. The personal and the pedagogical are always inextricably linked in S-STEP but within any one project one might be placed in the foreground. This holds true for the two sections in this volume. Chapters two through seven attend to teacher educators’ professional development across the career span and at individual, institutional, and professional community levels. Pedagogical and curricular implications are clearly present, but they are not the focus or the initial motivation for the projects. The inquiries of these authors, working in rural, urban, and suburban contexts across the globe, are strong reminders that participatory, inclusive schools and communities are not possible “if those who teach the teachers themselves are not committed to the needs of a multicultural society and its aims” (Ghosh & Galczynski, 2014, p. 139). And, concomitant with that commitment is a willingness to critically examine our own lived

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experiences, social identities, ideologies, professional preparation, etc., and acknowledge how these inform our work with teacher learners (Carter & Darling-Hammond, 2016; Cochran-Smith, 2004; Sleeter & Owuor, 2011). These chapters address the noted gap in the research regarding the demographics of teacher educators and the assumptions regarding schooling and diversity that they bring to their practice and scholarship (Faltis & Valde´s, 2016). In chapters eight through fourteen, the starting points for the inquiries are responses to language policies and/or particular pedagogical strategies for second language(s) development. As a collection, these seven chapters address several recent calls in the SLTE research, and fall into two main categories: (1) questions regarding the in/adequacy of teacher educators and their programs to prepare all teachers for linguistically diverse student populations (Faltis & Valde´s, 2016; Lucas & Villegas, 2010) and (2) the overall dearth of research on SLTE practices (e.g., Johnson, 2015; Wright, 2010). It’s worth noting that in addition to more in-depth knowledge of language(s)
including overall metalinguistic knowledge and discipline-specific linguistic knowledge (e.g., the language of science, of mathematics), advocacy is recognized as an area warranting attention. As Faltis and Valde´s (2016) argue, little is known about how teacher educators advocate for and think about language, language acquisition, and bilingualism or about the instructional practices favored for preparing to teach in linguistically diverse classrooms. (p. 552)

Johnson’s (2015) call for more empirical research seems particularly apt for S-STEP inquiries and is indicative of the lack of knowledge regarding S-STEP in the major SLTE research venues. Johnson argues that SLTE is in danger of becoming irrelevant unless there is more research that focuses on the practices of SLT educators, in particular the dialogic interactions between teacher educators and teachers, where teacher educators can see, support, and enhance the professional development of L2 teachers. Exploring these dialogic interactions… not only opens up the practices of L2 teacher education for closer scrutiny, but it also holds teacher educators accountable to the L2 teachers with whom they work, and of course, the L2 students their teachers teach. (p. 515)

We now highlight key pieces of each chapter, attending to the aforementioned challenges and issues for teacher educators dedicated to preparing teachers for cultural and linguistically diverse contexts and communities.

TEACHER EDUCATOR DEVELOPMENT ACROSS THE CAREER SPAN: A LIFE-LONG PROCESS The six chapters in this section reflect professional development over decades of one’s career as well as in particular moments in time (e.g., a semester). The authors are a rich collection of novice and veteran voices in teacher education

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as well as in S-STEP. Assembled here are single, coauthored, and multiauthored studies featuring diary studies, reflective autobiographical essays, and classroom-based research. Shawn Michael Bullock, an experienced and well-known S-STEP researcher opens the volume with a thoughtful and thought-provoking inquiry into his “accidental” initiation into becoming a teacher educator. Early in his teaching career, for reasons explained in the chapter, Shawn leaves his position as a physics teacher to become a type of teacher leader providing secondary content teachers with language and literacy support. Throughout this two year experience at a public school in an immigrant receiving neighborhood in Toronto, he kept a journal, making daily reflections. Here, he revisits the journal entries, analyzing six episodes and coming to a new understanding of how his position and positioning within the school informed his perspective on diversity in the classroom. Shifting from an immigrant neighborhood in Toronto to working class barrios in Bogota´, Colombia, we learn how Amparo Clavijo Olarte and Maribel Ramı´ rez Galindo, two veteran language and literacy teacher educators, are using S-STEP to reflect on and problematize the intersection of their professional and personal journeys as English as foreign language (EFL) learners and teachers. By bringing a S-STEP lens to an analysis of their professional development, these two long-time collaborators were able to identify a critical contradiction or inconsistency in their practices. A combination of collaborative inquiries into community-based pedagogies in the name of valuing local knowledge, and learning about S-STEP has led to a deeper understanding of how their SLTE graduate work in the USA and UK, more than 25 years ago, may have led to an unconscious privileging of theories and pedagogies produced outside of Colombia. Whereas the chapters two and three offer compelling stories from veteran educators tracing the beginning influences of their careers to current practices and inquiries, the next two chapters offer important insights and results from novice teacher educators. Vy Dao, Scott Farver, and Davena Jackson are doctoral students charged with teaching multicultural education courses to preservice teachers. These three novice teacher educators share a fascinating collaborative self-study investigating the interplay of professional identity construction and the contexts and content of teaching a multicultural education course. These authors rightly highlight how the diversity among them
race, language, gender, and national origin
and the sharing of their individual and collective processing of their teaching enrich their learning. A critical contribution of their S-STEP project is the call for greater attention on supporting our novice teacher educators, especially those who may be more vulnerable to critique due to power dynamics in their settings. Contexts always affect teaching and learning processes. In their chapter, Laura C. Haniford and Brian Girard use discourse analysis to identify some troubling assumptions they made about the contexts of their multicultural

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education courses. Laura and Brian became professional colleagues as doctoral students in the same institution. After graduation, as assistant professors at different universities, they design a collaborative inquiry based on teaching the same multicultural education course at their respective institutions. Locating their project within the discourse of the demographic imperative
where the majority of the literature assumes preparation for diversity means preparing White, female teaching candidates, the research pair identify critical insights regarding their assumptions and practices regarding race and class. Amber Strong Makaiau, Karen Ragoonaden, Jessica Ching-Sze Wang, and Lu Leng designed an international collaboration using online journaling to facilitate their inquiry across countries and continents: Canada, China, Japan, and Taiwan. The focus of their project was to investigate their understanding and use of inquiry as stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) across their culturally and linguistically diverse contexts. Their chapter is a reminder of the power of participating in collaborative self-studies as a professional activity that is affirming and challenging. We realized that each of us, despite our unique cultural contexts, all faced challenges in implementing inquiry as stance…[W]e learned that we need each other, and the diverse perspectives we have to offer… help to disentangle our most challenging professional puzzles.

Bethney Bergh, Christi Edge, and Abby Cameron-Standerford raise an interesting challenge for readers of a volume dedicated to the professional development of teacher educators serving culturally and linguistically diverse learners. This trio of researchers self-identify as White, English-speaking females and teach at a predominantly White institution in a rural area of the USA. Faltis and Valde´s (2016) argue that it is likely that teacher educators with this profile and working in isolation from more linguistically and culturally diverse populations depend heavily on the unexamined cultural scripts regarding schooling and language that privilege their monolingual English experiences. However, Bethney, Christi, and Abby make a case that they were socialized into different disciplinary cultures (of educational leadership, literacy, and special education) and this allowed them to explain differing, even opposing, interpretations of a student’s learning. From their inquiry and resultant insights, they argue that they are better able to engage preservice teachers in their context in discussions regarding cultural diversity.

PEDAGOGIES AND POLICIES RELATED TO IMPROVING AND SUSTAINING LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT The next seven chapters focus more explicitly on particular practices and/or policies related to cultural and linguistic diversity. The first two projects in this

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section highlight the distinction between S-STEP inquiries that focus on the overall professional development and learning of teacher educators, and inquiries that focus on developing particular pedagogies or in response to policies. For example, the context challenge raised by Bethney, Christi, and Abby is relevant to inquiries of Kathleen Ann Ramos and Roxanna M. Senyshyn (chapters “Preparing Teachers for English Learners in Rural Settings” and “Facilitating Preservice Teachers’ Transformation through Intercultural Learning: Reflections from a Self-study,” respectively). Both are housed in teacher education programs located in rural areas with small to nonexistent English language learning populations in the nearby K-12 schools. However, Kathleen and Roxanna teach required courses designed to prepare K-12 teachers for linguistically diverse classrooms. Kathleen designed a self-study focused on a series of assignments and activities she created to develop her students’ understanding of academic language development. Thinking creatively, she partners with the office of international education on her campus and pairs her students with students enrolled in the English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) program. Thus, she is able to create a more authentic experience for her teacher candidates as they are charged with helping the international students read, process, and discuss challenging academic texts. The assignments intentionally aim to develop her teacher learners’ metalinguistic knowledge and understanding of academic literacies. She raises critical questions for her own response to mandated coursework and implications for future actions. Roxanna Senyshyn also designs a self-study related to the pedagogical intervention she designed for her teacher education students. She also partners with an international student organization to create meaningful exchanges between the groups of students. However, the purpose of those activities is to develop intercultural awareness and competencies in her teacher learners. For readers new to S-STEP, Roxanna’s chapter is an excellent example of the difference between AR and self-study. Roxanna provides an overview of an AR project she did on her class and the transformative learning theory she used to analyze student learning. In the self-study she shares in this volume, she asks herself if she is demonstrating evidence of the types of transformative learning she expects of her students. A powerful critical incident she identifies and analyzes stems from a student challenging her position on bilingual education, suggesting that Roxanna is biased because of her immigrant/bilingual identity. “Why does it matter if the Pueblo language continues, so few people speak it?” This is the critical question that sets off the S-STEP inquiry pursued by Cheryl Torrez and Marjori Krebs, two teacher educators working at University of New Mexico but involved in supporting the preservation of Pueblo language and culture in the schools that serve these communities. The project reported here is part of a larger, multiyear collaboration between several partners. The focus of this chapter is to share the deep impact that learning about the Pueblo
through multiple visits and community experiences
has had on Cheryl and Marjori’s larger approach to validating and supporting students’

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cultures in their teacher education programs. It is also an illustrative response to Faltis and Valde´s’ (2016) call for more examples of teacher educator advocacy for linguistic diversity and bilingualism. We would also argue that teacher educators dedicated to this type of advocacy would benefit from following Cheryl and Marjori’s example of seeing and hearing students in the contexts where they thrive and feel a sense of belonging. Maintaining and supporting students’ ongoing development of their home languages and cultures is integral to teacher education in inclusive, pluralistic societies, and research shows that when students feel their social identities are valued and welcomed they fare better in schools (Osterman, 2000; Sua´rezOrozco, Sua´rez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2008). This holds true no matter where teaching and learning of languages takes place. Patience A. Sowa shares her experience teaching EFL to prospective EFL teachers at a women’s university in the United Arab Emirates. In her S-STEP project, Patience shares how she reframes and redesigns her English courses to more explicitly and actively promote and value her students’ Arabic language and cultures. Although she had always professed strong support for bi-/multilingualism and an additive approach to English learning, Patience realized that she was unintentionally conveying an English-only sentiment through her syllabi and assignments. Working with at critical friend, Patience began analyzing her course documents and “recognized the contradictions in the ways I was teaching.” Patience’s inquiry is a rich example of S-STEP as critical reflective practice and demonstrates how teachers can support students’ bilingualism even if they do not speak the students’ language(s). The next two chapters are two very different S-STEP projects inspired by a state mandate. In 2013, in response to a US Department of Justice finding that English learners in Massachusetts state public schools were being underserved, the state’s department of education mandated that all PK-12 teachers, preservice and in-service, take a course on structured English immersion (SEI). The state outlined the content of the course and required teacher education programs to submit syllabi for state-level approval before they could offer the courses. Elizabeth Robinson, based at a small college in Boston, designed a self-study, using two cycles of research, to analyze how she could achieve research praxis through her iteration of the SEI course. For her, it was critical that preservice and in-service teachers still brought an appreciation of and facility with research to their development and that they develop the appropriate skills to advocate for their English learning students. In nearby Cambridge, Laura Schall-Leckrone, Lucy Bunning, and Maria da Conceicao Athanassiou designed a multi-year collaborative S-STEP inquiry using mixed methods to explore the tensions, challenges, and opportunities of designing and delivering the SEI course. Their particular content focus was on teachers’ learning related to understanding academic language and discourse. Like many SLTE advocates in the state, Laura, Lucy, and Maria were initially happy that all teachers would be required to receive some type of training in order to better serve the

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growing emergent and developing bilingual population in their schools. However, they were concerned that one course would be inadequate and the English-only focus did not allow a space for recognizing students’ linguistic assets. S-STEP research design tends to be principally qualitative. Laura and her colleagues’ use of mixed methods is a valuable contribution to the S-STEP research methodology. Finally, Francis John Troyan and Megan Madigan Peercy share their research on their collaborative efforts to understand how teacher educators develop the dialogic mediation skills that foster teacher learning within microteaching opportunities. Drawing on sociocultural learning theories and informed by the growing trend in practice-based teacher education, they record and analyze Francis’ attempts to mediate the learning of a focal participant in his world language teaching methods class. Their collaborative study is an excellent example of how S-STEP can be used to address particular challenges from the larger research community. We see this chapter as a clear response to Johnson’s (2015) call for more empirical research on SLTE practices.

CLOSING: READ FOR BRIDGES ACROSS THE LANDSCAPES! We divided the 13 chapters into two sections: (1) focused on how teacher educators develop over the career span and (2) particular pedagogical practices. That choice was guided by the goal to show how this volume was cognizant of the critiques of or challenges to S-STEP collections. We argue that the first section is a rich contribution to the literature on the professional development of teacher educators committed to diversity in education. Novice teacher educators may be inspired by reading the histories of senior colleagues who, in turn, may now be raising questions regarding the adequacy of the support systems in place for their junior colleagues. The second section shares detailed accounts of specific pedagogical practices and approaches in courses and programs that are preparing teachers for diverse schools and communities. However, that was just one of several possible ways to organize the collection. We encourage readers to see the connections and cross-cutting themes present across the inquiries: what is the role of place? How does teaching in rural vs urban contexts raise different questions regarding diversity? How might Bethney, Christi, and Abby be inspired by reading Kathleen and Roxanna’s chapters? And vice versa? How does the intersectionality of the identities of preservice teachers and teacher educators affect individual and shared learning? What kinds of conversations will be generated between Amparo and Maribel thinking about their EFL training as they read and consider Patience’s experience preparing EFL teachers in the United Arab Emirates?

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We invite readers to be thinking of numerous bridges and connections as they read the chapters assembled here. And, most importantly, think about your own projects, current and future, and how the ideas generated can be part of that conversation.

NOTE 1. As the full name applies, TESOL International Association has an international scope and membership. It is based in the US. A similar professional organization based in the UK is the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL).

REFERENCES AERA. (2015). American Educational Research Association 2016 annual meeting call for proposals. Retrieved from http://www.aera.net/Portals/38/docs/Annual_Meeting/2016%20Annual% 20Meeting/2016AM_CallforSubmissions_UPDATED.pdf Barkhuizen, G. (2011). Narrative knowledging in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 45(3), 391
414. Borg, S. (2015). Researching language teacher education. In B. Paltridge & A. Phakiti (Eds.), Research methods in applied linguistics (pp. 580
595). New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Burns, A. (2009). Collaborative action research for English language teachers. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Canagarajah, S. (2012). Teacher development in a global profession: An autoethnography. TESOL Quarterly, 46(2), 258
279. Canagarajah, S. (2016). TESOL as a professional community: A half-century of pedagogy, research, and theory. TESOL Quarterly, 50(1), 7
41. Carter, P., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2016). Teaching diverse learners. In D. Gitomer & C. Bell (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching (pp. 593
637). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity, and social justice in teacher education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Cochran-Smith, M. (2005). Teacher educators as researchers: Multiple perspectives. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(2), 219
225. Cochran-Smith, M., Feiman-Nemser, S., McIntyre, D., & Demers, K. (2008). Handbook of research on teacher education: Enduring questions in changing contexts. New York, NY: Routledge. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (2009). Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation. New York: Teachers College Press. Cochran-Smith, M., & Zeichner, K. (2005). Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education. New York, NY: Routledge. Edge, J. (2011). The reflexive teacher educator in TESOL: Roots and wings. New York, NY: Routledge. Faltis, C., & Valde´s, G. (2016). Preparing teachers for teaching in and advocating for linguistically diverse classrooms: A vade mecum for teacher educators. In D. Gitomer & C. Bell (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching (pp. 549
592). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Farrell, T. (2013). Reflective practice in ESL teacher development groups: From practices to principles. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Freeman, D., & Johnson, K. E. (1998). Reconceptualizing the knowledge-base of language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 32(3), 397
417. Ghosh, R., & Galczynski, M. (2014). Redefining multicultural education: Inclusion and the right to be different (3rd ed.). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. Griffiths, M., Bass, L., Johnston, M., & Perselli, V. (2004). Knowledge and social justice in selfstudy. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study practices (pp. 651
707). Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Guilfoyle, K. (1995). Constructing the meaning of teacher educator: The struggle to learn the roles. Teacher Education Quarterly, 22(3), 11
26. Hamilton, M. (1998). Reconceptualizing teaching practice: Self-study in teacher education. New York, NY: Routledge. Johnson, K. E. (2015). Reclaiming the relevance of L2 teacher education. Modern Language Journal, 99(3), 515
525. Kitchen, J., Tidwell, D., & Fitzgerald, L. (2016). Self-study and diversity II: Inclusive teacher education for a diverse world. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Knight, S., Lloyd, G., Arbaugh, F., Gamson, D., McDonald, S., & Nolan, J. (2014). Professional development and practices of teacher educators. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 268
271. Korthagen, F. (1995). A reflection on five reflective accounts. Teacher Education Quarterly, 22(3), 99
105. Kramsch, C. (2014). Teaching foreign languages in an era of globalization: Introduction. Modern Language Journal, 98, 296
311. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2001). Toward a postmethod pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 35(4), 537
560. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2002). Beyond methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. LaBoskey, V. K. (2004). The methodology of self-study and its theoretical underpinnings. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study practices (pp. 817
869). Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lassonde, C., Galman, S., & Kosnik, C. (2009). Self-study research methodologies for teacher educators. Boston, MA: Sense Publishers. Loughran, J. (2010). Seeking knowledge for teaching teaching: Moving beyond stories. Studying Teacher Education, 6(3), 221
226. Loughran, J. (2014). Professionally developing as a teacher educator. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 271
283. Loughran, J., Hamilton, M. L., LaBoskey, V. K., & Russell, T. (2004). International handbook of self-study practices. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic. Lucas, T., & Villegas, A. (2010). The missing piece in teacher education: The preparation of linguistically responsive teachers. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 109(2), 297
318. Osterman, K. F. (2000). Students’ need for belonging in the school community. Review of Educational Research, 70, 323
367. Paris, D., & Alim, S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85
100. Peercy, M., & Sharkey, J. (forthcoming). Self-study and teaching English to speakers of other languages. In A. Berry, S. Bullock, A. Crowe, H. Gujo´nsdo´ttir, J. Kitchen, & M. Taylor (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education (2nd ed.). Rotterdam: Springer. Pinnegar, S., & Hamilton, M. L. (2009). Self-study of practice as a genre of qualitative research. Dordrecht: Springer. Pinnegar, S., & Russell, T. (1995). Introduction: Self-study and living educational theory. Teacher Education Quarterly, 22(3), 5
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Schulte, A. (2004). Examples of practice: Professional knowledge and self-study in multicultural teacher education. In J. Loughran, M. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study practices (pp. 709
742). Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic. Sleeter, C., & Owuor, J. (2011). Research on the impact of teacher preparation to teach diverse students: The research we have and the research we need. Action in Teacher Education, 33, 524
536. doi:10.1080/01626620.2011.627045 Sua´rez-Orozco, C., Sua´rez-Orozco, M., & Todorova, I. (2008). Learning in a new land: Immigrant students in American society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tidwell, D., & Fitzgerald, L. (2006). Self-study and diversity. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Vanassche, E., & Kelchtermans, G. (2015). The state of the art in self-study of teacher education practices: A systematic literature review. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(4), 508
528. Wright, T. (2010). Second language teacher education: Review of recent research on practice. Language Teaching, 43, 259
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46.

PART I: TEACHER EDUCATOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN CULTURALLY AND LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE CONTEXTS: A LIFELONG PROCESS

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THE ACCIDENTAL TEACHER EDUCATOR: LEARNING TO BE A LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATOR WITHIN DIVERSE POPULATIONS Shawn Michael Bullock ABSTRACT After spending three years as a secondary science teacher in an affluent Toronto neighborhood, I was surprisingly hired as a Literacy Teacher in my old school district just north of the city. I did not have a regular classroom; instead I was expected to work with as many teachers as I could within a cluster of elementary and secondary schools to, broadly speaking, pay explicit attention to the role of language in learning within the content areas. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze and interpret this part of my educational career by engaging in self-study via personal history; a personal history refers to becoming an accidental teacher educator, by virtue of a unique role as an in-service teacher educator with a language and literacy portfolio. Journals kept over two years reveal that, in many ways, I was a teacher educator before I knew what the term meant and that developing a pedagogy of teacher education with a focus on literacy made me increasingly frustrated with the over-simplified ways in which my school district framed issues of diversity. Keywords: Literacy teacher; language teacher; self-study; language teacher education; personal history self-study

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 17
36 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030001

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Since beginning my career as an educator formally in 2000, I have primarily self-identified as a physicist who happens to be teaching and researching within the discipline of education. When speaking with physicist colleagues informally and at science or history of science conferences, I tend to argue that physics pedagogy is a branch of both theoretical and applied physics. To educationists, I state that physics just so happens to be the curricular vehicle through which I explore the history, philosophy, and practice of education. Both sets of statements are true, and both are somewhat limited. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that I am a physicist who went on to receive an education in both the social sciences (education) and the humanities (history and philosophy of science) at the graduate level. Notably, absent from this narrative is the professional education I received by virtue of participating in a two-year pilot program nearly 15 years ago when I was a K-12 teacher working on my first master’s degree, which was in education. I became, accidentally, a language teacher educator before I even understood what a teacher educator was supposed to do, in an environment that favored a district-wide initiative in literacy to address the needs of its diverse populations. In this chapter, I will analyze the ways in which these early formative experiences enacting a pedagogy of language and literacy education contributed to my overall pedagogy of teacher education that resonates to this day in my role as an associate professor of science and technology education. I am well aware of the ways in which my identity tends to be constructed, almost automatically, by many academics and nonacademics alike
it might seem strange for a physicist to contribute to a book such as this one. It is often assumed that I favor statistical methods to answer questions about education, that I am stalwart in my commitment to modernism, that I am utopian in enthusiasm about education and technology, particularly about the recent moves toward “Big Data,” and that I have little background in considering humanistic concerns in education. As a physicist, after all, I must be aligned with the caricature of the (note the singular) scientific method espoused in textbooks and in media. That I favor a cluster of methodologies grouped as “qualitative” in my approach to education, that I argue physics did away with modernism a century ago, and that I approach my work in education and technology with a historical (and thus skeptical) lens would be a surprise to many. That I attribute a great deal of my thinking about pedagogy to the two years I spent as a language and literacy teacher might be downright shocking
both to colleagues in science and in language and literacy cognates in education. Although I have long kept a general eye on the field of language and literacy education since beginning graduate studies, a few recent events have encouraged me to begin to examine rigorously the role that early experiences as a literacy teacher have had on my pedagogy of teacher education. Specifically, my work with a professor of language and literacy education as a critical friend

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(Schuck & Russell, 2005) to help consider the ways in which digital technologies might be meaningfully utilized within an elementary literacy methods course encouraged me to consider more recent academic literature in the field (Kosnik, Menna, & Bullock, 2012). An invitation to assume this role at a small conference of literacy and teacher education scholars from around the world provided a further recent introduction into relevant scholarship and afforded an opportunity to have wide-ranging discussions with experts in the field (Bullock, 2016). Finally, a recent critical friendship with Megan Madigan Peercy has encouraged me to think about the ways in which my prior identity as a literacy teacher informed both my nascent pedagogy of teacher education and my existing pedagogy of education using perspectives of sociocritical literacy theory, the Third Space, and the idea of core practices in literacy education (Gutie´rrez, Baquedano-Lo´pez, & Tejeda, 1999; Gutie´rrez, 2008; Peercy, 2014; Peercy & Troyan, 2017). The purpose of this chapter is to understand the underlying hybridity of my pedagogy of teacher education by recognizing and interpreting its formation in the crucible of my experiences as a literacy teacher, experiences that I briefly mentioned in Bullock (2007) but never approached with a theoretical lens. In so doing, I use Samaras, Hicks, and Berger’s (2004) approach to selfstudy via personal history. First, I provide a context for understanding my transition from physics teacher to literacy teacher in my final two years of work as a K-12 teacher. Then, I outline the methodological underpinnings of self-study that guide this chapter and the specific methods that I use to understand my self-in-relation to past practice as a literacy teacher and as a current teacher educator. I present data representing six episodes in my thinking about who I am and how I wish to teach. Finally, I will offer comments about the ways in which my self-study has led to new understandings of how I learned to be a language and literacy teacher working with diverse populations, new understandings of the role of personal history self-study, and the ways in which these ideas might shed light on why it took me so long to explore the influences of these experiences on my pedagogy of teacher education. In many ways, the difficulty of using the term “language and literacy teacher” to describe my work during this time helps to underscore the complexities of the demands that were placed on me, and that I placed on myself. The school district settled on using the term “literacy teacher,” because funding for the roles were linked to the provincial focus on literacy across the curriculum and a high-stakes, newly implemented literacy test in Grade 10. I preferred the term “language teacher,” although I have long believed that all teachers are language teachers, not just those who teach English or other modern languages within the Canadian school system. The chapter highlights issues of both hybridity in practice and hybridity in identity
both of which turn out to be crucial, if heretofore tacit, components of my pedagogy of teacher education.

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FROM PHYSICS TEACHER TO LANGUAGE AND LITERACY TEACHER I did not seek out a role as a language and literacy teacher; I was quite happy to teach physics in both the K-12 system full time and community college system part time in my early years after completing undergraduate degrees in physics and in education. Immediately following graduation, I obtained a job that was, by most standards, a “dream” position for a new physics teacher
a timetable that included almost entirely senior physics courses, with a few Grade 9 science courses here and there. I felt good about my contributions to my school and I was active in supporting a variety of extracurricular activities, including but not limited to school musicals and a newly formed film club. I was most proud of the expansion of enrollment in physics during my short time at the school, mostly because students who did not see themselves on a pathway to a degree in science or engineering felt that they could learn valuable things in my courses. In particular, I recall one student who aspired to be a writer enrolling my senior physics classes because he wished to have a “better grasp” on modern sciences such as quantum physics and relativity theory for his future writing career. The school where I began my K-12 teaching career was complex. Situated in an old neighborhood in central Toronto, it had both a robust fine and performing arts program with decades of community support and a French immersion program that allowed students to complete most coursework in English or French up until Grade 11. The neighborhood immediately surrounding the school is well known as one of the most affluent areas in Toronto. The student population was predominantly of European ancestry, many students came from the local area while, like most Toronto schools, a significant group elected to come to the school from other areas via public transit. A sizeable minority of students were first-generation Canadians born to parents who came from Eastern European countries. A significant percentage of students had parents, grandparents, and extended family who had all attended the school. The school had an excellent reputation within Canada’s largest school district for excellence in both traditional “academics” and the performing arts; well over 90% of students went on to attend prestigious Canadian and American universities. A cursory assessment of the school could highlight a lack of racial diversity, somewhat odd for a school in Toronto, which certainly raises questions about the structures interacting to produce that result. Intersectionality theory (e.g., Crenshaw, 1989) reminds us that single categories are insufficient for understanding the relational nature of human experiences and that a multifaceted, polyvocal assessment of the structures of privilege and oppression is always warranted. An intersectional analysis of the school cultures would, for example, reveal relational dynamics of classism, heteronormativity, the experiences of newcomers to Canada, English language learners (ELLs), and the sexism in

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lived experiences of students and staff in this school and thus reflect competing narratives of diversity. In an intersectional analysis, it is certainly warranted to look at the interactions between social locations and processes to understand why there might have been a lack of racial diversity and, at least in my time at the school, no school-wide attention to the consequences of colonialism and the occupation of land of Canada’s indigenous peoples. I moved on from that school after only three years. My move was catalyzed by ongoing reorganizations of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), which had been created out of merging five smaller districts, just prior to me joining the school. This reorganization, combined with the way in which a new principal interpreted seniority regulations, resulted in my being declared “surplus” to that school toward the end of my third year and put on a transfer list
despite being the only person certified to teach physics. I decided to seek out employment in the York Region District School Board (YRDSB), which connects to TDSB along its northern border and is the district in which I attended elementary and secondary school. YRDSB was, and continues to be, somewhat of a microcosm of Toronto in many ways. The district is composed of several small cities and large towns, immediately north of Toronto, and is populated by persons of mostly European ancestry who have lived for generations in the area, Toronto ex-patriots seeking a home in the suburbs for either family reasons or to escape the high cost of the Toronto real estate market, and many newcomers to Canada, particularly from Hong Kong and India. The southern end of the district, closest to Toronto, has a particularly diverse range of languages and cultures represented in schools. In an extraordinary turn of events, YRDSB happened to be starting a pilot program they referred to as “Learning Plus.” The idea was to create a group of 10 secondary school teachers in the district who would assume a leadership role around issues of language and literacy education. In part, although not stated explicitly, these roles were to address broad concepts underpinning provincial and district “student success” mandates. The province of Ontario had recently implemented a mandatory, standardized, literacy test for Grade 10 that required students to respond to a number of reading comprehension tasks and to write short pieces in a variety of genres (i.e., nonfictional and fictional). The southern part of the school district, which was more culturally and linguistically diverse, tended to have a greater percentage of students for whom English was an additional language (EAL) and thus tended to experience more stress around this new requirement. In the northern part of the school district, which was less culturally and linguistically diverse, there were also strong concerns about the abilities of many students to be successful on the literacy test. In this case, though, students in the lower-socioeconomic status (SES) northern regions of the school district were framed as being less likely to have access to home libraries and parents who completed postsecondary school. Such multiple framings within the district, often with competing discourses from teachers,

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administrators, students, and parents had a lot to do with the reason the entire district received financial support for this program from the highest levels. The so-called learning plus/literacy teachers were “seconded” from the classroom, meaning literacy teachers did not have a regular classroom or classes of their own but were expected to work with one large secondary school and its associated “family” of 5
8 elementary schools. The roles were to be informed by the ideas of a group of academics and educational consultants who were enthusiastically supported by district superintendents and the director. Of particular import were ideas about change by Michael Fullan (2001, 2003), a particular approach to pedagogy referred to as “instructional intelligence” (Bennett & Rolheiser, 2001), and work from Cre´vola on issues of the development of oral language (e.g., Fullan, Hill, & Cre´vola, 2006). Identified leaders from within and outside the district would often present a series of PowerPointdriven lectures in professional development sessions that literacy teachers were required to attend, alongside administrative representatives and other “team members” from each school. YRDSB’s approach was to situate expert knowledge of literacy teaching as the provenience of experts hired by the district to communicate the latest in theory to a small group of literacy teachers, who would then be asked to take these ideas up in their family of schools. I was hired in July 2003 for one of these roles; to my knowledge I was both the only science teacher and the only “new hire” within the district to take on this position. Our role as Learning Plus teachers (eventually called literacy teachers) was to work with as many teachers as we could, across disciplines, to enact lessons in content areas that were specifically designed to pay explicit attention to the role of language in learning for all learners. In the southern part of the school district, my colleagues were called upon to particularly work with EAL students; in the northern part of the school district, we tended to be encouraged to work with the greater percentage of students who were identified as having “special learning needs” and thus governed by Individual Education Plans (IEPs). I recall wondering about the problematic framing of diversity and the connections between who was labeled as requiring extra assistance, the length of time students had been in Canada, the idea of “special learning needs” (particularly as someone who went through K-12 schooling with an IEP myself) and SES. I believe I worked hard to ensure that contributions I made to my assigned schools were about recognizing all learners for where they currently were, rather than framing particular groups as being “in need” of literacy support. People in my role were framed as literacy experts-in-the-making; we received an extraordinary amount of professional development to provide us with access to ideas from research on literacy and language learning and met regularly as a group with district leaders to discuss progress, concerns, and opportunities for collaboration. The professional development was, however, heavily weighted in favor of adolescent reading instruction and did not feature many ideas from

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sociological approaches to language, literacy, and culture. In an effort to explicitly value the district’s stated belief that all teachers are literacy teachers, most of the 10 of us hired into the role were certified to teach subjects other than languages. I was the science representative of the group.

METHODOLOGY, DATA CONSTRUCTION, AND DATA ANALYSIS Self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (S-STEP) is a robust methodology with 25 years of scholarship that poses a unique question: What effects might studying my practice have on my practice, and how does the study of practice influence my identity as a teacher educator and my understanding of myself in relation to practice? Although there are clear points of coherence with traditions such as action research and autoethnography, self-study is quite notable for its emphasis on understanding the development of self-in-practice and its admitted hybridity of methodology, which Bullough and Pinnegar (2001) argued required self-study methodology to incorporate requirements for trustworthiness from methodologies it combines with. Thus, as Loughran (2005) pointed out in the inaugural edition of Studying Teacher Education, there is not an agreed upon set of directions to enact self-study. There are, however, points of coherence that are generally agreed upon within the literature. LaBoskey’s (2004) handbook chapter on methodology argues “Self-study points to a simple truth, that to study a practice is simultaneously to study self: a study of self-in-relation to other” (p. 14). She goes on to argue that self-study methodology is (1) improvement-aimed, (2) collaborative, (3) able to use multiple, usually qualitative methods simultaneously, (4) unafraid to subject formal work to the research community for review and critique, and (5) able to provide exemplars of work grounded in what Munby and Russell (1994) refer to as the authority of experience. The authority of experience, in contrast to the more familiar ideas of the authority afforded to knowledge or to position, recognizes that knowledge of practice resides in the examination of reflection-in-action (Scho¨n, 1983). Samaras et al. (2004) note that the connection between personal reflection and action, a hallmark of self-study methodology, becomes particularly relevant within a personal history framework. They refer to personal history selfstudy as those formative, contextualized experiences that have influenced teachers’ thinking about teaching and their own practice … [it] is about self-knowing toward personal and professional growth that is necessarily enriched through conversation and critique within a selfstudy community of scholars (p. 910)

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This particular orientation to self-study motivates this chapter, as I was not aware of self-study methodology when I was working as a language and literacy teacher and thus I adopt a historical approach to constructing data for analysis in this chapter. It might seem quite odd to speak of data construction, as it (correctly) calls attention to the fact that the data presented and analyzed for this chapter were not created within this particular research program. Instead, I will approach my personal history self-study as a historian, using primary source data in the form of journals I kept as a literacy teacher from September 2003 to June 2005 as a jumping off point for constructing short narrative episodes for this chapter. The journals are handwritten in coiled notebooks, totaling 160 pages. There is at least a brief entry for every working day over the two-year period. Some entries are mainly descriptive, while others are reflective and reveal what I was thinking and feeling at different times. Although my dedication to keeping a daily journal of my experiences as a literacy teacher from 2003 to 2005 meets some of LaBoskey’s (2004) requirements for self-study (e.g., self-initiated and improvement-aimed), it falls well short of the requirements to make the experiences public and accessible to scholarly critique and to follow Loughran’s (2010) suggestion to go beyond the story of practice. Going beyond a story of practice requires me to establish complementary warrants for claims I make about new understandings of self-in-practice and shifts in what Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009) refer to as ontological commitment. Here, I build on Bullock (2014), in which I was faced with a similar challenge of analyzing past learning experiences with a view to understanding how they shaped my views of teacher education, and I initially turned to the concept of turning points; or “moments in data analysis that signal a new way of understanding teaching and learning” (p. 105). In my previous work, I argued that episodes of analysis might be constructed from artifacts to have four characteristics: accurate, emotionally laden, developmentally situated, and authentic. I restate these four characteristics (pp. 105
106), reframed slightly to reflect the current project: 1. Accurate: I wrote each episode in one sitting before returning to revise and edit the episode on numerous occasions, spaced out over several days, to ensure that I was accurately representing my recollection of past events. In some cases, I used physical artifacts to stimulate my memory and thinking of a particular event. Artifacts such as old teaching materials, pictures, computer files, and documents all helped me to access memories of particular events. 2. Emotionally laden: Following along with my previous work on turning points and Bullough and Pinnegar’s (2001) guidelines for autobiography, I selected episodes that represented an emotional turning point where something was “at stake” for my learning. For the purposes of this chapter, I was particularly interested in my transition from science teacher to literacy

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teacher within a new context of diversity. I wish to understand how such a transition affected my understanding of learning and the development of my pedagogy of teacher education. 3. Developmentally situated: Each episode is constructed to represent a different temporal phase of my development as a literacy teacher. I present the episodes in chronological order to facilitate connections between my development as a literacy teacher in a new context of diversity and my development as an accidental teacher educator. 4. Authentic: My journals provide an authentic, primary source for understanding how I was thinking and feeling about my role from September 2003 to June 2005. In addition, another data source in the form of some assignments completed for my M.Ed. during that time reveal the nature of interactions I was having with the scholarly literature. I thus wrote new narrative episodes based on my rereading of journal entries, with a particular emphasis both on my nascent formal identity as a language and literacy teacher and the ways in which the formation of that identity guided my thinking about diversity in the classroom. Guidelines for quality in self-study established by Bullough and Pinnegar (2001, pp. 16
20) further animate my work, particularly their assertions that “autobiographical self-studies should ring true and enable connection,” “autobiographical self-study research must engage history forthrightly and the author must take an honest stand,” and “interpretations made of self-study data should not only reveal but also interrogate the relationships, contradictions, and limits of the views presented.” My overarching goal is to demonstrate how I came to understand my practice differently as a teacher educator as a result of doing this self-study.

EPISODES OF A LITERACY TEACHER AND AN ACCIDENTAL TEACHER EDUCATOR I have previously described the importance of constructing narrative episodes using historical artifacts, mostly in the form of handwritten journals kept at the time, for engaging in a personal history self-study of my development as a literacy teacher and nascent teacher educator. In this section, I present my data in the form of six episodes. Episodes are presented in chronological order with a view to both meeting my established criteria and to giving the reader a sense of my developmental trajectory. Analysis of the episodes occurs after all are presented, with a view to highlighting the contributions they make to both an understanding of self-study and to language and literacy teachers and teacher educators working with diverse populations.

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Episode 1: Stranger in a Strange Land I arrived at my new school on the first day of school and almost immediately felt like a stranger in a strange land. As with many schools, we had a staff meeting and “welcome back” breakfast on the first day, before the students started to trickle in after a long summer. I did not know anyone, which is always more than a little uncomfortable, but this lack of familiarity gave me an ability to walk around and introduce myself with “new person” ignorance, catching the tail end of conversations. Almost immediately I was struck by two very different kinds of discourses from what I was used to at my old school. First, it is far easier to be thought of as “the physics teacher,” who has actual classes, rather than “the literacy person” who is designated to do “something” but does not have any classes assigned. In most Canadian school contexts, a teacher in a school without classes is either a guidance counselor or a special education teacher and since I was neither … well, I was difficult to think about and thus met many a furrowed brow. Second, I notice a discourse of scarcity
teachers were already lamenting that schools in the southern end of the district (closer to Toronto) were likely to be far ahead of schools in the northern end because of an increased flow of resources, teachers, and new schools being built in the south. The advantages of teaching in the southern end of the district were tacitly mentioned in many early morning conversations in everything from how interschool sporting events were to be conducted, to the fact that district meetings were often in the south, to the fact that the increased percentage of students who are newcomers to Canada in the south meant that additional resources were likely to be offered to “those schools” as opposed to our school. In sharp contrast to my previous school, my new environment seemed to be one in which teachers felt our students were forgotten by the district, in part because they came from lower SES and because the school had long struggled to escape its nickname of “Hammer High”
a name that both alluded to its extensive technical and trades programs and, less kindly, the implication that graduates were destined to swing hammers (and the related pejorative implication that a career in trades indicates someone has been less successful in school). That some teachers were still talking about how to work with our students’ self-esteem on the first day of school highlighted for me the urgency of the situation. I was indeed a stranger in a strange land
although I had grown up and attended school 40 minutes south of the school (although not in “the south” of the district), I was quite unfamiliar with the issues at my new school.

Episode 2: Confronting Old Discomforts As it turned out, the administration and the other teachers at the school were unfamiliar with what to do with me, and so I was told to pull up an extra

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table in the room where special education teachers spent their time. I noted in my journal “Am I with SPEC ED ?!?” and “Finally found out that SERT means ‘Special Education and Resource Teacher’
who decided I was a Literacy SERT?” This tension, manifested in the belief that I was here to assist the overworked and understaffed special education department because I was a literacy expert (!), was a central frustration in my early months at the school. I resented the idea that literacy was to be framed as yet another deficit for a subset of the 2,000 students in the school and I particularly resented the early edict from my supervising Vice-Principal that I should go and “help” the special education “learning strategies” withdrawal courses (a noninclusion course that many students with an IEP are required to take in lieu of another mandatory course for their diploma). Numerous annotations in my journals indicate my mounting frustration with being positioned at a surplus table in the special education offices, including the barely contained anger in an entry that summed up my day with “Again: We’ll get you an office.” It took me a while to realize that there was more to my frustration than the fact that I was not getting a chance to define a new role in the school. I myself was a former special education student, identified as gifted but requiring specific extra supports with certain kinds of tasks in Grade 3 and psychologized with an IEP that followed me until I graduated secondary school. That plan afforded me some helpful accommodations at various points in my life as a student but, more often than not, it introduced complications and frustrations that live with me to this day. I learned, upon graduating from secondary school, that I was assigned to two particular teachers who watched my progress throughout my secondary school career, even when I did not have classes with them. It was not until this experience working in a special education department that I was forced to confront my discomfort with
and in some cases, anger toward
special education teachers. To be forced to teach in classes I fundamentally disagreed with, classes that did nothing other than to label and “other” students within the school, made going to work a frustrating process early on. I also realized that I had never really confronted the anger I felt about the labeling process of my own schooling, and how it defined what I was and was not able to participate in.

Episode 3: Literacy Teacher in the Library It took a few months and several day-long mandatory professional development sessions, but I finally was able to work with the administration (one of whom I would later surmise to be a truly phenomenal principal) to clarify that I was not to be another special education teacher, but that my role was to work with teachers from across the disciplines and grades to think about ways in which we might all work together on issues of language and literacy education. Nowadays, I suppose the term would be “literacy in the content areas” but

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back then I was cautious to focus on language; I felt that language education was a safer term because Ontario had recently implemented a controversial, standardized “literacy test” that politicized literacy in all the ways frequently discussed in the literature, such as the dichotomization of phonics and whole language and the gendered discussions around “Why don’t boys read?” After striking up a good relationship with the school library teacher, who would become one of my closest allies during the two years I was there, I was invited to take a large workroom in the library as my office. I cannot overemphasize the importance of having this space; it both provided a place for me to work and to meet with teachers and visitors to the school and, more importantly, symbolized that I was to work with the entire school, not just a certain group of students. I think that the 18 months I spent in that office helped to complicate the ideas about diversity and language teaching inherent to my role that both I held and that were forced upon me. As I worked with teachers and students across the disciplines, co-teaching or teaching on my own, I developed a reputation among students and staff as being a different kind of teacher (in the sense that I did not have my own assigned classes) but a teacher nonetheless
and thus someone that students could seek out on their own. My office became, in many ways, a sort of ethnography of the students from across the various grades and programs that came to see me; the walls filled with chart paper and blackboard writings reflected the cultural and linguistic resources and needs of the students who came to see me. It was quite helpful that the office was large enough so that I did not have to erase everything all the time and that I could have a table for students to work with me. Everything from lists of prefixes (as in “submarine”) to the use of graphic organizers for differentiating between facts and opinions, to a chart listing prereading, during reading, and after reading strategies adorned my walls at a given time. Students in the room could see ideas and activities that both might be listed for “struggling” readers, including language learners, and reading for critical thinking side by side. By the end of my first year, I was equally likely to see a Grade 9 student who wanted help with reading as a Grade 12 student who wanted to learn more about some of the approaches to critical thinking and philosophy that I had demonstrated during the class. The somewhat ham-fisted symbolism of meetings with a language and literacy teacher taking place in a library was not lost on me and, in many ways, helped me to see myself as a different sort of teacher within the school.

Episode 4: Connecting with a Diverse Student Population through Martial Arts After settling into a routine of spending about half of my time working with other teachers in their classrooms and the other half of my time attending meetings and professional development workshops, I noticed something very

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important missing in my professional life: regular contact with students. I decided to start a student club; I soon received permission from the principal to start a martial arts club that met several times a week before school. I put posters up, negotiated with a variety of teachers for space, and waited patiently in my office one Wednesday after school to hold an information meeting before actually beginning classes. Several minutes past the stated beginning time, students began sheepishly coming in one at a time. There were about 25 students by the time I started the meeting. I explained the art form I was going to teach, and the expectations I had for participation. After about 15 minutes of comments from me, I opened the discussion up to ask why students had shown up. As a few students offered comments, I realized that there was a quite mixture of students from across the grades, genders, and social locations within the school. Significantly, none of them knew each other and appeared to have come individually. Only one student was involved in anything else that was extracurricular. Over time, I would learn through informal conversations with the group that the vast majority of these students felt marginalized in some way against the dominant cultures of the school. A few students identified as indigenous, others identified as gender nonconforming, and most were in one of the program tracks in the school designated for learners with special needs. The Grade 11 student who joined
and who was also involved in a popular extracurricular activity and thus part of one of the dominant cultures of the school
was the only student who said that her primary reason for coming was to learn a martial art. Everyone else said that they wanted to be a part of something affiliated with the school. I only ever had one information session for that club. We met twice a week for the remaining year and a half that I was there, holding at about 20 students in total. Half showed up every class, the other half varied a bit more, but all were committed to learning. I arranged for a modest budget to purchase karate uniforms (gi) and was enormously proud when each one of them managed to earn their second or third student rank in 18 months. In a slight break with tradition, I asked the school principal to cosign rank certificates with me and to attend our graduation ceremonies. My time with this group is, without a doubt, some of the most important work I have ever done as a teacher. It included a language focus, as well
I made the decision early on to conduct classes in a traditional style, using Japanese directions and names for concepts. When it was time for me to leave the school and, unfortunately, shut down the club, several of the students shared that they appreciated that I made them work as hard as I did on both the physical skills and the language skills.

Episode 5: I Am Not a Literacy Coach. Nor Do I Want to Be Being a literacy teacher at this time in my school district meant attending a full day, seminar-style professional development session implemented by a

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combination of school district leaders, curriculum consultants, and professors from a large local university. Initially, I enjoyed learning about the research that we were supposed to consider in our roles. The presentations, though long, were quite professionally done and seemed to contain just the right amount of humorous video clips and segues to keep us interested. By about halfway through my first year, though, I had become resentful of the “train the trainer” approach and the lack of willingness to respond to my questions. At one particularly memorable session, I was told that I was “resisting.” Driving home that day, I realized that there were politics of change at place and that the district leadership had invested in a particular vision that I was supposed to enact. By the end of the first year, I realized that I did not wish to be the “literacy coach” that the district had envisioned. Although I valued the professional development in teaching reading that I was receiving, I thought it odd that “literacy” seemed to be elevated as a content area in its own right. I felt that there was far too much of a link between the vision for student success held by district administrators
which seemed to be far too bound by conventional, noninclusive, notions of success
and one particular conception of what “literacy” meant. By the fall of my second year, I resolved to focus on working with my elementary and secondary teacher colleagues to think about the role of language within the courses they taught.

Episode 6: I Am a Teacher Who Teaches Teachers Russell (1997) begins: “I am a teacher who teaches teachers.” Although I had read that chapter as a part of my graduate coursework, it was not until halfway through my second year that I realized I was also a teacher who taught teachers. In rejecting the “train the trainer” model earlier, I had not considered that there were other forms of in-service teacher education and professional development. My journals are full of teaching experiences with colleagues, ranging anywhere from one class to a full unit plan lasting a few weeks. I have co-taught or taught all of the subjects offered in Ontario secondary schools
everything from drama and music, to French and history, to science, geography, technology courses (“shops”), and English. I also co-taught at the elementary school level over my years as a literacy teacher. Over time, I honed my nascent pedagogy of teacher education as being one that was grounded in respecting what my colleagues had to offer. My opening question became: “What have you always wanted to do, and how could working with another teacher give you the support you need?” Instead of approaching literacy from a deficit perspective (as in, targeting classes that required additional assistance), I worked with colleagues to focus on enhancing language and literacy teaching within whatever course they wanted. We approached problems as collaborators; I frequently shared what I had learned about “literacy teaching” and

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asked how it might apply within their areas of expertise. A major part of this approach was building trust with the 125 other teachers
some were quick to give me a chance, others assumed I was sent as an instrument of district surveillance. One of the main ways that I demonstrated my potential value in my first year was by offering to come to classes to teach “Inspiration” concept-mapping software
many teachers were interested in concept maps and lacked the time to learn the appropriate software. I often reported on the frequency and success with which I was introducing Inspiration software at district meetings; it was easy to call attention to the power of concept maps for illustrating issues pertinent to language and literacy teaching. The real power of the software, however, was the ways in which it enabled me to work with initially skeptical teachers by serving as a jumping off point for work that they wished to do. In my second year, I routinely worked with teachers on projects that we co-identified as being of mutual interest.

ANALYZING SIX EPISODES: INSIGHTS INTO MY OWN HISTORY WITH LANGUAGE AND LITERACY TEACHING This chapter has presented six episodes that shed light on the relevance of the two years I spent as a literacy teacher before leaving my K-12 teaching career to pursue doctoral studies full time. Although I knew that the experience of working side by side with other K-12 teachers was unique in my development as a teacher educator and that it gave me some early principles for working with preservice teachers (Bullock, 2007), I had never before considered the specific role that working with diverse populations as a literacy teacher had on my pedagogy of teacher education. Diversity was framed in a number of ways through my time as a language and literacy teacher; in district-wide meetings, the concerns of ELLs were often top of mind. Although I did work with many ELLs, my context required me to work with many other kinds of diversity beyond dichotomizing “first language” with English. Diversity in facility with English regardless of additional languages spoken (if any), diversity of cultural background, diversity of home support for language development, and diversity of indigeneity, settler, and recent immigrant experiences all had a role in complicating my understandings of working with students in the school. In this final section of the chapter, I use the episodes presented in the previous section as a jumping off point for thinking about the ways in which my experiences, and my self-study of those experiences, interact with some of the scholarly literature in language and literacy education. Gutie´rrez (2008) argued that sociocritical literacy “attends to contradictions in and between texts lived and studied, institutions (e.g., the classrooms, the academy), and sociocultural practices, locally experienced and historically influenced” (p. 149). This concept provides much to consider in light of the episodes

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I have presented about my two years as a literacy teacher, years that were full of contradictions in text. Here, I also draw upon Segall’s (2002) notion that the experiences of learning to teach can be read as hermeneutic text, using this notion to examine my episodes both on- and between-the lines. Gutie´rrez also argued that schools tend to be more oriented toward vertical, ahistorical literacies
certainly my experiences of the district-mandated professional development were squarely within this viewpoint. The explicit message from the district was that literacy was to improve, that weak students were to increase their skills, and that it was my job to teach teachers how to help students move in this direction. Importantly, this vertical notion of literacy was applied to teachers and students
both were assumed to be in need of “fixing” in some way. As Gutie´rrez noted, however, horizontal, historical forms of literacy take into account “expertise that develops within and across an individual’s practice” (p. 149). There are several ways in which the episodes presented can be interpreted through Gutie´rrez’s ideas about sociocritical literacy. First, the diversity of the school’s learners framed through deficit perspectives and prescribed interventions using vertical notions of literacy were evident from the very first day, through the ways in which teachers spoke about students, the ways in which students interacted in hallways, and the ways in which certain areas of the school were obviously tasked for particular categories of students. Teachers, too, were wary of my role as an outsider, someone sent in to “fix the literacy problems” at the school. Second, the successes that I was able to have as a literacy teacher occurred when I tried to move into a Third Space (Gutie´rrez, 2008) in my work with both teachers and students, through emphasizing both vertical and horizontal forms of literacies. In particular, this occurred when I made the turn from a vertically oriented (and mandated) literacy coach to a more Third Space-oriented teacher educator in which I sought to first understand the practices of my colleagues, rather than to frame them as “needing my expertise.” I embraced the importance of understanding the unique nature of my colleagues’ hard-won expertise in the crucibles of their practices, which had often developed over decades. Moreover, I was able to tune in to the consequences of how the school had been framed by the local community over time (a framing that remained largely internalized by local parents, teachers, and students who are used to thinking of themselves as “resource-poor” in relation to the southern end of the district), and the range of practices that both teachers and students tried to use to reframe their place in the school district. Third, my experiences teaching martial arts, teaching both the embodied language of movement in martial arts alongside some basic Japanese terms and expressions provided a way for me to understand more deeply the contexts of diversity within the school and the challenges faced by students in my martial arts club. Although I have a number of markers of my expertise as a martial artist
belts, sashes, cords, and the like
the formal endorsements and permissions I have received from my previous martial arts instructors have always given me

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more of a warrant than any material object signifying a “certification.” Martial arts, as a lifelong informal education (i.e., one that does not have formal recognized diplomas or degrees), does not give me the kind of vertical expertise that, say, a certified physical education teacher might have
although I would make the case that I am every bit as qualified. One might say that I learned about the range of students’ practices outside of the classroom while sharing some of my own horizontal expertise with students. One striking feature of the episodes constructed for this chapter is my admission of the discomfort I felt when, as a new literacy teacher, I was assigned initially as a member of the special education department. The fact that I was identified as a learner with special needs from Grade 3 onward is something that I have not discussed in person with many people, much less in print. Constructing that particular episode was a difficult experience for me, although I find considerable comfort in considering the importance of my historical experiences with literacy (Gutie´rrez, 2008) and motivation in Peercy’s (2014) felt need to intentionally focus “on the how of practice” (p. 147). Peercy argues, in part, that practice-based approaches to teacher education demand that teacher educators attend to what teachers actually do. I now realize just how frustrated I was with the district’s implicit assumption that a great number of students and teachers were in need of “fixing,” and that the solution to this problem would be to train a group of teachers in particular approaches that they could transmit to colleagues. This technical rationalist (Scho¨n, 1983) approach reflects the very opposite of what Peercy (2014) argued
there was never, as far as I know, any specific attempt to attend to what teachers did and to how they were actually coping with the new requirements of the literacy test and the ongoing realities of life in the district. The assumption seems to have been that there were not practices to be learned from. In contrast, I worked hard to find out how my colleagues actually worked with their students. My approach was to take early steps toward practice-based in-service teacher education. Accepting a sociocultural approach to learning, literacy, and self-study requires that I attend to the ways in which my pedagogy as a literacy teacher was informed by my history of schooling, a history that involved a lot of horizontal literacy practices on the margins of what was encouraged in school. Peercy’s (2014) self-study underscored the importance of uniting practice and theory through practice-based pedagogy. While I find considerable resonance with the idea, I realized that part of the reason that my pedagogy of literacy teacher education has remained in the shadows was not as much accidental as it was grounded in unwillingness, or perhaps an inability, to contextualize my own history with the literacies of school as a learner. I knew as a student, for example, that my identification was supposed to imply an automatic familiarity with the vertical literacies of school (despite the fact that, for example, I was the first in my family to consider attending university), yet I struggled to find spaces to understand the horizontal literacies that I had as a student (say, for example, in having my abilities as a martial artist recognized within the

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curriculum of physical education I was mandated to take). Peercy’s self-study is a bold call for me, as she fearlessly proclaimed her “failure to take core practices far enough into implementation, as well as not articulating a clear vision … about the components of and rationale for engaging in this work” (p. 158). In one sense, my pedagogy of literacy teacher education was unquestionably practice-based, it developed alongside my often more experienced colleagues in the classrooms of a large, comprehensive high school in the north end of a large school district. Although my pedagogy was practice-based, in the individual sense, I could not and cannot hope to claim that I developed anything close to a set of core practices that can be shared with other teacher educators (in-service or otherwise), and so I failed to meet the criterion for practice-based teacher education that exists in the literature. Perhaps this work might help to unpack the ways in which “informal” practice-based teacher education might be used to develop practice-based teacher education as it is currently framed.

CONCLUSIONS This personal history self-study into my practice as an accidental literacy teacher and teacher educator has provided two significant findings. First, I corroborate Samaras et al.’s (2004) assertion that personal history self-study enables understanding of one’s own identity in relation to practice in new ways, because it connects “the self in relation to others in historical and social contexts that facilitate the educative experience” (p. 911). I realize that my experiences as a literacy learner played a significant role in my enactment of a practicebased literacy pedagogy, which I have not examined carefully in part due to discomfort with my personal history as a learner. My failure was in not doing enough work on my self-in-practice to understand the role that my horizontal, historical literacies played in my approaches to, and frustrations with, my role as a literacy teacher educator. The second significant finding, particularly pertinent to this volume, is that developing a pedagogy of teacher education with a focus on literacy made me increasingly frustrated with the oversimplified ways in which my school district framed issues of diversity. Too often, literacy education was deemed something that was more relevant in the southern end of the school district, which had more students who had recently immigrated to Canada. When literacy was attended to in the northern end of the school district, where I was situated, it was often treated as a way to provide remedial instruction students who struggled in school. This particular framing frustrated me as a learner with a particular kind of history with literacies. Throughout my role, I struggled alongside many colleagues with similar interests to encourage others to frame language and literacy education as a part of any pedagogical approach. With the benefit of time and the opportunity to re-examine my experiences through a more robust self-study lens, I now realize how little was

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done to address the needs of the Indigenous Canadian learners, within the school district as a whole. The Indigenous learners in my martial arts club, for example, expressed many of their frustrations with the dominant structures of schooling, particularly locally. It is difficult to overestimate the influence of this experience on my developing pedagogy of teacher education, coming as it did at the tail end of my master’s thesis and lasting for the two years immediately preceding full-time doctoral work. I was a teacher educator before I knew what the term teacher educator meant and, in some ways, I began conducting a selfstudy of my practice before I knew about that particular methodology.

REFERENCES Bennett, B., & Rolheiser, C. (2001). Beyond Monet: The artful science of instructional integration. Toronto: Bookation. Bullock, S. M. (2007). Finding my way from teacher to teacher educator: Valuing innovative pedagogy and inquiry into practice. In T. Russell & J. Loughran (Eds.), Enacting a pedagogy of teacher education (pp. 77
94). London: Routledge. Bullock, S. M. (2014). Exploring the impact of prior experiences in non-formal education on my pedagogy of teacher education. Studying Teacher Education, 10(2), 103
116. Bullock, S. M. (2016). Digital technologies in teacher education: From mythologies to making. In C. Kosnik, S. White, C. Beck, B. Marshall, A. L. Goodwin, & J. Murray (Eds.), Building bridges: Rethinking literacy teacher education in a digital era (pp. 3
16). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Bullough, R. V., Jr., & Pinnegar, S. (2001). Guidelines for quality in autobiographical forms of selfstudy research. Educational Researcher, 30(3), 13
21. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(8), 139
167. Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. New York, NY: Jossey-Bass Inc. Fullan, M. (2003). Change forces with a vengeance. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Fullan, M., Hill, P., & Cre´vola, C. (2006). Breakthrough. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Gutie´rrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a sociocritical literacy in the third space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148
164. Gutie´rrez, K. D., Baquedano-Lo´pez, P., & Tejeda, C. (1999). Rethinking diversity: Hybridity and hybrid language practices in the third space. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 6(4), 286
303. Kosnik, C., Menna, L., & Bullock, S. M. (2012). Diving into social media: Using digital technologies to support teacher learning. In S. Van Nuland & J. Greenlaw (Eds.), Social media and teacher learning (pp. 47
60). Oshawa: UOIT E-Press. LaBoskey, V. (2004). The methodology of self-study and its theoretical underpinnings. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (Vol. 12, pp. 817
869). Dordrecht: Springer. Loughran, J. (2005). Researching teaching about teaching: Self-study of teacher education practices. Studying Teacher Education, 1(1), 5
16. Loughran, J. (2010). Seeking knowledge for teaching teaching: Moving beyond stories. Studying Teacher Education, 6(3), 221
226. Munby, H., & Russell, T. (1994). The authority of experience in learning to teach: Messages from a physics methods class. Journal of Teacher Education, 4(2), 86
95.

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Peercy, M. M. (2014). Challenges in enacting core practices in language teacher education: A selfstudy. Studying Teacher Education, 10(2), 146
162. Peercy, M. M., & Troyan, F. J. (2017). Making transparent the challenges of developing a practicebased pedagogy of teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 61, 26
36. Pinnegar, S., & Hamilton, M. L. (2009). Self-study of practice as a genre of qualitative research. Dordrecht: Springer. Russell, T. (1997). Teaching teachers: How I teach IS the message. In J. Loughran & T. Russell (Eds.), Teaching about teaching: Purpose, passion and pedagogy in teacher education (pp. 32
47). London: Falmer Press. Samaras, A., Hicks, M., & Berger, J. (2004). Self-study through personal history. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (Vol. 12, pp. 905
942). Dordrecht: Springer. Scho¨n, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York, NY: Basic Books. Schuck, S., & Russell, T. (2005). Self-study, critical friendship, and the complexities of teacher education. Studying Teacher Education, 1(2), 107
121. Segall, A. (2002). Disturbing practice: Reading teacher education as text. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

USING SELF-STUDY TO EXAMINE OUR RESEARCH AND TEACHING PRACTICES AS EFL TEACHER EDUCATORS IN COLOMBIA Amparo Clavijo Olarte and Maribel Ramı´ rez Galindo ABSTRACT In this chapter, we use self-study to explain the ways we enact community pedagogy in socioeconomically and culturally diverse school contexts in Bogota´, Colombia. We use our personal and professional journeys as language teachers, teacher educators, and researchers to show key experiences in our life stories and teaching trajectories that have influenced our teaching and research praxis. Our main interest as researchers and practitioners was to connect school curricula to the life of children and teachers in schools. Selfstudy helped us identify and problematize our identities and positions as foreign language teachers who espouse valuing of local knowledge. Through reflection and implementing field experiences with practicing teachers in professional development sessions in schools, we felt that we achieved such connection to develop the mindset for critical pedagogy. Keywords: Self-study; English as a Foreign Language (EFL); teacher education; teacher identity; community-based pedagogies; critical pedagogy; reflective practice

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 37
53 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030003

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INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we examine our collaborative experiences doing research with teachers in schools in teacher education programs from a Self-Study in Teacher Education Practice (S-STEP) perspective. In our professional profiles, we examine how thinking and researching the literacy practices of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and students in schools inform our praxis generate curricular transformation and help us reconnect school activities with the life of children and teachers in schools. In our teaching, we perceive that our social reality, our languages, values, and identities are undervalued. We view this in the national language policies that impose foreign standards, curricula, and textbooks in English language teaching (ELT) focusing on learning about native speakers of English countries and realities. Therefore, we strive to reclaim the value of local resources for teaching; propose to develop the first language and cultures (Ruiz, 1994) as resources for learning and promote the design and development of context-embedded curriculum in the professional development of teachers of EFL in Colombia. Thus, our current research and teaching practices as language teacher educators focus on helping teachers value local knowledge as critical pedagogy in English Teacher Education. In this chapter, we want to look closely at our professional trajectories, personal life histories, and our learning as teacher educators to explain what seems to be paradoxical in our current research and teaching practices: our positions as foreign language teacher educators who value local knowledge as critical pedagogy in English language teacher education. We examine the contextual situations, beliefs, and interests that motivated our interest in introducing local knowledge as critical in teacher education. We want to explain the reasoning behind our interest to explore teachers’ educational communities to identify the literacies present in each community as rich resources for curriculum and teaching.

OUR LEARNING WHILE RAISING TEACHERS’ AWARENESS OF LOCAL RESOURCES As we raise Colombian teachers’ awareness about the importance of using local resources in curriculum and teaching to promote meaningful learning in ELT classrooms through field assignments in graduate courses, we construct with them our own understanding of the resources available in different contexts of the city. By doing so, we echo Canagarajah’s (2005) claim: “A local grounding should be the primary and critical force in the construction of contextually relevant knowledge if we are to develop more plural discourses” (p. xiv). The author invites

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teachers in different communities to devise curricula and pedagogies that have local relevance. Teaching materials have to accommodate the values and needs of diverse settings, with sufficient complexity granted to local knowledge. (p. 20)

To promote the design and implementation of locally relevant curriculum and teaching that lead to critical pedagogies we consider essential the reflection processes among teachers and teacher educators. Encouraging teachers to explore their communities surrounding schools to identify assets that can serve as content for the curriculum, relate them to the given curriculum standards and becoming inform about social situations that need attention in the school neighborhood is the starting point for reflection in our teacher education courses on research methodology and first language (L1) and second language (L2) literacies.

THE VALUE OF REFLECTION IN SELF-STUDY We believe that when teachers systematically use reflection to improve their practice in professional development or teacher education programs (Ottesen, 2007; Zeichner, 2008), they become aware of key aspects left aside that need to be included in informed decision making. We also consider that teacher education programs in Colombia show a strong class division between the public and private institutions that is evident in the practicum. Student-teachers in private universities are only assigned to do their practicum in schools for wealthy families, whereas, public universities send their student-teachers to public schools where working class families have their children. Thus, self-study becomes a research orientation for teacher educators to document how their teaching practices evolve throughout time by mirroring their background, belief formation, their approach to content and culturally diverse socioeconomic contexts. This chapter addresses self-study of two teacher educators through our experiences learning from the years preparing future teachers for the public sector and learning with teachers in professional development programs. It aims at making connections between our personal and professional trajectories as teachers of English in Colombia with life histories that include experiences in Colombia and abroad and examine how such lived experiences have molded our philosophies and pedagogies as educators. We (Maribel and Amparo) both obtained a professional degree in Modern Languages in Colombia, lived and studied abroad through scholarships, and are committed to promote EFL teaching that engages students in inquiring about their social and cultural realities. Thus, this S-STEP focuses on our work learning with teachers from teaching and researching. We have come to understand self-study “as a stance that researchers take to explain the physical or social world” (LaBoskey, 2004, p. 1173). We have used teachers’ autobiographies, personal-experience methods, teachers’ narratives of

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their own practice, teachers’ own teaching journals, and personal history-based beliefs as sources to understand the study of our own practice as teacher educators. As novices to S-STEP, we find it rather complex to look at our collaborative experiences doing research with school teachers from this perspective. However, examining our past and present teaching experiences that make our learning tangible has been a valuable exercise. We can see our teaching and researching trajectories connected to our teaching philosophies as teacher educators. We believe that teaching is as Goodson (1981) defines it “intensely personal” (p. 69). Thus, in studying what we do as teacher educators, it is critical we talk about the persons we are (Goodson, 1981, p. 69). Additionally, in doing qualitative research in Applied Linguistics, Heigham and Croker (2009) remind us that when researchers go into research settings, they also take their own intellectual baggage and life experiences with them. As they argue, “it is important for researchers to be constantly aware and systematically reflect on their own personal identity and impact on the participants and research setting” (p. 11). Consequently, we decided to include our profiles as teacher educators in the different roles we play to later establish connections between our experiences teaching, our teacher identity, and the community research projects we have carried out in collaboration with teachers during the last 16 years.

LEARNING S-STEPS As we mentioned earlier we are novice to S-STEP. However, we became interested in learning more about self-study as an approach to teacher inquiry. Therefore, we started gathering professional literature about self-study and we found the work of Feldman (2002), Samaras and Freese (in Lassonde et al., 2009), and Samaras (2011) to be very valuable. Feldman (2002) explains that self-study researchers use their experiences as a resource for their research and “problematize their selves in their practice situations” (p. 911) with the goal of reframing their beliefs and/or practice. Samaras and Freese, in turn, consider that self-study focuses on improvement on both the personal and professional levels. Self-study builds on the personal processes of reflection and inquiry, and takes these processes and makes them open to public critique. (p. 4)

Samaras (2011) presents as principles for self-study self-personal situated inquiry, critical collaborative inquiry, improved learning, a transparent and systematic research process, and knowledge generation and presentation. We consider that these principles, to some extent, mirror our collaborative research experiences with teachers to the extent that it is critical collaborative inquiry, it

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is systematic research, and it generates knowledge that can serve as examples for other teachers. We understand that to do a self-study of our practice it is paramount to document our reasoning behind the decisions for research and teaching (Freeman, 1998). Accordingly, to document our S-STEP, we examined our personal and professional histories with a focus on framing critical moments that informed our practice, scrutinized in the educational policies in ELT education in Colombia during the span of our practice to consider external factors influencing our decision making as researchers and teacher educators, reviewed the two qualitative research projects we carried out with teachers between 2009 and 2016, and the syllabuses used in the courses we taught last academic year to analyze our positions and evolving identities as ELT educators. This information became useful to construct our self-study. The experiences we describe below have shaped our identity as teachers and as academics.

TEACHER EDUCATORS PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL HISTORIES Amparo As a Colombian language teacher educator, my current teaching and research practices are focused on the local realities of public-school teachers in urban schools in Bogota´. I used this practice as a source to understand the connection with global, social, cultural, and political issues have for Colombian educators. More recently, I looked at how globalization (Apple, 2010) has influenced education in ways that it demands for global citizens to be able to understand the social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions of globalization starting from the local to interact with more extended communities. Thus, an emphasis on learning from the local to understand the global has become essential part of our philosophy as language teacher educators in promoting critical pedagogies. I also believe that knowing what happens in schools informs the way I teach teachers at the university while collaborative research with experienced teachers provides me with valuable insights about the culture of schools. Thus, my recent research on community-oriented pedagogies with teachers investigates the ways teachers can relate students’ realities, life experiences, and funds of knowledge to the curriculum. Why Do I Engage in Research and Teaching in Settings with Low Socioeconomic and Culturally Diverse Students? When I decided to become a teacher educator 20 years ago, implicit in my decision was my interest and commitment with public education. Maribel and

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I believe that children with the most social, economic, and educational needs are in the public sector. Thus, we invest ourselves as teacher educators as advocates for a good quality of education for the children in need. We consider that our professional actions are informed by our beliefs integrated in a large social fabric and our interests move us to immerse ourselves in the social realities of those who are disadvantaged. However, we are aware that having a single view of the reality in public education can limit the dialogue among other belief systems where interest is the well-being of children in private education. Thus, as teacher educators we accept that the scope of our actions is directed to benefit children from low-income families, and the culturally diverse populations that inhabit these public schools in our urban areas. Who I am: My Family, My Schooling Years and My Commitment to Education I was born in a small town in Los Llanos Orientales de Colombia, in a middleclass family of nine children. I am the second oldest, and the first girl in the family. In a Colombian family, being the oldest girl means having lots of responsibilities and obligations at home including helping parents to raise all the younger siblings. In addition to that, our generation of young women and men in the sixties and seventies had to fight the terribly unfair social treatment of women in the Colombian society. Although our mothers were educated women, they were treated as if they were a property of their husband. That became an ideological struggle that marked our identities as women wanting to free ourselves from the stigmatization of a male oppressing society. Thus, education became a way to emancipate myself from a male-dominant society and to understand the implications of being a woman in a LatinAmerican country. I was the first in my family to go to the University and the only one to have obtained a PhD degree in the whole family. All my brothers and sisters also studied at the University and are successful professionals. And as in the educational literature, parents supporting their children’s education has a substantial impact on student learning and educational attainment (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). The support of my family and my achievements at school were key factors that shaped my life. My childhood and adolescent years studying in a Catholic school were a very positive experience. Before I turned 16, I graduated from high school and left home to experience a new, challenging, culture of the city in Bogota´. I became a university student and successfully pursued my career as I was equipped with strong family values and highly motivated by my parents to continue my studies at the University. I started studying a four-year career to become a teacher of English in 1980 at a private university in Bogota´. In my fourth year, when I started my teaching practice in high school I felt reassured that teaching was what I wanted to do in my life. I graduated in 1985 and started teaching English in a language institute, but I soon moved to teach at a bilingual private school in Bogota´. In

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February 1990, the dream of continuing my professional development came true when I obtained a Fulbright scholarship to do my Masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at a university in the USA. Navigating Two Cultures, Two Languages with an Open Mind: A Fulbright Identity I first lived in the USA as a Fulbright student from 1990 to 1993. As a graduate student in a large public university in Arizona, I experienced the English language and the American culture through schooling. It was a unique experience being able to choose the courses that most interested me from different departments. During that time, I had two brilliant mentors one in the Bilingual Education department, Dr. Sarah Hudelson, and the other, in the literature department, Dr. Elizabeth Horan. Both offered rich research experiences with “Literature from Women of the World” with Dr. Horan, and with Dr. Hudelson, an opportunity to work with second grade Mexican immigrant children developing English and Spanish literacies as newcomers in a public school in Phoenix, Arizona. Both academic experiences nurtured me immensely, especially because my learning was mediated by the use of both Spanish and English languages and cultures. My preparation at Arizona State paved my path to an immediate position as a bilingual teacher in a public school in Glendale, Arizona, for a year. In July 1993, I returned to Colombia with knowledge of the American educational system that I gained as a teacher. I earned a position at a University in Bogota´ and joined the faculty of the first teacher education program for teachers of English in Colombia. After two years, in August 1996, I obtained a second scholarship and a paid leave from my university to enroll in the doctoral program of Education (Language, Reading, and Culture) at The University of Arizona. For four years, I took doctoral courses from professors who were influential in my education: Dr. Luis Moll, Kathy Short, Kenneth & Yetta Goodman, Richard Ruiz, and Theresa McCarty. It was only in the doctoral seminars with Kathy Short that I read Paulo Freire’s emancipatory pedagogy promoting literacy with rural peasants in Brazil. During my undergraduate studies in Colombia, to become a teacher of English, there was little or no Colombian or Latin American authors whose pedagogies we could use as models to teach. Most of the readings in education were from imported perspectives, from inner circle countries (Kachru, 1985), making the knowledge about education in Latin America invisible in the education of teachers of English. Unfortunately, that is still a prevalent belief in some English teacher education programs in Colombia. I promote Dewey’s and Freire’s philosophies about inquiry curriculum to provide multiple experiences for learning in schools and classrooms, foster children’s literacy development in Spanish to learn their language and culture before learning EFL, explore students’ funds of knowledge with teachers to do

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community-based pedagogies (CBPs), raise teachers’ awareness about linguistically and culturally diverse learners who imply respecting the indigenous children language as a right and a resource for learning. My teaching is informed by the professional exchanges with many national and international scholars and my learning through collaborative research projects with teachers. Associated with our interest in collaborative research practices, my latest accomplishment as a University-based researcher was a Fulbright guest researcher (2016
2017) for a six-month stay at University of New Hampshire to further explore, with my colleague Judy Sharkey, the social justice for teacher education perspective to support our most recent collaborative research project on CBPs with diverse populations in three public schools in Bogota´ (2016
2017). Through readings and direct contact with scholars whose interest is to research the educational needs of disadvantaged students in public schools from a social justice and critical literacy view, I came across Barbara Comber’s work. Her work speaks to teachers (preservice and in-service), and invites them to move out of deficit pedagogies in curriculum and teaching practices (Comber & Kamler, 2004) that can offer quality literacy and learning experiences to disadvantaged children in schools. I am currently using her work with teachers in our research team and in teacher education courses. Sharing What We Know in National and International Educational Communities In the exercise of my profession as a teacher educator, I regularly play three different roles. As a teacher educator, I teach courses on literacy, qualitative research, and critical pedagogies to practicing teachers of English interested in learning to do classroom research and to develop their students’ competencies in English. As a researcher, I spend time with teachers in schools doing collaborative work with them to include community assets in their teaching and curriculum design. As the editor of a peer-reviewed journal in applied linguistics, I have worked hard to maintain a quality open access publication for our readers in many countries. Our editorial team aims at making research and pedagogical experiences from teachers and researchers in Colombia visible. It has been a very challenging endeavor considering “the exclusion that Third World countries and scholars experience from academic publishing” (Cardenas & Nieto Cruz, 2017, p. 7). In this regard, Gonzalez and Llurda (2016) likewise documented that English teacher education in Colombia has experienced many challenges as a result of globalization and free trade agreements. We have international publishing houses and international entities like the British Council interested in developing their English education programs in our country, view Colombia as a potential asset for education, testing, and training services. These foreign companies with commercial interest in selling language teaching products in Latin America as the target market report

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that the language training that local teachers have had in their teacher education undergraduate programs is not enough or reliable, and, therefore, that it needs the quality endorsement of the University of Cambridge through the British Council. (p. 99)

This situation undervalues the academic work of highly prepared teachers, teacher educators, and researchers in ELT in Colombia. Although the economic and politic panorama is challenging with the advent of globalization for Colombia and Latin America, as teacher educators we believe in the importance of establishing alliances that permit international dialog and collaboration. Thus, with the research group we developed an international collaboration between 2007 and 2009 with colleagues from the Applied Computing Department at University of Dundee, Scotland, and teachers from Colombia, Chile, and Canada. Using a virtual platform, we proposed together ways to engage learners of all ages in using information and communication technologies (ICT) to communicate with peers in English and Spanish through different curricular projects. In 2009, we started a new collaboration with a colleague from the University of New Hampshire, USA. We have carried out projects on CBPs with urban teachers from public schools and universities in Bogota´ (Sharkey, Clavijo, & Ramirez, 2016). We initially collected data from field assignments with graduate students at the University and later with language teachers in their classrooms (Sharkey & Clavijo, 2012). We have also shared the results of projects with the teachers in conferences and written articles that share our learning experiences and challenges with national and international audiences. As the principal investigator in the research team, I believe that doing collaborative projects with school teachers is very important for us as teacher educators. It also facilitates the access to schools, principals, and teachers. Thus, establishing partnerships between University and schools has shown successful results for school teachers and their students as well the research team. In sum, this S-STEP has helped me examine different moments in my professional and personal life, my philosophies as a teacher educator, beliefs, and experiences learning and teaching a foreign language to understand my current practices and research interests. S-STEP provided a space to inquire, in our life and professional histories, what seems to be paradoxical in being foreign language teachers whose research and teaching is focused on valuing local knowledge.

Maribel I am the oldest child of a traditional middle-class Colombian family, with two younger brothers. My parents used to promote key Catholic values in our family. It was mainly with the influence of my mother that I decided to become a teacher. She was a very patient, committed, caring, and devoted kindergarten

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teacher in a public school in Bogota´. I studied Modern Languages at Universidad Javeriana where I confirmed my desire and passion to become a Language Arts teacher. However, I have to recognize that the Teacher Education model followed at La Javeriana did not include any critical component as we were taught mainly about the pedagogy of language teaching framed in the Communicative Approach and some other subjects such as psychology, and sociology from a historical perspective. The program had a strong linguistic component to develop language skills in EFL and general French. As a consequence, most of my teaching beliefs relied on the way I was educated to become a “successful” language teacher, and for that time it worked effectively to meet the standards of the 1980s. Since then, I have been a Language Arts teacher both in private and public schools and universities for 34 years now. Teaching in schools has been an interesting challenge along my life as I have been able to understand my students’ realities especially from my classroom observations and from their voices, but basically, it was about understanding what teenagers liked, enjoyed, and feared in their lives. Nonetheless, I used to deliver my lessons following my teaching principles limited somehow to develop communicative skills where reality outside the classroom was ignored as it was others’ responsibility, I considered. I was rather an outsider. The nature of second language education, however, requires us to understand our educational practice in broader social, cultural, and political terms, and it is to critical pedagogy that I think we could most profitably turn to extend our conception of what we are doing as language teachers. (Pennycook, 1990, p. 305)

Sharing time during the EFL lessons and out of the classrooms, even during field trips generated new dynamics in the curriculum for me. I reached a very rich interaction with my female students, and they were just great and excellent learners! Many of them still contact me via social networks and we recall those great memories. That was between 1983 and 1987 at San Jose´ School. I must mention that in that first job I got an award for the best score in the English standardized test, which was very motivating for me as an EFL teacher. However, in my experience as a teacher in public schools for 24 years I have faced very difficult social situations. Thus, again I confirm what Education in our Colombian context should be about: a relevant social commitment that provokes different types of inquiries. Public education in our context is intended to meet the educational needs for the lower socioeconomic class. Therefore, teachers face all kinds of needs from students’ lives, from abandonment even when they live with parents or relatives, to becoming gang members involving drug dealing and consuming illicit substances inside schools. The role of the teacher turns out to be a supporter and a guide rather than a content area teacher. Students understand the school as a place to socialize, make friends, have fun, do “business,” and maybe learning.

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Thus, I was motivated to enroll in the MA program in Applied Linguistics in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at Universidad Distrital in Bogota´ from 1996 to 1999. There, I first met Amparo and learned about relevant teaching and learning EFL issues relying on my experience as a teacher in the public sector. It was during that graduate program that my Teacher Education interest emerged. First, with an interest in promoting innovative and relevant pedagogical practices with EFL teachers in public schools addressing critical literacy practices. Although the program has always been known for its research emphasis, most seminars focused on linguistic learning needs and social factors were only lightly mentioned. In fact, my thesis addressed reading strategies, which was responding to the contextual needs and to the master’s program in the late 1990s. Social needs were not part of doing research in ELT. My concern about Teacher Education evolved when I became a member of the Lectoescrinautas research group and a lecturer at the MA program in Applied Linguistics at Universidad Distrital. It has been very interesting to me as a teacher educator to observe and understand the evolution of the Literacy Area in the Master’s Program. Initially our students’ inquiries focused on reading and writing development in EFL implementing approaches that helped overcome literacy difficulties. Research problems addressed lack of comprehension and interpretation of different types of texts, as well as developing writing as a process in a meaningful way. I would say that those works had a critical approach to some extent. It was interesting and appealing at that moment as literacy issues were responding to the teachers’ research concerns. Later, social factors were important aspects to research at the Master program due to the growing difficult social and economic situations our country has gone through. The school becomes a place where kids’ interest is not learning, especially in public schools. This becomes a great challenge for publicschool teachers. However, this has interesting points to consider, how do EFL public teachers perceive social issues in education? How do we deal with them? To what extent we consider them in the curriculum? Thus, CBP (Sharkey & Clavijo, 2012) becomes an option for teachers to develop understanding about the school context where they work and to inspire curricular transformations. I had been teaching Introduction to Research course in our MA program for several years but in 2009 I began introducing CBP: students had to map their school’s community, identifying needs and assets to make curricular connections and proposing activities which involved different types of resources (local economy, linguistic, institutions, individuals, meaningful places, and associations) identified in the mapping. The activity involved writing a reflection. For some students, this initial exploration along with the possibility to make curricular transformation motivated research concerns to develop their thesis. Leading those CBP activities and research projects was very challenging for me as I was also exploring this approach as a public-school teacher and a

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lecturer guiding other teachers at the Master level. It was inspiring and motivating but I had the support and guide of Judy Sharkey, and Amparo Clavijo, who had already done some research in this field. From this experience and tutoring thesis using CBP, our research group Lectoescrinautas carried out two research projects that involved five public schools in Bogota´ with the participation of teachers from different content areas (Sharkey et al., 2016). I can say that the methodology designed and implemented during the development of the projects in the participating schools became an opportunity for me and for the participating teachers to learn about the great teaching and learning possibilities that CBP provides. There are positive impacts in any content area when teachers design their pedagogical practices on the community resources to make curricular connections as well as the impact evidenced in school students’ learning outcomes. They become protagonists of their own learning process as they recognize the great value of their community in the school curricula. As a Language Arts teacher in a public school and as a teacher educator along with my role as a leader of some CBP projects, I can strongly affirm that there are plenty of possibilities to transform lives positively when we as community teachers consider our students’ realities as a departure point to make pedagogical decisions leading to impact the community we serve.

From Individual to Shared Inquiry and Growth Our personal and professional histories frame this S-STEP as they describe key events in our development as teacher educators, including our experiences abroad. In the case of Amparo, having successfully participated and obtained recognized scholarships to pursue master and doctoral degrees in the USA, living nurturing research and educational experiences during her professional development in the USA, and reporting positive intercultural exchanges with peer researchers have made a positive impact on her career as she continues leading teaching and research projects with a transnational view to language teacher education. Equally positive were Maribel’s experiences as an assistant teacher in the UK and it is reflected in her position as a teacher educator in public and private institutions in Colombia. In addition to the positive career experiences that we have both had, we are certain that it takes a deep commitment to public education to access teachers in schools, obtain permission from school administrators, develop professional development programs with teachers to offer an alternative to the traditional literacy education of working class students in public schools in Bogota´. The leadership and respect for teacher agency that we brought to our school-based projects have been key factors in our work with teachers. In the following

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section, we describe the developmental routes to learning with teachers in our teacher education trajectories of collaborative research.

Deliberate Routes in Our Teacher Education Trajectories Doing Professional Development Professional development (PD) sessions with teachers is a vital component of our teacher education trajectories that have provided significant learning for us. Our research group deliberately offers introductory workshops to explain the research purpose and the dynamics of participation to teachers in schools. We also plan follow-up sessions with teachers to support the implementation of pedagogies and provide spaces for reflection and feedback. These in-school sessions immerse ourselves in their educational reality and permit us to better understand their interest as practitioners. Therefore, reflection and collaboration with teachers represent insightful learning in our profession. In the research team, along the years we have used different strategies to gain access to collaborative projects with teachers in public schools. Initially, we provided teacher PD to urban teachers in public schools through the link with the Secretary of Education of Bogota´ who hired University teams to do PD of teachers’ L1 literacy practices. The Secretary of Education as a governmental institution reported the scores obtained in the language test administered in schools in third, fifth, and ninth grades to identify difficulties which required an important intervention. They decided to implement teacher PD to transform the Spanish language arts curriculum to meet the language needs of students. The teacher professional development program (TPDP) offered by our research group Lectoescrinautas involved teachers’ literacy histories as point of departure to analyze their teaching practices and propose innovative literacy pedagogical projects. That was an excellent opportunity to become informed about teachers’ knowledge of literacy in Spanish and, for those teachers who were also teaching English, an opportunity to learn about their perspectives regarding English. In reflecting on these initial projects, begun in the 1990s, we see that we easily knew how to use local resources and teachers’ funds of knowledge in developing L1 language curriculum. Since 2008, we’ve gained access to schools and teachers’ classrooms through the work of our graduate students
practicing EFL instructors, as teacher leaders who share the results of their classroom projects in schools and open possibilities for participation of other teachers in similar projects. Because we are interested in maintaining contact with teachers in schools to carry out a dynamic research agenda, it is paramount to have an active network with schools through projects, publications, and conferences. As we began integrating more community-based pedagogies and mapping activities in our ELT graduate courses, more and more of our MA students have designed and

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implemented their curriculum research projects using CBP. Their success in using local resources and realities have served as powerful, positive examples to their colleagues in their schools. So far in this essay we have provided our personal and professional histories as English Teacher Educators that describe our professional trajectories and contextualize our practices. We have framed our practices and professional interests as English teacher educators, researchers, and editor (Amparo) within the sociopolitical realities and the National Policies for English Teaching in Colombia. In the following section, we share some of the insights gained through examining our work through an S-STEP lens.

INSIGHTS: CHALLENGING OUR IDENTITIES, BELIEFS, AND PRACTICES TO POSITION THE LOCAL IN ELT EDUCATION We are committed to critical literacy practices and community pedagogies focused on the local realities to address critical situations like poverty, forced displacement, unemployment, and single parent homes affecting the realities of children in classrooms, especially in public education. Through engaging in this S-STEP inquiry, we examined our language teacher education preparation and practices and realized that there was not always consistency in our approaches to teaching Spanish and English as a Foreign language. As mentioned earlier, we have come to critically question the heavy reliance on imported models in our practices in the field of ELT; we view this still too prevalent model as an ongoing sign academic colonization. More recently, our language teacher education courses are oriented to explore the physical, social, cultural, and economic realities of students’ and the local communities where the schools are located. We believe this approach helps teachers understand the relevance of contextual factors in teaching and in researching their practices. Such change from teacher-centered, goal-oriented, and theoryinformed teacher education practices to locally relevant, community pedagogies has caused our identities as EFL Teacher Educators to evolve. We have widened the scope of our practices as Applied linguists toward a socially oriented practice that includes diverse cultures, linguistic diversity, and socioeconomic differences. We have also come to the realization that a more coherent way to value the local in the teaching and research practices as English language teacher educators is to integrate into the graduate course work more Latin-American Education scholars and theorists. As Amparo mentioned, she was unfamiliar with the work of Paulo Freire until she went to study in the USA. In our research and teaching, we are now using more seminal work on social pedagogies of Latin-American scholars like Fals-Borda (1987), Mejia (2011), Freire (1980), Cavalcanchi (2011), Ruiz (1994), Sichra (2008), Loncon (2002), Zavala

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(2007), and Clavijo and Gonza´lez (2016) whose work address the educational needs of local communities. As teacher educators, we found it important to analyze our personal and professional trajectories to understand our positioning and commitment toward advocating for the education of low-socioeconomically populations in our country. Our focus on community pedagogies aims at showing teachers the connections they can establish between the resources in the local communities where they work and the lives of students to build a meaningful curriculum. This S-STEP experience has raised important questions for our English teacher education practices by providing instances to critically examine the imported, adopted, or imposed models used in EFL teaching in Colombia. By doing so, we can understand the sources that inform our professional identities and make commitment to raise teachers’ awareness of the underlying principles for teaching English that includes social, political, and cultural frameworks.

CONCLUSIONS This S-STEP was an opportunity for us to review our learning trajectories as teacher educators in our personal and professional histories to recognize in them invisible social, cultural, and political threads of the global fabric that dominates English teaching. We have come to understand that the adopted models we followed contributed to undervaluing our potential as teachers and researchers. We were blindly accepting imperialist mandates masked in political and economic international agreements. We became aware of the connections between reflection in teacher education and self-study as an approach to research in teacher education. In our context, diversity is evidenced in socioeconomic class, place of origin, minority languages, and linguistic varieties spoken across the country that generate differences that lead to inequity and discrimination. Thus, CBP became useful for teachers to promote a more equal, democratic environment among the differences. We learned that although it was challenging to carry out a self-study project of our trajectories as English teacher educators because of its complex nature; however, it was valuable to realize the genesis and evolution of our beliefs, practices, and collaborative research to understand our current identities that place our professional agendas within local and global interests in English teacher education.

REFERENCES Apple, M. (2010). Global crises, social justice, and education. New York, NY: Routledge. Canagarajah, S. (2005). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. Mahawh, NJ: Lawrence Elbaum Associates.

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Cardenas, M. L., & Nieto Cruz, M. (2017). Resisting exclusion from core indexing systems. Profile Issues of Teacher Professional Development, 19(2), 7
11. Cavalcanchi, M. (2011). Multilinguismo, transculturalismo e o (re)conhecimento de contextos minorita´rios, minoritarizados e invisibilizados. In M. C. C. Magalha˜es & S. Fidalgo (orgs), Questo˜es de Me´todo e de Linguagem na Formac¸a˜o Docente (pp. 171
185). Campinas: Mercado de Letras. Clavijo, A., & Gonza´lez, A. P. (2016). The missing voices in Colombia Bilingue: The case of Embera children schooling in Bogota´. In N. Hornberger (Ed.), Honoring Richard Ruiz work on language planning and bilingual education (pp. 431
458). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Clavijo, A., Guerrero, C., Torres, C., Ramirez, M., & Torres, E. (2004). Acting critically upon the curriculum: Innovations that transform teaching. Ikala, 9(15), 11
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310. Desforges, C., & Abouchaar, A. (2003). The impact of parental involvement, parental support and family education on pupil achievements and adjustment: A literature review. Research Report 433. London: Department for Education and Skills. Retrieved from http://www.bgfl.org/ bgfl/custom/files_uploaded/uploaded_resources/18617/Desforges.pdf Fals-Borda, O. (1987). The application of participatory action research in Latin America. International Sociology, 2(4), 329
347. Feldman, A. (2002). Be(co/am)ing a teacher educator. In C. Kosnik, A. R. Freese, & A. P. Samaras (Eds.), Making a difference in teacher education through self-study (pp. 35-50). Dordrecht: Springer. Freeman, D. (1998). Doing teacher-research: From inquiry to understanding. Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle. Freire, P. (1980). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Gonzalez, A., & Llurda, E. (2016). Bilingualism and globalisation in Latin America: Fertile ground for native-speakerism. In F. Copland, S. Garton, & S. Mann (Eds.), LETS and NESTs: Voices, views, and vignettes (pp. 89
109). London: British Council. Goodson, I. (1981). Becoming an academic subject: Patterns of explanation and evolution. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2(2), 163
180. Heigham, J., & Croker, R. (2009). Qualitative research in applied linguistics: A practical introduction. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the World: Teaching and learning the language and literatures (pp. 11-30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LaBoskey, V. K. (2004). Moving the methods of self-study research and practice forward: Challenges and opportunities. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (Vol. 2, pp. 1169
1184). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Loncon, E. (2002). El Mapudungun y derechos lingu¨ı´sticos del Pueblo Mapuche. Working Papers Series 4. Muper Mapuforlaget. ISBN 91-89629-04-03, 2002. Mejia, M. (2011). Educaciones y Pedagogı´as Crı´ticas del Sur: Cartografı´as de la Educacio´n Popular. La Paz, Bolivia: Ministerio de Educacio´n. Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory and Practice, 31, 132
141. Ottesen, E. (2007). Reflection in teacher education. Reflective Practice, 8(1), 31
46. Pennycook, A. (1990). Towards a critical applied linguistics for 1990s. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 8
29. Ruiz, R. (1994). Language orientations. NABE Journal, 8(2), 15
34. Samaras, A., & Freese, A. (2009). Looking back and looking forward: An historical overview of the self-study school. In C. Lassonde, S. Galman, & C. Kosnik (Eds.), Self-study research methodologies for teacher educators (pp. 3
20). Boston, MA: Sense Publishers.

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Samaras, A. (2011). Self-study in teacher research. Improving your practice through collaborative inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Sharkey, J., & Clavijo, A. (2012). Promoting the value of local knowledge in ESL/EFL teacher education through community-based fieldwork. In C. Reichman & B. Medrado (Eds.), Pra´ticas e projetos de formac¸a˜o de professors de ingle´s (pp. 39
58). Joa˜o Pessoa: Editora Universita´ria da Universidade Federal da Paraı´ ba. Sharkey, J., Clavijo, A., & Ramirez, L. (2016). Developing a deeper understanding of communitybased pedagogies: Learning with and from teachers in Colombia. Journal of Teacher Education, 67(4), 306
319. doi:10.1177/0022487116654005 Sichra, I. (2008). Cultura escrita quechua en Bolivia: contradiccio´n en los tiempos del poder. Tellus, 8(15), 11
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GETTING DOWN TO IDENTITIES TO TRACE A NEW CAREER PATH: UNDERSTANDING NOVICE TEACHER EDUCATOR IDENTITIES IN MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION TEACHING Vy Dao, Scott Farver and Davena Jackson ABSTRACT With the increasingly cultural and linguistic diversity in education, teaching multicultural education for pre-service teachers becomes an important part of teacher education. In this collaborative self-study study, we examine how we construct our identities and how social interactions of multicultural education classrooms shape our identities. Our study draws on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) “identity as learners” concept, Akkerman and Bakker’s (2011) “boundary crossing learning” theory, Harre´ & Lagenhove’s (1999) positioning theory, and positionality concept. We found three themes that describe our identities and they reflect our embodiment of our positionality, our positions, our challenge confrontation, and our teaching improvement. We argue for the need of tracing the professional trajectories of multicultural education novice teacher educators and the important roles that our positionality plays in our identity formation. Our study has implications for professional support

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 55
72 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030004

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for multicultural education novice teacher educators and offers suggestions for further self-study research about multicultural education novice teacher educator identity formation. Keywords: Collaborative self-study; novice teacher educator identity; doctoral student’s learning to teach; multicultural education; teacher education; positioning; positionality

INTRODUCTION Pre-service teachers have been required to take multicultural teacher education courses (MECs), including those focusing on racial, gender, sexual, cultural, and linguistic diversity, for a long time (Jun, 2016; Sleeter, 2001). Such courses play an important role in shaping pre-service teachers’ critical thinking, positive behavior, and actions about cultural and linguistic diversity (Ukpokodu, 2007; Vavrus, 2009). Though considered critical to the development of a pre-service teacher’s understanding about structural and systemic challenges in education (Gorski, 2012), often these MECs are taught by doctoral students. While many doctoral students within teacher education are former teachers and educators themselves, they are considered novice teacher educators (NTEs) within the context of teacher education. These NTEs learn to teach in university settings mainly through analyzing and understanding themselves and their own teaching experiences (Foot, Crowe, Tollafield, & Allan, 2014). This phenomenon raises important questions about how NTEs shape and reshape their own experiences through their teaching practices, and how their practices further inform educational policy for multicultural education teaching. By using collaborative self-study approaches and investigating our identities as NTEs teaching MECs, we address these inquiries. As doctoral students, we examine how our identities as NTEs affect both our classroom experiences as well as how we use our identities to advance our teaching. The two research questions guiding this study are: 1. How do three NTEs construct their identities as they teach multicultural education classrooms? 2. How do the contexts of multicultural education classrooms affect the development of their identities?

THE AUTHORS We are doctoral students in a teacher education program at a large research university. Each of us taught one section of a required MEC for pre-service

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teachers. Our individual multiple identities are unique, which helps us examine this collaborative self-study from many angles. Vy identifies as an Asian, heterosexual, cis-gendered female and mother from Vietnam. Vy taught psychology and sociology for eight years for preservice elementary school teachers in Vietnam. Despite this experience, Vy sees herself as a novice in teaching multicultural education for American pre-service teachers. Scott identifies as a white, heterosexual, cis-gendered male from the United States. Before coming to graduate school, Scott was an English teacher with the US Peace Corps, and taught in both elementary and high schools in the United States. Davena identifies as an African American, heterosexual, cisgendered female, and mother in the United States. Her experience includes teaching for over 20 years and serving in leadership roles at the K-12 level in the United States. We share a belief in the importance of teaching from a humanizing perspective (Paris & Winn, 2014). In doing so, we believe in centering youth and communities’ lives, as well as the stories and experiences of people who have been marginalized as we teach this course. This type of approach is reflected in the readings and videos we assign, the activities we engage in, and the discussions we have.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Identity and Learning Identity formation, specifically for teacher educators, is defined as the interactions between individual teacher educators who possess certain experiences, knowledge, personal history, and cultural backgrounds, and the social contexts in which their work resides (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2015). Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop (2004) assert there is no consensus among researchers about a working definition of teacher identity. However, there is consensus that this teacher identity formation is an ongoing process that embeds interactions between oneself and one’s environment. According to Lave and Wenger’s (1991) framework of situated learning, identity formation is connected to learning from and with others in a social setting. To learn in a social setting means to become “a different person with respect to the possibilities enabled by the systems of relations” (p. 53). Lave and Wenger (1991) use the term “identities-in-practice” to emphasize that identities take shape as one engages in the practices of social interactions through making sense of others’ talking, doing, and knowing. In short, identity is the status of one’s becoming a full member of particular social practices through one’s interactive learning with and from others’ responses and reflection. Such

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identities are not static. Rather, they are fluid, ongoing, and changing over time and place. NTEs embody such learning. Although doctoral students may be novices to teaching in a university setting, they still possess teaching experiences from their previous work. These experiences help them grow as they transition to university-level teaching (Kitchen, 2005). In other words, they are constantly learning to teach in order to become experienced teacher educators (Zeichner, 2005). NTEs’ learning to teach is not just about their coming to know content and pedagogical matter knowledge, but also constructing an identity of themselves as a person (Palmer, 2007). Thus, identity formation through learning to teach MECs and becoming a full participant in their teaching practices depends on how NTEs exercise their agency through establishing beings
a kind of thing one tells others about who one is and wants to be and do (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2015). In this study, we focus on one constitutive piece of that being
the positionality of NTEs. Positionality is seen as individual’s cultural position, especially the position that pertains to identities such as race, gender, and sexuality (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 592). It describes temporary and interactionally specific stances and roles of individuals who participate in social contexts. Positionality is applicable for the contexts of MECs because it associates to the ways NTEs make sense of their goals while navigating between various competing ideas in the new working contexts (Knight, 2011). In this regard, learning about one’s self within social practices both shapes and reflects the sense of who an NTE is in relation to others and the world around them. This involves potential for change since it enhances “[our] understanding of who [we] are being and becoming as a teacher educator” and “the contexts that constrain [us]” and “opens possibilities for [our] individual and collective acting, and doing,” and ultimately “bring[s] new ideas to the practice [we are] working on” (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2015, p. 68).

Identity, Boundaries, and Positioning Multicultural education classrooms are social settings (Brown, 2004; Ukpokodu, 2007). The different ways in which class is set up and carried out (e.g., how teachers lead class discussions or set up small group activities) create multiple social worlds within those settings (Foot et al., 2014). In this regard, when NTEs facilitate student learning in their classrooms, they might involve working with different social worlds that may be parallel or competing with one another (Trent, 2013). Akkerman and Bakker (2011) named this phenomenon boundary-cross learning, pointing out that as multiple worlds exist in social practices, they might create contradictory ideas, opinions, and expectations for teachers and learners. This often causes frustration, particularly for a novice struggling to construct an identity with which they are comfortable within the

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framework of others’ acceptance and support (Newberry, 2014). However, it can be fulfilled if the novices can reconsider, and look beyond their position to understand what they have learned, ought to learn, and will be learning. According to Harre´ and Lagenhove (1999), while moving from one goal and idea to another, individuals tend to involve various modes of positioning. They can position themselves to express their personal agency, in order to achieve a particular goal in their work. Individuals may also experience being positioned, when they position themselves in ways they think are required by others. Finally, the individual may experience a reposition, in that they adopt a new position as a result of making sense of previous experiences. Each stance is a response to a particular social context. Thus, how an NTE chooses to accept, engage, change, or ignore those positions shapes the ways they interact in classrooms, which then contributes to their identity development. In this study, we look across the worlds of our multiple goals about what and how we want to teach students, as well as what students seem to be seeking to learn. Looking across these worlds, goals, and expectations enables us to examine how we form our identities within the social contexts of our individual classrooms. Also, looking at the ways we both position ourselves and are being repositioned by our students while teaching MECs allows us to explore the multiplicity of our identities. This, in turn, helps us see how our identity formation in enacting our teaching practices in one particular social setting might be a potential resource for other settings. In short, our goal for this study is threefold: to understand (1) our potential teaching trajectories, (2) the challenges we encounter as novices, and (3) how it might be possible for us to take those challenges and turn them into opportunities to transform our teaching for the benefits of student learning.

RESEARCH DESIGN Contexts In this collaborative self-study, we are NTEs who teach an MEC for pre-service teachers (LaBoskey, 2004). In our inquiry, self-study is used to investigate our identity formation while we teach the course. Our study was located within a required course for all pre-service teachers at a large, predominately white (PWI) Midwestern research institution we call Green University’s (pseudonym) teacher education program in Spring and Fall 2016. The course is a social foundations course that introduces pre-service teachers to the ways in which social inequality affects schooling and vice versa. It is designed to allow students to examine how socially constructed categories (such as social class, race, or gender) are used to privilege some individuals and groups and marginalize others. The course meets 3 hours each week throughout the semester. Most instructors

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teaching the course are doctoral students who apply to teach the course for at least four semesters. We belong to this group of doctoral student instructors. We adopt curriculum framework designed by the university (with required course themes and requirements for students’ learning competences, reading lists, and grading). Based on this framework, we develop our own syllabi. Each syllabus reflects the curriculum framework requirements and allows instructor autonomy in course materials. Each semester, we meet in required bi-weekly instructor group meetings to share teaching approaches, design common assignments, reflect on our classroom practices, and share ideas to improve our teaching. During our research in Spring and Fall 2016, we also met informally to talk about our individual needs and interests around the course.

Data Sources and Data Analysis As this collaborative self-study focuses on understanding our identity and the social contexts that shape it, we have drawn data from three sources: (1) selfreflective texts, (2) collective reflective texts, and (3) cross-conversational texts. Our 18 self-reflective texts were developed over the course of both Spring and Fall semesters in 2016, when each of us recorded ideas and moments of our classroom teaching as field notes in our own reflective journal. At the end of each semester, we gathered our self-reflective texts and together discussed what we had written. We then collaboratively wrote two longer reflective narratives about our teaching and interactions with our students in our classrooms. These became our collective reflective texts. Our cross-conversational texts were the transcriptions of our eight bi-weekly instructor group meetings and six informal discussions meetings we had with each other. At the beginning of the study, each of us re-read our individual texts to identify initial codes. Then, we came together and began our collective data analysis by reading and re-reading the three data sources, engaging in cross conversation in the forms of questions and responses. Here, we looked for recurring ideas in the texts that represented elements of our identities and positioning as NTEs, collaboratively developing initial codes (Miles & Huberman, 1994). We used these codes to analyze how we shaped our goals, identified challenges, and took actions toward addressing the challenges in our teaching. We then connected those ideas with texts that describe influential characteristics for our teaching and our associated stances based on our positionality and bucketed the codes into three organizing themes: (1) Our goals, (2) Student expectations, and (3) Our actions. Finally, we related these themes to Akkerman and Bakker’s (2011) theory of boundaries, which we then use to analyze our findings (Table 1).

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Table 1. Coding Schema. Initial Codes

Organizing Themes

Cultural mediation

Condensed Themes Related to Boundaries

Our goals as instructors

Noticing boundaries
I am uncertain

Student expectations

Encountering boundaries
I am embarrassed

Actions related to our instruction

Readjusting boundaries
I made a move

Classroom as safe space Challenging students Disrupting students Neutrality Sharing cross-cultural knowledge Valuing student voice Sharing feelings and language Exposure to cultural diversity Friendship and collegiality Interactive activities

FINDINGS The development of our identities reflected our embodiment of various social interactions between ourselves and our students through multiple ways of positioning. They also reflect our beliefs, values, and actions related to our teaching. Below, we examine some of the ways these themes were seen in our self-study.

I Am Uncertain!
Noticing Boundaries In trying to understand what it means to be an NTE in a multicultural education course, we investigated how we self-positioned within certain teaching moments to think about our corresponding goals in our teaching. We often positioned ourselves as teacher educators in our teaching, even though we also considered ourselves novices. These positions are interwoven with our positionality and our teaching goals. For example, Vy considered the ways she envisioned herself as a teacher educator when thinking about ways she wanted to engage with students. She wrote at the beginning of the semester: I think that if I can bring my own experiences about cultural differences, that might be helpful. I think a teacher educator like me should create comfort, honesty, trust, and mutual understanding in my classroom, no matter if we [teacher and students] come from different cultural backgrounds. (Self-reflection, January 14, 2016)

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Scott also described himself as a teacher educator at the beginning of the course. In sharing his goals for trying to relate to his students, Scott wrote: I think that being a teacher educator in this course means that I should not be the sole source of information for my students. I don’t want to act like I know more than what I actually know. Rather, I want to challenge my students’ thinking about social issues within the scope of this course. (Self-reflection, January 26, 2016)

Likewise, Davena engaged in the idea at the beginning of the semester that she aims to create a learning environment in her classroom that supports mutual learning between herself and her students. In her self-reflective text, she wrote: I realized that to be a teacher educator in this course is to be in a place of humanization. That is, where I am working with and learning from my students, fostering an environment where the students and I develop a mutual respect for one another. (Self-reflection, January 10, 2016)

In coming together and considering our experiences and thoughts collectively, we shared ways we wanted to engage with students moving forward. Writing collaboratively, we shared: We want to teach through the ways we embody our experiences along with our student experiences. We want to construct the contexts of multicultural education classrooms
the ones that we help to create and sustain multicultural issues
in the ways that both teacher educators’ and students’ perspectives, stories, experiences, and social identities are welcomed. (Collective reflection, February 26, 2016)

As we thought about ourselves as teacher educators, we noticed the potential boundaries between our goals we set in our positions as teacher educators and learning expectations derived from student positions. Vy was struck with uncertainty, wondering if the cultural knowledge she shared might be what students really need: I know I am from an Asian community and am seen as a foreigner as I teach. I know most students are different from me, in terms of cultures, languages, and ethnicity … I feel it’s hard to do so in a completely perfect way because of the tensions and conflict that often happens in this course and wonder how my students will react to this. (Self-reflection, January 14, 2016)

Accordingly, Scott was concerned about whether his desire to challenge students overlaps with students’ goals: I decided to teach this course because I want to bring my multiple intersecting and privileged identities
White, heterosexual, able-bodied, and native English language speaker into class to challenge students because I know most of the students have similar privileged identities… However, I also wonder if my students want to be challenged in this way. (Self-reflection, January 16, 2016)

Davena was concerned whether boundaries between racial and language differences between her and her students might hinder her goal of creating a mutually understanding environment:

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I want my African-American woman aspects to be seen by my students. But, I know that my class has mostly White undergraduate students, who may or may not have had opportunities to disrupt dominant notions about race and privilege in their schooling. (Self-reflection, January 10, 2016)

Our identity construction is situated within such positionality, self-positions, and potential boundaries. How these positionality, positions, and boundaries affect our identity formation and how we responded to them are presented in the next parts.

I Am Embarrassed!
Boundary Encounters As we recalled our self-positioning as teacher educators and our positionality across our time teaching, we also narrated our reflection about how we were positioned by others
in this case, our students. As we reflected on the ways we were encountering these boundaries, we noticed two incidents that stuck out to us which were somewhat embarrassing. In the first, Vy, who sees her identity as Asian to be important in helping students better understand issues of culture, gets pushback from a student who did not see this piece of her identity as an asset. Vy wrote in her self-reflection that after watching a movie about race, a student wanted to talk about how Vy’s identity as Asian was not helping him grasp the concepts discussed: In the final minutes of class, a student approached me and talked in between his many pauses “I think most of what I said today was off …I know it’s not really … easy … The movie was OK … but I guess it would have been better if you had told us how your experiences were related to racial discrimination in this country.” After all students left, I sat still behind the podium, feeling confused, angry, incapable, and isolated. (Self-reflection, March 6, 2016)

Scott’s experience discussing issues of gender and sexuality caused him embarrassment as he considered his own identities, and whether students were able to take up the ideas he was presenting in spite of them: As I was explaining ideas of gender and sexual identity, I misspoke, using an outdated term. Immediately, a student raised his hand and corrected me. At that moment, I felt extremely embarrassed. I was embarrassed not just about using an old term, but also about my status as an instructor. What did they think about me being wrong like that? I also wondered if my heterosexuality hindered the ways students take up ideas I present on issues of LGBTQA þ . (Self-reflection, February 26, 2016)

We brought those incidents to our cross-conversation with Davena to discuss how we might move forward. When listening to our experiences, Davena was able to connect to her own struggles as an NTE: What I understood from your [Scott and Vy] stories was that at times your teaching was driven by the intention that might not have met what students thought about your teaching should be. This reminds me about what has driven the ways I taught the course and the

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VY DAO ET AL. constraints I think I have had… I wanted to construct a classroom of mutual understanding based on my identities as an African American women and an African American English speaker. But, I felt sometimes my students remained in their own spaces, leaving the notion of mutuality behind. (Cross-conversational reflection, March 18, 2016)

Vy related to this idea of mutual understanding, and shared how confused she was by her student’s response that he wanted to just understand the US context of race, not an international view. My Eastern cultures are my best features
that tells my stories
and I thought my stories should be a part of my teaching. I had thought that it would have been a positive force. In this case it seems it wasn’t. (Cross-conversational reflection, March 18, 2016)

Scott also struggled with his identity in this time of reflection and how he is limited in the ways he can interact with different topics based on his own privileged identities. I am aware of my privileges. I wanted to use them to challenge students who are considered privileged. But, I don’t think I considered the extent to which I might not be knowledgeable and sensitive enough to understand the nuances of marginalized groups. My privileged status is two sided
it has both a negative and positive impact on my teaching. Though I work really hard, I have to work harder to make sure I learn more about each topic before I teach it. (Cross-conversational reflection, March 18, 2016)

These conversations helped us reconsider how we might engage with students moving forward as NTEs. When we gathered together at the beginning of Fall 2016, we wrote that: Our students are important. They push us to visit our positioning and positionality and the actual state of our being which, then, helps inform our thinking about ways of our doing or enacting student learning. (Collective reflection, September 16, 2016)

I Made a Move
Readjusting Boundaries As we continued teaching our course and reflecting upon our teaching, we began to adapt our practices as we reflected upon students’ reactions to our teaching and the experiences we accumulated while teaching. After talking with her faculty mentor, Vy was able to see herself as an “intercultural learner” (Kim, 2007; Scollon, 1997) who can make connections with students as she learned how to navigate the classroom as an international NTE, which ended up impacting her pedagogy. Vy wrote: A student confronted me about a reading in our unit focusing on racism. Following conversations with my mentor, I became more aware of US classroom practices and I was provided with tools to communicate with that student… I felt I became a reciprocal intercultural learner through this. If I want to have students engage in a particular way of doing and thinking, I need to familiarize myself with the cultural norms that my students are used to. (Self-reflection, November 10, 2016)

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Through these types of reflections, Scott was also able to pinpoint some of his weaknesses as an NTE and use student knowledge to help facilitate discussions that resulted in him changing his teaching. In his view, he considered himself as a co-worker with his students: Moving forward from that moment of embarrassment, I still feel instances of imposter syndrome periodically, but I have also been able to look at my own weaknesses as strengths as an instructor. For example, this semester, when the topic of gender and sexuality came up, I invited that former student who corrected me into my class as a guest speaker
and it went really well. My students were engaged and interested to hear from a peer on these issues and benefited from a number of resources on campus that he shared. (Self-reflection, November 20, 2016)

Davena was also able to respond to specific student issues, which resulted in a change to her teaching. She wrote: A student’s story about when a professor criticized her African American English inspired me to make a move by incorporating additional readings concerning the intersections of race, racism, and language into my course. Additionally, the students participated in a Chalk Talk activity in which they were broken into groups and moved around the room to interrogate the concepts of culture, power, identity, and racism. I used Chalk Talk as a scaffolding activity to prepare the students for the unit on language. Through this activity, I realized that I am growing in my teaching through listening to my students’ stories. (Self-reflection, November 16, 2016)

Our reflection on the switch and turn of our positioning not only impacted the ways we made a move in leading activities in the classroom space, but also in the ways we approached students’ assignments. Scott reflected on an issue he had with a student who sent an email about lodging a formal complaint about an assignment, and how it made him think about his switching between various positions
a former teacher, a teacher educator, and a doctoral student
facing student challenges about grading: Having been a teacher for over half my life, this hit me close to home
it was as if the student was questioning my identity. Up to this point, I had been teaching in some way or another for 12 years. As a professional educator, I knew what I was doing when I walked into a classroom and was confident in my abilities. I enter classrooms with years of experience in various states and countries. But as a graduate instructor, I found myself questioning myself more than I had in previous situations. Was I good enough to be here? (Self-reflection, October 22, 2016)

Scott’s reflection included how he deliberately adapted his responses to this student’s email based on his previous and current teacher educator’s experiences. He wrote: I took a walk around my house composing my response in my head, and trying to cool off. After a number of laps, I sat down to finally respond to the student. I first acknowledged their frustration and explained my thinking around the assignment that was causing them to be frustrated. I then firmly stated my commitment as an educator. I sent the email, cc-ing my advisor. My advisor emailed me immediately, expressing their support for me and my

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VY DAO ET AL. response, and the student emailed the next day with an apology for the tone in their email. (Self-reflection, October 22, 2016)

Likewise, Vy tends to analyze her multiple positions
a “graduate student teacher,” a “teacher,” and a “grader.” She reflected on how these positions help her weigh her decision on giving a student a low grade, and how she examined and reexamined multiple challenges she encountered before and after deciding grades. Vy wrote: A student in his first course assignment argued that being White is normal, and he, as White, deserved to get privilege. He wrote without citing course materials. I thought he deserved a low grade, but I was not sure about his reactions. I heard from colleagues that if a graduate student gives students low grades, they would get bad course evaluations. I emailed my advisor asking for advice and we agreed to give him a grade lower than 3.0. I commented a lot and gave him many suggestions on his assignment. Soon after, he left a note on my desk stating that my teaching about race was opposite to his perspectives. Later, in his mid-term review, he stated that he found the course useless. (Self-reflection, October 10, 2016)

Vy was able to reflect on how she adjusted her pedagogical approaches as a means to move this student forward from his discomfort about his grades and how such adjustment contributed to the changes in the student’s engagement in the subject matter. Vy wrote: I created an activity for him to present his perspectives about racial issues to the whole class, and followed with written comments from his classmates. After the presentation, he seemed to participate more in class discussions. In his final course paper, he wrote, “I began to learn that my teaching would be harmful if I do not fully understand about other race. I realized that I was swimming so long in the river of my innate White privilege that I was hesitant to challenge my pre-existing perspectives about being White.” (Self-reflection, December 28, 2016)

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS Our findings seem to confirm previous self-study findings about the indispensable connections between identity formation, time, spaces, and the ongoing learning process (see, for example, Williams & Berry, 2016). Our study points out that our identities are seen through the ways we see ourselves in the midst of various challenges happening as doctoral student instructors. Our study also indicates that over time, we seem to learn from and adjust our teaching through our positioning switch, noticing, analyzing, and dealing with challenges. In other words, our identities are formed in the triad between our elastic and evolving learning process, the time over which our teaching progresses, and the classroom spaces where our teaching takes place. This connection is an important element for novices like us to become better teacher educators, because

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in the process of becoming [teacher educators] we have multiplicities and assemblages of ideas that fold into the rhizomatic development of connections in the past, present, and future of our evolving experiences. (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2015, p. 4)

Our study also offers a window to understand better how NTEs see their teaching practices. Previous research on teacher identity often neglects novices like doctoral students teaching pre-service teachers. Our findings reveal that no matter how much previous teaching experience we have, we each were genuinely novices to teaching MECs in college-level classrooms in the United States. One example is that while teaching the course initially, we each experienced feelings of frustration whenever we were not sure how to react to students in embarrassing and confusing moments. This seems to stem from our lack of knowledge-expertise (Opfer & Pedder, 2011, p. 380) such as making mistakes when delivering subject matter knowledge (in Scott’s case) or inadequate understanding about social and historical contexts of teaching materials (in Vy’s case). However, this may also stem from the ways we embodied our ontological experiences
“the nature of being and how we perceive and enact it” (Palmer, Arthur, & Megan, 2010, p. 25), specifically the intersectionality (and the lack of it) between our positionalities, as it pertains to our race, ethnicity, language, or sexuality and that of our students. It seems clear from our findings that we intended to use our individual positionalities to support our teaching. Vy intended to embrace her Eastern aspects as asset for her teaching, Scott constantly mentioned how he wanted to use his privileged status as tools to challenge his students’ learning, and Davena saw her study and use of AfricanAmerican language as a catalyst for promoting linguistic diversity in her classroom and beyond. By doing so, we were able to analyze deliberately the sense of ourselves and that of our students, in relation to our teaching practices. For example, Vy felt uncertain about whether students could relate to her Eastern stories, Scott realized the potential counter-effect of his privilege in teaching students on topics outside his identities, and Davena seemed to encounter the tension between her goals and the reality of her teaching due to students’ lack of willingness to engage in a disruption of norms from her white students. This helps us to understand that if we want to author our positionality in our classrooms, we need students’ authorship or students’ “censorship” (Sharkey, 2004, p. 495) to do so. Taken altogether, this suggests that both our knowledgeexpertise and ontological dimensions are important elements contributing to constructing the identities of NTEs like us, and help us better grasp the nature of our teaching. While there has been much research focusing on the knowledge-expertise dimension in novice teachers’ work (see, for example, Opfer & Pedder, 2011), there is little written about how the ontological dimension shapes their personal and professional lives (Palmer et al., 2010). Thus, our self-study offers ideas for future strands of research. That is, future research might investigate the

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dynamics of ontological dimensions, such as the ways NTEs embody their positionality to empower students by making their classroom experiences genuinely relevant and meaningful to them. In addition, because multicultural education classrooms are not only spaces that contribute to improving NTEs’ teaching, future research might investigate how conditions outside classrooms influence their positionality embodiment. Indeed, the ways institutions view who NTEs are, in relation to their positionality, play a prominent role in shaping and making changes to the ways in which individuals perform in diversity and multicultural-centered classrooms (Daniel & Peercy, 2014). Teacher educators are likely to continue to grapple with challenges of resistance in multicultural education courses (Dunn, Dotson, Ford, & Roberts, 2014). Hence, if we can understand how NTE positionality is constructed and reconstructed from individual and institutional perspectives in such courses, we can better understand how their identities are developed
thus improving both their teaching and student learning, especially in course focused on multiculturalism and diversity. Our study highlights the connections between the switch of our positioning and our pedagogical moves
a kind of instructional adjustment which aims to readjust the boundaries between our multiple goals and the expectation of our students. The finding shows that over the two semesters, we experienced navigating and progressing our pedagogical adjustment while examining and reexamining our positions through making sense of our classroom incidents. For example, in the Fall 2016, Davena positioned herself as “a growing learner.” Accordingly, she adapted the Chalk Talk activity to supplement her teaching a lesson on language discrimination. By doing so, she demonstrated that she learned from students’ insights for her pedagogical decisions, which helped refresh her and students’ ideas about what it meant to be a reciprocal understanding environment in class discussions. So too with Scott. He was able to reflect on an embarrassing situation and use that experience to change his teaching. By inviting a former student into class as a guest speaker and repositioning himself as a co-teacher with his former student, Scott seems to readjust his boundary so that his goal was more in line with the expectations of his students. Going along with various constraints from students and reconsidering her position as “an intercultural learner,” Vy did the same as Scott by finding her ways to better understand American classroom cultures and meet the needs of her students, who were having difficulty seeing her experiences as relevant to what they were learning in the course. The narratives of Vy and Scott about their strategies for grading
a part of our pedagogy
reflect that by wresting with multiple positions we were also able to refresh our pedagogical choices. That is, Scott’s carefully crafted email to respond to a student making sense of an assignment or Vy’s having a student present to the whole class on the topic they were uncomfortable with were new moves that came as a result of this wrestling. Such moves changed our pedagogy and helped provide opportunities to support our students to engage better in both communication and understanding of subject matter. In short, the

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pedagogical moves reflect our efforts to the “switch of sense of self” to mediate our multiple self-positions “in such a way that a more or less coherent and consistent sense of self is maintained throughout various participations and selfinvestments in one’s [teaching] life” (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011, p. 315). As our identities were being positioned by other and repositioned by us, so too were our teaching practices and our pedagogical approaches. Sharkey (2004) helps us put this insight in a concise and thoughtful way by writing that [u]ltimately, if we [teacher educators] acknowledge our roles in constructing those contexts we acknowledge our roles in shaping our students’ stories, and that consequently, their stories are a part of us. (p. 496)

In this way, our repositioning, encountering, crossing, and readjusting of boundaries between our goals and students’ expectations as well as our wrestling with challenges in classrooms teaching of multicultural education
they all represent a reflection on our being and our doing in our identity formation as teacher educators. That is, we were trying to build meaningful relationships with students through the course instruction and explore our sense of self through making sense of students’ reactions to our teaching. There have been (and will continue to be) a considerable number of doctoral students like us teaching pre-service service teachers in research-based universities (Walker, Golde, Jones, Bueshel, & Hutchings, 2008) and NTEs will continue to seek social, emotional, and intellectual support to enhance their teaching (Bullock, Williams, & Ritter, 2012). However, they typically receive little professional support for their teaching (Zeichner, 2005). We suggest that doctoral students and other NTEs tasked with teaching multicultural education-related courses might benefit from professional development that takes into account the complexities of classroom social contexts and the multiplicity of NTE identities
the weaving of their learning, time, and spaces within their teaching, as well as their positionality and positioning. If we can do so, we will contribute to put in place the recent calls from many self-study scholars, such as Berry and Russell (2013), for the sustainable and high quality professional support, not only for NTEs of multicultural education, but for others who teach method classes or are clinical teaching mentors. This study is important for NTEs like us as we develop as doctoral students, teacher educators, and researchers. Collaborative self-study approaches like ours have a long history of development with the participation of doctoral students at the earlier time (see, for example, Crowe & Whitlock, 1999). We continue to highlight the important roles of collaborative self-study approaches in supporting our teaching and strengthening our epistemology about self-study. Our use of self-study supports our teaching because our methodological approaches promote our teaching and vice versa. Employing self-reflective inquiries and our explicit and intentional uses of our teaching experiences helps us to analyze and understand our identities. Better understanding of our

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identities, in turn, leads us to more reflections on our teaching. When this cycle continues throughout our research, it generates important resources for our teaching individually and collaboratively
basically self-study sustains us while teaching. We are both researchers and teachers throughout the process (LaBoskey, 2004). In this way, the complex issues of cultural and linguistic diversity, social justice, and equity in our teaching and learning contexts are better understood and the students learning experiences about multicultural education is enhanced. Our study enhances our self-study epistemology as it helps us go beyond merely telling stories in order to produce knowledge. As we consider self-studies as ways to “locate our own experiences to our own teaching practices” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, p. 36), we believe that our study helps generate knowledge in the field by telling a conventional story about an underresearched group (i.e., doctoral students teaching multicultural courses) in a new way. The purposes of our storytelling began with our personal experiences, which helped us understand the nature of our work and the complexities of the contexts that shape it. If our study can tell a traditional story in a refreshing manner, then we respond to Loughran’s (2010) call for “push[ing] toward a sophisticated articulation of the knowledge that lies beneath the story” (p. 223) and offer ways to engage in producing knowledge about teacher educators’ practices.

CONCLUSION Increasingly, teacher education bears the responsibilities for enhancing social justice through multicultural education teaching practices. In order to better understand those practices and those who are charged with its implementation, this collaborative self-study investigates identity formation of doctoral students who are NTEs in multicultural education courses. Our work suggests that the most important elements of our identity formation is the evolving relationships between the selves, in terms of our teaching goals, positionality, and positioning, and the ways we activate our agency to confront challenges and transform our teaching.

REFERENCES Akkerman, S. F., & Bakker, A. (2011). Boundary crossing and boundary objects. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 132
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Berry, A., & Russell, T. (2013). Seeking congruence in teacher education practices through selfstudy. Studying Teacher Education, 9(3), 201
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DISCURSIVE RESOURCES IN A MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION COURSE Laura C. Haniford and Brian Girard ABSTRACT This chapter explores the impact of context on the teaching of a multicultural teacher education course and illustrates what can be learned through partnering self-study methodology with discourse analysis. The study described in this chapter draws on data collected at two teacher education institutions with different student demographics in two different states in the United States. By drawing on methods of discourse analysis, we explore how the differences between two classes manifested in response to a set of class readings on race and racial stereotyping in schools. Specifically, we look closely at the discursive resources available in each location to talk about issues of race and racism. Through partnering discourse analysis and selfstudy methodologies, we uncovered deep-seated assumptions held by each of us that resulted in a reification of issues of race and class in ways that surprised and troubled us. Keywords: Discourse analysis; multicultural education; teacher education; race in schools

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 73
91 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030007

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INTRODUCTION This chapter has two separate but related aims. First, to explore the impact of context on the teaching of a multicultural teacher education course. Second, to offer our perspective on what can be learned through partnering self-study methodology with discourse analysis. The data described in this chapter are part of a larger study comparing the teaching of a similar multicultural teacher education course in two teacher education institutions in different states with students from different backgrounds and experiences. In this chapter, we explore how the differences between the two classes manifested in response to a set of class readings on race and racial stereotyping in schools. Specifically, we look closely at the discursive resources available in each location to talk about issues of race and racism. Through the use of discourse analysis and self-study methodologies, we uncovered deepseated assumptions held by each of us that resulted in a reification of issues of race and class in ways that surprised and troubled us.

LITERATURE REVIEW Over the past several decades, there has been increased focus on the preparation of teachers able to teach the diverse student population in the United States. Often research has cited the demographic imperative (Banks et al., 2005) as a rationale for the work of changing the beliefs and attitudes of the predominantly white, female, middle-class, teaching force. However, we believe that despite current projections indicating teacher demographics will remain relatively unchanged in the foreseeable future, approaches are needed that do not simply assume a white audience. While this work has advanced teacher education research and practice, it has also masked important questions and omissions, particularly those pertaining to preparing non-dominant teacher candidates. We are not the first to make this point. In her review of research on multicultural education within teacher education, Christine Sleeter (2001) highlights the ways that focusing on white, female, preservice teachers can silence students of color. She argues that we need to provide all preservice teachers with rigorous preparation. The work described here represents our attempt at beginning to think about this need in our own lives and courses. Additionally, Marilyn Cochran-Smith (2004) has documented her own realizations that one cannot assume that because a course interrogates questions of equity and access in America’s schools that it meets the needs of all prospective teachers. Rather, one also has to consider to whom the course is addressed: do the assigned readings and activities presume a white prospective teacher? In

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order to address all prospective teachers, Cochran-Smith (2004) described her work to …revise the story the curriculum told about identity and rewrite the characters who were central in that story, particularly who “we and they,” “self and other,” “regular and left over were”. (p. 98)

In this chapter, we seek to interrogate not only the stories our curriculum told, but the ways our students read these stories and constructed perspectives based on these (and other) stories. Additionally, we describe how what we learned required us to honestly confront our own preconceived ideas about “diversity” and “difference” in the classroom. Those working within the self-study community have also sought to better understand the preparation of culturally competent teachers. In keeping with Sleeter and Cochran-Smith’s work, Schulte (2009) summarized high-quality self-studies investigating multicultural teacher preparation, and reiterated the need for teacher educators to examine their own ideologies. While other selfstudies of multicultural teacher education have been conducted by white teacher educators (e.g., Schulte, 2004, 2009; Skerret, 2006; White, 2009), they focus on the course as a whole. This study differs by analyzing one specific aspect of the class
namely the discursive resources made available in a particular class session’s readings and student responses to those readings in two courses held at different universities. However, we share the commitment to the use of self-study for furthering the professional development of teacher educators (Korthagen & Lunenberg, 2004).

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The theoretical framework guiding analysis draws on sociolinguistics (Gee, 1999) and Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1989, 1995; Luke, 1995) to interrogate the different discourses constructed and drawn on by students in their written responses. The fundamental approach to discourse taken here is that language is reflexive. Describing language as reflexive means that “language simultaneously reflects reality (‘the way things are’) and constructs (construes) it to be a certain way” (Gee, 1999, p. 82). As such, we look carefully at how our students use language to both reflect and construct their understanding. As James Gee (1999) points out, all language is political
that is, language has consequences for the distribution of social goods. When we speak or write we always take a particular perspective on what the “world” is like. This involves us in taking perspectives on what is “normal” and not; what is “acceptable” and not; what is “right” and not; what is “real” and not; what is the “way things are” and not; what “people like us” or “people like them” do and don’t do; and so on and so forth, again through a nearly endless list. But these are all, too, perspectives on how we believe, wish, or act as if potential “social goods” are, or ought to be, distributed. (p. 2)

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By asking students to write reflective responses on articles, we asked students to grapple with and begin to articulate a perspective toward many of the issues Gee describes. We approach analysis from a discursive perspective in part because it avoids reifying differences by interrogating the ways our students constructed the issue of race in response to texts we gave them. A discursive perspective allows us to see the multiple and often conflicting ways students navigated the readings, their identities as students and future teachers, and their own racial identities. We agree with Adele Clarke (2005) when she reminds us: …we cannot assume what any kinds of differences mean to those in a given situation and need more and better methods to explore those meanings and their consequences in concrete social practices, including the production and consumption of discourses as practices. (p. 26)

Discourse analysis as a methodological approach made it possible for us to see the ways we were ascribing meaning to difference and pushed forward our conversations about our assumptions as white teacher educators. The students in each of the two classes accomplished multiple activities through the writing they produced in response to readings. For our purposes, we were interested in the ways these students used language to establish particular perspectives on the issue of race and the implications those perspectives had on their understanding of teaching and learning (these implications can be explicitly articulated in their text or more implicit). Ultimately, we were also interested in understanding the different discourses drawn on and available in each of our two classes. How students view some of the complex issues of race and the ways it functions in schools has repercussions for how they approach their role as teachers. For example, if they view racism as a problem that has been solved, they will likely have different reactions to equity questions in schools than if they had taken an alternate perspective. Critical discourse analysts make an explicit connection between how discourse works to constitute individuals and how that discourse serves to perpetuate existing power structures. This is done through close attention to the effects of context on discursive choices. For the students in this study, the discursive choices they made constructed them as certain kinds of individuals. Additionally, the above is also true for us as the instructors of the course. Deborah Tidwell and colleagues (2012) state: The nature of self-study methodology positions the researcher to examine the self as an integral part of the context for learning, whereby the framing and reframing of lived experiences results in a cumulative and altered understanding of practice. (p. 15)

Adding self-study to our methodology required that the questions we asked of our students must also be asked of us. How did we discursively construct race and racism in our own lives and in the course? How did the texts we select frame the available discourses? And what did we learn about ourselves that

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might allow us to construct ourselves as instructors in ways that would add to our contexts for learning?

BACKGROUND AND AIM We met as graduate students at the same US university, where we received similar training and were responsible for teaching the same multicultural education course in the teacher preparation program. When Laura completed her PhD and took her first faculty position, she was assigned to teach multiple sections of a multicultural education course. The university where she was hired was quite different from our graduate school university. At the time, Brian was still a graduate student and teaching the multicultural education course. We had many informal discussions about the ways Laura’s new classes were different and the changes she was making to her classes as a result. These informal discussions ultimately shaped the study from which this chapter is drawn. Many of these early discussions centered on our beliefs about preparing preservice teachers to teach and advocate for all their students. We realized that as teachers of multicultural education courses, we stress to our preservice teachers the importance of understanding their teaching context and the resources their students bring to the classroom. However, we had a feeling that we were not practicing what we preached. Through our discussions, we formulated the questions that guided the self-study component of our work: In what ways did we seek to learn about the students entering our own classrooms? What resources and knowledge about multicultural education did our students bring? Did we have blind spots regarding the different populations we were teaching? What implications might these answers have for our teaching? We began to investigate how our teaching of similar courses, grounded in similar pedagogy and materials, played out in different teaching contexts with different populations of preservice teachers. Here, we focus on the “conversation” between one class session’s readings regarding race and the student reflective writing in response. We asked students to read and respond to articles common to the two classes. We analyzed the discourses students drew on in response to the readings, looking for similarities and differences to help us understand the discourses made available by each group of students. Through this analysis, we consider the implications for ourselves as teacher educators and as researchers.

Our Perspectives Because self-study requires that we deliberately consider the balance between “self in relation to practice and the others who share the practice setting”

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(Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001, p. 15), it is not enough for us to analyze students’ responses without considering what we bring into the relationship. In fact, Bullough and Pinnegar (2001) argue, “to study a practice is simultaneously to study self: a study of self-in-relation to other” (p. 14). As such, it is important to consider our own backgrounds and perspectives and how they might have shaped the available discourses. Laura is a white, middle-class female who grew up and attended college in the Midwest. During her teacher education program she completed her student teaching on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico. It was here that she began to question the educational system in the United States and to see the ways that race, privilege, and power are enacted in and through that system. She also began to question the ways she was implicated in this system. Brian is a white, middle-class male who grew up in the Midwest and attended college on the east coast. Several experiences were key in developing his interest in multicultural education, including his own multicultural education course in his certification program, working with a diverse group of students in both an urban community service project and a summer college preparation enrichment program, and finally his own classroom teaching. These experiences engendered his interest in improving instruction for all students, with a particular focus on classroom relational resources for teachers and students. It should be clear by this point that we had a priori assumptions regarding the importance of different aspects of social diversity in constructing and enacting these perspectives within a multicultural teacher education course. We assumed that a classroom of students with diverse backgrounds and experiences would result in a wider variety of discourses with which to discuss race in schools. Through analysis, it also became apparent to us that we perhaps initially approached this study assuming that students from diverse backgrounds would add to the available discourses in ways that were more complex and did not focus predominantly on deflecting attention away from issues of race. We discuss this assumption in more detail below.

Classroom Context Our approach to multicultural education seeks to help prospective teachers better understand both themselves and the larger educational system. We take this view because we share a belief that without understanding the larger system, beginning teachers can become discouraged. In our syllabi, we explain the course in the following way: This course begins with the not-so-simple premise that schools work differently for different students. In order to better understand the factors that impact a child’s opportunities to learn and your opportunities to teach, we focus on three levels of analysis. We begin the semester

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by studying the societal systemics of schooling
what and how do social, historical and political forces shape the structure of public schools in the United States? The second level of analysis looks at the interaction between student characteristics and schools
through what mechanisms do schools serve different populations of students differently? The third and final level of analysis focuses on our role as teacher. After questioning how schools work differently for different students, we begin to strategize ways we as teachers can help ameliorate these problems.

The particular class session discussed here occurred in the middle of the semester, and the focus on race places this course in the second level of analysis mentioned above.

METHODOLOGY Institutional Contexts As mentioned above, this study was conducted at two different teacher education institutions. One institution (Midwestern University) is a traditional, undergraduate teacher preparation program at a large research university. The teacher education students at this institution tend to conform to the national demographic of teachers in the United States
they are predominantly white, middle-class females. The multicultural education course is part of the certification program. Of the 23 enrolled students, 22 agreed to participate in the study. The class was predominately white (21 students), female (18), and monolingual (16 fluent only in English). The second institution (Western State College) is a state college providing fifth-year teaching credentials to students already possessing a bachelor’s degree. The multicultural education course at this institution is a prerequisite prior to admission to the credential program. Of the 31 enrolled students, 27 participated. Students at this school are more racially and ethnically diverse than the national average for secondary school teachers. While the class had a majority of students who self-identified as white (20), there were a larger number of Hispanic (6) and Asian (4) students than at Midwestern University. Additionally, 22 of the students were fluent only in English with the remaining nine identifying they were fluent in Spanish, Vietnamese, or Romanian.

The Readings In this chapter, we seek to read our courses as racialized texts (Cochran-Smith, 2004). Doing so requires that we are as explicit as possible about the different texts and discourses we made available to our students
both explicitly and implicitly. The discursive approach taken in this chapter allows us to

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understand the interaction between students, context, and content in a way that other approaches do not. During the design of the larger study, we spent considerable time discussing the course
everything from the larger goals, aims, and structure to daily lesson plans and activities. We selected four readings for this week’s session. While we co-planned the course, certain local conditions precipitated small differences. One such modification was a change in the planned reading for the students at Midwestern University, in which a planned article by Lewis (2003) was substituted for another piece (Lewis, 2001) that focused less on racial formation in schools and more on the operations of a color-blind ideology in a predominately white school. Given the demographics and backgrounds of the Midwestern University students, Brian deemed the change important for his students. All four of the articles contained key arguments, concepts, and discursive resources we think are important for teachers, which we briefly outline below. 1. Lewis (2001). There Is No “Race” in the Schoolyard: Color-blind Ideology in an (Almost) All-White School. American Educational Research Journal, 38, 4, 781
811. (Read at Midwestern University) Drawing from a yearlong ethnography of three schools, Lewis focuses on one school and how it operated with a color-blind ideology. She documents the ways that race manifested itself in the institutional and classroom practices despite the desire to not see it. The piece problematizes a color-blind ideology and considers the strengths of being “color-conscious.” 2. Lewis (2003). Everyday Race-making: Negotiating Racial Boundaries in School. American Behavioral Scientist, 47, 3, 283
305. (Read at Western State College) This article looks at how race is constructed in the day-to-day interactions of an elementary school, both in the classroom and in the yard. This article highlights the differences between racial ascription and racial identity. 3. Lee (1994). Behind the Model Minority Stereotype: Voices of High and Low Achieving Asian American students. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 25, 4, 413
429. This article challenges students’ ideas about stereotypes and demonstrates the negative consequences that arise from what could be viewed as a “positive” stereotype. This article also challenges monolithic views of Asian Americans. 4. Hanssen (1998). A White Teacher Reflects on Institutional Racism. Phi Delta Kappan, 79, 9, 694
698. We chose this reading to introduce the students to the concept of institutional racism with specific examples from one teacher’s own practice and experiences in her school. This article raises important questions about curriculum, hiring, and expectations for students.

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5. McIntosh (1990). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Independent School, 49, 31
36. We chose this seminal article to raise questions for students about white privilege and to introduce students to the concept of relational privilege
if some people are denied privilege systematically in the current system, others are necessarily given privilege.

Data Collection and Analysis The central source of data for this investigation were students’ weekly responses. In addition, we analyzed our syllabi, the readings, and our debriefings of the course. Each researcher completed the analysis for their class individually, and then we compared the patterns and the discourses illuminated in each individual class. Our discussions extended and challenged our individual interpretations and understandings.

The Weekly Assignment In each of our classes, students were required to write one-page responses to the readings and submit them prior to class. The weekly assignments were described to students this way: The weeklies are graded on completion, not on content…. The purpose of these weekly papers is to allow me to monitor more closely your engagement with the material and to address any questions and/or concerns as they arise.

At Midwestern University, 23 weekly responses were analyzed, and 27 weekly responses were analyzed at Western State College. The required length was one page single spaced. At Western State, 11 were exactly one page, seven were just over a page, and eight were less than a full page. At Midwestern University, 15 were one page, six were just over a page, and two were less than a full page. It is not our intention to suggest that student writing was directly translated into classroom discourse. Rather, we are interested in examining these written assignments for the ways our students grappled with multiple discourses made available by the readings and how they positioned themselves in relation to these discourses (and by extension, us as their teachers). The writing in these assignments represents the discourses potentially available for classroom discourse. Because this particular week occurred in the middle of the semester, students were familiar with the expectations for the weekly, especially that they were graded on completion, not on the position students did or did not take in response to the readings.

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Analysis We began our analysis by drawing on Strauss and Corbin’s (1990) model of grounded theory to help us see what was important to the students themselves. We wrote detailed memos during this stage of analysis that contained both our coding and our initial thoughts and impressions. These memos guided our collaborative discussions described below. We developed emergent categories from constant comparison about the ways each student responded to the readings. One especially salient category was students’ personal connections to the readings. After an initial read and discussion, we went back to our data and coded for the ways the students made personal connections to the readings and the issues raised within them. This level of coding was broad, including all text written about the readings, themselves, and any connections made between the two. At this point, we conducted more detailed textual analysis on the excerpts from their weekly writings, drawing on Norman Fairclough’s approach to textual analysis (1989, 1995), to look at the ways the students responded to the readings and to the issue of race. Fairclough’s heuristic looks at whole-text language organization, the relationship of clauses to one another, the construction of sentences, and word choice. Fairclough (1989) brings a critical perspective to the study of coherence, emphasizing the importance of making connections within a text as well as between the text and the world. We looked at which readings the student chose to respond to, the focus of their writing, whether or not they made personal connections to the text and if so, the nature of those personal connections, and the “stance” taken toward race, particularly as it applies to schools. This level of analysis provided a window into the discourses drawn on by students. These discourses represented for us the cultural resources available within each of our classes to talk about race as an idea and as a construct. Additionally, we looked carefully at the ways students used language to construct race as an issue, the ways they either took up the issue of race as salient or deflected attention away from race. Did students implicate themselves in their writing or did they construct passive sentences as a way to distance themselves from the issues and problems? What specific language did students use to describe their reactions? Did students self-identify their own racial identity, and, if so, did they do so directly or indirectly? Other authors (e.g., Tilbury & Colic-Peijker, 2006; van den Berg, Wetherell, & HoutkoopSteenstra, 2003) have conducted similar analyses in other fields and we drew on their methodologies to assist us. Collaborative Discussions. Our analysis of our discussions drew on the understanding of “dialogue as methodology or research stance” (Guilfoyle, Hamilton, Pinnegar, & Placier, 2004, p. 1110). Working together to understand our individual experiences within our teacher education programs, we sought

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to deepen our own thinking regarding the teaching of multicultural education, and the ways we were and were not considering our individual students. We met initially to plan the course and then did not meet again until the course was over. After we had completed the first round of analysis on our individual classes, we met to discuss our initial findings. It is at this point that our discussions became part of our data collection. We shared our initial findings with one another, making note of similarities and differences. Through these conversations, we allowed observations, surprises, and questions to naturally arise. Based on our professional relationship
one based on respect, trust, and shared commitments
we were able to ask critical conversations of one another. Through these discussions, it became clear that we had each made assumptions about teaching this course, and Laura in particular had made assumptions about what teacher candidate diversity might mean for classroom discourse and learning. We turn next to a discussion of these findings.

FINDINGS There are two categories of findings: (1) the discursive strategies employed by students that were similar and different in each setting in response to the readings, and (2) the unarticulated assumptions held by each of us as teacher educators regarding the impact of teacher candidate diversity on classroom discussions about race in public schools.

Similarities There were a number of overlaps between the two classes in the deployment of discursive strategies. Both classes used distancing moves to remain detached from personally engaging in the material and maintained positive face through alignment and exoneration utterances. At Western State College, 9 out of the 26 students used distancing strategies and 10 used alignment strategies. At Midwestern University, 9 out of the 23 students used distancing strategies and 5 used alignment strategies. It should be noted that often students used multiple discursive strategies in the same weekly response. One prevalent distancing strategy was the use of academic, “objective” language. This discursive move by students constructed the topics as something to be studied in the abstract, removed from any connections to their own lives. Students in both classes who distanced themselves from the issue of race and racism using this discursive strategy also tended to describe generalized teachers, as opposed to considering the implications for their own classroom

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practice. As examples, consider two excerpts from responses to the article by Hanssen (1998): • I think that this is a worthy piece of advice for all teachers in order to prevent prejudice in their classrooms. (White, Male, Western State College student) • A teacher has to work to conceal any personal opinions/prejudices that could influence his/her students in a negative manner. (White, Female, Midwestern University student)

In the example written by the student at Western State, he said “all teachers” need the advice outlined in the article, while the Midwestern University student said, “a teacher” has to conceal prejudices. In neither of these instances is the student directly implicated in work needing to be done. By referring to a generalized teacher, rather than to themselves as individuals, they distance the claims they make and the advice that “teachers” need from applying directly to them. The strategies students used to position themselves in relation to the texts and the instructor were also similar across the classes. For example, in order to present positive face, students often aligned themselves with one of the authors: Like Hanssen, I moved from a comfortable job at [State University] as a researcher to being a science teacher at an inner city school in [large western city]. I share in Hanssen’s mission of trying to figure out my role. I have had experiences that contribute to developing answers to this question in my current position as a high school Earth Science teacher. (White, male, middle class, Western State College student) Just like Hannsen, I will probably be teaching in either a majority black or majority Hispanic school with a mostly white faculty and issues and racial tensions may arise between the students, community, and teachers. (White, Female, Midwestern University Student)

The discursive alignment can be seen in the phrases, “Like Hanssen,” “I share in Hanssen’s,” and “Just like Hannsen.” This strategy implied that they are in agreement with and share similar perspectives as the author. It may also serve to mitigate ideas contrary to the author (and instructors) presented later in the weekly. This move also highlights the struggle for students in both classes to navigate the tension between their multiple identities
as individuals with differential access to power and privilege, as soon-to-be teachers, and as students concerned with their grade in a class. Moves of alignment could also be read as potential “studenting” moves, designed to present a positive face to us as their instructors. Asking students to take positions on the readings and on race and racism required that they adopt vulnerable positions as students. As instructors, we needed to recognize and respect this vulnerability. Despite the similarity of some discursive strategies, we found some striking differences in the ways our students framed race, both as a larger social construction and in its implications for teaching and learning in schools. We now turn to a more detailed analysis of our findings around these differences, starting with the Midwestern University students.

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Telling Differences Midwestern University Students Frame Race Student responses from Midwestern University reveal some characteristic discourse patterns that provide insight into how these teachers-to-be framed race as a social factor and their sense of agency relative to it. Three themes were common across the weekly responses: 1. race as a social problem that is difficult to solve (5 out of 23); 2. race as an emotional and sensitive social topic (7 out of 23); and 3. race as an interpersonal barrier to teaching (3 out of 23). Within these responses, the students did not challenge the “reality” of the central concepts described by the readings (i.e., institutional racism and white privilege), nor did they resist the problematic nature of adopting a color-blind ideology in their teaching practice. The presence and effect of race as a social construct impacting the lived experience of students was not at issue. Rather, the “problem” of race was constructed in a way that by and large allowed the student teachers to avoid responsibility. In order to provide an example of the ways discourse analysis allowed us to learn about our students, we discuss the first discursive strategy (race as a difficult to solve social problem) adopted by Midwestern University students in more detail. We chose this example to highlight because it presents a particularly salient example of the challenges Brian faced at Midwestern University, and what he learned as a result. I was actually a little overwhelmed when I finished this week’s reading. Especially while thinking about white privilege and the institutional racism that Hannsen discusses, I was struck by the enormity of the issue. [...] I am not sure I have any idea about how to counter any of these things. As one person, how can I change how society views (or decides to ignore) race? [...] it seems that parental and societal influences will be much stronger than what a teacher can do. (White, Female, Midwestern University student)

Through the use of strong descriptors, like “overwhelmed” and “enormity,” this student positioned herself as unable to make a difference. In fact, she states directly that she does not “have any idea” how to “counter any of these things” because she is “one person.” By constructing race and racism as an insurmountable problem, the student sidesteps responsibility for any efforts at change. At the end of this excerpt, this student constructed society and parents as having a greater impact than they do as a teacher. In this excerpt, the student teacher does not express any responsibility for action or amelioration and shows the importance of helping students see themselves as agents capable of challenging racist systems and structures. Western State Frames of Race The students at Western State College used multiple methods of framing race to deflect attention away from its salience or importance in their everyday lives

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and in the distribution of social goods in society. Overwhelmingly, students resisted viewing race and/or racism as a problem. Instead, students at Western State College framed race and/or racism in the following ways: 1. as an individual matter (5 out of 26); 2. racism as a thing of the past and those who attend to it are overreacting (6 out of 26); 3. one factor in the inevitable progression toward greater social equality (1 out of 26); 4. racial distinctions and privilege as natural and human nature (2 out of 26); 5. an issue that is difficult to solve (5 out of 26); 6. race and culture as monolithic categories that are conflated (3 out of 26); and 7. race as a malleable social construction that can be enacted differently in different social situations (1 out of 26). Most of these framings of race and racism were constructed in opposition to the arguments made by the authors of the assigned readings, as opposed to the students at Midwestern University who did not overtly challenge the ideas in the articles. Students at Western State College tended to downplay the significance of race, by either constructing it as a problem of the past, or construing it as an issue of individual responsibility. For example, one white female student from a working class background replied, “I had a hard time reading the article by Peggy McIntosh. Of course, had the paper been written in the 1960s I would have agreed.” This excerpt clearly positions racism as a remnant of the past (in this case, the 1960s). The other frequently used discursive strategy used by Western State students was to frame issues of race and privilege as located in the individual.

Discourse of Individualism Framing race and racism as an individual matter was a common theme in the writings of students at Western State College. This framing was used in multiple ways
from explicitly stating that claims of racial discrimination or privilege are all simply matters of individual difficulties and/or failure to more nuanced framings suggesting that solutions to problems (including institutional racism) are located within individuals and the particular actions they do and do not take. By framing issues of race and racism as individual matters, this discourse deflects attention away from the systemic and institutional nature of racism and avoids discussion of the ways power and privilege are implicated. One weekly response in particular demonstrates the complexity and contradictions that were apparent in many students’ responses. This student is a

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white female, from a middle-class background and her response most clearly demonstrates the ways students framed issues of race and racism as being matters of individual responsibility. I am not that different from any of my white neighbors for example, we live in the same neighborhood, therefore we have attended the same types of schools and have lived in the same type of multi-cultural environment. Yet some of us have gone to college and will be successful and some of us won’t. It seems that some people don’t want to take personal responsibility and that is what makes me so angry! There are children out there that won’t take school seriously and will want a “free-ride” through life, and that is why they will fail in the long run, not because their ancestors were conquered or forced into the country. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule and some children will fail because of their environment. Their teachers are racist, they live in a poor neighborhood and their schools are run-down, over-crowded, and missing important supplies. A number of considerations could prevent someone from doing well. And for these students I am truly sorry, because the system has failed them, but for some who use every excuse under the sun, except to face the truth and blame themselves for lack of effort is who I am angry with.

This student orients to an egalitarian discourse through her discussion of herself and her white neighbors. However, she constructs this discourse as a way to argue against differences in race
if there are differences in educational attainment and success among whites it must mean that institutional racism and white privilege are overstated and a form of overreacting. She also references a personal responsibility discourse by arguing that those who take personal responsibility are also necessarily successful. Through this construction and the following description of those who want “free rides” through life and those students who she is “truly sorry” for, she constructs some “others” as deserving and some as not deserving. The statement describing her understanding that there are inequities is constructed to maintain her positive face and present her as a reasonable individual. In fact, this student works hard to construct a reasonable, non-racist position for herself in this excerpt by articulating a long list of exceptions to those individuals with whom she is “angry.” However, implied in this excerpt is the fact that there are more individuals who do not take responsibility than there are students failed by the educational system. This description positions her as aware and “not prejudiced” while still referencing the discourse of personal responsibility.

Learning about Ourselves We began this study in order to better understand how local context can and should inform the teaching of a multicultural education course. Prior to this study, each of us would have articulated a position that explicitly sought to problematize reified notions of race and difference. However, through our analysis we each discovered the challenges of enacting that position in our teaching

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and in our research. We each found (to our surprise) that we had made assumptions regarding the importance of different aspects of social diversity in constructing and enacting these perspectives within a multicultural teacher education course. We assumed that a classroom of students with diverse backgrounds and experiences would result in a wider variety of discourses with which to discuss race in schools. Through analysis, it also became apparent to us that perhaps we initially approached this study assuming that students from diverse backgrounds would add to the available discourses in ways that were more complex and did not focus predominantly on deflecting attention from issues of race. The knowledge we gained through this analysis underscores the importance of discourse analysis for troubling these assumptions and destabilizing monolithic views of race and culture. Through our collaborative discussions, Laura realized that one of her assumptions was true: there were more discourses available at Western State College. However, because these discourses were quite often in opposition to the discourses available in the readings and through the instructor, she initially did not recognize them as diverse and multiple. She wonders if perhaps she did not recognize them because they were not discourses she wanted to hear. However, they were discourses she could and should have engaged. Through her graduate school experience, Laura was prepared to engage with resistant white students. She was not prepared for resistant students of color. She was (and in some respects still is) troubled by the position that seemed created for her as a white person in these interactions. Despite the fact that we view the world as constructed in and through discourse, we failed to make the most of these readings and others like them. Upon reflection, we came to see that two of the readings we assigned (Lee and Lewis) were distant and academic in their own way. We had provided students an academic model for distancing, and the students at Midwestern, in particular, echoed that academic distance. Furthermore, at this point in the course, we had not turned to explicit positive models of teaching. These are two key areas of improvement that we have made since beginning this self-study. First, we have infused more specific examples of teachers taking action for social justice into the course to model efficacious action. Second, we have incorporated more elements at the start of the course for students to reflect on themselves, inverting the logic of our original structure.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS The knowledge we gained through this analysis underscores the importance of self-study and discourse analysis for troubling assumptions and destabilizing monolithic views of race and culture.

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First, the approach to analysis described in this chapter demonstrates a way of viewing teacher learning within multicultural teacher education programs that illuminates the intricate ways prospective teachers interact with course readings and the dominant discourses of the course. This view of teacher learning shifts the focus from detailing and documenting what preservice teachers lack and what they do not learn from teacher education programs. Instead, as evidenced in the ways the students at each of institution framed race as a social issue (constructed as either relevant to their lives or not), this approach details the discursive work done by preservice teachers as they try and construct teaching identities for themselves and as they try and position themselves within the larger social and institutional discourses of race. There are many remaining questions and concerns arising from the analysis described in this chapter. First of all, taking a discursive view of diversity in multicultural teacher education classes made apparent to us some of the assumptions we bring to the preparation of teachers to teach the increasingly diverse student populations. Our analysis illuminates what the first author quickly learned experientially through teaching her classes at Western State College: one cannot assume that teacher education students from non-dominant backgrounds hold social justice perspectives on teaching and the purposes of education. Additionally, one cannot assume students will agree with or advocate for the positions held by the authors of articles assigned in the class. Many of the students of color in the class at Western State College oriented themselves to similar discourses as the white students. However, some of the strategies used by the students of color at Western State College also seemed to function as strategies to resist the marginalized positions perhaps suggested or provided for them in the assigned readings. This is an important consideration for us as white teacher educators and part of the reasoning behind infusing more readings that modeled positive, transformative teaching examples. Without the specific tools afforded by discourse analysis, we would not have been able to see as clearly the moves being made by all our students in relation to the articles. Seeing these discursive moves allowed us to question ourselves and one another, and take steps to try and better address all students in our classes. Which brings us to a second point regarding the utility of a discursive approach to understanding the teaching of multicultural teacher education courses. The discursive approach we have demonstrated here demands that analysts look not solely at the teacher education students and what they do and do not adopt from the instruction of these courses or what teacher education students do and do not bring with them into these courses. This approach requires an interactionist stance
one must look carefully at the discourses available in the readings themselves, the discourses available through what we have called the “argument of the class,” the discourses we as instructors bring into the class, and the discourses constructed at different points by the students in response to available discourses.

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The discourses available to the students include those they have available to them outside of the teacher education program
including those they have participated in for much of their lives. We take seriously Cochran-Smith’s (2004) and Sleeter’s (2001) arguments that despite attention to issues of race, quite often teacher education courses contain a hidden curriculum where the “overwhelming presence of whiteness” (Sleeter, 2001, p. 101) is visible through the intended audience of the readings and the course itself. If we address our teacher education courses to a primarily white, female, middle-class prospective teacher, we smuggle in whiteness and continue to marginalize preservice teachers of color and preservice teachers from non-middle-class backgrounds. For us as white teacher educators, it is especially imperative that we seek to purposefully broaden our curriculum and class discourses. As we continue to reflect on what this work has taught us, we wonder about the ways this type of analysis might be included in our work with teacher candidates. As we use our deepened understanding to raise important questions with our current and future teacher candidates, particularly around the ways they distance themselves from issues of race and racism, we also wonder how those working in multicultural teacher education might assist teacher candidates in asking these questions of themselves.

REFERENCES Banks, J., Cochran-Smith, M., Moll, L., Richert, A., Zeichner, K., LePage, P., ... McDonald, M. (2005). Teaching diverse learners. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 232
274). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Bullough, R., & Pinnegar, S. (2001). Guidelines for quality in autobiographical forms of self-study research. Educational Researcher, 30(3), 13
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1167). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Hanssen, E. A. (1998). A White teacher reflects on institutional racism. Phi Delta Kappan, 79(9), 694
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449). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Lee, S. (1994). Behind the model minority stereotype: Voices of high and low achieving Asian American students. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 25(4), 413
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40). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press. Schulte, A. K. (2009). Seeking integrity in teacher education: Transforming student teachers, transforming my self. Dordrecht: Springer. Skerret, A. (2006). Looking inward: The impact of race, ethnicity, gender, and social class background on teaching sociocultural theory in education. Studying Teacher Education, 2(2), 183
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DEVELOPING AN INQUIRY STANCE IN DIVERSE TEACHER CANDIDATES: A SELF-STUDY BY FOUR CULTURALLY, ETHNICALLY, AND LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE TEACHER EDUCATORS Amber Strong Makaiau, Karen Ragoonaden, Jessica Ching-Sze Wang and Lu Leng ABSTRACT This chapter explores how four culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse colleagues use self-study methodologies and online journaling to systematically examine inquiry-based teaching and learning in international contexts. Respectively from the USA, Canada, Taiwan, and China, the main research question is, “How can we develop an inquiry stance in our similarly diverse teacher candidates?” For five months, they explore the question with one another in an interactive online journal. The analysis of their written journal reflections result in four main themes: (1) naming and framing inquiry and context, (2) perspectives on translating theory to practice, (3) common practices for developing inquiry stance, and (4) policy work. The chapter concludes with a list of recommendations for fostering inquiry-based

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 93
113 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030009

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teaching and learning with culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse teacher candidates. Self-study research methodologies, Philosophy for Children, and online journaling are also suggested as professional development models for diverse globalized teacher educators. Keywords: Culture; language; self-study; online journaling; inquiry; teacher education; Philosophy for Children

INTRODUCTION This chapter explores how four culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse colleagues use self-study methodologies and online journaling to systematically examine inquiry-based teaching and learning in international contexts. Respectively from the USA, Canada, Taiwan, and China, we came together in the spring of 2014 to form the philosophy for children Hawai‘i (p4cHI) International Journaling and Self-Study Project. Amber is a p4cHI curriculum and research specialist and teacher educator at a large university in Hawai‘i, Karen is a director and teacher educator at a large university in Canada, Jessica is a p4cHI researcher and teacher educator at a large university in Taiwan, and Lulu is a professor of education at a large university in China. In each of our home countries, the p4cHI approach to education (see http://p4chawaii.org/) is being explored as a viable means for school improvement (Oakes, Quartz, Ryan, & Lipton, 2000) and, although it is not the focus of this study, it is important to note that we formed our international research collective because of our shared values, common interest in p4cHI, and mutual commitment to applying self-study methodologies to p4cHI research (Kosnik, Samaras, & Freese, 2006). In this chapter, we aim to further advance the work of our international project by sharing how we used self-study and online journaling to inform our own practice, the teacher education programs that we work in, and the broader knowledge base of teacher education that is aiming to promote more thoughtful and inclusive societies. Developed out of the findings from prior studies that reported on the positive role of self-study and online journaling in our international research collective (Makaiau, Ching-Sze Wang, Ragoonaden, & Leng, 2016, 2017; Makaiau, Leng, & Fukui, 2015), the study presented in this chapter was designed to investigate the ways that Self-Study in Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) and online journaling can contribute to both the personal and professional development of culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse teacher educators who are working to develop an inquiry stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009/2015) in their similarly diverse teacher candidates. More specifically, we wanted to:

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• further expand the culturally responsive international p4cHI research collective that was initially created by Makaiau et al. (2015); • explore with international partners the developmental pathway(s) that our culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse teacher candidates go through on their journey to understand and embody inquiry-based teaching and learning; • reflect on the professional and personal impact of belonging to an international research collective that is comprised of culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse teacher educators; and • disseminate and mobilize knowledge relating to the professional development of culturally, ethnically, and/or linguistically diverse teacher educators who work with similarly diverse populations. In the following pages, we elaborate on the self-study process that was used to carry out these particular research goals. We begin with the background and theoretical framework behind our main research question, “How can we
four culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse teacher educators
develop an inquiry stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009/2015) in our similarly diverse teacher candidates?” Then we share how we gathered data by exploring this and other research questions (listed right below the description of the background and theoretical framework) with one another for over five months in an interactive online journal. We describe how the analysis of our written journal reflections resulted in four central themes. Situated within both the personal and social dimensions of teaching and learning (Brookfield, 1995; Leggo, 2008; Palmer, 1998/2007), these findings report on the important role that S-STEP and online journaling played in helping us: (1) name and frame the intersection of inquiry and context, (2) use multiple perspectives to tackle the struggle we all faced in translating theory to practice, (3) identify common practices for supporting the development of an inquiry stance in teacher candidates across diverse contexts, and (4) inform policy work that we do, which impacts the diverse student populations and communities that we work in. At the end of the chapter, we conclude with a list of recommendations for fostering inquiry-based teaching and learning with culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse teacher candidates, and we position self-study research methodologies, p4cHI, and online journaling as a professional development model for globalized teacher educators who are similarly diverse.

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Teacher education has been increasingly shaped by teacher educators’ self-study research (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 1998; LaBoskey, 2004; Samaras, 2011).

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Tracing its roots back to teacher inquiry (Dewey, 1938), action research (Loughran, 2004), and reflective practice (Schon, 1983; Zeichner & Liston, 1996), self-study is a research methodology used by teachers and teacher educators to create structures for ongoing professional development (Beck, Freese, & Kosnik, 2004; Macintyre & Buck, 2007; Ragoonaden & Bullock, 2016) in a variety of cultural contexts. It is a systematic analysis of practice that acknowledges how the integration of “self in research design … can contribute to our understanding of teaching and teacher education” (Hamilton, Smith, & Worthington, 2008, p. 17). Aimed at promoting the development of personal, constructivist, and collaborative (Beck et al., 2004) professional communities of inquiry, self-study is a promising methodology for researchers like us, who are “concerned with both enhanced understanding of teacher education in general and the immediate improvement of our practice” (Laboskey, 2004, p. 818). Deeply connected to socio-constructivist and relational learning contexts, selfstudy researchers often collaboratively engage in iterative cycles of inquiry. This approach aligns well with curricular modes of orientation by foregrounding the relational nature of inquiry and reflexive and emergent ways of knowing. In this self-study, we explored the inextricable nature of the personal and the professional using an interactive online learning journal (Lee, 2010; Moon, 2006) to create the conditions that we needed for reflective practice in our international research collective. In line with Spalding and Wilson (2002), who examined pedagogical strategies for encouraging reflective journal writing, we recognized the importance of using interactive technologies to facilitate our cross-cultural research collaboration (O’Brien, Alfano, & Magnusson, 2007) and overall journaling process (Makaiau et al., 2015). Based on our previous research (Makaiau et al., 2015, 2016, 2017), we knew that despite our geographic distance, these methods would provide greater opportunities for “constructing our learning together, probing one another’s ideas, and reviewing and reframing our ideas collaboratively” (Kosnik et al., 2006, p. 153). We were interested in using the online journaling process to think together about how we could better support the development of an inquiry stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009/2015) in our culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse (CELD) teacher candidates. This research focus developed out of our common observation
from the vantage point of both teacher educators and p4cHI researchers
that most of our teacher candidates had not had the opportunity to experience inquiry as a part of their own K-12 schooling. In each of our home countries, we recognized that inquiry-based approaches to teaching and learning were often reserved for privileged, upper class students, and elite (e.g., private) school communities. Directly in line with Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s (2009/2015) pronouncement that “the disparities in learning opportunities and outcomes among students from differing racial, cultural, linguistic and socioeconomic backgrounds have continued and become even more urgent in many places” (p. vii)
we believed wholeheartedly that

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the incorporation of inquiry into our teacher education programs and the development of an inquiry stance in our diverse teacher candidates could lead to an increased number and a wider range of P-12 students having access to an inquiry-based education. We also believed that this change could ultimately contribute to “larger social and intellectual movements for [positive] social change and social justice” (p. viii). For these reasons we want to further clarify what we mean by inquiry, inquiry as stance, and how the p4cHI approach to developing intellectually safe communities of inquiry was used to guide this study.

Inquiry Dewey (1916) argued against seeing teaching as the transmission of ready-made ideas to students, saying: No thought, no idea, can possibly be conveyed as an idea from one person to another… Only by wrestling with the conditions of the problem at first hand, seeking and finding [his or her] own way out, does [a person] think. (p. 188)

In a prescient move, this assertion, which is elaborated on in many of his other works (1910, 1933, 1938), established new theories of learning and learning to teach. For the scholars who followed him (like Philosophy for Children’s Matthew Lipman and Anne Margret Sharp), it also helped to establish the theoretical foundations of an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning that is defined by agency, a questioning attitude, experiential engagement with resources and materials, discovery, integration, and an overall desire to continue learning. One example is Matthew Lipman (1993)
the founder of Philosophy for Children (P4C)
who defined inquiry as learning by “investigation,” where students and teachers are “self-correcting” in their practice (p. 522). When carried out in a social context, Lipman (1991) explained, the classroom can become a “community of inquiry in which students listen to one another with respect, build on one another’s ideas, [and] challenge one another” by using their good thinking (p. 15). Organized around an “openness that lecture cannot have,” he characterized inquiry-based teaching and learning as the practice of “discovery” for both the student and teacher (Buchler in Lipman, 1993, p. 522). A radical departure from more traditional approaches to education, pre-service teachers who have not had the opportunity to experience this type of inquiry-based education for themselves often struggle to translate the theories of Dewey and others into a viable classroom practice. Quite often, they tend to confuse the “the refined, finished end products of inquiry” with the inquiry process itself (Lipman, 1991, p. 15). It is for these reasons and more that teacher educators must provide opportunities for their teacher candidates to learn

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about, experience, and embody inquiry-based teaching and learning in their teacher preparation programs.

Inquiry as Stance Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999, 2009/2015) refer to this as developing inquiry as stance in teacher candidates. “Teaching is a complex activity” they write, “that occurs within webs of social, historical, cultural, and political significance … [and] inquiry [as] stance provides a kind of grounding within the changing cultures of school reform and competing political agendas” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, pp. 288
289). In this light, inquiry-based teaching and learning are not simply seen as prescribed practices, but rather as the positions that teachers take toward knowledge and its relationship to pedagogy. In our work as teacher educators, we collectively aspired to develop an inquiry stance in our teacher candidates; however, we each faced challenges in our efforts to translate theory to practice. Within a contemporary framework, Macintyre (2013, 2015) acknowledges that the theory/practice transfer problem within teacher education is well documented (Darling-Hammond, 2006a, 2006b; Korthagen, 2001; Zeichner, 2006). She also recognizes that the traditional application-of-theory model persists in schools of education despite little empirical evidence of improved teaching practices and student achievement (Grossman, 2008; Leiberman & Pointer-Mace, 2008). Biesta (2004) points out how these opportunities are not about the teacher
learner relationship but about the relationality of the relationship, concluding that the real import of education unfurls in the in-between space occupied by teacher and learner. Biesta argues that this in-between space or gap is not something to be ignored or overcome but to be embraced as an in-betweenness or interlude that supports inquiry. Drawing on Biesta’s concept of being attentive to this inbetween and in-betwixt space, Dana (2013) defines the practice of inquiry as teachers’ engagement in a cyclical process of posing questions or “wonderings,” collecting data to gain insights into wonderings, analyzing the data along with reading relevant literature, taking action to make changes in practice based on new understandings developed during inquiry, and sharing findings with others. In this study, we aimed not only to cultivate this sort of inquiry stance in our students, but to also practice it ourselves through a “personal, constructivist, and collaborative” (Beck et al., 2004) approach to self-study.

Philosophy for Children Hawai‘i (p4cHI) The p4cHI approach to inquiry-based teaching and learning also shaped the research methodologies used in this self-study. Founded by Thomas Jackson in

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1984, p4cHI is a culturally responsive offshoot of Lipman and Sharp’s original P4C program. It evolved (see Jackson, 2012) in response to the tensions that arose while doing P4C in a multicultural community context, and from the way in which the Hawaiian concept of aloha is used to mediate these tensions and build community between diverse groups of people in the islands. Directly in line with the scholarship of culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2000), p4cHI practitioners emphasize the creation of “intellectually safe” (Jackson, 2001, p. 460) communities of inquiry in which participants’ cultures, languages, histories, socioeconomic backgrounds, and other aspects of their identities are included and validated during the building of relationships and the co-construction of knowledge (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008). Rarely practiced as a stand-alone program, p4cHI is better positioned as an overall approach to culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) that can be used by teachers from a wide array of disciplines, contexts, and grade levels to promote social justice in classrooms, schools, and communities across the globe. In this study, strategies from the p4cHI approach were used to both establish and maintain an intellectually safe community of inquiry in our online journal.

RESEARCH DESIGN Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks and research described above, the purpose of this study was to explore with international partners the ways in which S-STEP practices and online journaling can contribute to both the personal and professional development of CELD teacher educators who are aiming to develop an inquiry stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009/2015) in their similarly diverse teacher candidates. The research questions used to guide this study were: • How can we
four CELD teacher educators
develop an inquiry stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009/2015) in our similarly diverse teacher candidates? • What leads to a teacher candidate’s ability to truly plan and implement “inquiry” in their classrooms? Is there a common developmental pathway that all teacher candidates go through on their journey to understand and embody inquiry-based teaching? • In what ways does S-STEP and online journaling with international partners support personal and professional development?

Methods This self-study applied a research methodology that was self-initiated, improvement aimed, and interactive (LaBoskey, 2004). The four authors of this chapter

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were drawn together because of shared interests in self-study and p4cHI research. Amber, Jessica, and Lulu all met at the University of Hawai‘i Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education (UAPEE) and connected with Karen via the American Educational Research Association S-STEP Special Interest Group. To ensure the longevity of both our personal relationships and professional collaborations, we established the p4cHI International Journaling and Self-Study Project in the spring of 2014. Since then we have engaged in a number of research projects and joint publications. To better situate our individual positionality within this particular self-study, it is important to know the following about each of our international teaching contexts: Amber is a teacher educator at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa (UHM) College of Education and a p4cHI curriculum and research specialist at the UHM UAPEE. With the most diverse university community in the USA (students and teachers)
students at UHM are provided with a unique multicultural and global educational experience in a Hawaiian place of learning. The UAPEE is an example of this as it attracts a wide range of international Philosophy for Children (P4C) practitioners and researchers who are interested in learning about P4C in UHM’s unique geographic, social, and cultural context. Karen is a teacher educator from the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. As a research intensive university, the campus serves a regional population including a growing number of international students from Middle Eastern, African, and South-East Asian countries. The Faculty of Education adheres to an inquiry-based focus aimed at developing critical and creative curricular competencies. Jessica is a teacher educator from the Department of Education at National Chiayi University, Taiwan. The university’s college of education has a well reputed history in teacher preparation and houses six departments that offer bachelors, master as well as doctoral degrees in education. She teaches philosophy of education and philosophy for children; and she has been trying to develop a model of inquiry-based literacy education inspired by p4cHI. Lulu is a teacher from the Department of English Education at Jinan University, China. Being the No. 1 university in international students in mainland China, Jinan University is committed to foster a culture of openness, diversity and creativity in its community and students. The Department of English Education is actively attempting to expand its overseas academic communication and cooperation. The school upholds its international orientation especially towards Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.

Data Sources and Data Collection Data for this self-study came from the interactive online journal that the four authors wrote in
with one another
for five months (August 29, 2016
December 13, 2016). This journal was housed in a shared Google document, which facilitated the authors sharing their writing with each other in an asynchronous online setting. Each author completed at least one journal entry

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each week. The content of our journals included personal reflections, perceptions, and questions. To get our journal started, we used a separate online Google document and the p4cHI process of “Plain Vanilla” (Jackson, 2001, p. 462) to generate and select our research questions. Here is how the process worked: • We reflected on our current teaching practices, things we had read, the media, recent conversations with colleagues/friends, observations about the world or self, and used the Good Thinker’s Tool Kit (Jackson, 2001, p. 463) to generate possible research questions. • We each selected a color, and then wrote our questions in our shared Google document. • Next to each question, we made sure to include an explanation of where our question came from and the reasons behind why we were asking the question. • We also agreed to create and maintain an “intellectually safe” (Jackson, 2001) online journaling environment with the other participants in this project. This process of generating possible research questions was conducted over a one-month period (April 18, 2016
May 16, 2016). Some examples of our possible research questions were: How does a CRP provide a forum for complicated (Pinar, 2004) questions? How does a teacher educator/university teacher keep the spirit of wonder and inquiry alive in their classroom? What elements of p4cHI do students like best? At the end of this one-month period, we then voted on the question(s) that we wanted to be the focus of our research. Each of the authors got two votes, and they placed their votes on the questions that they were most interested in inquiring about with the others in our international research group. Again, the overarching research question that we selected to guide our journaling with one another was, “How can we
four CELD teacher educators
develop an inquiry stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009/2015) in our similarly diverse teacher candidates?” It was at this point that we created a new Google document to house our interactive online journal. Next, in the spirit of Biesta’s focus on the importance of the relationality of the relationship, we made the decision to spend a bit of time re-establishing our online community of inquiry before we started journaling about the research question that was the focus of this particular collaborative self-study. To accomplish this goal we all wrote an initial journal entry that answered the following questions: (1) what are three “new” things that you would want others to know about you? (2) what are your previous experiences with teaching/facilitating “inquiry” with pre-service or in-service teachers? and (3) what are the reasons that you wanted to think/write/dialogue about this particular research question with our international self-study journaling project?

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From there, we began to journal. Each week, we entered into the online document and responded to both the research question and the journal entries that our colleagues had written around the research questions. Quite often, these journal entries sparked new wonderings and insights, and we used those questions and comments to guide further inquiry. This led to ongoing and continuous written dialogue with one another, which was characterized by careful listening, questioning, and openness to different viewpoints. At the end of our data collection period, we had accumulated 35 pages of single-spaced journal entries, which became our primary source of data. Secondary data sources included emails between authors and personal analytic memos which were shared during the data analysis process (Charmaz, 2006; Creswell, 2007).

Data Analysis To analyze our data, we drew from the methods of constant comparison (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). This occurred in three phases. In phase one, we worked on our own and engaged in the analytic process of open coding (Charmaz, 2006). This included placing names on the themes that emerged from our back and forth comparison of the data (Charmaz, 2006). Then, in phase two, we came together via email and worked as critical friends (Miles & Huberman, 1994). We shared our open codes and collectively refined, collapsed, and organized our individual findings. We used the methods of axial and theoretical coding (Charmaz, 2006) to bring together our initial open codes and created a composite set of analytic themes. For each of these themes, we specified their properties and dimensions, and related each theme to subthemes. This culminated in the development of four main themes. In phase three, we wrote up our findings and collaborated further to revise and refine our thinking.

FINDINGS Collaborative analysis of our journal produced four major themes. These themes shed light on the process that we went through in our efforts to think together about how we might better support the development of an inquiry stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009/2015) in our CELD teacher candidates. The themes are: (1) naming and framing the intersection of inquiry and context, (2) using multiple perspectives to tackle the struggle we all faced in translating theory to practice, (3) identifying common practices for supporting the development of an inquiry stance in teacher candidates across diverse contexts, and (4) informing policy work that impacts the diverse student

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populations and communities that we work in. In the following sections, we explain each theme further.

Naming and Framing the Intersection of Inquiry and Context Analysis of the data revealed how a self-study methodology facilitated by an online journaling platform provided the authors with the opportunity to gain perspective on the ways in which inquiry-based teaching and learning is inextricably connected to the historical, political, social, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic context in which teaching and learning are taking place. This increased perspective, fostered by the exchange of dialogue between international colleagues, provided each of the authors with the space to both name and frame (Kettering Foundation, 2011) the intersection of inquiry-based teaching and learning in each of their home contexts. For example, Amber took the time in one of her journal entries to describe to her colleagues how the newly adopted C3 Framework for State Social Studies Standards is being used to define inquiry in the USA. On the national level in social studies the new C3 Framework has put forth the charge that all social studies teachers use inquiry in their classrooms, which I think is great, but I also am worried that it will oversimplify what inquiry really is. (Amber, August 15, 2016)

Embedded in her response are her worries about the impact of the highly politicized standards-based teaching movement and how this might affect her teacher candidates’ commitment to taking an inquiry stance in their future classrooms. Halfway around the world, one of her colleagues responded to her by describing the challenges she was facing in her context. In recognition of the need to develop a framework for Chinese teachers, Lulu wondered how to share the importance of inquiry within a transmissionbased education system. She wrote, “The censorship of the Chinese government sometimes makes me frustrated. How can I implement inquiry and cultivate free-thinking style with my students in this context (November 4, 2016)?” In another entry she added, “I’m struggling because I have to make compromise and sacrifice my beliefs of a good education to conform to the culture of Chinese society, December 14, 2016).” To ease Lulu’s concerns, Jessica wrote from her positionality in Taiwan. She explained that she had come to the conclusion that her teacher candidates in Taiwan need time to adjust to the inquiry approach. She reflected, “I’m no longer expecting them to run when they could not even crawl” (November 11, 2016). Journal entries like these illustrate how we each faced unique challenges in implementing inquiry as stance (Dana, 2013) in our diverse teacher preparation programs. They also demonstrate the ways in which journaling with one another helped us to name or define the particular difficulties we were facing in

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each of our home countries and frame how we might shift toward an improved professional practice. As a collective, one of the professional puzzles that we gravitated toward pooling our multiple perspectives and working on together was the critical task of learning how to effectively translate theory to practice.

Multiple Perspectives on Translating Theory to Practice Across our cultural contexts, the data revealed that we all grappled with finding ways to translate both our own and our teacher candidates’ theoretical beliefs about inquiry-based teaching and learning into an effective practice. For example, in this journal entry Amber pointed out some practical as well as conceptual problems she saw in promoting inquiry. Even though many of my pre-service teachers and the mentors that I work with report valuing inquiry they don’t always practice it with their students. There are a couple of reasons that I see for this: (1) Time. Many teachers say that they do not have enough time to do inquiry. They say it takes too long. (2) Standards … (3) Misconceptions about inquiry. Many of the teachers may say that they are doing inquiry but they aren’t even starting with having their students ask questions. It is more of a checklist mentality. (Amber, September 9, 2016)

In addition to lacking an understanding of what inquiry is, Lulu also worried about her teacher candidates’ lack of appreciation for the value of inquiry. Students do not seem to value inquiry, ability to ask questions, ability to listen to and connect with others, ability to explore themselves, other and the world that much. Even though they value thinking, reflection, independent learning, they did not want to spend time and energy in doing that. They just want to get more knowledge and find a good job in the future. Learning and studying is a very pragmatic thing for them. (Lulu, September 18, 2016)

In response to shared issues like these, we called on each other to engage in reflective dialogue so that we might discover multiple perspectives on how to address the problems we all faced in our efforts to translate theory to practice. One example of this is found in an exchange between Karen and Jessica. Karen identified the need “to deconstruct the challenges faced when teaching inquiry” and agreed with Jessica’s suggestion that we go back “to the wonder of beginner’s eyes and to the childlike quality of awakeness and awareness that should permeate thoughtful inquiry” (Karen, September 13, 2016). Building on this, Jessica explained how she likes to “connect the idea of philosophical inquiry with the larger picture of who we are, why we have this life on earth, what purposes we want to achieve in, with, and for this life.” In a later journal entry, Karen finally added, making informed decisions, interrogating buffoonery and idiocracy, examining socio-cultural-economic agendas and structures are part of the critical questioning which should be permeating all aspects of self, education and society. (Karen, November 13, 2016)

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Through the written exchange of thoughts, ideas, and perspectives like these, we were all able to dig deeper into the “why” of inquiry-based teaching and learning, which ultimately helped to build a platform for “how” we could improve our practice.

Identifying Common Practices for Supporting the Development of an Inquiry Stance in Teacher Candidates across Diverse Contexts As a result of the analysis of the data, we discovered four common practices that we each deemed successful in helping us develop an inquiry stance in our teacher candidates across the diverse contexts in which we work. These four practices are: (1) building community, (2) establishing intellectual safety, (3) promoting emotional safety, and (4) cultivating opportunities for reflection. As Amber commented, “it seems that we are all highlighting the COMMUNITY component of inquiry,” namely, “the intellectually safe community in supporting the development of questions and thinking” (Amber, September 30, 2016). Jessica agreed, Intellectual safety is always a key. Students also need to know that they can ask any questions they don’t understand or want to know more about; they can also raise their doubts about the reading. In other words, we need scaffolding. Also, students need to feel that their questions are valued. (September 28, 2016)

These comments made Lulu reflect upon her own teaching, which caused her to realize that she had “lost the momentum in creating and forming this intellectually safe environment” (October 3, 2016). Admittedly, her big classroom size added to the challenge of the task. She later understood that this lack of safety might be the key reason why students “did not have any interest in raising a question,” altogether with their lack of “ability or habit in questioning” (Lulu, October 3, 2016). Amber concurred with Lulu’s challenges, describing her experiences teaching inquiry in Japan, “where the classroom is not traditionally a place where students ask questions,” but “a place where teachers give out information” (Amber, October 5, 2016). Jessica further raised the important role that emotional safety played in cultivating and inquiry stance in her teacher candidates. She wrote: Emotional safety also allows people to disagree or to raise contrary viewpoints (when they genuinely do) without worrying about harming other people and causing disruption. A healthy disruption or conflict or tension in the discussion can enhance the quality of the discussion. But conflicts or tensions of viewpoints won’t be productive if there is no intellectual and emotional safety supporting its development. (October 4, 2016)

To add to Jessica’s reflection, in one of her journal entries Amber emphasized the process of teacher educators and teacher candidates co-creating intellectual and emotional safety.

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I believe this process of changing the culture starts with explicitly co-constructing what the group wants the culture to be like. And you, as a valuable member of the group have the power to share what you want the culture to be like
A place where people can “ask any question or state any point of view as long as they are being respectful of others” (Jackson, 2001). This sets the tone and establishes the groundwork for the group co-creating this new culture together. (Amber, October 5, 2016)

Finally, in addition to the agreed upon importance of developing intellectually and emotionally safe communities of inquiry the analysis of the data also revealed the criticality of reflection in all of our practices. “I’m now seeing how fundamental and important GROUP and SELF-REFLECTION is,” wrote Amber (October 16, 2016). She continued, teacher candidates must “have ample opportunity to reflect on the [inquiry] process and internalize both the (1) structures and (2) openness to ambiguity that are needed for successful inquiry” (Amber, September 30, 2016). Agreeing with Amber, Jessica raised additional questions: If students do not come with reflective habits of mind, and if reflective habits of mind are the key to success in an inquiry-based learning, does this mean that we cannot realistically expect success in the beginning at all (or in most cases)? Because this will mean that we are expecting students to be reflective when reflection is what we hope they can learn. Is reflection a prior condition or a conclusion (end-product)? (Jessica, October 18, 2016)

This prompted Karen to suggest a more mindful, contemplative, slower approach to teacher education in general: I wondered how we, as educators can bridge the challenges of techno-rational teaching to truly embrace a thoughtful, reflective stance. I like what Amber wrote about contemplative reflection and trying to find this transient time in walking, painting and just simply being. (Karen, October 31, 2016)

These new ideas, gleaned from the space we had created for contemplation and reflection, eventually found their way in to some of the policy work that we are involved in at our respective universities.

Informing Policy Work That Impacts the Diverse Student Populations and Communities That We Work In As seasoned practitioners in inquiry-based teaching and learning, the analysis of the data let us see the ways in which we reflected on the challenges of establishing safe intellectual and emotional learning communities while concurrently taking into consideration the diverse historical, political, social, and cultural variables in each of our international contexts. For example, within a Canadian context, Karen wrote about the numerous local, regional, and provincial administrative levels that required consultation and sometimes-hierarchical authorizations emphasizing the power and privilege of systemic, institutionalized educational leadership. As she and several of her colleagues worked hard

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to conceptualize and to develop a revised Teacher Education Program focusing on creative and critical inquiry, harsh criticism emerged not only from external parties but also from colleagues within her faculty. Undaunted by the hostility, she referred to the conceptual touchstones of the revised Teacher Education Program of her faculty. Known as Inspire, the new program is an acronym for in-situ: Multiple learning opportunities to concretely explore theory/practice intersections; scholar-practitioner: Participating prospective and practicing educators as students of learners/learning for life: inquiry: Heart of all learning and a concept of re-imagined education: Envisioning education invested in individual and collective learner/learning growth and well-being. (Karen, December 8, 2016)

The importance of creating conditions to nurture the transformation of the mind, the conceptualization of teaching and learning as investigations into a series of interconnected discoveries, and the desire to cultivate students who are ignited by curiosity and passion as they engage in the pursuit of sustained inquiry are common sentiments throughout our journal. However, as Karen describes above, the art of questioning and critical reflection is often met by resistance from administrative-laden systems, which focus on stringent policy and specific educational outcomes. In recognition of the limitations within these educational hierarchies, our international research collective became a place where we could adhere to and practice seminal skills, like listening, acknowledging, and critiquing as we strove to implement inquiry as a stance in our own contextualized realities.

DISCUSSION As the current iteration of our online journaling and self-study initiative came to an end, we reflected on the four major themes that emerged from the data collection: the intersection of inquiry and context, the translation of theory to practice, the act of identifying common practices for supporting inquiry, and the ways in which our reflective journaling with one another supported the policy work that we were each doing in our respective communities. We realized that each of us, despite our unique cultural contexts, all faced challenges in implementing inquiry as stance (Dana, 2013) with our CELD teacher candidates. However, as we embraced the spirit of wonderings (Dana, 2013) and opened up our practices to critical friends, we gained strength by exploring the issues and dilemmas that challenged us together (Dana, 2009, 2013). We also recognized the critical role that a “personal, constructivist, and collaborative” approach to self-study methodologies (Beck et al., 2004, p. 1256)
facilitated by a live online journaling platform
can play in supporting colleagues as they strive to cultivate and nurture teacher candidates who embody an inquiry stance to education. In an effort to bring coherence and logic to these findings,

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we include in this discussion a list of recommendations for fostering inquirybased teaching and learning in CELD teacher preparation programs.

Teacher Educators Must Create Space to Observe Their Practice, Gain Perspective, and Clarify What They Are Truly Aiming to Accomplish with the Teacher Candidates in Their Particular Teaching Context In our effort to cultivate our teacher candidates’ ability to plan and implement inquiry-based teaching and learning in their future classrooms, this study revealed that we too needed time to observe our own practice, gain perspective, and then clarify what we are truly aiming to accomplish with the teacher candidates in our particular teaching context. Through the open and critical dialogue that occurred on the pages of our journal, we learned how to step back and use the paper mirror (Hubbs & Brand, 2005, p. 60) to examine how our collective goal of developing an inquiry stance in our students was deeply embedded within the cultural contexts of our home countries. While writing and exchanging perspectives with one another, we made connections between ourselves and the world around us, which included naming and framing (Kettering Foundation, 2011) the unique challenges associated with inquiry-based teaching and learning in each of our diverse settings. We learned that self-study methodologies and journaling gave us the space we needed, both personally and collectively, to define inquiry-based teaching and learning and to develop a framework for improving our abilities to support the development of an inquiry stance in our teacher education practice. This included creating an intellectually and emotionally safe context in which to model inquiry so that our pre-service teachers were eventually able to identify and then replicate practices that promoted investigation and discovery.

Teacher Educators Must Foster Classroom Social Climates That Are Characterized by Intellectual Safety and Openness to Different Possibilities and Arguments Within the contemplative space of our online Google document, four common practices for effectively implementing inquiry-based teaching and learning with CELD teacher candidates bubbled to the surface. In journal entry after journal entry, we built solidarity over the opinion that an inquiry stance can only be established when teacher education programs take the time to build community, establish intellectual safety, promote emotional safety, and cultivate opportunities for reflection with their students. This includes the cultivation of skills such as the ability to listen to, care about, and connect with others and with themselves (Brookfield, 1995; Leggo, 2008; Palmer, 1998/2007).

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We also learned that pedagogy ensconced in lecturing and rote learning can be adapted to more problem-based or philosophically grounded educational approaches (Jackson, 2001; Lipman, 1991, 1993; Makaiau & Miller, 2012), which focus on an openness to different possibilities and arguments, critical thinking, creative thinking, cooperation, and communication. Consequently, we recognized that the content of our curricula should reflect this stance by creating distance from the overemphasis on knowledge acquisition or disciplinebased knowledge to authentic experiences based on student and community interests, experiences, and preferences (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1998; Dewey, 1916, 1938). This is representative of Lipman’s (1993) concept of learning as philosophical investigation, where students and teachers, through self-examination, aim for a critical perspective
where discovery is encouraged and promoted through dynamic pedagogy based in authentic questions and contexts.

Teacher Educators Need to Have Strong Determination and Momentum to Practice Inquiry Pedagogy and Overcome Their Frustrations with Strength and Courage In the face of the frustrations and dilemmas that we were dealing with in both our professional and personal lives, the data culled from our journaling also indicated our strong determination, motivation, and long-term passion for the implementation of inquiry pedagogy. Through the freedom of expression in the research collective, we found that we were all captives of historical, political, and philosophic influences, which, regardless of geographic location, either liberated or constrained our initiatives. Yet, despite the constraints we each seemed to uphold the beliefs, traditions, and values
individuality, free expression of thoughts, inquisitive minds, and appreciation of creative/unique ideas (Dana, 2009, 2013)
that are necessary for implementing inquiry pedagogy and maintaining an inquiry stance in our own practice. For example, British Columbia, a Canadian province along the Western Coast of North America has embraced a new K-12 curriculum which focuses on developing three core competencies that focus on the intellectual, personal, and social skills, abilities, and habits of mind needed to develop and to sustain inquiry-based perspectives toward school and in life. However, regardless of the institutional and epistemological justification for implementing inquiry, Karen described the initial animosity and lack of support from her own colleagues toward these proposed changes to the Teacher Education Program. Recognizing that international contexts are imbued with various inspirations and practical constraints as those that are illustrated in this example, we posit that there is not necessarily one common developmental pathway to understand and to embody inquiry-based teaching and learning. This pathway is dependent on the incentives and/or disincentives emanating from the educational and cultural environments, and

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teacher educators’ determination and momentum to practice inquiry pedagogy with strength and courage (Palmer, 1998/2007).

Teacher Educators Must Capitalize on the Ways in Which Contemporary Technologies (i.e., Google Docs) Can Support the Cultivation and Nurturing of Intellectually Safe Professional Communities of Inquiry across Diverse Geo-Political Contexts In line with previous research (Makaiau et al., 2015, 2017), the interactive online learning journal (Lee, 2010; Moon, 2006) that we created for this research project enabled us to design conditions across time and space that facilitated self-study and supported the development of mindful and critical friends (Makaiau et al., 2016) who gained strength and courage from one another. The use of collaborative technology, Google documents, was particularly helpful in facilitating this international exchange of ideas and perspective. More specifically, the technology allowed us to communicate with one another despite the challenges of cultural and temporal contexts. It offered us a metacognitive space where we could “unabashedly take the time to think through, edit, and revise our interactions with one another” (Makaiau et al., 2015, p. 14) while engaging in authentic contemplating, questioning, interrogating, and discovering of new truths about ourselves and the societies we live in. At the study’s conclusion, this practice
of building community and reflecting with colleagues who reside beyond the boundaries of our institutional organizations, culture, and geography
was not only seen as both personally and professionally rewarding, but as essential to both our individual and collective desires to be transformative agents of positive change in the world.

CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE Yos (2012) writes, In today’s … educational climate, with its laser-sharp focus on “accountability” and “raising the bar,” the community aspect of “community of inquiry” is more important than ever. It is so important because it purposefully cultivates what many of today’s schools are unwisely leaving too far on the fringe: the loving, caring, fun-filled human relationships which are at the core of human flourishing. (p. 52)

On our path to discover what leads to a teacher candidate’s ability to embody an inquiry-based approach to education (Dewey, 1916, 1938), like Yos, we found this need to focus on community. Reminded of the inextricable link between community and inquiry that is so deeply valued in the p4HI approach to education (Jackson, 2001; Makaiau, 2017; Makaiau & Miller, 2012), we recognized the criticality of building relationships and connectedness

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with our CELD teacher candidates on their pathway toward developing an inquiry stance toward education. Additionally, we became increasingly mindful of the important role that the community plays in our own inquiry stance
we learned that we need each other and the diverse perspectives we have to offer, in order to disentangle our most challenging professional puzzles. On a more global scale, this sense of community is increasingly important, given the turbulent nature of our current era, which is characterized by mounting conflicts between nations, social, political, and cultural unrest within nations, and a worldwide environmental crisis. In our position as teacher educators who work with CELD teacher candidates, we are hopeful that if we model the community aspect of the community of inquiry (Yos, 2012) in both our college classrooms and with our international colleagues, then there is a greater chance that this sense of community will grow and slowly dismantle these threats. In conclusion, as we seek to contribute to the broader knowledge base of teacher education, we position self-study as a research methodology and online journaling as an ideal model for developing professional communities of inquiry for all educators. This is especially true for globalized colleagues like us, who are seeking to improve Teacher Education practices in CELD contexts. If we can model building community and thinking together to solve our greatest challenges, we hope that our future teachers will also.

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REFRAMING OUR USE OF VISUAL LITERACY THROUGH ACADEMIC DIVERSITY: A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY COLLABORATIVE SELF-STUDY Bethney Bergh, Christi Edge and Abby Cameron-Standerford ABSTRACT We are three teacher educators
Christi, Bethney, and Abby
representing literacy, educational leadership, and special education, who have collaborated in self-studies of our teacher education practices (S-STEP) over a period of five academic years. Through this collaborative engagement, we came to recognize the similarities and differences in our language and values found within each of our individual disciplinary cultures. It was through the juxtaposition of studying ourselves alongside of that of our colleagues that we further generated a shared culture and common understandings. In our chapter, we explore the ways in which self-study enabled collaboration with teacher educators representing different disciplines. The research brought to light specific disciplinary values, assumptions, and terminology that, when articulated and examined among critical friends, facilitated our ability to both

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 115
142 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030010

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broaden and deepen our individual understandings of teacher education practices in light of each other’s diverse disciplinary perspectives. Keywords: Academic diversity; disciplinary culture; cross-disciplinary collaboration; educational leadership; literacy; special education; visual literacy; self-study

INTRODUCTION While it may be well known that research interests emerge from the personal and professional puzzles we ponder (Anderson et al., 2010; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Loughran, 2004), it may be less well known or understood that to engage in self-study research is to not only study a puzzling educational phenomenon, but it is also to live research wholly as an event
to study oneself and one’s own knowledge and assumptions in an ecological relationship with that phenomenon. Rather than bracket oneself outside the research event, selfstudy affords intentional stance and methods to study the dynamic relationship between self, study, and the broader educational knowledge base. In our chapter, we explore the ways in which self-study enabled collaboration with teacher educators representing different disciplines and brought to light specific disciplinary values, assumptions, and terminology that, when articulated and examined among critical friends, lifted us from our academic islands to see and to understand ourselves, our work, and the broader educational landscape in which we teach and research. Through this research, we came to recognize the similarities and differences in our language and values found within each of our disciplinary cultures
educational leadership, literacy, and special education. Defining disciplinary culture as a common set of assumptions, attitudes, conceptualizations, epistemologies, and values held by members of an academic disciplinary community…which is tacitly transmitted to new members and which shapes their views of the nature, production, transmission, and sharing of knowledge, (Starr-Glass, 2015, p. 82)

we came to know one another’s disciplines. While culture is commonly associated with heritage or country of origin, we name our academic disciplines as professional cultures in which we have “grown up” into the academy. As former K-12 content-area teachers, we carried the tacit assumptions and values of those disciplines into the university without acknowledging or exploring the ways in which those disciplinary backgrounds influenced how we knew teacher education. Through self-study, the juxtaposition of studying ourselves alongside that of our colleagues, we generated a shared culture and common understandings. Specifically, in this chapter, we reframe a shared critical research event in order to demonstrate how self-study facilitated our ability to both

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broaden and deepen our individual understandings of teacher education practices in light of each other’s diverse disciplinary perspectives. We call for other educators to collaborate across disciplines as a means to both examine one’s own academic culture and to learn from others for purposes of a consciously diverse and socially just teacher preparation.

CONTEXT Self-Study Context We are three teacher educators
Bethney, Christi, and Abby
representing educational leadership, literacy, and special education, who have collaborated in self-studies of our teacher education practices (S-STEP) over a period of five academic years. When we first came together as newly appointed assistant professors, we were transitioning from careers as K-12 educators into the academy. We were fortunate to join a school of education comprised of senior faculty who valued self-study research. After being welcomed into an existing self-study group and engaging in successful collaborative self-study with colleagues, we three continued the legacy of engaging in self-study as a way to understand and to contribute to teacher education through sharing our research in broader public forums. Together, we were three monolingual, English-speaking, White women representing our individual academic disciplines. As self-study researchers, we came to value the aim of self-study research
to make explicit and to question our tacit knowledge of practice through systematic investigation of our practices (Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015). Now in our fifth year of collaborative research, we have come to understand that a “turning point” in our shared research story was our second, year-long collaborative self-study (Bullock & Ritter, 2011). Bullock and Fletcher (2017) describe the features of a turning point to include: (a) an affective element to the data; (b) the data frame a problem of practice; (c) the author of the data is implicitly or explicitly asking for help from the critical friend; and; (d) the data allow time to take action on the problem. (p. 39)

For us, this second year became a turning point because we saw our teaching practices and our research methodologies differently. Through a shared focus on visual literacy practices in our education courses, we came to see how our diverse academic perspectives guided our thinking and our decisions about how visuals convey meaning. Studying this turning point through self-study, we came to reframe our once-diverse academic disciplinary knowledge, expectations, and values through a new and collaboratively constructed “sub culture” around shared values and experiences.

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Our Individual Academic Cultural Contexts Bethney’s Academic Culture of Educational Leadership As an educator, I am passionate about leadership and knowing first-hand the impact a school leader can have on the educational experience of both students and teachers. I recognize the societal contribution that is made through effective leadership and understand the possibilities that become available to students and teachers when guided by an individual or team that is committed to their success. During the years I spent as a principal and superintendent, I was a relatively young female and often found myself at meeting tables surrounded by males with commendable years of experience. I saw in each a tremendous amount of knowledge and wisdom, and appreciated their willingness to openly share their approach to building and district level leadership with me. I often felt as though I may have come across as impressionable. The actuality of this context allowed me to recognize that many of the approaches they represented simply would not work for me. Each time I returned to my building filled with teachers and staff committed to their profession and who knew me first as a classroom teacher, I came to recognize that if I was going to be successful, I needed to remain true to who I was as an educator and as a leader. I found comfort in the words of Joseph Murphy who reminded me that, “Leaders are quiet lambs as much as roaring lions, and leadership is not found only at the top of an organization” (2013, p. 29). When I was first approached by the current principal and superintendent to consider leadership roles in my school, I was “found” in a classroom teaching high-school English, and my practices were (and still are) much more lamb-like than the cultural lionization of the leadership profession. After being “found” and over the next several years, I took on the roles of guidance counselor, principal, and eventually superintendent. Simultaneously during this time, I worked toward and earned an MA in Guidance and Counseling and a PhD in Educational Leadership. After 13 years of serving in the K-12 setting, I have since moved on to the university where I teach courses preparing teachers to become principals and superintendents. Carrying with me my teaching and leading experiences from K-12, I purposefully promote an academic culture within the educational administration programs that prompt teachers to begin their study of leadership by recognizing who they are as individuals. Kouzes and Posner (2010) remind us, The quest for leadership, therefore, is first an inner question to discover who you are and what you care about, and it’s through this process of self-examination that you find the awareness needed to lead. (p. 117)

This mindful practice of self-discovery serves to provide a foundation for an academic culture that allows future school leaders to move forward in an intentional and authentic direction
values I continue to hold close in my own leadership. Starratt (2004) further explains,

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The work of the authentic leader involves the leader’s deep commitments as a human being, as an educator, as an educational administrator, and as a citizen administrator. The leader’s identity is very much communicated in these commitments; it is the leader’s way of being real in his or her own relationships. (p. 79)

As my students see their leadership practices come to being within this intentional academic culture, together we build confidence in the words shared by Taylor who states, There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s. (1991, p. 28)

Christi’s Academic Culture of Secondary Literacy As an educator
now for 19 years
I embody the epistemologies, conceptualizations, and attitudes of the disciplinary cultures I have both “grown up” in and contribute to. I (Christi) focus on understanding the meanings people make, how they make them, and ways I can facilitate others’ meaning-making of “texts,” broadly defined, for purposes of understanding. During the “turning-point” year of our multi-year collaborative self-study, I investigated my use of visual literacy in two field-based reading and diversity methods courses that I taught to prospective teachers who were majoring in secondary (grades 6
12) content areas/majors, including social studies/history, mathematics, English, world languages, physical education, music, special education, industrial technology, and science. To our self-study, I brought an unarticulated appreciation for how my university students’ cross-disciplinary collaborative teaching led to unique insights and an appreciation for one another’s content areas. I also brought a conscious and ongoing curiosity for understanding how literacy and the teaching of reading enables content-area teachers to empower their students to be active learners as well as how knowledge of reading and literacy empowers prospective and practicing teachers to understand their own teaching practices and selves as teachers. This stance was/ is deeply influenced by my formal journey in and through my chosen academic disciplines of English language arts and literature then reading and literacy as a student, teacher, teacher educator, and researcher. As someone who was initially enculturated to tacitly accept the authority of print-based texts, I first found that Rosenblatt’s (1938/1995, 1978/1994, 2005) Literature as Exploration and Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing shifted the spotlight onto the meaning-making process of the reader and to the multifaceted possibilities for many meanings an individual reader could make from communicative signs in particular contexts. I came to value that “[meaning]
whether scientific or aesthetic, whether a poem or a scientific report
happens during the interplay between particular signs and a particular reader at a particular time and place” (Rosenblatt, 2005, p. x). As a classroom teacher, I found that Rosenblatt put into words what I knew and could not yet say as an English teacher; in her words, I found my own. From my content areas,

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I have come to understand that the purpose of my content-area discipline is to explore, convey, understand, and re-imagine the human experience. Later, while teaching secondary English and reading and also pursuing a graduate degree in English education, I became a Tampa Bay Area Writing Project fellow and teacher consultant. From those experiences, I came to understand and to value that writing, learning, living, and people are ever “a work in progress.” While pursuing a doctoral degree, I taught university English education and reading methods courses; during this time, I studied how preservice and beginning teachers read classrooms as texts and how they made meaning of their work as teachers, their identity, and their professional milieu. From these experiences, I came to envision how classrooms, people, and experiences are like texts that we read and compose in effort to make meaningful understanding. Through Rosenblatt’s work, I also discovered the works of John Dewey whose transactional paradigm (Dewey & Bentley, 1949) and view of “educative experience” (Dewey, 1938) helped me to articulate my views of teacher education. I discovered in Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) narrative inquiry words for what I sensed as a teacher-turning-researcher who valued how the stories we live and tell both compose and express the meanings one makes. From this journey, I am a teacher educator whose academic culture informs my view of individuals as meaning-makers who read both the printed words and the world around them, and who actively make meaning in an ecological relationship with the many cultures which they daily read and compose. Individuals can contribute to the world through the meaning that they make and share. Abby’s Academic Culture of Special Education Defining my academic culture began with articulating the influence of my experiences as both a special educator in the public schools for 12 years and as a teacher educator in the field of special education for the past five years. I began my teaching career as a middle school special education teacher after earning a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education and Emotional Impairments. As a special educator in a small, rural district, I quickly recognized that my specialization in emotional and behavioral disorders had not prepared me for the broad range of needs my students had, specifically those identified with learning disabilities. I returned to school to earn a Masters of Arts in Learning Disabilities in hopes that I could better meet my students’ needs while also working to create more inclusive teaching practices through co-teaching. In the following years, I began to see myself as a teacher-leader; however, despite working to make significant changes to the practices within my building, I saw limitations to the power of my voice beyond that space. I wanted to better understand how and why educational decisions were being made
at the building, district, state, and national levels. This desire to know

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more and to become empowered as an educational leader led me to earn a Doctorate in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in Administration. As a special educator, it was
is
imperative that my students know that I see them as individuals, with strengths, needs, goals, and characteristics that make them unique. As a teacher educator, I believe that high-quality teaching integrates content while addressing the individual needs of the learners. When designing courses within my completely online graduate program, I consciously situated my thinking in adult learning theory
andragogy. Andragogy is generally defined as the theory of adult education (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2005). Andragogy, as outlined by Knowles et al., includes five guiding principles: (1) self-concept
an adult learner views himself/herself as a self-directed human, (2) adult learner experience
an adult learner accumulates experiences which becomes a resource for future learning, (3) readiness to learn
an adult learner’s readiness to learn is oriented toward the development of skills related to social roles, (4) orientation to learning
an adult learner seeks knowledge for immediate application to a problem-centered issue, and (5) motivation to learn
an adult learner is intrinsically motivated. Drawing on adult learning theory, I see my role as a teacher educator in two distinct yet integrated functions. First, I must design courses which allow students to create their own understanding of the content situated within the students’ own experiences. Second, I must facilitate, through the sharing of insights, questions, additional resources, and feedback, continued growth. The theory of andragogy and the framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) help to guide me when designing my online courses in terms of modeling for my adult learners how important it is to consider the individual when creating collective learning opportunities. UDL principles are a best practice often referenced in special education. UDL guides the design of instructional goals, assessments, methods, and materials so that learning can be customized and adjusted to meet individual needs. UDL references learning across three areas: (1) the WHY of learning
which addresses motivation and engagement, (2) the WHAT of learning
which addresses the various ways in which content can be presented. and (3) the HOW of learning
which addresses the need to differentiate the ways in which learners can express what they know (Dalton & Proctor, 2007; Rose, Harbour, Johnston, Daley, & Abarnell, 2006). In my teaching, I strive to move each individual forward in their thinking about students with disabilities, in their pedagogy for teaching these diverse learners, and to share with them the belief that learning must be individualized and reflect achievable challenge
which may be different for each learner. I see my role as a special educator
teacher educator as seeking to provide a learning environment that is “just right” for each individual student while empowering practicing teachers to become educational leaders in their own spaces.

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Institutional Context Northern Michigan University (NMU) is a public, rural university located on the southern shores of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabe. Demographically and culturally speaking, the university and the surrounding communities are predominantly white and English speaking with a culture rooted in Scandinavian, Finnish, and Italian immigrants. There are strong Christian values, a long history of mining, and people who both depend upon and value natural resources and life in the outdoors. In terms of diversity within our region, American Indian represent the largest ethnic group. Geographically, the Upper Peninsula is isolated and yet our university, and the School of Education, places a strong emphasis on their cultural role within the region. Recognizing this role, in 2012 the university formed a diversity committee who articulated that NMU would strive “to be an inclusive community where differences are recognized as assets of the institution, respected attributes of the person and a valuable part of the university experience.” This charge echoes the conceptual framework guiding the school of education in which our academic appointments are housed: Drawing from Banks and Banks (2004), a derivative explores race, culture, and social justice: [I]n attempt to call into question the social and political agenda in this country that has long included (and in some ways continues to be) the myth of cultural assimilation and the practice of racial hegemony in the pursuit of multicultural education. Banks and Banks (2004) describe the dimensions of multicultural education as: (1) content integration, (2) the knowledge construction process, (3) prejudice reduction, (4) an equity pedagogy, and (5) an empowering school culture and social structure (p. 20). Drawing on our view of education, as embodied in Scheffler’s (1965/1976) definition and Banks and Banks multicultural education, we must include a commitment to providing experiences that foster a critical understanding of the central role of race, cultural and social justice. (2004, p. 38)

As teacher educators, we recognize that the geographic and cultural context of our institution presents a challenge in terms of preparing and supporting preservice and inservice educators to be cognizant of cultural and linguistic diversity. One way in which we strive to mitigate this is by identifying the ways in which we are diverse
for example, in our academic cultures
despite otherwise appearing to be homogeneous.

Framing Our Use of Visual Literacy in 2014 Inspired by one self-study colleague’s recent (2013) work as the chair of the Caldecott committee that recognizes excellence in illustrations and by another colleague’s longitudinal work in educational policy, we decided to focus on visuals as an element embedded across the Common Core State Standards and as an instructional tool that educators commonly use in their teaching practices

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(Bergh et al., 2014; Edge, Cameron-Standerford, & Bergh, 2014). Together, we puzzled about how we could critically consider the challenge of preparing prospective and practicing teachers and leaders to enact policy and best practices in through the use of visual materials by first studying our own teaching practices. Our shared inquiry question was: How does our use of visual texts (e.g., photos, drawings, and student-generated artifacts) in our teaching practice help to convey and to communicate meaning? Across our self-studies, we saw three common facets: (1) visuals acted both as objects and as mediums in our teaching, (2) we are a part of, rather than outside, the interpretive act of making meaning through visual texts, and (3) textualizing lived experiences revealed linguistic and cultural diversity, which surfaced across our academic disciplines.

Reframing Our Use of Visual Literacy in 2017 Prompted by comments, observations, and feedback from the broader research community as we shared our work at conferences such as the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting and the Castle Conference in 2014
2016, we began to look at our work longitudinally and quickly recognized our visual literacy study (2014) as a shared critical event (Webster & Mertova, 2007; Woods, 1993) or turning point (Bullock & Fletcher, 2017; Bullock & Ritter, 2011). This event ultimately generated a shared culture in which we developed a common language. In light of our findings, we decided to “get meta” by turning the self-study lens onto the self-study process itself; in other words, we sought to examine and uncover the tensions, assumptions, and embodied knowledge in our lived research events. Although the initial focus of the 2014 study was on our use of visuals in our teaching, in our 2017 study we sought to reframe this self-study from a linguistic and disciplinary perspective in order to articulate how academic diversity within a self-study group influenced our understandings. In 2014, we (initially) came to the self-study “table” as individuals carrying with us the culture and language of our separate disciplines. Through our self-study process, we came to recognize and ultimately value our disciplines and their unique cultures as threads in the “web of significance” (Geertz, 1973, p. 5) in which our new collaborative interactions were suspended (Deal & Peterson, 2009). We came to realize how the underlying culture of our own disciplines influenced our interpretation of each other’s disciplines.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Our self-study research is situated in two complementary epistemological perspectives: feminist communication theory (e.g., Belenky, Bond, & Weinstock,

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1997; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Colflesh, 1996) and transactional reading and learning theory (e.g., Dewey, 1938; Dewey & Bentley, 1949; Rosenblatt, 1978/1994, 2005). These epistemologies recognize the ecological relationship between a knower and his or her environment, both in what they know and how they communicate that knowledge. We generated this theoretical framework in year one (Cameron-Standerford et al., 2013) of our longitudinal research as we sought to explore and to see the values and assumptions we held about teaching and learning. Then and over time, we have realized that this framework both articulates how our diverse perspectives made new meaning and reflects our shared cultural beliefs and knowledge related to teaching and learning.

Feminist Perspectives Agency Teaching is “intimate work” (Bruner, 1996, p. 86). From a feminist perspective, care and understanding are at the center of teaching and learning (Noddings, 1984). Self-study researchers Belenky et al. (1986) advocate for learners to see knowledge as actively constructed by all human beings. In contrast to the traditional model of learning being a transfer of knowledge from the teacher to the student, a feminist perspective recognizes that knowledge is created within and drawn from the learner (Belenky et al., 1986). In other words, constructivist knowers are more than silent receivers of knowledge and instead act with a sense of agency. To act with agency, one must gain confidence and skill in using information from a wide range of sources to form his/her own understandings (Colflesh, 1996). Public Homeplace Belenky et al. (1997) describe spaces in which people learn together and move toward constructivist knowing as “public homeplaces” or places where “people support each other’s development and where everyone is expected to participate in developing the homeplace” (p. 13). In public homeplaces, participants feel safe to express their thoughts and to envision possibilities beyond their current situations. Within our public homeplace, we positioned ourselves as meaningmakers who could textualize our lived experiences into spoken, written, and visual texts to read and make meaning from. By textualize, we mean that we deliberately took a step back from our lived experiences to examine them in a way similar to how the reader of a print-based text might objectify a text’s construction, her own reading experience, or her process of coming to understand a text (Edge, 2011). Together, through discourse around these “texts,” we could build envisionments of our teaching practices.

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Envisioning Lived Experiences An envisionment is “meaning-in-motion” (Langer, 2011a, p. 17), as a person makes sense of herself, others, her own understanding, and the world around her. Much like Close and Langer’s (1995) ideas on “envisionment building” when reading literature, as members of a public homeplace textualize and share their lived experiences, they begin to “explore the horizons of possibilities” (p. 3). When reading for information, Close and Langer (1995) suggest that the reader “maintains a point of reference” (p. 3) while: … their envisionments are shaped by their questions and explorations that bring them closer to the information they seek and that help them better understand the topic. As people read, they use the content to narrow the possibilities of meaning and sharpen their understandings of information. Using information gained along the way
combined with what they already know
to refine their understanding, they seek to get the author’s point or understand more and more about the topic. (p. 3)

Textualizing our lived experiences as teacher educators helped each of us to develop the skills of constructivist knowers who could revisit a critical event, create new interpretations, and incorporate new insights about the event constructed in light of her discourse with critical friends (Cameron-Standerford et al., 2013; Edge, 2011). One can learn to become a constructivist thinker in a public homeplace where such thinking is valued and modeled; a public homeplace offers a learning environment in which all members become one among equals and where power is shared among all. Educators who are constructivist thinkers are more likely to see their students as capable of thinking and constructing new ideas (Belenky et al., 1997) and to enable their students to see learning as a dynamic, symbiotic, and as a transactional relationship.

Transactional Theory Most commonly associated with Louise Rosenblatt’s (1978/1994) theory of reading and writing, transactional theory asserts that meaning is not located in the text for the reader to withdraw; rather, it is made through the active coming together of a reader and a text. Rosenblatt’s conception of meaning as an event is the crux of her transactional theory of reading and writing. The essence of this theory is that [e]very reading act is an event, or a transaction involving a particular reader and a particular pattern of signs, a text, and occurring at a particular time in a particular context. (Rosenblatt, 2005, p. 7)

The reader and the text are not fixed entities acting upon one another like parts of a machine or colliding billiard balls, explained Rosenblatt; the reader and the text are “two aspects of a total dynamic situation” (2005, p. 7). The reader makes meaning by transacting with the text in a particular context.

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Meaning, then, is an event in time, made through the confluence of reader and the text in particular context (Rosenblatt, 1969, 1986, 1978/1994, 2005). Rosenblatt’s conception of making meaning is rooted in a transactional paradigm and draws from philosophical and theoretical fields, including John Dewey’s pragmatist epistemology, Charles Sanders Peirce’s (1933, 1935) semiotics, and William James’ (1890) concept of “selective attention” (Rosenblatt, 1978/1994, 1938/1990, 1995, 2005). Although her theory has broad philosophical and theoretical underpinnings, Rosenblatt wrote that it connects to a theory of language and a view of how a human relates to the natural world (Rosenblatt, 1978/1994). Consequently, the transactional paradigm has “profound implications for understanding language” (Rosenblatt, 2005, p. 3). Traditionally, language had been seen as an autonomous, self-contained code or system that imprinted its meaning on the minds of readers or listeners; however, Rosenblatt’s theory recognized the role of an individual’s life and language experiences in the dynamic process of making meaning with language. Triadic Signs The work of pragmatist philosophers, including John Dewey and the father of semiotics, Charles Sanders Peirce, contributed to Rosenblatt’s transactional view of language in her theory of reading (Rosenblatt, 1978/1994, 2005). Particularly influential, Peirce’s (1933, 1935) triadic theory of semiosis held that meaning is made through the interpretation and creation of signs; meaning, then, is made through an interpretive process involving a triadic relationship between a sign, an object, and the interpretant. The heart of the transactional theory is that meaning is made through the creation and interpretation of signs in a particular context and by a particular individual, situating language in individual’s transactions with the world. While language is generally seen as a socially generated system of communication, Rosenblatt argued, Pierce’s triadic model affords consideration that language is internalized by individuals transacting with particular environments. Language has public usages and meanings as well as private associations (Rosenblatt, 1978/1994, 1991, 2005). For the individual, then, the language is that part, or set of features of the public system that has been internalized through that person’s experiences with words in life situations. (Rosenblatt, 2005, p. 5)

These experiences with language accumulate and form an individual’s “linguistic-experiential reservoir” (p. 5). Linguistic-experiential Reservoir The event called meaning, according to Rosenblatt, is guided by a reader’s “linguistic-experiential reservoir” (2005, p. 5). This reservoir is “the residue of the individual’s past transactions
in particular natural and social contexts” (p. 5), and it “reflects the reader’s cultural, social and personal history” (p. 8). In other words, each individual draws upon expectations that emerge from her

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or his storehouse of language and experience. This expectation acts as a guide for making sense of present events; nevertheless, this sense-making might also require the reader to reconsider or to extend her/his storehouse. Rosenblatt explained: Embodying funded assumptions, attitudes, and expectations about language and about the world, this inner capital is all that each of us has to draw on in speaking, listening, writing, or reading. We “make sense” of new situations or transactions and make new meanings by applying, reorganizing, revising, or extending public and private elements selected from our personal linguistic-experiential reservoirs. (2005, p. 5)

Transaction, noted Rosenblatt, not only relates to language, but “also applies to individuals’ relations to one another, whether we think of them in the family, the classroom, the school or in the broader society and culture” (2005, pp. xviii
xix). A person’s linguistic-experiential reservoir is malleable. It is reciprocal. It both guides a person’s meaning-making and is potentially revised as a result of new meaning that is made. It is both an aspect of the total context in which a reader makes meaning, and it is a product of meaning made during the transaction that the reader will use to guide future transactions. Transactional theory positions learners in a reciprocal relationship with their environments including their own knowledge and experiences, sources of knowledge beyond the self, and with other learners. According to Rosenblatt (1978/1994), as readers interpret texts, they are changed by the texts as well as changing the meaning of texts through their interpretations. So learning occurs both from within the learner and from shared interpretations that expand the reader’s questions and insights. Humans share an ecological relationship with their environment
both taking from it and contributing to it (Dewey & Bentley, 1949; Rosenblatt, 2005), much like Gee’s (1990/1996/2007) notion of society as an ambiguous cultural text that is read and composed by its members. The knower, the known, and knowing are aspects of one process (Dewey & Bentley, 1949). Merging the two broad areas of research, feminist, and transactional theories, not only articulated the theoretical framework of our study, but also created space for each of the authors to learn personally and professionally, both individually and collectively as we made both individual meaning and shared meanings. At the start of our longitudinal work, we were individuals
each with our own rich and individually diverse linguistic-experiential reservoirs (Rosenblatt, 1978/1994, 2005). Through discourse and acting as critical friends, we shared the experiences and language that guided our individual meaningmaking; as we did, we discovered tensions between public and private language; we discovered how our diverse disciplinary perspectives framed our thinking in subtle, yet powerfully distinct ways. For instance, the very words transaction and transactional theory initially caused dissonance in Abby’s thinking and tension in Christi’s and Abby’s initial conversations. From a leadership perspective, the term reminded Abby of a business-like exchange, which did not seem

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to fit the dynamic and active making of meaning that Christi spoke about from her literacy and language arts perspectives. Presently, by “going meta” in order to study our own process of collaborative self-study research, we have come to see and to name (some of) the language and experiences that not only reflect our distinct academic diversity but also
through transactions with our teaching as texts and our research as texts
we have come to make meanings together that reflect the shared culture we have made.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND ANALYSIS Self-study is rooted in postmodernist and feminist thinking (LaBoskey, 2004) and thus positions the researcher to examine the self as an integral part of the context for learning, whereby the framing and reframing of lived experiences results in a cumulative and altered understanding of practice. (Tidwell et al., 2012, p. 15)

Just as teaching is “intimate work” (Bruner, 1996, p. 86), self-study is “intimate scholarship” that captures particular lives in the context of the educational world and documents the ways that individuals navigate that world (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014). As self-study researchers, we documented how we negotiated our lived experiences as texts (Cameron-Standerford, Edge, & Bergh, 2016). Self-study methodology aims to both inform the researchers and to generate knowledge that can be disseminated both within and beyond the professional discourse community. Self-study as a methodology helps researchers to explore and challenge their assumptions and beliefs with the purpose of improving their understanding and practice of teaching (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001). In each of our self-study inquiries over our five years of shared scholarship, we used a modified collaborative conference protocol (Anderson et al., 2010; Cameron-Standerford et al., 2013; Seidel et al., 1997) to help one another reframe an understanding of experience (Loughran & Northfield, 1998). To examine our self-study process, we utilized the same collaborative conference protocol. This process, depicted in Fig. 1, included: (1) Identifying a critical event. Through the review of our longitudinal research artifacts, we came to recognize that a turning point in our shared research story began in our 2014 self-study involving our use of visuals and has continued to be woven throughout our work in subsequent years. It was in this study that we first sought to understand how visuals can be used to construct and convey meaning in our face-to-face and fully online courses. (2) Formulated a self-study question. In light of the feedback that we had received from the broader research community regarding our collaborative work, in 2017 we sought to understand how our diverse linguistic and disciplinary perspectives contributed to the creation

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Self-study Collaborative Conference Protocol.

of a shared culture. (3) Textualized the experience and (4) situated the event in its broader context. We revisited and archived our longitudinal work by physically bringing our research artifacts together in our public homeplace (e.g., our conference room). We covered the walls with presentation posters, powerpoint slides, handouts, and articles. These texts represented snapshots in time depicting our individual understandings of our research history. Naturally, discussion developed focusing on the (5) shared ideas and insights developed out of the review. The process continued through the intentional practice of asking (6) questions, making comments, observations and allowing the diverse perspectives of each other to be shared. Through the process of (7) re-reading the texts

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of our research events, we identified the existence of a shared culture that stemmed from the three of us. We recognized this culture was created from the merging of our diverse experiences, academic disciplines, and disciplinary languages in a common experience
our collective self-study research. Discourse within our shared culture resulted in greater (8) connection between each other’s experiences, our diverse individual professional knowledge, and the collective understanding from which we built new knowledge. Recognizing evidence of the impact our diverse experiences, disciplines, and languages have had on our collective artifacts and research outcomes, we now understand that, “As we write the text, the text writes us” (Clarke, Erickson, Collins, & Phelan, 2005, p. 171). To come to this understanding, we needed the previous years of collaborative self-study to allow the academic diversities unique to each of our disciplines
educational leadership, literacy, and special education
an opportunity to surface and become a part our shared culture.

FINDINGS In seeking to understand how our diverse linguistic and disciplinary perspectives
educational leadership, literacy, and special education
contributed to our unique shared culture, we focused on the ways in which we used self-study methodology to see and re-see our use of visual literacies in our individual teacher education practices, to construct meaning about teaching across academic disciplines, and to understand the broader knowledge base of teacher education. We recognized: (1) visuals acted as both objects and mediums in our teaching, (2) we are a part of, rather than outsider, the interpretive act of making meaning through experiences as texts, and (3) textualizing lived experiences within an academically diverse self-study community enabled us to see disciplinary linguistic diversity across our academic areas and resulted in a better understanding of teaching practices.

The Role of Visuals in Our Teaching Practices: Objects and Mediums As a result of inquiring into our use of visual literacy, we realized we were using visuals as both objects and mediums. A visual object, such as a drawing or photo, is a representation of the understanding or interpretation of the person who created it. The visual, once created, becomes static in meaning and no longer represents a transactional experience for the creator. A visual interpreted as an object can be further described as a noun naming or identifying an individual experience. Consider the interpretive act of naming clouds as representations of other known objects
for example, one person names a dragon,

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another a dog. This process of identification of the object is personal and does not require the consideration of others’ perspectives. Beyond naming a visual as an object, we recognized that visuals also could be mediums or tools through which learning is constructed simultaneously between two or more individuals. Interpreting a visual as a medium requires the process to be defined dynamically denoting the active role of both the teacher and the student in creating a shared understanding. The visuals we selected for use in our face-to-face and online classrooms were often images that represented past meanings that we had made and wanted to share with our students. For example, we used images to synthesize and communicate a theoretical construct, to communicate a tone of excitement, or to illustrate ideas related to an assignment. However, we also asked our students to use visuals to communicate understandings, emotions, and reflective practices related to teaching and learning. For example, Abby asked student teachers who were taking an online seminar course to respond to a discussion forum prompt using visuals only to reflect their perception of student learning. This was one visual response shared (Image 1). Abby’s initial reaction was that the student teacher had not understood the intent of the discussion and in fact, Abby felt that the student teacher was being purposely flippant. While most students had posted pictures of the classrooms they were working in or the projects their students had generated, this student posted an abstract image. To Abby, it seemed as if the student had randomly copied and pasted an image from the Internet rather than, like the other students, selecting an image from her work as a student teacher. After Abby shared her frustration and concern with Christi and Bethney, she quietly took notes on what her critical friends observed, shared, and asked. It was during this phase that Christi’s literacy perspective came to light and prompted Abby

Image 1.

Perception of Student Learning.

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to reconsider how she had viewed the student’s image. Christi commented that the image represented the meaning the student was in the process of making. The student had written about how she felt overwhelmed by an experience that felt chaotic. Christi shared how, at times, people generate an image to convey what they understand; at other times, they are working to understand what they are experiencing, and may be drawn to an image that conveys what they do not yet have the words to fully express. In later discussions following this event, we realized that Christi’s literacy frame gravitated toward considering the meaning the student had made in relationship to the seminar assignment, her student-teaching experiences, the student, and the image. As a special education teacher educator, Abby’s attention reflected her concern for the student. We assumed our students would arrive at the same meaning we had made or that the meaning we made matched the intention of the student. We assumed that the visual was a medium. Through the use of a collaborative conference protocol, we were able to critically look at the assumption that our meaning would automatically become our students’ meaning and vice versa. As a result, we were later able to acknowledge that we were not providing students with time and space to make their own meaning. Additionally, we began to question the unwritten assumptions we made in light of our disciplinary cultures. To them, the visual was an object. However, through connecting ideas and engaging in literate thinking (Langer, 1987) meaning can be created rather than superficially assigned and subsequently transfers the perception of a visual as an object to a visual as a medium through which meaning-making occurs. In order to do this, we
students and teachers
needed time and space in order to engage in our own interpretive act. Looking at this finding longitudinally, we now recognize the critical role it has played in framing our continued work as collaborative self-study researchers. We became empowered to intentionally view multimodal texts as objects through which we could make meaning. We began to textualize our public research (i.e., conference posters and papers) and we continued to textualize our teaching, and to make meaning through these events. In Langer’s (2011a, 2011b) iteration of envisionment building, she states that at times, the meaning one makes results in powerful takeaways that deepen or broaden his or her understanding; future meaning-making events then begin from that new point of reference. Following our year-long inquiry into how we used images to convey and to communicate meaning, we began to re-see how all multimodal texts could act as both objects and mediums. In our study, the object of our inquiry included both specific visuals we used when teaching and we saw our teaching practices as events. Each researcher brought different visuals to our public homeplace; in discussing these images and our teaching practices, each image became a visual text (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Draper, Broomhead, Jensen, Nokes, & Siebert, 2010; Rosenblatt, 2005) through which we engaged in meaning-making about teaching practices. Visuals acted as a common or shared medium through which we generated not just a common

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language, but also a shared culture. Similar to how readers of a print-based text might build a learning community through their shared interactions and conversations, we built a community around and through the visuals in each researcher’s self-study. Re-seeing this phenomenon from the distance of time and place, we now understand the relationship between visuals being objects and mediums in our 2014 study to our work since. For instance, we began to recognize and to position policy as both an object and medium; we saw self-study as an object and a medium. Additionally, we began to act and to be educators who understood a text to be an “object that people intentionally imbue with meaning, in the way they either create or attend to the object to achieve a particular purpose” (Draper et al., 2010, p. 28). And from this vantage point, we were freed from our previous, tacit assumptions related to the authority print-based texts. Seeing this knowledge and agency, we could then purposefully shift our stance to recognize the authority of experience and to position texts to be objects that represented our meaning-making and mediums through which we could generate meaning (Munby & Russell, 1994).

Our Role in Viewing and Using Visuals in Our Teaching Practices: An Interpretive Act We came to realize we are a part of the interpretive act of viewing visual texts. That is, the image we either interpreted as an object or utilized as a medium for communicating our understanding involved a transaction with the visual text. In the transactional act, or meaning-making event, we the viewers, the image viewed, and the act of viewing were aspects of one process. As a transactional event, viewing and creating images necessitated transmediation
reorganizing meaning we made from one sign system to another (Harste, 2000). We either began with a visual that we interpreted as a text, using words, or we began within a linguistic sign system in the form of words we wrote, spoke, or thought, and reorganized meaning into a visual text. For example, Bethney began with an image to prompt conversation in an online discussion forum whereas Abby and Christi asked students to generate images to represent their perception or lived experiences. In Bethney’s school law class, she uses an image of bird/animal footprints to elicit individual student interpretation of what happened to create the footprint pattern depicted in Image 2. This is similar to the active practice of a school leader coming to understand a school incident that may have been reported by a student, teacher, parent, or other stakeholder. In this activity, titled, What Happened?, students share their interpretation of the image with their online group members and then move forward, individually constructing learning by practicing the act of mediation,

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Image 2.

What Happened?

in which one seeks to understand the perspective of another. To do so, students must be open to allowing the interpretations of another to enter into their understanding through the online transactional event. To understand this new perspective “requires an element of unconditional acceptance, meaning that all views presented as part of the discursive efforts must be accepted as valid” (Stader, 2013, p. 237). In either direction, the meaning-making event required us to actively make sense by taking what we understood in one sign system and translating that knowledge into another sign system. This act of transmediation was an interpretive and creative act. We read visual or verbal texts and created new visual or verbal texts through the meanings we made (Smagorinsky, 2008). In retrospect, we felt that recognizing ourselves as part of the interpretive act of viewing visuals should have been more obvious at the outset of our study. Theoretically and practically, we claimed to view knowledge as constructed through transactions with texts. Nevertheless, our initial limited understanding of the specific language and compositional elements of visual texts prohibited our ability to recognize that we were engaged in an interpretive act akin to what we knew we experienced as readers of a written text. Once we began to explore, understand, and construct a language for interpreting elements of visual texts
for example, perspective, color, lines, and shape (Connors, 2011; O’Neil, 2011)
with which we could speak to what we did to make sense of images and how we constructed interpretations of the visuals, we were able to recognize that we were a part of the interpretive act of reading and making sense of visual texts. With this heightened awareness, we examined the longitudinal impact of this finding across multiple years of self-study. Much as we needed to construct

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understanding of the language specific to visual literacy, our broader self-study homeplace required the creation of a common language and set of experiences as well. Our ability to engage in this language-generating act was facilitated, subtly by Bethney’s philosophical and practical experiences as a guidance counselor, principal, and superintendent, and her disciplinary values related to purposeful, mindful leadership. Within our public homeplace, and through our collaborative conference protocol, we practiced the act of mediation through seeking to understand the perspective of another. Through the interpretive act of reorganizing meaning made in our 2014 selfstudy, we began to see that our individual experiences were no longer ours alone. Instead, through the self-study process, we had, in seeking to understand one another’s lived experiences as educators, extracted our individual experiences
freeing them from the confines of one view only and reframed them as a collective experience
thus ensuring that our differing perspectives contributed to collective understandings (Loughran, 2007; Schon, 1983).

Our Role as Self-study Educators in an Academically Diverse Community: Textualizing Lived Experiences to Understand Teaching Practices As we sought to construct and convey meaning in our face-to-face and fully online courses using visuals, we textualized (Edge, 2011) our individual interpretations of visuals used in our individual teaching practice. To do so, we had to step back from the meaning we made, examine how it was constructed, and consider how our knowledge, experiences, assumptions, and values as educators guided our interpretations. This is significant in that the process of textualizing allowed us to see and understand how and why we as individuals selected particular images to use in our teaching, and to understand how or why we responded to student-produced images the way that we did. It was during textualization that aspects of the diversity present with our individual academic and disciplinary linguistic foundations began to surface. When we first came together in self-study, we saw our differing academic disciplines as “objects” that described who we were as educators. In light of our continued research and learning together, we each have integrated, embedded, and adopted the language and disciplinary values we once thought were specific to others’ individual disciplines. This first was recognized when Christi spoke of the term transactional defined as a “reciprocal, mutually defining relationship” (Rosenblatt, 1978/1994) between a reader and a text in a particular context and valued within the context of literacy. Through discussion, Abby and Bethney shared their misunderstanding of Christi’s use of the term
within their disciplines, the word transactional carried a differing meaning and referenced a style of leadership that “is a power based, rewards and punishment relationship;

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leaders get tasks completed by providing rewards to followers who compete tasks in a specified and desired manner” (Green, 2010, pp. 11
32). Through our longitudinal self-study research and in particular, textualizing our experiences, we came to see our individual academic disciplines as both objects and mediums through which we could not only reframe our own teaching practices but also broaden our understanding about teaching, learning, being, and ever-becoming teacher educators. Through Christi’s literacy lens, we came to acknowledge and then adopt her disciplinary view of texts as communicative signs we imbue with meaning (Draper et al., 2010). Through this lens, we came to envision our lived experiences as educators and as self-study researchers as texts that we could read, respond to, and, through the leadership perspective of mediation, seek to understand and appreciate the interpretations others constructed of the experiential texts we shared in our public homeplace as critical friends. Our stance
another term we appropriated from a literacy perspective (Langer, 2011a; Rosenblatt, 1978/1994)
was open to understanding the perspectives of others
a value and practice from leadership and special education
we were positioned to not only consider others’ ideas, language, connections, and experiences but also transact with them as texts that were spoken and written and woven into our shared and lived self-study text. Textualizing our experiences and responding to them in our public homeplace demonstrated that how “self-study emphasizes the value of critical conversations about topics and practices that cross-disciplinary boundaries and that this type of collaboration potentially results in improved practice for each participant” (Hall-Kenyon & Smith, 2013, p. 97). For example, returning to an example mentioned previously in this chapter, re-envisioning our lived experiences through multiple disciplinary lenses initially emerged when Abby shared with our self-study group an artifact from a self-identified critical event. As members of the group shared back their perspectives, Abby re-saw the event through the worldview of Christi’s and Bethney’s disciplinary perspectives. Said another way, as a result of Christi and Bethney sharing what they saw, what they heard, the connections that they made, and the literature that came to mind in response to Abby’s artifacts, Abby “re-read” the situation from multiple disciplinary lenses and also in light of others’ linguistic-experiential reservoirs. These collaborative interactions embodied the values and purposes of each individual academic discipline, and over time and through transacting with our experiences as texts we built the greater web of our shared self-study culture. By shared culture, we mean that within the existing departmental culture that valued self-study, we three constructed a personal-professional subculture that included respect for and appreciation of one another’s disciplinary values and knowledge. Across these disciplines, we wove a tapestry of shared understanding, threading the knowledge and experiences of each individual into a new cultural text. Within a public homeplace
a place where individuals learn together and move toward constructivist ways of knowing
our academically

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Special Education

Teacher Education

Shared Culture

Educational Leadership

Literacy

Fig. 2.

Shared Culture.

diverse perspectives surfaced. Through transaction, as a result of our purposeful stance to understand one another, these perspectives broadened and deepened our linguistic-experiential reservoirs (Rosenblatt, 1978/1994). The use of a self-study collaborative conference protocol facilitated our recognition of our longitudinal findings (Fig. 2). We now recognize: (1) visuals acted as both objects and mediums in our teaching, (2) we are a part of, rather than outside, the interpretive act of making meaning through experiences as texts, and (3) textualizing lived experiences revealed linguistic and cultural diversity which surfaced across our academic disciplines.

SIGNIFICANCE One of the most significant outcomes gleaned from our longitudinal perspective and review of our collective self-study was the realization that we would not have come to deeply understand or re-see experiences had we not participated in collaborative self-study with critical friends outside of our individual disciplines. Cross-disciplinary critical friends helped to make visible and call into question our, often tacit, knowledge rooted in our disciplines, including discipline-specific language, values, and assumptions. While the value of collaboration in selfstudy has been widely documented (e.g., Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015) for challenging one’s assumptions and biases and for expanding one’s interpretations (LaBoskey, 2004), we have also come to see additional value. We now recognize how collaborative self-study with teacher educators representing different disciplines brings to light specific disciplinary values, assumptions, and

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terminology that, when articulated and examined among critical friends, can lift us from our academic islands to see the broader educational landscape. Gee (2012) further explained: Discourses are ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing, that are accepted as instantiations of particular identities by specific groups …They are socially situated identities. They are, thus, always and everywhere social products of social histories. (p. 3)

Individually, one’s linguistic-experiential reservoir guides meaning-making (Rosenblatt, 1978/1994); nevertheless, self-study across multiple disciplines resulted in the creation of a common language that encompassed literacy, leadership, and learning disabilities. A collaborative cross-disciplinary self-study provided us with a sense of agency which resulted in the creation of a community of discourse. As a result, we did not merely step into an existing university culture to close our office doors and go about our work as lone scholars; rather we actively created space for ourselves through our new discourse community. We understand that “identity is shaped by communities whose languages we share” (Hillman, 2013, p. 398). Whether the language is one that is shared through heritage or country of origin, as is the case for many of the chapters in this book, or whether language is shared professionally through collaborative efforts to bridge academic islands and prepare the next generation of teachers and leaders, language is critical to building a community of active meaning makers. To empower our prospective and practicing teachers to build connections across disciplinary borderlands, we needed to experience this shift for ourselves. Perhaps, as preservice and practicing teachers learn to open themselves to different ways of seeing and knowing across disciplines, the framework for drawing on this practice can be realized when working with students and families from different language, cultural, and racial backgrounds. Just as we were able to broaden our understanding of each other’s disciplinary cultures and thus create our shared culture out of this understanding, we have a responsibility to guide our preservice and practicing teachers to become aware of the many “micro” cultures that they both contribute to and are influenced by. We also have a responsibility to model how to attend to and learn from others’ cultural viewpoints as well consider diversity from a broader and less traditional perspective. And yet, with new understandings come questions and thoughts for the future. Considering the geographic and cultural realities of our context, how can we continue to help our students look for diversity among surface homogeneity? How does preparation level
elementary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate
cultures influence the frame from which educators view their work? Learning from diverse disciplinary perspectives in the context of a collaborative self-study was the key to our individual and collective growth. For us as teacher educators and researchers, engaging in collaborative discussions with supportive, “critical friends” who provide cross-disciplinary perspectives

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(LaBoskey, 2004, p. 819); examining problems in practice; sharing case studies to make tacit understandings more explicit; and articulating beliefs about instructional practices for others to see, examine, question, utilize, and reflect on practice offered us the framework from which we could intentionally address this challenge and through which significant growth could occur (Freidus, Feldman, Sgouros, & Wiles-Kettenmann, 2005).

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PART II: PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES AND POLICIES RELATED TO LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

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PREPARING TEACHERS FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS IN RURAL SETTINGS Kathleen Ann Ramos ABSTRACT Teacher educators in rural settings where few English learners (ELs) may be enrolled in PK-12 schools are responsible for creating learning experiences that support preservice teachers in building a foundation for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse learners. The goal of the self-study described in this chapter was to investigate a teacher educator’s practice in a largely White, English-speaking rural area in the northeastern US. Learning experiences embedded in the one required course for preparing to teach ELs were grounded in extant research. This chapter highlights one unique experience in which the preservice teachers interacted with international ESL peers on campus to negotiate meaning of a complex text. The preservice teachers reported that this interaction led to analogous understandings for planning and implementing literacy instruction with ELs. These results may be useful to other teacher educators in rural areas who seek principled ways to strengthen preservice teachers’ preparedness for teaching ELs. Keywords: Teacher education; self-study; rural area; English learners; preservice teachers; teacher preparation

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 145
165 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030012

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INTRODUCTION Although English learners (ELs) have long been present in US. PK-12 schools, preparing preservice teachers to effectively teach these culturally and linguistically diverse learners represents a field of research still in its infancy (Bunch, 2013; Lucas & Grinberg, 2008). As the EL student population continues to grow steadily, there is urgency around serving ELs with equity and excellence in our nation’s schools. This goal implies that teacher educators must provide thoughtful preparation, grounded in research and theoretical understandings, which supports preservice teachers in preparing to meet ELs’ social, affective, and academic needs (Valde´s, Kibler, & Walqui, 2014). Designing meaningful preparation for learning how to teach PK-12 ELs can be a challenging endeavor in rural settings in which very few ELs may attend the schools where preservice teachers complete fieldwork and student teaching experiences (Cho, Rios, Trent, & Mayfield, 2012). Additionally, teacher education programs in many states require only one course that provides a foundation for teaching ELs (de Jong & Harper, 2011). How to support preservice teachers in rural areas for embracing the culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners that they are likely to teach during their careers is an emerging body of research (Cho et al., 2012; Hansen-Thomas, Grosso Richins, Kakkar, & Okeyo, 2016). Thus, there is particular urgency for teacher educators in such contexts to design coursework that fosters preservice teachers’ understanding of how to create optimal teaching and learning environments for ELs. As a teacher educator in a rural area, I sought to address the broader question of how to approach this critical work in this context. Specifically, I wanted to investigate my practice in a rural area that is nearly 100% White and English speaking in which preservice teachers take just one course to learn to teach ELs and do not encounter ELs in field experiences. In this chapter, I describe a self-study that I undertook to explore this issue as a teacher educator who taught for three years in this context. I anchored my investigation in tenets of self-study research by examining my own practice in order to improve it (LaBoskey, 2004; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). I employed multiple, mainly qualitative methods and considered the results as provisional and ongoing (LaBoskey & Richert, 2015). Additionally, I anchored my work around preparing teachers to teach ELs in existing research frameworks and individual studies conducted by other teacher educators (Zeichner, 2007). Moreover, I sought to not only investigate how I prepared preservice teachers in a rural setting to teach ELs but also provide rich insights about this work in this specific context in order to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge in this critical field (Loughran, 2010; Zeichner, 2007). I employed self-study methodology to explore the ways in which my approach to preparing future teachers to effectively teach ELs in a rural area

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where interaction with PK-12 ELs was minimal or non-existent could influence my students’ confidence in and preparation for teaching ELs.

CONTRIBUTING TO THE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT PREPARING TEACHERS TO TEACH ELS THROUGH SELF-STUDY As this volume attests, Self-Study in Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) is gaining prominence as a methodology that can inform the knowledge base of policy and practice (LaBoskey, 2004; LaBoskey & Richert, 2015; Samaras, 2011). To describe my self-study, I embrace Loughran’s (2010) emphasis to foreground and articulate the knowledge gained about teaching and preparing teachers over the story of conducting the self-study. This notion aligns with the idea of employing self-study as a way to accumulate knowledge about teacher education practices in a specific context, an essential goal of quality self-study research (Zeichner, 2007). Like Loughran (2010), Zeichner (2007) urges self-study researchers to ensure that widely accepted components of quality research are in place so that recounting the research can move beyond descriptions of methodology and teacher education practice activities and articulate the knowledge gained from the research in order to more directly influence teacher education practice and policy. Thus, teacher educators who are committed to examining their own practice in specific contexts in order to investigate how we may positively shape preservice teachers’ preparedness and willingness to value cultural and linguistic diversity in today’s classrooms can name and use self-study research. In this chapter, I will share the why, how, and what was learned from this self-study. I will also emphasize the way that knowledge gained from this investigation may be particularly useful for shaping teacher education practice for preparing future teachers of ELs in rural areas.

PREPARING PRESERVICE TEACHERS TO EFFECTIVELY TEACH ENGLISH LEARNERS At the time of this self-study, I was a teacher educator in a private, liberal arts college in a rural county in a northeastern state. In 2010, the two largest demographic groups in this county were White (95.3%) and Black or African American (2.3%) while Some Other Race was 0.3% (US Census Bureau, 2010). I was charged with designing and delivering the one course that all PK-12 preservice teacher candidates were required to take in order to learn about all aspects of teaching and learning with PK-12 ELs. I had refined and reshaped

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the course over time by studying research informing best practices for preparing educators to effectively teach ELs, attending national conferences, and considering students’ feedback from course evaluations. My own work as a former Spanish and ESOL PK-12 teacher and as a current teacher educator and scholar has been deeply influenced by sociocultural and functional linguistic perspectives on teaching and learning. Current research anchors preparing preservice teachers for CLD classrooms in sociocultural and sociolinguistic frameworks (de Jong & Harper, 2011; Lucas & Villegas, 2011; Valde´s et al., 2014; Walqui, 2011). These frameworks emphasize viewing ELs’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds as strengths rather than deficits and designing rigorous, interactive instruction that invites ELs to actively use language to explore and respond to grade-level, standards-aligned content with native English-speaking peers. Furthermore, language and literacy scholars argue that preservice teachers need to explore the academic language demands of school curricula in order to gain an understanding of the way that academic language resources function in the school-based genres that all children are expected to read and write in school (de Oliveira & Schleppegrell, 2015; Kibler, Walqui, & Bunch, 2015). This emphasis on the functions of academic language resources, grounded in systemic functional linguistics (SFL), is based on the premise that an equitable education for all children must seek to strengthen PK-12 learners’ control over academic language and literacy practices (Brisk, 2012, 2015; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010; Gebhard, 2010; Rose & Martin, 2012). Yet, many teachers lack the knowledge about language that is necessary for helping ELs to understand how academic language works in the genres of school curricula (Gebhard, 2010). In a self-study, Galguera (2011) named this knowledge pedagogical language knowledge, or the knowledge of the way that language and literacy development are supported through the teaching of core curricula. Bunch (2013) noted that this knowledge is particularly important for teachers’ efforts to support ELs in meeting the rigorous language and literacy requirements of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Notably, Galguera (2011) argued that teacher educators should embrace the responsibility to prepare preservice teachers to learn to design instruction that engages all PK-12 students in academic language and literacy practices rather than focusing only on the literacy needs of ELs. Galguera reasoned that a focus on ELs as lacking English proficiency can lead to deficit thinking about ELs’ capabilities. An experienced teacher educator, Galguera suggested the use of participant structures (Philips, 2009) to afford preservice teachers with opportunities to engage in experiential tasks involving academic texts. These learning experiences can be useful in guiding preservice teachers to build awareness of academic language resources and develop an understanding of the way that academic language functions in real texts. Teacher educators of current and future teachers of ELs have also investigated their own practice in order to contribute to this body of research,

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strengthening the knowledge base in this field. This body of research highlights the importance of creating learning experiences that foster preservice teachers’ confidence in teaching ELs (Durgunog˘ lu & Hughes, 2010), sparking examination of beliefs and attitudes toward ELs (Coronado & Petro´n, 2008; Markos, 2012), interrupting deficit views of ELs (Gainer & Larrotta, 2010), fostering empathy for ELs (Zhang & Pelttari, 2014), and providing direct interaction with ELs (Jimenez-Silva & Olson, 2012). Embracing my responsibility to optimize learning experiences for preservice teachers to learn to teach ELs through completing one course, I developed and refined a course based on extant research. I designed a self-study in order to investigate my own practice in a specific context
preparing preservice teachers to teach ELs in a rural area in which PK-12 ELs rarely enrolled in local schools. I aimed to investigate the ways that the learning experiences I crafted could support preservice teachers in this rural setting in gaining confidence in and preparation for teaching ELs and to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge from research in this specific context (Cho et al., 2012; HansenThomas et al., 2016). Moreover, I sought to look beneath the story to think critically about what the understory may suggest about teacher education practices and policies (Loughran, 2010) in largely homogeneous rural contexts.

METHODOLOGY This self-study was conducted with 18 White preservice teachers, 10 males and 8 females, in a teacher preparation program situated in a private, liberal arts college in a rural county in a northeastern state. The specific research questions investigated were: • How did participants perceive the way that the overall course affected their confidence in and preparation for teaching ELs? • To what degree did participants perceive that specific learning experiences supported them in gaining the specialized knowledge necessary for teaching ELs? To pursue answers to these questions, I sought to investigate the way that my professional, informed choices around course learning experiences could influence the preservice teacher participants’ preparation for their future work in CLD classrooms.

The Participants The 18 White undergraduate participants were completing the one required course focused on preparing to teach ELs in their teacher education program.

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Teaching certificates sought by these preservice teachers included: PK-4; middle level ELA and social studies; secondary history, English, and mathematics; and K-12 foreign language and environmental science. Notably, none of the participants had experienced any direct interaction with PK-12 ELs during fieldwork in schools. Only two participants reported having experienced a fair amount of interaction with non-native English speakers, through friendships with ELs during their own school years or service trips abroad with religious organizations. Despite this lack of real-life encounters with ELs, I found these future teachers to be open to learning to teach PK-12 ELs. For example, all participants provided positive responses to the pre-course question, “When you hear the words English learner, what comes to mind?” Their responses acknowledged how difficult it must be for PK-12 ELs to try to learn a new language in school and lacked any negativity toward ELs. I found this positive perspective toward ELs heartening given that educators often hold negative perceptions of ELs (e.g., Coronado & Petro´n, 2008; Gainer & Larrotta, 2010; Markos, 2012). The positivity toward ELs expressed by these undergraduate participants could be attributed to the fact that these students were enrolled in a highly selective, religious institution of higher education that valued and promoted social justice and service to others. Yet, recent research emphasizes that efforts to prepare rural educators for teaching ELs across content areas have been inadequate. These efforts need to deepen rural teacher candidates’ understanding that their own preparation for teaching CLD learners plays an important role in ELs’ academic success (Cho et al., 2012). Thus, I aimed to provide my students with a strong fundamental preparation for teaching PK-12 ELs whether in rural areas or in more diverse settings. The self-initiated desire to examine my own practice with the intention to improve it as well as to contribute to the growing knowledge base of preparing educators in rural settings for effectively teaching ELs served as the motivation for this self-study.

A Unique Core Learning Experience Principal goals of the course included supporting preservice teachers in building the confidence to meet ELs’ needs (Durgunog˘ lu & Hughes, 2010) embracing an additive perspective on teaching ELs (Gainer & Larrotta, 2010; Jimenez-Silva & Olson, 2012) and gaining both the dispositions and specialized knowledge for designing instruction that offers ELs consistent opportunities to develop academic language and literacy practices while learning grade-level academic content (Kibler et al., 2015). Although I included several research-based core learning experiences in this course (e.g., a simulation activity, critiquing of video excerpts of classroom

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instruction with ELs, detailed lesson plans with content and language learning goals), I will focus on one unique experience that was responsive to the rural context in which these preservice teachers were learning to teach. I created this unique learning experience to afford my students with the opportunity to have direct interactions with ELs. My goal was to promote viewing ELs from a strengths-based perspective as well as to foster an appreciation of their cultural and linguistic backgrounds as bridges, not obstacles, to learning (Gainer & Larrotta, 2010; Jimenez-Silva & Olson, 2012; Markos, 2012). Furthermore, I wanted to create awareness of the importance of pedagogical language knowledge for designing integrated content and language instruction that advances PK-12 ELs’ academic language development (Bunch, 2013; Galguera, 2011). Self-study research design allowed me to investigate the way that including this unique learning experience could contribute to my students’ preparation for teaching ELs and to the knowledge base about teacher education practices in a specific context (Loughran, 2010; Zeichner, 2007). In the next section, I describe this learning experience, which I hoped would serve as a substitute for implementing literacy instruction with PK-12 ELs in schools given that my students had yet to encounter ELs in the local schools.

Interacting with New International ESL Students on Campus As an experienced educator, I realized that creating lesson plans, participating in simulations, and analyzing video excerpts of classroom teaching with ELs could not take the place of actual interaction with ELs. As Peercy (2014) argued in her self-study, meaningful practice in the act of teaching is a more powerful experience for preservice teachers than reflecting on teaching. I considered that connecting the preservice teachers with newly arrived international students on campus could feasibly fill this void; thus, I reached out to one of the college’s ESL instructors. The international program on campus was small, comprising undergraduate business majors from China and biology majors from Brazil. Other ESL students were international members of the religious order that operated the college. The ESL instructor and I arranged for six international students to interact on two occasions with my students during our overlapping course meeting time. The first interaction was social in nature, allowing the preservice teachers and international students to get acquainted. Three of the ESL international students were from China, and three were from Brazil. These students were in an intensive ESL program designed to build academic English skills in preparation for pursuing undergraduate degrees at the college. As study abroad students, these international students possessed strong first language (L1) literacy skills as well as general and academic background knowledge. However, their

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English-speaking skills, comprehension of academic texts in English, and knowledge of life in the US were still developing. Future teachers of PK-12 ELs must have an understanding of the academic language demands inherent in the texts that ELs will need to read and write in school (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010). That is, preservice teachers need to develop pedagogical language knowledge (Bunch, 2013; Galguera, 2011). One way that teacher educators can support preservice teachers in building this knowledge is to plan experiential tasks involving interaction around academic texts from a functional language perspective (Fang, 2008).

Participating in an Instructional Conversation around an Academic Text I hypothesized that reading and discussing a complex text with the international ESL students would be representative of the challenges that many PK-12 ELs face to comprehend complex texts. Complex texts are often difficult for ELs as these texts can employ unfamiliar academic language resources and may reflect culturally unfamiliar topics (Fang, 2008). Drawing on my own prior experience as an ESOL teacher of older adolescents in a high school setting, I reasoned that the preservice teachers would benefit from firsthand experience with the difficulties even well-educated ELs would likely encounter when negotiating meaning in a culturally unfamiliar complex text. Through this text negotiation with international ELs, I hoped to spark analogous understandings about hallmarks of effective instruction with PK-12 ELs: tapping into prior knowledge, schema building, and scaffolded interaction (Walqui, 2006). I also aimed to create an authentic way to explore a complex text from a systemic functional linguistic (SFL) perspective in order to develop awareness of the way academic language resources function according to genre (Rose & Martin, 2012). I had previously introduced the preservice teachers to planning this type of genre-based instruction through a journal article describing a teacher’s efforts to support fourth grade ELs in gaining control over the academic language resources that function to construe persuasion (Gebhard, Harman, & Seger, 2007). I selected a persuasive argument written by national columnist Nicholas Kristof titled The American Dream Is Emigrating (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 14, 2014) for this learning experience. Prior to the collaborative reading experience with the international students, my students completed a graphic organizer prompting them to consider how to set a purpose for reading, build background knowledge about American cultural concepts in the text, and explain phrases such as education as a lubricant of social and economic mobility during reading. The preservice teachers considered which questions they might ask to check for understanding during reading as well as how they could invite their international peers to share their opinions and questions about this text.

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The preservice teachers also noted their thinking about the academic language resources of the text from an SFL perspective by identifying the genre, deciding the purpose and audience, exploring how the author used evaluative language authoritatively to advance his argument, and thinking about the text’s structural organization. This pre-reading activity also served as practice for planning integrated language, literacy, and content instruction.

Data Sources In order to include multiple, mainly qualitative methods (LaBoskey, 2004) in my self-study as well as to leverage instruments from other teacher educators’ studies of practice (Zeichner, 2007), I adapted a 12-item pre- and post-course survey (Durgunog˘ lu & Hughes, 2010) to measure any shifts in the preservice teachers’ readiness to teach PK-12 ELs (see Appendix). I also administered a post-course questionnaire with three open-ended questions that asked the participants to explain any changes in their perceptions of ELs as well as in their understanding of culturally responsive teaching practices and to describe what they had learned from engaging in the text negotiation with their international peers. A second section of this post-course questionnaire invited the preservice teachers to identify and explain the degree of helpfulness of the research-based core learning experiences in the course. Additionally, the preservice teachers wrote brief reflections about the reading experience with their ESL peers.

Data Analysis I analyzed the 12-item survey responses by comparing percentages of participants who strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed, or strongly disagreed with each survey item pre- and post-course. To analyze the responses to the three openended questions, I determined initial codes emerging from participants’ perceptions of ELs, knowledge about culturally responsive teaching practices, and learning gleaned from the collaborative reading experience. I then organized these initial codes into key categories that I further analyzed for prevalent themes (de Jong & Harper, 2011; Huberman & Miles, 2002). I analyzed data from the preservice teachers’ explanation of the degree to which the researchbased core learning experiences were helpful by using the same method of initial coding, categorization, and theme identification. It is important to note that two data points helped me to explore whether the unique learning experience of text negotiation with the international students may have shaped my students’ thinking about working with ELs on an academic literacy task. The post-course open-ended question invited my students to explain what they learned through the interactive reading with their

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ESL peers. Additionally, the students’ written reflections on these interactions allowed me to glean rich insights into their thinking about what they had taken away from this unique learning experience. Through these reflections, I engaged my own students as critical friends (LaBoskey & Richert, 2015). I include examples of these insights in the findings section. Collectively, analysis of these multiple, mainly qualitative data allowed me to triangulate the data in this self-study.

Limitations It is possible that the pre- and post-course surveys and questionnaire responses may have reflected what the preservice teachers assumed would be pleasing to me as the instructor. However, as these data collection tools were completed anonymously and required an articulation of rationale in open-ended responses, this bias was minimized. Another limitation is that it would have been helpful to seek critical friends beyond the students to validate my thinking and analysis (LaBoskey & Richert, 2015). Additionally, the small number of participants did not permit me to make strong claims about my findings. Nonetheless, thinking critically about the findings provided a pathway for examining my own practice in order to improve it and for sharing insights that may be useful to other teacher educators in rural settings who prepare future educators for today’s diverse classrooms.

Findings First, I will briefly share examples of results from the survey and questionnaire data. Then, in keeping with the focus on the text negotiation experience, I will turn to insights gained from my students’ written reflections around the interactive reading task. As was anticipated, the pre- and post-course survey responses indicated that the preservice teachers’ confidence for teaching PK-12 ELs grew during the course. For example, in response to the statement, “I feel confident that I am fundamentally prepared to teach ELs from a wide variety of cultural, socioeconomic, and educational backgrounds,” none of the participants expressed agreement pre-course while 94% agreed or strongly agreed with this statement post-course. The analysis of the degree of helpfulness of the research-based core learning experiences (e.g., simulations, video lesson analyses, creation of lesson plans with content and language goals) revealed that the participants found these learning experiences to be helpful or very helpful in learning to teach ELs. For example, prominent themes that emerged from a simulation involving giving

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directions in Spanish without and then with scaffolds included “visual aids/gestures are critical” and “increased empathy for ELs.” Themes emerging from responses about the degree of helpfulness of analyzing video excerpts of teachers in real classrooms with ELs included, “gave teaching ideas by good teachers” and “showed the reality of teaching.” Themes that emerged from the preservice teachers’ responses to the openended post-course question, “What did you learn from the session with the college-level ELs around reading and discussing a text?” were especially noteworthy. This learning experience was a unique aspect of this self-study, reflective of the specific context in which these preservice teachers were learning to teach as well as my effort to build their pedagogical language knowledge from a functional language perspective. These themes included “Ask questions during reading,” “ELs expect the teacher to assist,” “ELs have varying levels,” “Multiple-meaning words need explained,” “ELs can decode but might not know the meaning,” “ELs want to practice speaking,” “ELs are motivated to achieve,” and “The teacher must listen closely.” These insights represent important fundamental knowledge for working with PK-12 ELs. The preservice teachers’ written reflections on this experience gave me a deeper look into their learning around implementing interactive reading instruction with ELs. I share a few quotes illustrative of their thinking in Table 1. These comments, along with findings from the other data sources, were useful in thinking critically about what I learned about my own work to prepare teachers for CLD classrooms as well as what insights into teacher education Table 1.

Insights Gained from Text Negotiation with ESL Peers.

“I noticed that vocabulary was a main issue, and it helped when I would use examples and illustrations to explain words.” “I found I had to check for understanding a lot by asking my student to rephrase the text or give his own example.” “One thing that we talk about in class is building background knowledge. Before reading the text, my partner and I explained some aspects of American society.” “I found myself wishing that the student would think like me. Make connections like me. That’s not how it works.” “Overall, I learned that reading, writing, and speaking are all equally important when working with ELLs.” “The more opportunities we gave our student to speak, the more comfortable she became sharing her opinions with us and asking questions.” “Even after thorough preparation, it was interesting to see the challenges we faced while reading the article. Our student was a very advanced reader, but we still worked to define unknown terms, make inferences about the author’s opinion, and predict the future of education in America.” “The two concepts that stood out most to me were the importance of explaining vocabulary and taking cultural differences into consideration.”

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practices in rural settings may be gained from this self-study. It is to this discussion that I now turn.

DISCUSSION Eliciting the preservice teachers’ thoughts about the course’s core learning experiences provided me with rich feedback well beyond that which is obtained in end-of-course evaluations. For example, one student noted in her reflection about the text negotiation experience that, Now I understand why it is so important to allow ELLs frequent opportunities to practice explaining the content with academic vocabulary so that they can cement their understandings of not only the academic concepts, but also the linguistic ones.

I found my students’ positive perceptions of what they had learned and their reported increased confidence for teaching PK-12 ELs heartening. Yet, it was clear to me that their increased knowledge and perceived readiness to teach PK-12 ELs would not be sufficient for the work ahead in diverse classrooms. I realized that enacting one instructional episode with well-educated, adult ELs with sophisticated literacy and knowledge levels cannot replace the learning that could occur through consistent opportunities to engage in fieldwork with PK-12 ELs. This direct interaction is crucial for shifting preservice teachers’ beliefs and assumptions about ELs from deficit views to strengths-based perspectives (Gainer & Larrotta, 2010; Markos, 2012) and in fostering empathy for the challenges ELs may face in school (Jimenez-Silva & Olson, 2012). The opportunity for experiential learning afforded by the text negotiation activity seemed useful in building the preservice teachers’ initial awareness of the challenges of teaching a culturally unfamiliar, complex text. Indeed, this learning experience seemed to provide my students with preliminary insights into the hurdles that ELs may face when reading and discussing complex texts. As one student commented about the interactive reading experience, It was an eye-opening experience for me, because I was able to see, hear, and feel the frustrations that both an instructor and an ELL student go through in reading a challenging text.

Yet, recent research conducted with experienced practicing teachers in rural contexts, half of whom had some training for teaching ELs, points to the need for stronger knowledge of literacy strategies for teaching ELs (Hansen-Thomas et al., 2016). I knew this experience paled in comparison to work by Jimenez-Silva and Olson (2012), teacher educators in a metropolitan area with wide access to PK-12 ELs, who embedded a way for preservice teachers to participate in semester-long Teacher-Learner Communities with mentor teachers in classrooms with PK-12 ELs during coursework. Their course required preservice

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teachers to conduct an in-depth case study of an EL’s cultural capital as well as his/her goals, interests, and language and literacy skills and to subsequently reflect on what was learned through discussion and writing (Jimenez-Silva & Olson, 2012). Cho et al. (2012) created and implemented a program to address language acquisition and language diversity across the teacher education curricula in an effort to meet the pressing need to strengthen rural teachers’ preparedness for successfully teaching the rapidly growing EL population in Wyoming. I realized through this self-study that preservice teachers in rural areas where interaction with PK-12 ELs in schools is not available and who learn about teaching ELs through one course could be disadvantaged over those who have ample opportunities for meaningful interaction with school-age ELs and consider teaching and learning with ELs across coursework. Hansen-Thomas et al. (2016) identified inadequate teacher preparation as a pressing challenge faced by rural schools in meeting ELs’ needs. I also realized that my effort to familiarize students with a functional linguistic approach to instruction that integrates content learning and academic language and literacy development fell far short of the time and practice needed to understand the theoretical underpinnings of this approach and apply it to teaching and learning with ELs. Having immersed myself in studying an SFLbased approach to language and literacy instruction (Rose & Martin, 2012) and having practiced this approach with adolescent ELs as a former secondary ESOL teacher (Ramos, 2014, 2015), I knew firsthand how daunting it can be to become skilled at designing integrated content and language learning instruction from a functional linguistic perspective. This language-based approach has been shown to be promising in helping teachers learn to intertwine these dual instructional goals, (e.g., Brisk & Zisselsberger, 2011). Yet, I was keenly aware that the interactive text negotiation experience was insufficient for supporting my students in developing a firm grasp on the usefulness of this framework for strengthening ELs’ academic language development and content learning in tandem. It is in preparing my students to create the kind of instruction that PK-12 ELs need to achieve academic success that I believe I was not sufficiently successful. I agree with language and literacy scholars that it is imperative to prepare all teachers to support ELs in gaining control over the academic language resources that function to create meanings in the genres that ELs will be expected to read and write to achieve academic success in school (Bunch, 2013; Gebhard, 2010; Walqui, 2011). Well-developed academic language and literacy practices are necessary for ELs to pursue educational and career pathways after high school. As Bunch (2013) and Galguera (2011) emphasized, having pedagogical language knowledge, or a deep understanding of the way language functions in academic contexts and is used to represent knowledge in classrooms, is crucial for all educators who will teach ELs in today’s diverse classrooms.

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Moreover, as argued by teacher educators Galguera (2011) and Peercy (2014) in their self-studies, the need to embrace a practice-based, hands-on pedagogy cannot be overstated. Yes, my students responded positively to the text negotiation experience, which allowed them to explore the academic language features of a complex text (Galguera, 2011) while affording them the opportunity to practice the enactment of teaching (Peercy, 2014) through pre-instructional thinking, engaging in the collaborative reading experience, and reflecting on what was learned from the activity. One student wrote, “We were able to take the lead, almost like a true teacher, when discussing the article.” Another noted, “Even though we may talk about how to teach ELs, nothings is more beneficial than actually getting to apply our knowledge.” However, the learning that occurred during this one course, as indicated by the survey data, open-ended responses, and students’ written reflections, does not allow me to assert that the preservice teachers developed a deep understanding of the complexities of integrating content learning with academic language and literacy development, which educators in today’s diverse classrooms need (Kibler et al., 2015). I make no claim to have uncovered any absolute truths about preparing future rural educators for their work with PK-12 ELs. This acknowledgment aligns with stipulations that self-study research conducted by teacher educators must interpret findings with caution as developing understandings rather than as demonstrated truths (LaBoskey & Richert, 2015). When interpreting the data from this self-study, I kept in mind that the knowledge gained from self-study of one’s practice as a teacher educator must be impactful beyond the individual level (Loughran, 2010; Zeichner, 2007). Zeichner (2007) argued that teacher educators conducting self-study research must strive to contribute to the knowledge base in an existing field, inform teacher education practice at the local level, and influence the policies that shape teacher education. Loughran (2010) urged self-study researchers to foreground the purpose of an account of a self-study by asking, “What does the story tell and what purpose does it serve?” (Loughran, 2010, p. 223).

What Does the Story Tell and What Purpose Does It Serve? Overall, the findings from this self-study could be presented as supportive evidence for ways to successfully prepare the educators of ELs in rural settings. This self-study affirmed for me that it is a worthwhile endeavor to strive to create course learning experiences based on extant frameworks for preparing educators to effectively teach ELs (de Jong & Harper, 2011; Lucas & Villegas, 2011; Walker & Stone, 2011). That is, my students seemed to benefit from learning experiences that aimed to help them value and leverage ELs’ cultural and linguistic capital when designing instruction (de Jong & Harper, 2011; Valde´s et al., 2014). Through the interactive text negotiation with their ESL

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peers, these preservice teachers seemed to develop a fundamental appreciation for the way that the academic language demands inherent in complex texts can be challenging for ELs (Bunch, 2013; Galguera, 2011). Yet, I would be remiss to frame the revelations from my self-study in this light. To further question my findings and consider the deeper implications of my research for affecting teacher education practice and policies in a specific field (LaBoskey & Richert, 2015; Loughran, 2010), this self-study provoked me to ask whether current teacher education practices and policies for preparing preservice teachers in rural areas to teach ELs are sufficient. This question becomes a critical one when we consider that many rural areas are experiencing an influx of ELs and their families for the first time (Cho et al., 2012; HansenThomas et al., 2016). Moreover, preservice teachers who prepare to teach ELs in rural settings may relocate to teach in areas that serve large populations of ELs. Recent research has emphasized the critical need for school districts, rural and urban, to strengthen teachers’ preparation for the complexities of teaching and learning with ELs (Brooks & Adams, 2015; Hansen-Thomas et al., 2016). This reality calls into question the policy in many states to require only one designated course that addresses the myriad of competencies necessary for effectively teaching CLD learners. In the state in which I conducted this selfstudy, the requirement to include one course focused on teaching and learning with ELs in teacher preparation programs only became a policy in 2011. Therefore, even though I embraced the responsibility to carefully anchor learning experiences in research, there was still only a cursory exploration at best of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are critical for teaching and learning with ELs. Hansen-Thomas et al. (2016) suggested that two or more college courses correlated positively with rural educators’ development of competencies for effective instructional methods and techniques with ELs. These researchers argued for professional development in the form of graduate coursework for content area teachers in rural areas. Conducting this self-study, along with my experience as a teacher educator in a rural area over three years, confirmed for me that it is vital to continue to provide professional development (PD) for practicing teachers in schools. This PD should aim to enhance understanding of instructional contexts that meet ELs’ academic, social, and affective needs (Bunch, 2013).

MOVING FORWARD This self-study has taught me that it is important that we as teacher educators continue to investigate how to best prepare future educators across contexts for their work with PK-12 ELs. Self-study research provides an excellent pathway for this pursuit whether we aim to study our own practice as language

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educators to more closely unite theory and practice (Peercy, 2014) or to collaborate with others to study our collective practice in a specific context (LaBoskey & Richert, 2015; Petrarca & Bullock, 2014). Self-study can be a useful framework for exploring the usefulness of PD opportunities once teacher candidates become practicing teachers working with PK-12 ELs. Tidwell and colleagues (2011) described the way that teacher educators and classroom teachers employed a self-study framework to support professional learning in a dual language school in rural Iowa. My own self-study affirmed my belief that we teacher educators need to advocate for and collaborate to create PD opportunities for expanding practicing educators’ knowledge and expertise for teaching PK-12 ELs across geographical areas. The current reality is that PD efforts within schools largely fail to promote the notion of shared responsibility for teaching ELs and tend to ignore the needs of diverse learners (Brooks & Adams, 2015). Thus, it may be counterproductive to have policies that require fundamental preparation for teaching ELs in teacher education programs without follow-up policies that ensure that this initial preparation is expanded in a systematic, ongoing way. As Bunch (2013) and others have argued, it is vital that all classroom teachers are well-prepared to create effective teaching and learning environments with PK-12 ELs. Whether our nation’s PK-12 ELs are served with equity and excellence, no matter where they reside, seems to hinge upon all of us working to ensure that this goal becomes a reality.

REFERENCES Brisk, M. E. (2012). Young bilingual writers’ control of grammatical person in different genres. The Elementary School Journal, 112(3), 445
468. Brisk, M. E. (2015). Engaging students in academic literacies: Genre-based pedagogy for K-5 classrooms. New York, NY: Routledge. Brisk, M. E., & Zisselsberger, M. (2011). “We’ve let them in on the secret”: Using SFL theory to improve the teaching of writing to bilingual learners. In T. Lucas (Ed.), Teacher preparation for linguistically diverse classrooms: A resource for teacher educators (pp. 111
126). New York, NY: Routledge. Brooks, K., & Adams, S. R. (2015). Developing agency for advocacy: Collaborative inquiry-focused school-change projects as transformative learning for practicing teachers. New Educator, 11 (4), 292
308. Bunch, G. C. (2013). Pedagogical language knowledge: Preparing mainstream teachers for English learners in the new standards era. Review of Research in Education, 37, 298
341. Cho, J., Rios, F., Trent, A., & Mayfield, K. K. (2012). Integrating language diversity into teacher education curricula in a rural context: Candidates’ developmental perspectives and understandings. Teacher Education Quarterly, 39(2), 63
85. Coronado, J. M., & Petro´n, M. A. (2008). Walking in English language learners’ shoes: A university’s effort to increase awareness of pre-service teachers. Southeastern Teacher Education Journal, 1(1), 95
99. de Jong, E. J., & Harper, C. A. (2011). “Accommodating diversity:” Pre-service teachers’ views on effective practices for English language learners. In T. Lucas (Ed.), Teacher preparation for

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linguistically diverse classrooms: A resource for teacher educators (pp. 73
90). New York, NY: Routledge. de Oliveira, L. C., & Schleppegrell, M. J. (2015). Focus on grammar and meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Durguno˘glu, A. Y., & Hughes, T. (2010). How prepared are the U.S. preservice teachers to teach English language learners? International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 22(1), 32
41. Fang, Z. (2008). Going beyond the fab five: Helping students cope with the unique linguistic challenges of expository reading in intermediate grades. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 51(6), 476
487. Fang, Z., & Schleppegrell, M. J. (2010). Disciplinary literacies across content areas: Supporting secondary reading through functional language analysis. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53(7), 587
597. Gainer, J. S., & Larrotta, C. (2010). Reproducing and interrupting subtractive schooling in teacher education. Multicultural Education, 17(3), 41
47. Galguera, T. (2011). Participant structures as professional learning tasks and the development of pedagogical language knowledge among preservice teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 38, 85
106. Gebhard, M. (2010). Teacher education in changing times: A systemic functional linguistics (SFL) perspective. TESOL Quarterly, 44(4), 797
803. Gebhard, M., Harman, R., & Seger, W. (2007). Reclaiming recess in urban schools: The potential of systemic functional linguistics for ELLs and their teachers. Language Arts, 84(5), 419
430. Hansen-Thomas, H., Grosso Richins, L., Kakkar, K., & Okeyo, C. (2016). I do not feel I am properly trained to help them! Rural teachers’ perceptions of challenges and needs with Englishlanguage learners. Professional Development in Education, 42(2), 308
324. Huberman, A. B., & Miles, M. B. (2002). The qualitative researcher’s companion. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Jimenez-Silva, M., & Olson, K. (2012). A community of practice in teacher education: Insights and perceptions. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 24(3), 335
348. Kibler, A. K., Walqui, A., & Bunch, G. C. (2015, March). Transformational opportunities: Language and literacy instruction for English language learners in the common core era in the United States. TESOL Journal, 6(1), 9
35. Kristof, N. (2014). The American dream is emigrating. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 14. Retrieved from http://www.post-gazette.com LaBoskey, V. K. (2004). The methodology of self-study and its theoretical underpinnings. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (pp. 817
869). Dordrecht: Kluwer. LaBoskey, V. K., & Richert, A. E. (2015). Self-study as a means for urban teachers to transform academics. Studying Teacher Education, 11(2), 164
179. Loughran, J. (2010). Seeking knowledge for teaching teaching: Moving beyond stories. Studying Teacher Education, 6(3), 221
226. Lucas, T., & Grinberg, J. (2008). Responding to the linguistic reality of mainstream classrooms: Preparing all teachers to teach English language learners. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. FeimanNemser, J. McIntyre, & K. E. Demers (Eds.), Handbook of research of teacher education: Enduring questions in changing contexts (pp. 606
636). New York, NY: Routledge. Lucas, T., & Villegas, A. M. (2011). A framework for preparing linguistically responsive teachers. In T. Lucas (Ed.), Teacher preparation for linguistically diverse classrooms: A resource for teacher educators (pp. 55
72). New York, NY: Routledge. Markos, A. M. (2012). Mandated to learn, guided to reflect: Pre-service teachers’ evolving understanding of English language learners. Issues in Teacher Education, 21(1), 39
57. Peercy, M. M. (2014). Challenges in enacting core practices in language teacher education: A selfstudy. Studying Teacher Education, 10(2), 146
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Petrarca, D., & Bullock, S. M. (2014). Tensions between theory and practice: Interrogating our pedagogy through collaborative self-study. Professional Development in Education, 40(2), 265
281. Philips, S. U. (2009). Participant structures and communicative competence: Warm Springs children in community and classroom. In A. Duranti (Ed.), Linguistic anthropology: A reader (pp. 302
317). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Pinnegar, S., & Hamilton, M. L. (2009). Self-study of practice as a genre of qualitative research: Theory, methodology, and practice. Dordrecht: Springer. Ramos, K. (2014). Teaching adolescent ELs to write academic-style persuasive essays. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(8), 655
665. Ramos, K. (2015). Using genre pedagogy to teach adolescent English learners to write academic persuasive essays. Journal of Education, 195(2), 19
35. Rose, D., & Martin, J. R. (2012). Learning to write, reading to learn: Genre, knowledge and pedagogy in the Sydney School. Bristol: Equinox. Samaras, A. P. (2011). Self-study teacher research: Improving your practice through collaborative inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tidwell, D. L., Wymore, L., Garza, A., Estrada, E., & Smith, H. L. (2011). Creating a professional learning community through self-study. Studying Teacher Education, 7(3), 315
330. US Census Bureau, Decennial Census. (2010). Retrieved from: https://www.census.gov/2010census/ data/ Valde´s, G., Kibler, A., & Walqui, A. (2014, March). Changes in the expertise of ESL professionals: Knowledge and action in an era of new standards. Alexandria, VA: TESOL International Association. Walker, C. L., & Stone, K. (2011). Preparing teachers to reach English language learners: Pre-service and in-service initiatives. In T. Lucas (Ed.), Teacher preparation for linguistically diverse classrooms: A resource for teacher educators (pp. 127
142). New York, NY: Routledge. Walqui, A. (2006). Scaffolding instruction for English language learners: A conceptual framework. The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 9(2), 159
180. Walqui, A. (2011). The growth of teacher expertise for teaching English language learners: A socioculturally based professional development model. In T. Lucas (Ed.), Teacher preparation for linguistically diverse classrooms: A resource for teacher educators (pp. 160
177). New York, NY: Routledge. Zeichner, K. (2007). Accumulating knowledge across self-studies in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(1), 36
46. Zhang, J., & Pelttari, C. (2014). Exploring the emotions and needs of English language learners: Facilitating pre-service and in-service teachers’ recognition of the tasks facing language learners. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(2), 179
194.

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APPENDIX Please circle the number that corresponds to your own personal level of agreement with the following statements: 1. I feel confident that I can use research-based techniques to scaffold instruction for ELs at various English language proficiency levels. 1 Strongly disagree

2

3

4

Disagree

Agree

Strongly agree

2. I feel confident that I can differentiate instruction in a way that it is attuned to ELs’ English language proficiency level. 1 Strongly disagree

2

3

4

Disagree

Agree

Strongly agree

3. I feel confident that I can modify and adapt assessments for ELs at different levels of English language proficiency. 1 Strongly disagree

2

3

4

Disagree

Agree

Strongly agree

4. I feel confident that I can embed formative assessments in lessons with ELs to measure their progress toward learning objectives. 1 Strongly disagree

2

3

4

Disagree

Agree

Strongly agree

5. I feel confident in my overall ability to implement culturally responsive teaching practices in my future classroom. 1 Strongly disagree

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Agree

Strongly agree

6. I feel confident that I have an understanding of the difference between social language and the academic English needed for success in school.

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2

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4

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Agree

Strongly agree

7. I feel confident that I know how to leverage ELs’ funds of knowledge in lesson design. 1 Strongly disagree

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Agree

Strongly agree

8. I feel confident that I have a fundamental understanding of the continuum of second language acquisition. 1 Strongly disagree

2

3

4

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Agree

Strongly agree

9. I feel confident that I can write both content and language objectives connected to the Common Core State Standards and state academic content standards. 1 Strongly disagree

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3

4

Disagree

Agree

Strongly agree

10. I feel confident that I am knowledgeable about the challenges ELs may face to comprehend informational texts in different content areas. 1 Strongly disagree

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3

4

Disagree

Agree

Strongly agree

11. I feel confident that I can design instructional tasks that are cognitively challenging for all learners in the grade level I aspire to teach while making appropriate adjustments to the language demands of the instructional tasks according to ELs’ English language proficiency levels. 1 Strongly disagree

2

3

4

Disagree

Agree

Strongly agree

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12. I feel confident that I am fundamentally prepared to teach ELs from a wide variety of linguistic, cultural, socioeconomic, and educational backgrounds.

1 Strongly disagree

2

3

4

Disagree

Agree

Strongly agree

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FACILITATING PRESERVICE TEACHERS’ TRANSFORMATION THROUGH INTERCULTURAL LEARNING: REFLECTIONS FROM A SELF-STUDY Roxanna M. Senyshyn ABSTRACT While the need to improve teacher preparation in response to linguistic and cultural diversity has been widely acknowledged, the learning process of teacher educators has not been widely discussed. This chapter presents findings from a self-study that examined practices aimed at preparing preservice teachers for linguistically and culturally diverse contexts through transformative intercultural learning. It exemplifies how Mezirow’s transformative learning theory can be put into practice by helping teacher educators reflect on their belief systems and practices. The findings show that disorienting dilemmas might challenge the validity of assumptions and lead to perspective transformation. It is evident that both teacher education process and intercultural learning share common ground in transformative learning. As researchers and educators continue to explore this relationship, particularly though self-study, it will lead to many insights about educational

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 167
184 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030013

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practice that is critical in a time of increasing diversity locally and possibilities for teaching and learning globally. Keywords: Teacher education; self-study; transformative learning; intercultural learning; perspective transformation; critical reflection

INTRODUCTION For more than 20 years, the research literature has widely asserted the need for changes in teacher education. One of the driving forces is increasingly diverse student population in classrooms across the United States and other countries that experience rising immigration and influx of refugees. Learning for transformation in such a changing environment (Sun, 2013) and understanding how to cultivate the development of intercultural learning and competence in preservice teachers has become increasingly important (Cushner, 2011; Kumar & Hamer, 2013). It is essential that future teachers meet the varying needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students, their families, and create inclusive learning communities (Cushner, 2007; Seidl & Hancock, 2011). Studies show that learning opportunities such as service learning, study abroad, or teaching abroad lead to perspective transformation regarding language and culture teaching and learning and regarding human differences and similarities (Cushner, 2007; Fittz & Gross, 2012; Riojas-Cortez & Flores, 2009; Young & Young, 2001). Ultimately, such educational experiences, if carefully planned and structured, result in transformative intercultural learning that rectifies biases and leads to the development of intercultural competence. Therefore, it is important to provide future teachers with learning experiences that differ substantially from their own background (Putnam & Borko, 2000) in anticipation of teaching in diverse classrooms. As stated above, the need to improve teacher preparation and abilities to respect and respond to linguistic and cultural diversity has been widely acknowledged. However, the learning process of teacher educators has not been widely discussed. Chen, Nimmo, and Fraser (2009) proposed that a selfstudy is a useful tool that allows enhancing teacher education practices when preparing perspective teachers to meet the needs of diverse students. Self-study contributes to our understanding of what is significant to teacher educators’ practices and to the creation of knowledge that can be used for decision-making purposes to promote diversity and social justice (Kitchen, Fitzgerald, & Tidwell, 2016; Zeichner, 2007). In this chapter, I present findings from a self-study in which I examine my experiences facilitating an Intercultural Learning Partnership project embedded into an introductory-level undergraduate course that prepares preservice

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teachers to work with English Language Learners (ELLs). I reflect on my beliefs and practices as well as dilemmas that made me analyze my role as a teacher educator and the nature of ongoing professional learning for myself and my students, future early childhood, and elementary education teachers. Specifically, the research question that guided this study is the following: Am I an educator who not only provides transformative experiences to her students but also experiences transformation herself in the process of critical reflection on her practice?

INTERCULTURAL LEARNING AND SELF-STUDY As a teacher educator, I often question whether I have a clear understanding of the complexity of the projects I assign to foster intercultural learning and student learning outcomes before undertaking such projects. The literature on teacher preparation often discusses interchangeably the terms multicultural and intercultural teaching and learning (Gay, 2000; Han & Thomas, 2010; LadsonBillings, 1992). Coulby (2006) provides a useful distinction and notes that the word intercultural became a more common concept as it encompasses the interactive aspect of teaching and learning process, where multicultural emphasizes pluralism. Research on intercultural learning has often focused on a process that involves individuals who represent different cultures interacting and encountering cultural differences. In an attempt to describe what happens in the process of intercultural learning, Taylor (1994, 2007) connected intercultural learning to the theory of transformative learning proposed by Mezirow (1991, 2000), a concept central to the theoretical framework for this self-study. What motivated me to undertake this self-study was my strong and ongoing commitment to improving my practice, especially as I strive to provide meaningful intercultural learning experiences for homogeneous groups of early childhood and elementary education students who lack experience in diverse contexts. I consider this task both active and reflective in nature and a selfstudy of my teacher education practice, a form of inquiry in which researchers pay close attention to the research process itself; what they value
their own professional learning and that of their students; and knowledge of their practice. (Feldman, 2016, p. 26)

This definition is in line with the purpose I set for myself in this study.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK In this section, I discuss self-study research methodology and transformative learning theory and why they provide a useful framework for my investigation.

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My interest in self-study, like for many other researchers (see discussion in Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015), stems from my involvement in action research. Action research and self-study are interrelated to a great extent, both in purpose and methodology. However, a distinction should be made and a strong argument on how to differentiate between the two is provided by Feldman, Paugh, and Mills (2004). They suggest the difference depends on whether the emphasis is on the action or the self. They argue that when the emphasis is on the self, then the self is the primary focus of the investigation. They further explain, “action research provides the methods for self-studies, but what made these self-studies were the methodological features” (Feldman et al., 2004, p. 974). In a self-study, a researcher uses one’s own experiences as a resource for examination of professional self in practice in order to reframe both researcher/practitioner’s beliefs and practices (LaBoskey, 2004; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). In other words, action research focuses on what the educator does as a practitioner rather than who the educator is as a practitioner. Paugh and Robinson (2009) drew on action research to question teacher education practices and the relationship to their goals and goals of the teachers in their courses as well as the diverse needs of the students. They suggest that action research positions the self in relationship to the context of what is being studied. In addition, it allows exploring the dynamic roles and relationships in the teaching-learning process. Such exploration will ultimately lead to a deeper insight into the notion of self as both social and cultural constructions. Additionally, Paugh and Robinson (2009) recommend that self-study researchers should use methods that correspond to their theoretical framework and at the same time should be responsive to the unique local demands in the research process. Suggestions provided by Paugh and Robinson (2009) are particularly relevant to the present self-study. Vanassche and Kelchtermans (2015) in their review of literature on SelfStudy of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) identified four broad themes that are addressed in self-study research: impact of specific pedagogical interventions on student learning; acknowledgement and analysis of the differences between the practitioner’s aspiring and actual practices; attempt to link the practice to a more socially just learning environment; and “articulating a philosophy of practice for exploring broader theoretical-pedagogical interests” (p. 513). It is these last two themes that best resonate with this self-study. Methodologically, researchers use various qualitative approaches in conducting self-studies. Typical protocols and data include interviews, observations, autobiographical reflection, teaching and assessment materials, and many alternative approaches (Anderson-Patton & Bass, 2002; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015). Furthermore, it is important to note that literature on self-study has found its benefits on teacher practices (LaBoskey, 2004; Loughran, 2002; Samaras & Freese, 2006) and the connection it has to transformative learning (Cranton & Carusetta, 2004; Schulte, 2009; Wilcox, 2009). In fact, Schulte (2009) explains

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that transformative learning and self-study have a critical similarity, in that they both require those involved in the study be highly intuitive and constantly involved in the metacognitive processing of their own teaching and learning processes. Therefore, next, I will discuss the basic tenets of transformative learning. The theory of transformative learning was introduced by Mezirow (1991, 2000), a scholar of adult education, who suggested that individuals can be transformed when engaging in a process of critical reflection. For transformative learning to take place, one must experience/encounter a disorienting dilemma, a situation that does not fit one’s preconceived notions and leads to critical reflection and search for new ways to understand and interpret experiences. Specifically, Mezirow (2000) described transformation as a 10-step process in which cognitive aspects such as exploration, assessment, self-examination, and planning are part of the learning experience. The 10 phases do not have to be linear (Cranton, 1994) and some researchers have adapted Mezirow’s framework into a condensed version that consists of three, four, or five phases (Taylor, 2007). Although Mezirow (1994) stated that not all phases are required, research shows that the more phases the learner experiences, the more likely transformative learning is to take place (Brock, 2010). A condensed version proposed by Senyshyn and Chamberlin-Quinlisk (2009) guided this selfstudy, and it includes the following five phases: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

disorienting dilemma; reflection and exploration of assumptions; acquisition of confidence in a new role; behavioral changes; and integration of a new perspective.

It is important to note that Mezirow (2003) argued that transformative learning is a method to an understanding of the self or an awareness of the self in relation to others. Furthermore, he suggested that the process of transformative learning is highly dependent on three types of reflection. It is dependent on content reflection which involves thinking about experiences we engage in, and process reflection that implies thinking about the way we handle our experiences. Finally, premise reflection focuses on exploring and examining socially constructed assumptions, values, and beliefs that are strongly held and embedded in the context of our experiences or problems we encounter. The ultimate result of such reflection and transformation is a change in perspective needed to face new roles and relationships (Mezirow, 1991). As discussed above, transformative learning has been linked to intercultural learning (Cranton & Carusetta, 2004; Taylor, 1994, 2007). Specifically, it has been used as a tool to investigate personal perspective change in various higher education contexts (for analysis see Snyder, 2008), including preparing future or current teachers to work with ELLs and linguistically and culturally diverse

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students (e.g., Sprow Forte & Blouin, 2016). Additionally, transformative learning can help consider ways in which teacher educators understand their practice of preparing preservice teachers for diversity, as pointed out by Schulte (2009): If one believes any of what it said about transformation, it would serve to support the process of self-study. Transformation is a study of self; the benefits of the process can be applied to the method. Therefore, I and other teacher educators who expect their students to engage in any type of reflection on the self must engage also in some sort of self-study if for no other reason than to practice what we preach. (p. 55)

Likewise, this study was constructed within both frameworks, transformative learning and self-study. It employs a self-study approach to better understand the practice of preparing preservice teachers for linguistically and culturally diverse contexts, and the experiences of the teacher educator are analyzed through the theoretical lens of transformative learning.

METHODOLOGY Context This self-study was conducted at a non-residential branch campus of a large, public university in the Northeastern region of the United States where I teach Introduction to Teaching English Language Learners, a required introductorylevel undergraduate course for early childhood and elementary education students. Despite the fact that the college is recognized as the most diverse campus of the university (became minority majority campus in fall 2017), students who major in early childhood and elementary education tend to be a relatively homogeneous group. They are predominantly White, monolingual, female and often lack experience in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts. Study abroad opportunities are generally not of interest to this group of students due to either financial or program constraints. However, there are many local resources that can be used to provide these students with meaningful on-campus intercultural experiences. One of those resources is a growing population of international undergraduate students, many of whom often find themselves in need of meaningful social interaction with their US American counterparts. In fact, it is important to note that my role at the institution is not only a teacher educator, but I also teach a first-year seminar course specifically designed for newly arrived undergraduate international students who lack confidence in their communication skills. This allows me to be proactive and engage both groups of students
preservice teachers and international students
in an out-ofclass required project, called Intercultural Learning Partnership (ILP) project.

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The Course: Introduction to Teaching English Language Learners I had taught this course in the fall semester over the course of four years. When designing the course, I considered student demographics, and the literature regarding teacher education, TESOL pedagogy, and diversity. By diversity I mean the cultural experiences that children bring to school, including language, values and norms, and home and community backgrounds. This course focused on the development of foundational knowledge and followed the state’s guidelines for preservice teacher education that encompass the following broad categories: culture, language, instruction and assessment, and professionalism. Specifically, the learning outcomes for culture category, as stated in the syllabus, included: • Identify socio-cultural characteristics of ELLs including educational background and demographics. • Describe how ELLs’ cultural communication styles and learning styles affect the learning process. • Describe how ELLs’ cultural values affect their academic achievement and language development. • Understand the importance of intercultural competence in interactions with colleagues, administrators, school and community specialists, students and their families. These learning outcomes were particularly relevant for intercultural learning goals I set in the course and they served as the foundation for designing the ILP project. The purpose of the ILP project was to immerse preservice teachers in a semester-long out-of-class intercultural exchange with newly arrived undergraduate international students from China (majority) and other countries in Asia. A total of nine weekly meetings were required and several topics that included culture and language learning were suggested for discussions. Through the weekly meetings and discussions, preservice teachers got exposure to what it takes to learn and speak another language and learn how cultural differences penetrate our identities and communication. During the project, preservice teachers were required to reflect on their experiences by writing journal entries and a final reflection paper. These writings served as a source of data for my action research. This allowed examining and assessing how the preservice teachers made meaning of experiences with cultural and linguistic diversity. More specifically, through the adapted/condensed version (Senyshyn & ChamberlinQuinlisk, 2009) of Mezirow’s (1991, 2000) transformative learning phases I examined how stages of transformation emerge in preservice teachers’ intercultural learning over the course of the project. The findings indicated the importance of such partnerships considering positive outcomes of intercultural learning and the potential for transformation that resulted in gaining new perspectives, trying out new roles, and reframing perceptions and feelings about

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cultural and linguistic diversity and the value of diversity in education (Senyshyn, 2018). In addition, students’ reflections indicated that they saw my role as the instructor as a crucial one in the overall success of the project and, in particular, for supporting them in difficult moments. From Action Research to Self-study Although I had taught Introduction to Teaching ELLs and implemented the ILP project for several years, I continued to work on improving my teaching effectiveness when providing engaging experiential opportunities for students to become successful intercultural learners in class and beyond. As stated earlier, this action research motivated me to begin my own reflections with the aim to better understand my practice as a teacher educator. More specifically, this realization that self had a place in my action research became evident when I completed preliminary analyses of data of a three-year study on student transformative learning in the ILP project over the course of three fall semesters (2013, 2014, 2015). I “discovered” that throughout the process of collecting student data for the project, I kept my own notes that encompassed reflections, observations, and questions directed at my practices and my perspectives. I began questioning whether I was practicing what I preached. If I am successful in facilitating my students’ transformation, what is the evidence for my own transformative learning? Therefore, the motivation for the STEP came from analysis of the action research project and when I discussed the preliminary results of the action research with a former student who was seeking help in finding effective ways to reflect on her newly gained teaching experience in a K-12 setting. This is when I familiarized myself with the literature on S-STEP.

Data Data for this self-study included materials collected over the period of two fall semesters (2014 and 2015). All materials used for analysis in this study included over 80 typed and handwritten pages. In order to obtain triangulated perspective, the data were derived from several different sources including course materials (e.g., syllabi, assignments, lesson plans), course correspondence with and feedback from students (e.g., emails and postings on the course management system), and reflection and observation notes. My reflection and observation notes consisted of concise paragraphs, lists of questions I posed for my reflections, some of which remained unanswered. My reflection and observation notes also included brief comments I wrote after a few informal conversations I had with a colleague (with whom we alternate teaching the undergraduate education course discussed in this chapter) at my institution about pedagogy and creating meaningful and authentic experiences for our education students who are part of a very diverse campus but rarely engage with those who come

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from a different cultural and linguistic background. In addition, I considered students’ end-of-semester written reflections about the course and the ILP project to be a collaborative element in this self-study that provided evidence in an attempt to uncover my professional self and my own transformative journey. This approach is consistent with what is argued in the self-study literature as a collaborative element or engagement with others (Feldman, 2016; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015). This collaboration can be with education students or teacher educator colleagues. In the present study, preservice teachers were the critical collaborative component for the researcher.

Data Analysis I examined the data through the lens of the guiding question, seeking evidence for my transformative learning. I began data analysis by reading and rereading all the sources. I started with and spent more time reading my reflection and observation notes as well as course correspondence as these data sources needed more attention than the course materials such as the syllabus and the ILP project assignment guidelines, since only minimal changes were made to these latter documents over the course of the study. Many of the reflection and observation entries were rather messy, as these were handwritten notes on the lesson plans for class meetings throughout the implementation of the ILP project. This was done out of convenience and easy access to revisit the notes to see what needed to be discussed explicitly in class as students engaged in intercultural learning through readings but had to make connections to their experiences in the ILP project. When analyzing the course syllabus and the ILP assignment, I used the copies that included my comments and remarks on the margins to track what changes were planned to be made to these course documents in the future and why. Content analysis of the data was used to identify and code the themes in all three sets of the data that represented features of transformative learning and critical reflection (LeCompte & Schensul, 2010). I began by coding the data according to the five phases of transformation as proposed by Senyshyn and Chamberlin-Quinlisk (2009) and explained earlier in this chapter.

DISCUSSION OF THE OUTCOMES Data analysis showed that there was evidence to respond to the question guiding this self-study: Am I an educator who not only provides transformative experiences to her students but also experiences transformation herself in the process of critical reflection on her practices?

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What follows is a discussion of the findings with attention to the sources that showed indicators of transformation.

Disorienting Dilemma My reflection and observation entries revealed that the decision to start my own reflections was done during the second year of implementing the ILP project (Fall, 2014) and based on conversations I had with students who made frequent stops by my office when the ILP project was assigned at the beginning of semester. The discussions we had happened to focus on students’ own informal sharing with me about the project: how they perceived it, how they reacted to it, and how motivated they were to continue working on it and even volunteer to tutor or organize a conversation club for new international students or recent immigrant students who needed to build confidence and practice in using English with American peers. I understand now that I chose to record these notes based on the conversations with students as it was a vital information for me and a proof that my students were engaging in transformative intercultural learning that took them beyond the classroom. That was also the evidence that was often lacking in the reflective journals they had to write after each meeting with their international student partners. Therefore, these conversations often focused on discussing reflection and reflective writing which are critical components in the process of transformative learning. The goal on my part was to help these students realize that it was important for them to learn how to engage in reflective writing as opposed to informative writing, in which students simply state what and how during their meetings with new international students rather than contemplating about the experiences. However, it has to be noted not all students were equally excited about the ILP project or about class discussions on culture and language learning. One of the students who visited my office presented me with a few challenging questions I consider to be the disorienting dilemma or the first step or key factor that led to critical reflection on my part, as suggested by theory of transformative learning (Mezirow, 1991, 2000). The dilemma presented to me focused on issues broader than just the ones related to the ILP project but still within the scope of the topic of linguistic and cultural diversity as discussed in the course. The student argued whether the educator should be asking students to question and examine their values and assumptions and make them examine what they stand for and be graded for it. In particular, what led to this conversation was a discussion in class about bilingualism in the United States, including bilingual education as a program option for ELLs. The student was convinced that my views were biased because of the intersectionality of my multilingual and immigrant identity that “prevented” me from seeing the other side of the issue.

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Moreover, the student questioned my right to raise my daughter as a bilingual speaker, speaking with her and teaching her the heritage language. As a nonnative speaker and a citizen by choice, I often engage in self-disclosure in class, as it relates to the topics discussed, and thus such personal information is readily available to my students. However, this conversation with a student constituted a disorienting dilemma as it was an emotional experience not only because it had to do with my personal identity and how I raise my daughter but, most of all, with my belief that I do my best to present my students with different perspectives and views on how to educate ELLs, which are research-based perspectives and require careful consideration when it comes to making a decision considering local context. This led me to question if I had done or said something in class that made the student think that I hold biases toward different ways to educate ELLs. This is when I started what I called Nota Bene notes, simply referred to as reflection and observation notes in this chapter. “Nota bene” is a Latin phrase that means to “note well” and is used to focus one’s attention on something that is important. I wrote in my reflection and observation notes after that meeting that I, too, need to more formally reflect on my views and practices, especially because I engage my students in this process.

Reflection and Exploration of Assumptions When analyzing the dilemma presented by the student, I revisited Mezirow’s (1991) interpretations of possible causes of disorienting dilemma in an attempt to better understand the student’s disposition and my own response to it. He noted that adult learners are often part of a sub-culture where little or no reflection is a norm and as a result, any challenge to their own established perspectives causes emotional pain since it makes them examine their deeply held values. This is one way to look at and understand the motivation behind the views of the student and the encounter. Critical reflection and assessment of one’s assumptions could be a challenging task, which leads the learner to experience discomfort or even embarrassment. Moreover, the negative effect of disorienting dilemmas can have an imprint on performance. Since I was aware of the possibility of such consequence, I took time to assess my assumptions after the conversation with the student, as I did feel some discomfort. I felt anger, but I had to be conscious to be my rational self when addressing diversity issues with students in class or outside of class. In the notes taken after that meeting, the following statements suggest that my thoughts were directed to assessment and reflection of my own biases and even those against me, “Do I come across to students as a biased educator because of my identity? Could they be biased against me? … All have biases
topic to discuss in class” (Fall, 2014). This disorienting dilemma was not a rude awakening, but it reduced my level of

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confidence and made me revisit my assumptions, reflect on them, and this led to the next phase of transformative learning.

Acquisition of Confidence in a New Role This phase of transformative learning requires the learner to test new assumptions before committing to them. At this point, it is important to think about new ways of approaching a situation or a problem and planning a course of actions to begin changing behavior. What did these steps mean for me? I began to think more about my identity as a teacher educator. Even though I am white, there are other aspects of my identity, such as being a citizen by choice and a multilingual and nonnative speaker of English, a strong advocate for bilingual and heritage education, I needed to recognize the potential for areas of dissonance with my students. My focus seemed to be more on what I should address in class rather than on how to engage students in open and constructive ways. The disorienting dilemma helped shift this focus to the how side, and my lesson plan notes reflected this shift. My plan was to integrate a discussion about biases, especially implicit biases. I must have done some research at that point, trying to find ways to handle a bias directed toward me, too, because my notes contain four steps or actions on how to handle such a situation. Specifically, I wrote that it is important to acknowledge and manage emotions when we feel bias directed at us. It is important to be objective and engage in “authentic conversations” with those who hold biases against us and work on improving how we relate to them in the future. Overall, this phase involved the development of a new understanding of how to face the difficult situation when dealing with biases and being proactive about it.

Behavioral Change When analyzing notes and reflections and changes made to course materials to find evidence of behavioral change, one of the themes that stands out, just as stated above in the previous phase, is the shift from what to how, as evident by many questions I posed on the lesson plans. The focus here was on how to support class discussions around difficult conversations. One change that stood out to me was that I chose to directly state in class that I was open to varying perspectives and questioning. I stated that my goal is not to “indoctrinate” my students or to make them embrace a point of view, but it is rather to explore issues (difficult issues and choices) with students to sharpen their analytical skills and critical thinking skills. My goal was to support students as they strengthen their own argument, shift perspectives, and even understand another point of view. I noted on my lesson plan to spend more time on discussing why

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assimilation may not be the best choice for integrating into a new culture for first generation and why the home language should be seen as resource by teachers and schools. One strategy to get students be more involved in discussions and have their voices heard was to ask them to reflect at the end of class and write any comments or questions they had related to a discussion if the topic seemed to be a sensitive issue. In general, my notes show that I developed a plan to focus on the process, on how to engage those few students who might have views that differ from the rest of the cohort/class to explore diversity issues and education. I chose to engage my students in discussion on how to respectfully ascertain with those that might not have their perspectives, and we even developed a set of rules for class discussions to be attentive and respectful class participants. In my notes, I wrote that it is important that I continue to encourage and require my students to “explore different sources of information and to consider perspectives and positions that are inconsistent with their initial thinking on topics.” Students’ participation in the ILP project and their exploration with their conversation partners was beneficial to them in this respect.

Integration of New Perspective As my discussion of previous phases of transformation indicated, I worked on implementing new approaches of engaging students in discussing diversity topics in class. Specifically, in my research on linguistic diversity in the United States, I came across the Resolution on Students’ Right to Their Own Language (1974). I used the document as a starting point with my students to discuss and reflect on the perspective that early childhood educators have when it comes to educating young learners who deserve cognitive and social benefits of bilingualism or multilingualism and children’s linguistic backgrounds and histories that are part of their identity and need to be acknowledged and used as a resource in the classroom. As Canagarajah (2014) argued, in today’s increasingly diverse early childhood classrooms, all children are part of the linguistic “contact zone” whether they are nonnative or native speakers of English who bring with them to school their dialects and linguistic and communicative varieties. In fact, the ILP project and the experiences that preservice teachers gained through meet-ups with international students added substantially to further develop these conversation as these partner meetings were more hands-on approach for my preservice teachers to see how consideration of linguistic and cultural background of the international students was critical in their success in college. What seemed to be the challenge, though, was that these preservice teachers were all undergraduate students with no or very little teaching experience. They were now asked to think and respond to diversity issues as if they were professionals, and once again the ILP project provided a platform for such discussion and understanding that would, hopefully, help them transfer this newly

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gained perspective into the their own classrooms in the future. Diversity is a major issue that educators have to embrace since education is not a value-free endeavor. At the same time, educators should not try to persuade learners of one point of view or value system, but provide opportunities for student to explore differing perspectives, engage in reflection, and guide them in making decisions that work best for a given context. Kegan (2000) argued, transformation can occur when a person undergoes a process of questioning personal assumptions, regardless of the outcomes in terms of changes in practice. Although, in my case, there was evidence to suggest that there were changes that took place in my practice, as discussed in the above section. These results are consistent with what Brock, Florescu, and Teran (2012) concluded in their study of the precursor steps of transformative learning that the five steps that are most effective in fostering transformative learning are experiencing disorienting dilemmas, reflecting on assumptions, trying on new roles, acquiring new skills to make a change, and building confidence. In addition, as I engaged myself in the critical reflections, I revisited my course materials with a special attention to what was revised or what was emphasized and the following three themes stood out to me: creating safe and transformation-oriented environments, encouraging self-reflection, and building a community of learners. It is not to say that these themes were not part of my professional identity, but it was my reflective practice that made me be more explicit about what and how and I made a conscious effort to relate more to my students, preservice teachers. I would like to say that this is something that I had always done in the other course that I teach in the fall semesters. For example, the orientation course for new international students, where community building often starts with not only getting to know my students by relating to them as someone who had been in their shoes. I share with them that I started my own academic journey in the United States as an international student, too.

IMPLICATIONS At the end of each semester I reflect on the courses I teach
what worked and what did not work. I am constantly experimenting with integrating new ways to introduce and discuss ideas, new activities and readings in order to relate more and appeal more to my students. However, I had not had a chance to formally analyze my practice, and therefore this self-study proved to be beneficial by furthering my understanding of my teaching and my professional identity. More specifically, the following two major implications for my practice stand out as a result of this self-study. First, the shift in my practice from what to how. This means that I became more intentional about how to introduce, how

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to have students engage with and reflect on issues that deal with linguistically and culturally responsive practices in the early childhood classroom. When it comes to the ILP project that I assign to my preservice teachers, despite the many logistical challenges and the amount of time it takes on my part to effectively integrate it into the course, I continue to see the value of this experience not just for my students but for me as well, as it provides for authentic material to be discussed in class and the opportunity to be more intentional about the influence of the process of intercultural learning on my students. Second, this self-study led to me being more explicit in stating directly
whether in writing or expressing it in class
what used to be implicit in my practice. This includes admitting that I too have biases and that my goal as an educator is not to persuade the students in the superiority of one perspective over another, as discussed earlier in this chapter. Although, it may be a difficult task, since education is not a value-free environment. Therefore, I hope this self-study will motivate other teacher educators to continue to grow and learn about themselves and about teacher education. It invites the reader to see the connections between action research and self-study since this study resulted from analysis of the action research project and was motivated by a disorienting dilemma that led to critical reflection and exploration of assumptions and more gradual change of practice framework. It assured that as an educator, I am not only striving to provide transformative opportunities for my students when engaging them in intercultural learning projects, but I am too open to reflect on my views and assumptions when encountering a disorienting dilemma. Moreover, the insights gained from this self-study should help teacher educators be sensitive to the needs of preservice teachers who lack experience in diverse linguistic and cultural settings. Educating a homogeneous group (including being predominantly monolingual) of preservice teachers about linguistic and cultural diversity can be surprising and even puzzling. We must remember that they are students at the same time as they are learning to be teachers. Therefore, we need to guide them in their exploration of their thinking and actions by providing environment that is safe for them to share and reflect on their assumptions and by providing opportunities for hand-on experiences with diversity and reflection on these experiences. Finally, it is important to note that, as discussed in the theoretical framework, both self-study and transformative learning require critical reflection. This intersectionality of the two approaches
methodological and theoretical
makes them a useful framework for teacher educators who strive to better understand their practices, particularly if the goal is to prepare teachers to work successfully in linguistically and culturally diverse contexts. In addition, it is important to note that in this study, preservice teachers were exposed to transformative intercultural learning not simply as a product that was created by scholars or a set of steps/procedures that are used to study experience or practice, but rather as an authentic way or process for action and reflection.

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Therefore, the purpose of the study was also to serve as model in the process of doing a reflective research project as a form of self-study.

CONCLUSION When reflecting on my experiences, self-study was a very important part of the process because of the following reasons. First, it helped me develop a deeper understating of the practice of preparing teachers for linguistically and culturally diverse contexts and explore future possibilities for self-reflection in teacher education (e.g., social justice aspect). Second, it made me examine my beliefs and practices as a teacher educator who strives to provide transformative experiences for her students. Furthermore, this self-study made me reflect on who I am as a practitioner by examining my own transformation, too. It is evident that both teacher education process and intercultural learning share common ground in transformative learning. As researchers and educators continue to explore and understand this relationship, it will lead to many insights about educational practice that is critical in a time of increasing diversity locally and increasing possibilities for teaching and learning globally. As teacher educators understand more about intercultural learning in teacher education and more about transformative learning, continued research could affect teacher preparation program development and planning, curriculum development and pedagogy, and professional development of teacher educators.

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IMPACTING CLASSROOMS AND OURSELVES: A SELF-STUDY INVESTIGATION OF OUR WORK WITH AND WITHIN AN INDIGENOUS PUEBLO COMMUNITY Cheryl Torrez and Marjori Krebs ABSTRACT We share developing understandings from a self-study in which two university-based teacher educators worked with Indigenous Pueblo community members, teachers, and educational assistants to integrate Indigenous culture, heritage, and language into PK-12 Pueblo classrooms. We found that our collaborative endeavors (between Pueblo educators and the two of us) are resulting in culturally relevant and culturally responsive curriculum being developed and implemented. By our stepping aside from our traditional and Western positions as teacher educators to positions of supporters, the cultural experts (the Pueblo language teachers) took the lead and grew in their capacities as educators. This work has had a transcendent impact on both of us. The significance of this self-study is framed within working with diverse educators who teach PK-12 Indigenous students and within our development as teacher educators working in an institution that

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places more value on Western knowledge and less value, in practice, on Indigenous knowledge. Keywords: Indigenous language; culture and heritage; collaboration; partnership; cultural responsiveness; teacher educators; PK-12 schools

INTRODUCTION I was surprised by the question asked of me at dinner the other night. The gentleman sitting next to me was a nationally renowned economic analyst of educational issues. We had been talking, at the table with 6 other faculty members, about some of the work we had been doing with the Pueblo School District focused on supporting the integration of Pueblo language, culture, and history in the Pueblo schools. He asked, “Why does it matter if the Pueblo language continues, so few people speak it?” His question wasn’t flippant, he simply was seeking to understand. (March 2014)

This excerpt comes from Cheryl’s journal, as she recalled the conversation from a dinner during which the topic of educational funding came up. In this study, we highlight our changes in our thinking and practices as teacher educators in connection to our work with an Indigenous community and their Pueblo language, culture, and history. We had already been involved in a self-study of our work with the Pueblo School District (PSD) in this community (Torrez & Krebs, 2014), but this question led us to think more deeply about the significance of our work and the ways in which we could share the importance of Indigenous language and culture with others, especially our teacher candidates. In addition, we considered the importance of helping educators in the Pueblo better understand ways in which their language, culture, and history could be the central to their teaching. In this chapter, we share our developing understandings from our work as non-Native, university-based teacher educators working with Pueblo community members, teachers, and educational assistants to integrate Pueblo culture, heritage, and language into the PK-12 Pueblo schools. Through this self-study, our perceptions of our work have moved from simply implementing important grant-funded teacher education work to participating in supporting profound cultural proliferation in cooperation with Pueblo educational experts. This work is bigger than us, and more important than our role as teacher educators. Our current project focuses on language and culture and is part of a larger grant, PETAC, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the goals of which are described below. The full title of this project, as named by the district superintendent, who is a Pueblo member, is “Pueblo: Engaging Teachers and Community (PETAC), A Teacher Recruitment and Retention Program to Empower a Community of Learners.” This project is a partnership between the PSD and the University of New Mexico (UNM).

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CONTEXT The state of New Mexico includes 22 Native American tribes and pueblos. As lead investigators for this project, we were outsiders, not tribal members. As two White, middle-class, tenure-track female teacher educators, with no prior substantive experience working in Indigenous, rural communities, we define ourselves as outsiders. As associate professors, we teach both undergraduate and graduate students at the UNM, designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and classified as a Carnegie Research University-Very High Research Activity. The university is located three hours from the Indigenous community in which we are working. The goal of PETAC is to provide opportunities and support for teacher credentials and professional development for members of the Pueblo to: • • • • •

provide a social and cultural orientation for current and future teachers; reestablish a sense of empowerment among principals and teachers; facilitate collegial and collaborative work across the district; recruit current Indigenous students to become teachers; and provide educational opportunities through scholarship dollars for teachers and future teachers to obtain graduate and undergraduate degrees.

These goals were co-developed by the PSD leadership and the two of us as lead investigators in tandem with the PSD Advisory Board. The Advisory Board is comprised of six Native American faculty members who are not tribal members of this Pueblo, two PSD representatives who are tribal members, and the two of us. The Advisory Board was created by the PSD Superintendent, who wanted the opportunity to not only share the work that was occurring within PETAC, but also to have other Native advisors to give feedback, assist in making connections across other areas of the university, and serve as critical friends. The Pueblo encompasses approximately 450,000 acres of land across counties in two states, where the Indigenous tribe has lived for thousands of years. The population of the Pueblo is approximately 12,097, with a median household income of $31,050, where 32% of its residents live below the poverty line. In the PSD, encompassing over 600 square miles, the largest racial/ethnic group in the area is American Indian (94.1%), followed by Hispanic (3.8%), and White (2.0%). The District is comprised of 1,336 students and 100 teachers (Public School Review, 2014).

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES The spring dinner query regarding the importance of keeping the Pueblo language alive led us beyond our initial self-study (Torrez & Krebs, 2014) in which

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we sought to better understand our positioning as outsiders in the work we were doing as teachers and researchers, to this current study focused on issues of language, culture, and history within the PSD context. Over time, we began to notice that our work in supporting educators in the integration of Pueblo language, culture, and history as a pivotal component of curriculum and instruction was becoming increasingly important to us personally and professionally as well. Because of this new focus, we engaged in this current self-study to investigate the changes in our practice as teacher educators as a result of our work within this Pueblo. We had been productive as teacher educators in our traditional teacher preparation program. We taught various undergraduate and graduate courses, from methodology to research; from seminar to field experience supervision. However, even though we had been successful teacher educators, receiving high marks in student evaluations and positive comments in annual faculty reviews, we noticed our perspectives were changing. We needed to study what was changing and why. Therefore, our self-study research question is “How has our work related to Pueblo language, culture, and history informed our work as teacher educators?”

FRAMEWORK We employ the two-fold framework of McCarty and Lee (2014) to support this self-study: (1) the body of literature on Indigenous exclusion in their own educational decision-making and (2) scholarship on the importance of culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy. Historically, exclusionary practices of formal education systems often fail to meet the needs of Indigenous populations. In many settings, insiders in Indigenous communities are excluded from decisionmaking, curriculum design, selection of teachers, selection of teaching methods, and definition of standards. When Indigenous worldviews, knowledge systems, and ways of knowing are not recognized, educational needs of Indigenous students and communities are not met (Saunders, 2012). As a progressive and dynamic attempt to redefine the nature of teacher preparation within Indigenous communities, PETAC invited the Pueblo community to serve as a model to other Indigenous communities for the ways in which necessary collaboration can yield strong student educational attainment with a focus on Pueblo language, history, and culture, as well as to solidify community engagement in the educational process. Though much has changed since the early days of Indigenous education, the residuals are engrained in the community consciousness. Historically and traditionally, Indigenous education of children involved storytelling and mentorship in aspects of daily life and necessary community skills. Once colonialism began, first with the Spanish followed by the Mexicans, Indigenous children were educated by Franciscan friars in the Catholic doctrine. In the 1800s, the US

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government created the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which placed children in boarding schools. As part of the effort of the Christian military campaign against Indigenous Peoples, the goal of these boarding schools was to remove the children from their Indigenous homes and assimilate them into American culture. These boarding schools had, and continue to have, damaging effects on children and families through the generations (Mondragon & Stapleton, 2005; Pewewardy, 2005; Waziyatawin, 2005). Children suffered violence and ethnocide as students in these schools. They were raped, tortured, and murdered at extraordinary rates. Canada estimates that 50,000 Indigenous children died as a result of their “federally mandated education” (Waziyatawin, 2005, p. 114). The attack on Indigenous languages has had long-term effects. As Thiong’o, a Kenyan language scholar, writes, The choice of language and the use to which language is put is central to a people’s definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment, indeed in relation to the entire universe. (1981, p. 4)

If a language is lost so is the central definition of a people. Extensions of these assimilationist, colonizing practices exist in the current school-based systems, which favor Western knowledge over Pueblo cultural values and community practices, and learning the English language over learning their Indigenous languages. According to Waziyatawin (2005), “efforts to eradicate Indigenous languages occurred simultaneously with sustained Indigenous-white contact” (p. 113). Indigenous languages were considered backward and inferior to European languages. As numerous Indigenous scholars have asserted (Cajete, 2012; McCarty & Lee, 2014; Pewewardy, 2005; Waziyatawin, 2005), Indigenous culture must be used as a teaching pedagogy to teach children rather than teaching children about their Indigenous culture. An effective way to positively impact academic achievement of American Indian schoolchildren is to “educate their teachers in ways that help them [the teachers] become responsive to the cultural uniqueness of the children they teach” (Jamie & Rush, 2012, p. 154). This type of shift in Indigenous education is part of a decolonization movement. As defined by Waziyatawin and Yellow Bird (2005), decolonization is The intelligent, calculated, and active resistance to the forces of colonialism that perpetuate the subjugation and/or exploitation of our minds bodies, and lands, and it is engaged for the ultimate purpose of overturning the colonial structure and realizing Indigenous liberation. (p. 2)

We began to see our role as teacher educators as pivotal in this important effort to support the teachers in the Pueblo, especially as our work related to impacting the language, culture, and history of the Pueblo people. We also saw that bicultural partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups can be effective in this way, but must preserve the integrity, prestige, and authority of Indigenous cultures. True collaboration between cultural insiders and outsiders in the context of culturally responsive research and evaluation

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methodology includes breaking down walls that have been created by a history of exclusion, control, harm, and influence in Indigenous communities (Demmert, 2005).

RESEARCH DESIGN AND ANALYSIS Berry and Crowe (2009) indicated that self-study can present a framework for inquiry into one’s beliefs and practices as an educator with a focus on better understanding the interaction between beliefs and practices for the improvement of teaching and learning. (p. 85)

Zeichner (2007) stated that self-study research can “open up new ways of understanding teacher education” (p. 43). We were drawn to self-study because of our desire to think more deeply about our significant experiences in the Pueblo and specifically how these experiences have affected us as teacher educators. The comment at dinner was a catalyst that led us to begin thinking and talking about our work, specifically the importance of language and culture in ways that we had not yet considered. Thus, we began to intentionally inquire into our beliefs as teacher educators, our practices with and within the contexts of PETAC, as well as our changing practices as teacher educators. Our collaborative methods were iterative over a 24-month period from January 2014 to December 2016, meeting monthly to discuss and analyze our work, and more often, less formally, as we engaged in the day-to-day work of our grant project. Our data sources include individually written journals that focused on the implementation of the grant, self-reflections, interviews with Pueblo members, and analytic memos from authors as well as transcriptions of the authors’ audio-recorded dyad conversations (Table 1). Many of these conversations occurred during our shared bi-monthly drives to and from the Pueblo and during our overnight stays. Heeding LaBoskey’s (2004) principles for producing trustworthy findings, additional data sources included audio recordings and notes taken during group discussions with our Indigenous partners, artifacts developed by the educators in Pueblo and their students, and project evaluation data, conducted by the Indigenous external evaluator, from the overarching grant project. The data analysis occurred both individually and in collaborative conversation, and was ongoing throughout the 24 months; hence a recursive process, as we revisited earlier steps, reexamined our data, and reassessed preliminary interpretations based upon incoming data (Samaras, 2011). We also drew upon our previous self-study findings because we view our development as teacher educators as ongoing rather than fragmented (Torrez & Krebs, 2014). Serving as critical friends, we challenged each other’s assumptions and beliefs and pushed each other to enhance our research. Coding schemes, begun informally at the

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Table 1.

Data Sources.

Data Technique (Researcher/Initiator)

Frequency/Time

Written journals (Marjori and Cheryl)

1
2 times/month

Self-reflections, written (typical brief thoughts or ideas written to capture the essence) (Marjori and Cheryl)

Weekly

Totals 35 200

Analytic memos (Marjori and Cheryl)

Semi-monthly

Dyad conversations (Marjori and Cheryl)

Bi-monthly

20 75

Group discussion notes from conversations with Indigenous partners in PSD and advisory council meetings

Every other month

12

Student artifacts (books)

4

PETAC evaluations (external evaluator)

3

3

individual level as we both read and reread our data, allowed us to more closely examine data together in the dyad setting. Themes that emerged during coding are elaborated in the following sections. Employing constant comparative methods (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 2015) allowed us to examine and reexamine data to the point of saturation. For example, in 90% of the dyad conversations we spoke of navigating the complexities that we encountered and pushback we felt from some colleagues as we conducted this work. We came to a point where we realized that we were having the same conversations repeatedly. As we elaborate upon below, we grouped the themes that emerged into findings related to culture and context, changes in our practice, and dealing with frictions.

OUR WORK Through Spring and Summer Professional Development Institutes Working with classroom educators in this Pueblo has had a profound effect on both of us. As Marjori indicated, Of all the work I have done as an educator, our work with the Pueblo community has been the most meaningful
because of the importance of this culture and its perpetuation. (Journal, October 2016)

Cheryl noted, Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have the privilege of working closely with educators in a Pueblo. I am grateful for the doors that have opened for us, and for being able to engage in some of the most meaningful work of my career. (Journal, October 2016)

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Both of us have used the term poignant to describe the transcendent opportunities we have had. Much of our on-the-ground work revolves around co-organizing, with the PSD leadership, spring and summer institutes for professional development, held during spring and summer breaks. The PETAC week-long institutes focus on, but are not limited to, integrating Pueblo language, culture, and history into Project Based Learning (PBL) activities as part of the regular curriculum. Cheryl recalled the kick-off day to the first PETAC summer institute, conducted by members of the tribal cultural committee. Their presentation focused on the history of the tribal emergence from the Grand Canyon, their migration to their current settlement, the artifacts that are still being unearthed, and the religious and cultural importance of the artifacts and the emergence history. The vast majority of the participants were tribal members, and we were among the three White people in the room. Probably the most poignant time for me has been when the Cultural Advisory Committee gave that one-day presentation of the findings in the Grand Canyon in the Petroglyphs and all the other ancestral materials that are still there, and how unique it is and how they are working so hard to protect it. I was honored to actually be in a room where that was being shared, and few of the tribal members had heard or knew of any of this. I remained humbled and honored by that because I considered that a great privilege; and it’s interesting because for a lot of this work I continue to still feel somewhat very much as an outsider. I totally understood them code switching between English and their native language because there were some things that only tribal members could know. I didn’t feel like an outsider at all then. (Dyad Conversation, March 2014)

Following their presentation, the tribal cultural committee members led the group on a visit to an ancestral site that was undergoing archaeological excavation. Marjori noted: The other moment was when we went to the ancestral sites and saw all of the excavations in the very rural areas of the Pueblo and saw all of the pottery shards, and human bones, and the thing that was most poignant about that was that the tribal members did not know that existed and that was just a big surprise to me and helped me to understand how the issue of communication really is a different one out there. (Dyad Conversation, March 2014)

Beginning with this same initial summer institute, we conducted professional development within the framework of PBL. PBL is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge. (Buck Institute for Education, 2016, para. 1)

Many of the educators with whom we work in the Pueblo are Pueblo language teachers who hold Heritage Language and Culture certificates that allow them to teach the Pueblo language in classrooms. About these teachers, Marjori journaled: I am so appreciative of the community members in Pueblo who have taken the risk and understand the rewards of attaining the Heritage Language Certificate. With the Pueblo

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Language being an isolate, not spoken anywhere else in the world by any other group of people, helping children learn the language to perpetuate their culture is imperative for the Pueblo people to continue to exist. I wonder if the children truly understand the gravity of this situation and how much responsibility is on their shoulders. I would hope this sense of urgency to learn and continue the Pueblo Language would be a priority in the community, however, it seems that learning the Pueblo Language has been put on the schools. When visiting Pueblo, one does not see the Pueblo Language written on signage, stores, etc. I wonder what influence we can have to assist the community in seeing what role they can play in Pueblo Language perpetuation, and not just put this on the school district and teachers? (January 2014)

As a result of these workshops, the classroom teachers, educational assistants, and Heritage Language teachers have developed a variety of PBL units that focus on Pueblo language, culture, and history. The promotion and preservation of the heritage Pueblo language is a key component of our work in meeting the grant goals. Our work continues to reveal that the Pueblo language is deeply intertwined with Pueblo culture. In response to the question Cheryl was asked at dinner about the importance of language, she later journaled, language and culture are interwoven … most of the participants in our PBL workshops are Pueblo language teachers, and they just don’t teach the language skills; they teach culture, history, Pueblo core values. Language frames understanding and worldview. (April 2014)

After one of our workshops in the Pueblo, Marjori also journaled about the importance of language: If the Pueblo Language is to perpetuate, the young people in the community must learn it and use it. Because so many families do not speak the language at home anymore, the learning of the Pueblo Language, like many other areas of our culture, has to be picked up by the schools. Because, as I understand it, much of the Pueblo culture is passed on through the language, if the Pueblo Language disappears, so does the Pueblo culture and religion, eventually. (February 2015)

Marjori’s analytic memo continued on a similar theme: By teaching the Pueblo history, language, and culture in the schools, it systematizes its perpetuation. I believe this is unfortunate, but necessary. As Ms. P [a Heritage language teacher] explained in one of our group discussions early in 2013, many of the grandparents in the Pueblo were raised in “Indian Schools” where they were punished severely for speaking their language. They did not want the same thing to happen to their children so they did not encourage their children to speak or learn the Pueblo Language. It is the children of these children who are in schools today
the 2nd generation AFTER the Indian Schools. With a missing generation, it seems the language is already being lost on these children and grandchildren; hence, the culture is being lost. Since the Pueblo Language is a language isolate (only spoken in one place by one people), if this language is not learned by these children, it has a great potential to be lost forever. With the loss of the language, they also lose their culture. (April 2016)

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With Pueblo Language Teachers Two Pueblo language teachers, Ms E and Ms L., embraced PBL and each sought to develop projects for their respective classrooms. As we worked in tandem with these teachers, our understanding of the importance of language increased. Because we do not speak the language, we are clearly novices in this area; the Pueblo language teachers are the experts. The PSD has worked over the years to develop materials to support the heritage/native language education of local students, but curricular gaps still exist. The Pueblo language has been in written form for only 50 years, and discrepancies in spelling and usage among those who speak and write the Pueblo language persist (Edaakie, Kostelecky, Krebs, & Torrez, 2015). The curricular gaps and discrepancies afford Pueblo language teachers the opportunity to create their own classroom materials. For example, Ms E, a Pueblo teacher and fluent Pueblo-language user, developed a PBL project with a Pueblo-language focus for her third graders, drawing upon the need for culturally relevant heritage language materials. In this project, her students solved a pragmatic problem of material creation by authoring an alphabet book in their Pueblo language. Additionally, the book increased students’ sense of responsibility to preserve and revitalize their own language through a project that also has authentic audience and meets a genuine community need. (Edaakie et al., 2015, p. 37)

During the development and implementation of this project, we worked closely with Ms E by providing support, materials, and serving as sounding boards and as nudges. Ms E indicated in an interview that a majority of her students are not fluent enough in their native language to hold a conversation with her, and her PBL project allowed her to engage her students in dialogue with their elders and to have something tangible to reference when learning their language (Edaakie et al., 2015). Ms L, an early childhood educator, taught the Pueblo language and culture to her preschool students by developing a PBL project in which the children collected native seeds and planted them. Underpinning this work was a focus on helping children regain connections that, according to the Pueblo District Superintendent, “have been eroded and lost due to colonization. These disconnects include child and parent, child and another significant adult family member, and child and the environment” (Group Discussion, July 2015). Ms L. provided age-appropriate language instruction related to farming, and seeds and planting, which are part of the Pueblo history and culture. The young students then had conversations, in their Pueblo language and English, with their parents and elders about the importance of seeds and planting to the Pueblo. The flash cards, in their Pueblo language with pictures, helped facilitate the conversations. These conversations led to one family finding heritage seeds in an adobe wall in their ancestral home. Ms L. also taught Pueblo planting

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and harvesting songs that the children sang while planting their heritage seeds and, later, while harvesting, their crops. In our work with each of the Pueblo language teachers, we were able to draw upon our expertise as teacher educators by suggesting strategies, providing materials, and offering approaches into curriculum and instruction. More important, however, was the richness of the content provided by the cultural experts, the Pueblo language teachers. Through our professional development work focusing on Pueblo language, history, and culture using PBL as a key strategy, we believe we have been able to make a significant impact on teachers to focus on these areas in their curriculum, and to be curriculum creators for the children in the Pueblo. We have seen direct evidence of teachers revitalizing their language through culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy (McCarty & Lee, 2014; wa Thiong’o, 1981; Waziyatawin, 2005).

OUR LEARNINGS Our self-study, focusing on our work with the PSD and our Indigenous partners described above, shed light on our key learnings as we sought answers for our research question: How has our work related to Pueblo language, culture, and history informed our work as teacher educators? The themes that emerged were numerous, so we combined and categorized our learning into these key ideas: • We now have a clearer focus on the importance of culture and context for all learning situations, but specifically for Indigenous communities where the culture is intertwined with identity and all aspects of daily life. • We have noted changes in our Western ways of approaching our work as teacher educators, specifically with our focus on linear thinking and planning. • Our course designs have undergone an evolution to help practicing and preservice teachers focus on culture and context of their learners. • We carefully traverse our roles both within the Pueblo and within the university in ways that are mindful in how we discuss our work and make decisions.

A Clearer Focus on Culture and Context “Content and context, content and context.” As former history majors, we have heard these terms since our undergraduate studies. What was less visible, and is now crystal clear to us, is the notion that context and content don’t exist

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without culture. Successful teaching and learning in Indigenous communities does not occur without content, context, and culture integrated within the curriculum. Culture is a part of a community’s context; however, we have never worked in such a rich context in which teachers must be aware of culture at every turn. For example, teachers in this Pueblo must consider the types of classroom pets they will have, the time of year their students can participate in storytelling, and where both girls and boys can go on classroom fieldtrips around the Pueblo. In a reflective conversation about our journals, Cheryl commented, “One of the themes that came out of both of ours [journals] was culture, culture, culture, and context
culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally sustaining pedagogy” (February 2016). In that same conversation, Marjori added, It’s so important. Like we have taught our PETAC participants, if you are going to teach geography, great, call up an old Map of the Pueblo, don’t look at a map of Latin America, or if you do, then connect it with the Pueblo people’s migration to Latin America. When these lessons are connected to their culture, they matter to the students
and they learn. (February 2016)

Cheryl also noted the importance of culture and context regarding the Pueblo language as opposed to English. Cheryl journaled, Language and culture are tightly interwoven, and in many respects one in the same for the Pueblo. This is not the case for many English speakers across the world, as English is often a means of communication without strong connections to the culture of the individual speaking. So to lose part of the language is to lose part of a culture. As a result of teasing out more understanding in this regard, I am much more of an advocate for Heritage Language preservation. Language is culture, and history is embedded therein. (November 2016)

In connecting this work to our current role as teacher educators, Marjori commented in a journal entry, Being able to work in a place that is soooo [sic] culturally rooted has forced me to attend to the importance of more than just the typical content and strategies I teach my teacher education students. I see Pueblo students being totally tuned out of school because there is NOTHING in the curriculum that seems relevant to them…which has served me well as I revisit my priorities in teacher preparation. When one teaches in the Pueblo, one CANNOT ignore the culture and be successful. Culture, context, family, and community should not be ignored but embraced. (October 2015)

Continuing this theme of content, context, and culture, Cheryl journaled, Measures of success and impact are different. As we work with Pueblo educators and community members to emphasize Pueblo language, culture and history in classrooms, we may not work with every teacher and see widespread changes in three years, but the pebble in the pond makes a difference. (November 2016)

This importance of place has extended to our general teacher education work, encouraging our teacher candidates to look closely and examine the place, the

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context, where their students live and learn and connect that to their planning and instruction. In one of our recorded dyad conversations (July 2016), we agreed that we are now keenly aware that effective teaching must be connected to the cultural context of the learners. In the Pueblo, our work as partners is to assist the teachers to be empowered, as the superintendent stated in the major objective of this work, to integrate the content with the Pueblo context, especially with the Pueblo language, culture, and history. Their future as a People depends on it. This empowerment is the key to the success of our work.

Changes in Our Teaching Styles PETAC has empowered us to make key changes in our own teaching styles as teacher educators. We have noticed a movement away from our Western positioning to being more flexible in our schedules, as well as purposefully seeking to understand barriers students may face when trying to navigate a Western university system. Cheryl also wrote in a self-reflection, I think I’ve also become more flexible in my role as an instructor. By nature, I tend to adhere to … expectations, and pretty much say what I mean and mean what I say. This is a Western positioning I know. However, working within the Pueblo, I’ve become more flexible as I’ve come to see first-hand how many obstacles there are for university students (undergrad and grad) who live in the Pueblo. (March 2015)

Marjori agreed in a dyad conversation (June 2016) that she, too, has become much more flexible, especially in the planning of the workshops, etc., where she indicated she has said, “however you want to do it,” more during this work than ever in her life. She has learned to let go and let the partners plan the work that they see they need to be doing, instead of directing and planning from her perspective alone. In addition, both of us have worked to assist our Pueblo partners to navigate obstacles such as the lack of reliable internet, isolation and ruralism, inhospitable bookstore hours, and the unavailability of UPS service for textbook delivery
all issues we would never have seen ourselves being involved as faculty members before this work. Our change in our teaching styles has broadened the way we understand and work with our students.

Evolution of Teacher Education Course Design As a result of this work, we have not only become more flexible and understanding in our teaching styles, but we have also made changes in the way we design our teacher education courses. We have changed some of the content we teach and the foci of our classes, modified our course resources and materials, and made adjustments in our assignments.

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Marjori noted a change in her content and focus of both her undergraduate and graduate coursework by assisting her students to “help students understand issues around education and not just how to teach.” In this journal entry, she continued with this theme: How does my work connect to my work in the Pueblo? My teacher education lens has broadened. I don’t just focus on the learning in the classroom when I’m teaching now…. I help them focus holistically on the children and their families. I want them to understand the context in which they teach. I want them to explore WHERE their students live and what their lives are like. What resources are available to families? Are there libraries? What about Wi-Fi? What languages are spoken at home? How many people live at home? (July 2016)

With regard to resources and materials, Cheryl stated in a reflective journal entry, As I have redesigned some of the graduate courses I teach, as I think about this, I’ve sought out additional texts and readings that several years ago I wouldn’t have been as inherently compelled to do. For example, “Culturally Sustaining/Culturally Revitalizing Pedagogies,” by McCarty and Lee (2014). I also suspect that the importance of tribal sovereignty has crept into my positioning in ways I’ve not yet teased out. (September 2016)

Cheryl also noted in a reflective interview that she is reframing the way she thinks about teachers as curriculum developers, and ways she can support them in this changing role. She connected to Marjori’s comment about Rob teaching geology using the Pueblo Mountain. Rob is a high school geology teacher who uses the Pueblo Mountain, which can be seen directly out his classroom window, to teach the striations of geology and incorporates the Pueblo traditional fetish carving in his class, teaching the students about all the types of stones through this cultural tradition. He invited in a traditional fetish carver to co-teach these concepts; the carver connected the Pueblo language and traditions throughout these lessons. When you [Marjori] talked about Rob and geology, and you know the kids aren’t going to forget those experiences because it’s within their context, but what the PBL stuff has done, it’s really kind of reframed for me this really is more the notion of “Teachers as curriculum developers in the context of where they live,” and students who are in their classrooms beyond just the routine field trip to a local site. Wow, if you really do understand the context you really can do much more with curriculum development if you really know who your students are. (Dyad Conversation, November 2016)

Like Cheryl, Marjori also stated in an interview that she paid much more attention to culturally relevant pedagogy, asking students to think about, “How can their lessons connect directly to their students’ language, culture, home life, family background, surrounding community?” (August 2016).

Careful Navigation within the Pueblo and the University Even though this rural Indigenous community seems to be worlds away from our urban university setting, we now find ourselves navigating our work at the

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university carefully when reminding our colleagues of the issues faced in rural areas as we re-design our teacher preparation program. Early on, we recognized that the university and its focus on Western knowledge and ways of doing were cumbersome and perpetuated colonization and marginalization of Pueblo language, culture, and history (Torrez & Krebs, 2014). This requires careful navigation and conversation. Just as the Pueblo language teachers have taken responsibility for perpetuating the Pueblo language, we, as teacher educators, must take ownership of our role as representatives of Pueblo views and challenges at the university. Serving as teacher educators at an urban university, while working and researching in an isolated, rural school district, brings a responsibility to give our Pueblo partners a voice in our teacher education planning. As an illustration of this voice, Cheryl journaled, Often our colleagues make generalizations about learning preferences of Native students, such as their dislike of online courses. We owe it to our Pueblo partners to speak up and contradict our colleagues’ comments with our personal experiences with our Pueblo teachers. I remember when Shondra had to take all online classes because of her family’s religions obligations that year. Having online classes was the ONLY way she could continue her Early Childhood degree. (August 2015)

In addition to representing contrasting views of online courses in conversation with our faculty, the focus on Common Core State Standards (CCSS) has also come up. Marjori recalled in a dyad conversation how focusing on the Common Core in professional development sessions with teachers did not always meet the needs of Pueblo teachers in the same way that it did in our professional development at the university: For our Pueblo teachers and students, CCSS is just a continuation of colonization in the 21st Century
just one more way our colonizing government is controlling our Native people and their education of their children. Is it too radical to surmise that the CCSS is just an extension of the Indian Schools of old? (May 2014)

We also pushed one another beyond bristling to step back and acknowledge that we have been able to make changes to our teacher education program and to the institution. For example, university-based advisors now offer face-to-face meetings with students in the Pueblo, numerous tribal members are enrolled in teacher education and educational leadership degree programs, Pueblo language now counts as a foreign language for degree credit, and we continue to advocate for the importance of maintaining online course offerings. Not only have we learned to traverse in the Pueblo community with care, but we have also become aware of how we traverse our roles at the university. Our metaphor is the balance beam. We traverse carefully at work because not all of our colleagues understand why two White women have conducted such extensive work in a Pueblo. Just as we have noted the changes in our work as teacher educators through our self-study, we have also noted the importance of

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focusing on how we traverse within the university. Regarding traversing our roles within the Pueblo, Cheryl stated it bluntly in a reflection: For a couple of White girls, we have really come to understand some of the tensions and complexities that exist within Indigenous Communities in ways about as much as maybe some outsiders are ever going to be able to. (April 2015)

Marjori also discussed the joys and challenges of traversing into a language and a culture where she previously had little experience. As our relationships have grown with our Pueblo partners, our work has not been equally well-received by some of our university colleagues. I traverse carefully…. I purposefully monitor and choose in which work contexts to talk about our work in the Pueblo, the educators with whom we work, or how well the work is going. I’ve not worked in an environment before, in higher education or in K-12, in which I’ve felt as though I’ve needed to be so cautious. (Group Discussion, November 2016)

We both agree we are traversing a balance beam. This theme, in reflective interviews, casual conversations, and reflective journal entries has become a strong metaphor of our work. “You know where you’re going [on a balance beam], you just have to be sure-footed, but you still have to pay attention to how you’re moving” (Cheryl, Analytic Memo, September 2016).

Summary of Key Learnings On our balance beam, proceeding with caution, yet with a solid foundation underfoot, we navigate our work as teacher educators working both within a Pueblo and a university. Both roles are important, and we would not have the Pueblo work without our university work. However, we have most certainly made changes in our work as teacher educators as a result of our work in the Pueblo, especially in our focus on culture and context, changes made in our teaching styles, evolution of our course designs, and finally, our careful navigation of our roles as teacher educators.

DISCUSSION AND FINAL THOUGHTS Seeing how our work in PETAC has had a direct, positive effect on the daily instruction in the Pueblo Language is quite rewarding, and helps me remember one of the reasons I became a teacher
to make the world a better place, one child at a time, and to touch the future with a positive legacy. (Marjori, Journal, December 2016)

As we conclude this self-study, we are reminded of important personal and professional changes we have experienced through the initial query that prompted our study, “Why does it matter if the Pueblo language continues; so few people speak it?” There were numerous ways we could have responded to the question

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and questioner, but we chose to investigate our work with Pueblo educators to better understand how we are changing. In this study, we explored how our work related to Pueblo language, culture, and history has informed our work as teacher educators. In addressing this question, we found that our collaborative endeavors (between Pueblo educators and the two of us) are resulting in more culturally relevant and culturally responsive curriculum being developed and implemented. By our stepping aside from our traditional and Western positions as teacher educators to positions of supporters, the cultural experts (the Pueblo language teachers) took the lead and grew in their capacities as educators. This work has, as mentioned earlier in the chapter, had a transcendent impact on both of us. The significance of this self-study is weighty, framed within working with diverse educators who teach PK-12 Indigenous students and within our development as teacher educators working in an institution that places more value on Western knowledge and less value, in practice, on Indigenous knowledge. Additionally, as non-Native teacher educators, this study has implications for breaking down bias and walls within traditional university structures. We have become invested in the Pueblo, personally connected to the teachers there, and indebted to the Pueblo community for helping us become teacher educators with a much deeper purpose
to keep the Pueblo language, history, and culture alive through the education of its children.

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98). Dordrecht: Springer. Buck Institute. (2016). Project-based learning. Novato, CA: Buck Institute for Education. Retrieved from http://www.bie.org/about/what_pbl Cajete, G. A. (2012). Decolonizing Indigenous education in a twenty-first century world. In Waziyatawin (Eds.), For Indigenous minds only: A handbook (pp.145
156). Santa Fe, NM: Shoot for Advanced Research Press. Demmert, W. G. (2005). The influences of culture on learning and assessment among Native American students. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 20(1), 16
23. Edaakie, R., Kostelecky, S. R., Krebs, M., & Torrez, C. A. (2015). Third graders revitalize the Pueblo language one letter at a time. Literacy and Social Responsibility, 8(1), 36
44. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory. Dallas, TX: Houghton Mifflin. Jamie, A., & Rush, R. T. (2012). Three-part strategy for ensuring culturally relevant pedagogy for American Indian children. In B. J. Klug (Ed.), Standing together: American Indian education as culturally responsive pedagogy (pp. 149
159). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. LaBoskey, V. K. (2004). The methodology of self-study and its theoretical underpinnings. In International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (pp. 817
869). Dordrecht: Springer.

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SIFTING THROUGH SHIFTING SANDS: CONFRONTING THE SELF IN TEACHING BILINGUAL EMIRATI PRESERVICE TEACHERS Patience A. Sowa ABSTRACT This chapter examines how the author, a teacher educator, uses self-study to reframe and reconceptualize her teaching of Emirati preservice teachers. The author describes how conducting self-study helped her shift from using monolingual approaches to teaching Emirati preservice teachers and a focus on improving their English language proficiency, to affirming their bilingual identities, and becoming more culturally responsive. Initially, the researcher posed the question, “how do I frame and reframe my teaching to support the English language learning of my Emirati preservice teachers?” then progressed to asking and answering the question “how can I affirm the bilingual identities of my Emirati preservice teachers and support their English language proficiency?” Keywords: Self-study; bilingual language teaching; preservice teachers; culturally responsive pedagogy; translanguaging; teacher education; bilingual learners; English learners

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 203
221 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030015

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In the 21st century, globalization, mobility, and innovative use of technologies have brought unprecedented opportunities for connectivity. These developments have led to changes in sociolinguistic patterns, and the ways in which languages are used in society (Blommaert, 2010; Garcı´ a, 2011). The use of the English language has become so widespread, that it is now considered to be the world’s lingua franca or global language leading countries to take a cosmopolitan view of language (Garcı´ a, 2011; Ricento, 2015). This means they perceive knowing languages like English as facilitating global communication and social mobility (May, 2014). Consequently, countries have implemented language policies which encourage the study of two or more languages in schools and universities to educate bi/multilingual citizens who can work and communicate across borders and thereby improve the economies of these countries. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the emirate of Abu Dhabi, where this self-study is situated, introduced bilingual education in K-12 schools for this very reason. The Director General of the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC), Dr Mugheer Khamis Al Khaili, noted “English is the international language of business and science and is central to Abu Dhabi achieving its vision of economic growth and diversification” (Kader, 2009). To achieve their language policies, countries like the UAE have begun efforts to improve and increase the preparation of teachers to teach languages such as English in their educational systems (Kader, 2009; Ricento, 2000; Tollefson, 2012). Expatriate English language (EL) teacher educators, in monolingual institutions of higher education, who are required to teach in and/or teach English either ignore the mother tongues of their students (Preece, 2009; Safford & Kelly, 2010), or are faced with the dilemma of knowing how to support the English language proficiency development of their preservice teachers while affirming their bilingual and cultural identities. The purpose of this self-study is to explore how I reframed my teaching from a focus on solely supporting the English language proficiency development of bilingual Arabic-English Emirati preservice teachers, to becoming more culturally responsive and affirming their bilingual and cultural identities. Initially, I asked myself “how do I frame and reframe my teaching to support the English language learning development of my Emirati preservice teachers?” then progressed to asking the questions “how can I, and how did I affirm the bilingual identities of my Emirati preservice teachers while supporting their English language proficiency development?”

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE To explore my story in the UAE, I draw from the self-study of teacher education practices and sociocultural theory as theoretical frameworks. I also draw

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on the research on critical literacy, culturally responsive pedagogy, bilingual and English language learning, and the preparation of bilingual preservice teachers, which form the basis of my teaching. Self-study serves as both the theoretical and methodological framework of this study. Through self-studies teacher educators explore and improve their teaching and student learning. Dilemmas, tensions, and contradictions spur self-studies (Loughran & Northfield, 1998), leading teacher educators to ask themselves, “how can I improve my practice?” (Whitehead, 1989, p. 41), and then systematically examine “their own learning beliefs, practices, processes, contexts and relationships” (Berry & Hamilton, 2013, para. 1). Self-study is reframing; the systematic reflection of teacher educators to “open themselves to new interpretations and to create different strategies for educating students” (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 1998, p. 2). Consequently, self-studies are personal, practical, transformational, and public. They are public because they are conducted with the intention of making the work available to teachers and teacher educators “for deliberation, further testing and judgement” (LaBoskey, 2004, p. 860). I use sociocultural theory as a framework because it is crucial in any exploration of language and literacy. Both are social processes that inform each other (Botelho & Rudman, 2009; Graff, 2009). Sociocultural theory considers the social, cultural, political, and contextual factors that influence social interactions among students and their teachers and how students learn. It views “learning … as socially constructed and mutually negotiated” (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Nieto, 2010, p. 4). The following section discusses research and theories on teaching literacy and language and how they informed this study.

Research on Teaching Literacy and Language This self-study draws on theories which form the basis of my teaching. These include cultural responsive pedagogy (Gay, 2010; Villegas & Lucas, 2002), critical literacy, and theories for teaching English language and bilingual learners. Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Culturally responsive pedagogy is teaching which recognizes student cultures as assets and infuses their knowledge and ways of being into the curriculum (Gay, 2010). Gay stated, Culturally responsive teaching is … contingent on … seeing cultural differences as assets; creating caring learning communities where culturally different individuals and heritages are valued; using cultural knowledge of ethnically diverse cultures, families, and communities to guide curriculum development, classroom climates, instructional strategies, and relationships with students. (p. 31)

Culturally responsive teachers are socioculturally conscious, affirm the diverse backgrounds of their students, act as agents of change and provide constructivist

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learning and scaffolds for the children they teach. Closely linked to the theory of culturally responsive teaching is critical literacy which became central to how I taught literacy and language. Critical Literacy Critical literacy involves encouraging students to use language to question the everyday world … interrogate the relationship between language and power … analyze popular culture and media, and to understand how power relationships are socially constructed … (Lewison, Leland, & Harste, 2008, p. 3)

This study adds to the body of research on self-study, cultural responsiveness, and critical literacy by describing how a deeper understanding of these theories led to the reframing of my teaching. Bilingual Preservice Teachers For the purposes of this study, bilingual preservice teachers are defined as teacher candidates whose L1 or mother tongue is a language other than English, and are learning to teach in English. This self-study adds to the research on support for bilingual preservice teachers. These studies recommend that teacher education programs offer preservice teachers programmatic support to improve both their language expertise and pedagogical skills as they pursue their degrees (Brady & Gulikers, 2004; Moussu & Llurda, 2008; Riesky, 2013; Selvi, 2014). This includes creating safe spaces for candidates to learn and practice English, focusing on strengths they bring to programs and schools, carefully crafted practica in schools, and situating their learning within a sociocultural context so they may acquire a deeper understanding of teaching contexts and “local cultures of learning” (Selvi, 2014, p. 594). Similarly, research studies have also pointed out the need for teacher education programs and universities which are generally monolingual, to draw on the linguistic or language resources of their bilingual learners. Discussing institutions of higher education based in English-speaking countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (USA), scholars have noted that bi/multilingualism of students is frequently ignored, that they are often marginalized and regarded from a deficit perspective (Coleman, 2016; Marshall, 2009; Martin, 2009; Preece, 2009; Safford & Kelly, 2010). In contrast, they view mother tongue languages as a resource (TorresGuzman, 2007), and argue for colleges and teacher education programs to legitimize bi/multilingual students by giving them chances to create dialogic, heteroglossic, and heterocultural spaces where their voices can be heard (Coleman, 2016; Flores & Schissel, 2014; Rodriguez & Hye-sun, 2011), and where they are given opportunities to use their mother tongue languages (Bismilla, 2011). These mother tongue languages should not be viewed as less prestigious than languages such as English, or only as a support for learning English. Students L1, L2, and/or L3 should be viewed as supporting each other, and part of the

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capital that bi/multilingual learners bring to education (Torres-Guzman, 2007; van der Walt, 2013). As language learners themselves, bi/multilingual preservice teachers are uniquely positioned to teach language learners no matter their context and their strengths in this regard can make significant contributions in teaching children language. This self-study contributes to the body of research on teacher preparation in monolingual universities, and internationally, by exploring preservice teacher preparation in a Middle-Eastern context, giving examples of how expatriate teacher educators can draw on the linguistic resources of their students. The next section of this study considers best practices for teaching language learners such as using children’s literature, sheltered language instruction, and translanguaging. Teaching English and Bilingual Learners Researchers have long emphasized the importance of teaching and learning language and literacy in a holistic manner. Integrating speaking, listening, viewing, reading, and writing has been proven to strengthen learner proficiency in these skills (Hinkel, 2006; Richards & Rodgers, 2014; Tompkins, Campbell, Green, & Smith, 2014). Children’s literature is an effective tool for teaching literacy and language in a holistic manner (Hadaway & Young, 2009; Winch, Johnston, March, Ljundgahl, & Holliday, 2010). Linguistic benefits of children’s literature include syntactic development, acquisition of language and literacy, and comprehensible input (Krashen, 2007; Sowa & Lacina, 2011). Additionally, research studies support the use of sheltered instruction to teach academic language and subject matter to English language learners to improve their academic language proficiency (Echevarrı´ a, Vogt, & Short, 2013; Hansen-Thomas, 2008). Researchers in bilingual education have been advocating for a move away from monolingual approaches to teaching bi/multilingual learners to approaches which promote flexible bilingualism in the form of translanguaging practices. Translanguaging Translanguaging refers to the flexible use of linguistic resources to make meaning. Instead of viewing languages as autonomous and bound, translanguaging focuses on the practices of bilingual or multilingual children and their ability to use their receptive and productive skills to make meaning in two or more languages (Baker, 2011; Garcia & Wei, 2014). Translanguaging enables students to expand thinking and understanding through reading and writing bi/multilingual texts (Baker, 2011). When translanguaging is used in classrooms, bi/multilingual learning is maximized because students draw from all their existing language skills and resources to make meaning (Baker, 2011; Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Garcia, 2009; Garcı´ a & Leiva, 2014). Translation, bi/multilingual projects, and reading texts in one language and responding in another are examples of translanguaging strategies. However, translanguaging is more than

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just classroom pedagogical strategies (Baker, 2011; Canagarajah, 2011a, 2011b; Garcı´ a & Leiva, 2014). Since language is closely tied to culture and identity, translanguaging practices also recognize and affirm the importance and centrality of their mother tongues to bilingual learners (Bismilla, 2011; Creese & Blackledge, 2015; Wei, 2011). “The creation of space for students’ mother tongues in college classrooms is an ethical imperative, since their mother tongues are integral components of their identities” (Bismilla, 2011, p. 1). Similarly, Wei (2011) stated, translanguaging “creates a social space for the multilingual language user by bringing together different dimensions of their personal history, experience and environment” (p. 1223). Finally, translanguaging is transformative because it moves people away from privileging one language over another (Garcı´ a & Leiva, 2014). Translanguaging is relevant in bi/multilingual contexts such as the UAE, and this study adds to the research on self-studies in these contexts as well as to the growing body of work in translanguaging internationally (Carroll & van den Hoven, 2017; Mazak & Carroll, 2016). Self-studies on culturally and linguistically diverse preservice teachers tend to focus on participants who study, live, and/or work in the West or in Asia. Very few, if at all, have explored teacher education in the Middle-East, and specifically in the UAE. This self-study adds to existing research on self-study and language learning, and makes public the tensions and contradictions inherent in teaching bilingual preservice teachers in the UAE as an expatriate teacher educator. The next section describes the context and methodology of the study.

CONTEXT The United Arab Emirates Linguistic Landscape The UAE is a loose federation of seven Emirates located near the Persian Gulf. Emiratis make up 12% of a population of over 9 million. A variety of languages are spoken in the UAE including Arabic, the official language, English, Hindi, Urdu, and Tagalog. Emiratis contend with a triglossic situation regarding Arabic. This means they speak a colloquial regional dialect of Arabic; speak and write Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is taught in schools, and used in official contexts; and learn classical Arabic, the language of the Quran (Baker & Jones, 1998). Educational Landscape When I arrived in the Emirates in 2007, English was taught as a subject and content area subjects were taught in Arabic in K-12 public schools. Student experiences learning Arabic and English were traditional, involving rote level drill and practice (Moussly, 2010). Consequently, students had low levels of

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English language proficiency. To address this issue, and to introduce more current forms of teaching, in 2009 ADEC, a supra-governmental agency in charge of K-12 education in the emirate of Abu Dhabi introduced a student-centered bilingual education program as part of its educational reform efforts (Gallagher, 2011). One aim of the New School Model (NSM) was to develop “bi-literate learners in Arabic and English” (ADEC Policy Manual, 2014, p. 110). The curriculum required mathematics and science be taught in English. To support English learning in Abu Dhabi public schools, ADEC hired over 400 teachers from Western countries such as the Australia, the USA, and the UK. My Teaching Context In this section, I describe my teaching context in the UAE and how my experiences and the educational context led to the systematic reflection and continual framing and reframing of my teaching practices. I taught from 2007 to 2015 in what was initially a women’s university. The particular university aims to produce graduates who are fluently bilingual in both Arabic and English. It provides an intensive English program for students whose English language proficiency scores are low. Students take required courses in Arabic and Islamic studies, but courses in the majors are taught in English mainly by expatriate faculty who do not speak Arabic. Below, I share a vignette to illustrate teaching events which were catalysts to the first changes in my pedagogical practices. My first semester. My course work for the first semester was reading and writing intensive. Preservice teachers wrote journal entries, prepared lesson plans, conducted micro-teaching lessons, wrote chapter summaries, reading responses to picture books, and essays on various topics. I had been told that the preservice teachers struggled with English, but did not realize how difficult they found it to express themselves in written English until I started grading their assignments. I tried using some classroom time to teach language mechanics, but it took time away from course content. I made sure all my rubrics assessed language and writing conventions. I discovered the traditional “drill and kill” grammar and cloze activities came very easy to them, “we know this Miss,” they said. Yet this knowledge did not transfer into essay writing. I read drafts, reminded them to use spellcheck, and supported self and peer-editing. During micro-teaching activities, I noticed preservice teachers struggled with question formation, pronunciation, and verb tenses. I modeled and we practiced forming and asking questions, and reading aloud with fluency. Through informal feedback from preservice teachers at the end of the semester, I discovered that they found the textbooks hard to read. By the end of the semester, both the students and I were exhausted from the amount of work we had done! Reflecting on my first semester I asked myself “how do I reframe my teaching to support the English language learning of my Emirati preservice teachers?”

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Participants I taught Emirati preservice teachers courses in language, literacy, and children’s and adolescent literature. All of them spoke Arabic as their L1. Most of the preservice teachers were TESOL and early childhood majors who were expected to teach their subject matter in English. I described these Emirati women as “respectful, funny, serious, shy, bold, feisty, curious, and intelligent” (Sowa & Schmidt, 2016, p. 221), and noted that they … were very technologically savvy and often had two to three of the latest smart phones as well as tablets. The internet connects them to the world. They watch … movies and television, … use Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and What’s app. They were an absolute joy and delight to teach. (Sowa, 2016, p. 83)

Relating their experiences in learning to write in English in school, preservice teachers said English learning often consisted of copying and memorizing paragraphs written on the blackboard. I quickly realized their language proficiency needed to be supported and improved along with their learning of pedagogy and content. In the meantime, the educational landscape of the emirate of Abu Dhabi was shifting with the introduction of the NSM, and these changes as well as other events led to the reflection, and reexamination and of my pedagogical practices in the preparation of Emirati teachers. The introduction of the NSM in the 2009
2010 academic year led to higher stakes for moving preservice teachers along the language expertise continuum. To teach English in grades 1
6 in Abu Dhabi schools, ADEC required preservice teachers to achieve a 6.5 or above in the international English language testing system (IELTS). Other majors needed a minimum of 5.5 (Afsan, 2012). The IELTS scale consists of nine bands starting from band one or non-user of English to band nine or expert user. Many of our preservice teachers struggled to achieve a 5.5. Although the council wanted to hire as many Emirati teachers as possible, if they did not achieve these scores, preservice teachers were unlikely to be hired. Next, I describe the self-study of teacher education practices which I used as a methodological framework for this study.

METHODS Since the aim of self-study is a systematic examination and reflection of one’s teaching practices, I used qualitative methods to collect and analyze my data. Qualitative research is well suited for conducting a self-study because it explores how people make sense of their experiences and the world around them (Merriam, 2009). My data consisted of course syllabi, in-class assignments, informal course feedback, transcripts from literature circles, and reflection papers. Other sources of data included published research and conference presentations related to my work in the Emirates. I examined my course syllabi,

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assignments, and notes to create a timeline and gain a sense of the changes I made over the years. I then coded the data and looking for patterns and themes (Merriam, 2009). I also shared my interpretations with my critical friend Cynthia. My analysis of data indicated that there were two phases in the reframing of my teaching. These phases were not distinct or clear cut. In phase I, I focused solely on monolingual approaches to strengthening preservice teacher English language proficiency development; however, I had implemented culturally responsive practices like asking preservice teachers to write stories for and about Emirati children. In phase II, I started using bilingual approaches and placed more emphasis on drawing on preservice teacher linguistic resources and cultures.

FINDINGS In this section, I describe phases I and II of my teaching.

Phase I: Monolingual Approaches The new requirements of ADEC regarding English language proficiency led to a push by college faculty to find ways in which to improve preservice teacher English language development. I drew on sheltered language instruction and developed assignments which integrated the four language skills and viewing to help strengthen preservice teacher language proficiency. Sheltered Instruction Designed for content area lessons for English language learners in US schools, sheltered instruction promotes the use of teaching strategies which “lower the linguistic demand of lessons, without compromising the integrity or rigor of the subject matter” (http://ell.nwresd.org/node/42). I used the sheltered instruction observation protocol (SIOP) which emphasizes the explicit teaching of both content and language (Echevarrı´ a et al., 2013), and broadened the definition of academic language to include the pedagogical classroom language teachers needed to know and use in classrooms. I modeled writing language and content objectives, discussed them explicitly, and required preservice teachers to include both in their lesson planning and teaching. To address their challenges with reading textbooks, I used simple research articles or summaries from websites such as Reading Rockets (www.readingrockets.org). To scaffold their reading of textbook chapters, preservice teachers completed Questioning Answer Relationship (QAR) and/or Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review (SQ3R) forms. I also used read alouds to help strengthen preservice teacher pedagogical skills as well as their English language proficiency.

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Read Alouds Teaching preservice teachers how to conduct read alouds was at the core of all the courses I taught. In every class, I read a picture book as a warm-up activity. Through read alouds, I introduced preservice teachers to the variety of children’s picture books available, explicitly modeled fluent reading, and the ways in which fiction and nonfiction picture books could be used to teach language, content, and literacy. I realized early on in this phase that there were very few books written in English based in the Gulf region and even fewer about Emirati children written by Emirati authors, so I used books which were about Arab cultures or Islam which the preservice teachers could readily identify with. These included Silent Music by James Rumford (2008) which tells the story of an Iraqi boy in war-torn Baghdad who loves writing Arabic calligraphy; and Naomi Shihab Nye’s (1997b) Sitti’s Secrets, about an Arab-American girl who visits her grandmother in the Middle-East. Preservice teachers learned how to select vocabulary, ask predicting, inferential, factual, and higher-level questions, and to connect texts to children’s lives. They were carefully prepared to conduct read alouds with children in schools as part of course-related field experiences. Before starting their practica, they wrote lesson plans, practiced reading aloud in class, recorded and listened to themselves reading aloud at home. I required the preservice teachers to listen to their recorded read alouds, and reflect on their fluency, pronunciation, grammar, and question formation, so they were more mindful of their language use. During the 3-week practicum they conducted one to two read alouds and worked with children in guided reading groups. I observed their read alouds and gave them oral and written feedback. After their read alouds, preservice teachers wrote reflective essays on their strengths and areas needing improvement. In the next section, I discuss how events during phase I led to my experiencing dissonance between my espoused beliefs about culturally responsive pedagogy and my monolingual approaches to teaching. Emerging Tensions In 2008, my critical friend and former colleague Cynthia and I began to hold online literature discussions between her preservice teachers in the USA and my preservice teachers. When we started analyzing our data in 2009
2010, I began to recognize the contradictions in the ways I was teaching. Our goal in developing the literature circles was to help preservice teachers become more globally aware. We wanted them to appreciate that people have different ways of being and seeing the world, and to learn about and from each other through reading and discussing multicultural books which focused on social issues. Additionally, we hoped the discussions would help “support the English language development of Emirati preservice teachers and help US American preservice teachers recognize levels of language proficiency among language learners” (Sowa & Schmidt, 2014, p. 42). We collaborated to achieve

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Table 1. Book

Selection of Western and Middle-Eastern Chapter Books.

Author

Description

Tasting the Sky

Ibtisam Barakat (2007)

Habibi

Naomi Lyiana moves from the USA to Shahib Nye Jerusalem, her father’s birthplace. She learns about herself and the new (1997a) worlds and cultures around her.

The Color of Lynn My Words Joseph (2000) Seedfolks

Paul Fleischman (1997)

Mame Marrying Malcolm Farrell Murgatroyed (1995)

A memoir of Ibtisam Barakat who describes her life as a child after the Six Day Palestinian Israeli War.

Social Issues War, loss, power of literacy, and language. Coming of age, identity, culture, language, Palestinian Israeli conflict.

Ana Rosa, a girl who lives in the fictional Dominican Republic, discovers her words determine the lives of people in her village.

The power of literacy and language to transform lives.

Thirteen characters who live in an impoverished part of Cleveland, Ohio, narrate this story. The story describes how these characters, young, old and from different ethnic groups, bond through planting a community garden.

Building community, the power of community, friendship, loss, immigrant lives.

Hannah dislikes Malcolm who is the most unpopular boy in school. Things change when he becomes a good friend of her brother who suffers from muscular dystrophy.

Illness, disability, friendship.

the above by introducing critical literacy in our courses. We provided scaffolds to help preservice teachers interrogate texts when they read texts on their own and when they participated in the discussions. To be culturally responsive, we purposefully included books which were situated in Western and Middle-Eastern contexts so preservice teachers could identify with the books. The discussions gave preservice teachers the opportunity to read and respond to multicultural literature, and to serve as cultural informants to each other (Sowa & Schmidt, 2014). The social issues in the books included building community, the power of literacy and language to transform lives, war, illness, and disability. Table 1 shows a selection of the multicultural chapter books used for the literature circles. Literature circle discussions about the power of language and literacy elicited comments from the Emiratis about themselves as speakers of Arabic and their love for their language and culture. Comments they made about Arabic included: It is our language, we have to maintain it. It is the root of our identity, if we lose it we will eventually lose our identity. It is the language of the Quran.

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Preservice teachers also revealed that they perceived the emphasis on English at the university had led to the gradual loss of their proficiency in Arabic. The following comment by one teacher echoes the perspective of many of her peers, “I used to be an A student in Arabic, but since I’ve been … taking courses in English … I think my Arabic language is getting weak.” These responses served as catalysts for reflection, critical examination, and consequently a reconceptualization of my teaching and a turn toward affirming preservice teacher culture, biliteracy, and bilingual identities by using culturally responsive teaching and translanguaging practices.

Phase II: Affirming Preservice Teacher Bilingual Identities Framing the teaching of reading in general and the literature circles more specifically, through a critical literacy lens, and informal feedback from preservice teachers, led to my awareness that by using monolingual approaches to teaching I was inadvertently privileging English over Arabic. This recognition led to three major changes in my teaching. First, I worked harder at building relationships, which is very important in Emirati culture. Even though all the preservice teachers were Emirati, they came from different ethnic groups or tribes and backgrounds. I created a classroom climate where we learned about each other, “our cultures, religion, and ethnicities. We learned about and questioned our ways of being, and our cultural differences as well as similarities” (Sowa, 2016, p. 91). Second, I unpacked my teaching, explicitly discussing how course assignments targeted preservice teacher biliteracy, and stressing the advantages they have as bilingual Arabic English speakers. We also discussed the importance of teaching mother tongue languages, bilingual education, and the political and sociocultural implications of hiring Western teachers to teach English. Third, I developed and/or adapted assignments which drew on preservice teacher linguistic repertoires, and encouraged them to use different modalities to express themselves. I continued to support preservice teachers’ English proficiency development, but shifted away from using solely monolingual approaches. Examples of assignments I developed or modified during this phase include using of picture books written in Arabic, Arabic English book reviews, digital autobiographies, preservice teacher development of children’s literature picture books, and poetry. Incorporation of Arabic Picture Books By 2010, I had discovered the existence of an Emirati publishing company devoted to publishing quality children’s picture books in Arabic. An Emirati colleague and friend Lubna helped me select and buy many of these books for the college library. I assigned these books to preservice teachers to read themselves, and to read to children during their practica, “emphasizing the need for

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children’s literature to serve as ‘mirrors and windows and sliding glass doors’ (Bishop, 1990, p. ix) to the children who read them” (Sowa, 2016, p. 20). The discovery of these quality picture books led to the development of translanguaging tasks such as Arabic English book reviews, which gave preservice teachers the opportunity to further engage with these texts. Arabic English Book Reviews I developed an Arabic English book review translanguaging assignment which required preservice teachers to read Arabic and English picture books, and then write short reviews of these books in both languages. I graded the English reviews and Lubna graded the Arabic reviews. A qualitative survey we conducted about preservice teachers’ experiences translanguaging indicated they had positive attitudes toward completing these translanguaging tasks (Sowa & Al Marzooqi, 2015). We found that 40% agreed and 35% strongly agreed that translanguaging activities helped them strengthen their proficiency in both languages (Bismilla, 2011). Forty percent agreed being able to read in English and writing a response in Arabic and vice versa demonstrated full understanding of a topic. Positive comments preservice teachers made included: I would prefer to do some assignment [sic] in both languages because after graduation I want to have the ability to demonstrate what I learned in both languages. I like to complete assignments in English and Arabic, it helps me to improve in both languages.

Comments from participants who did not agree with translanguaging tasks mostly centered around their struggles with Arabic. One such comment was, “I would not want to, because I am not good in Arabic.” Similarly, another student wrote, “I do not write well in Arabic and I got [sic] some bad spelling mistakes.” While some students pointed toward their perceived lack of proficiency in Arabic, others stated they preferred an emphasis on English to strengthen their English language proficiency development: “I would not prefer to complete some assignments in Arabic because I think my Arabic language is very good and I need more training in English language.” Digital Autobiographies In phase II, I developed course work which was less reading and writing-intensive and provided opportunities for preservice teachers to use multimodal resources to demonstrate their learning. For example, instead of requiring them to write literacy and language autobiographies I asked them to develop digital literacy autobiographies using iMovie. Preservice teachers explored their experiences learning Arabic and English at home and at school for this assignment. They were required to narrate their stories and I encouraged them to use Arabic, English, and other semiotic modes such as clip art, music, images, and photographs to tell their stories (Sowa, 2014).

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Children’s Literature Books To develop a children’s literature book based on Emirati culture, I asked preservice teachers to draw on their everyday lives to tell a story for and about Emirati children. In phase II, this assignment was slightly modified and I encouraged preservice teachers to use some Arabic. We used mentor texts to learn how to incorporate Arabic words and their meanings into their stories. In her story, describing Emirati traditions and rituals for drinking coffee, Sara1 writes, “Arabic coffee (qahwa) is part of my Emirati tradition and hospitality. The Arabic coffee pot (dallah) comes with small cups (finjan) and dates (Tamar).” Hawa describes a regular weekend afternoon spent at her grandmother’s house with the women of her immediate and extended family, The majlis becomes like a party room. They drink qawah (Arabic coffee) with halwa (popular sweet) and talk to each other like people who have not seen each other for a long time. (Sowa & Lacina, 2011, p. 396)

Poetry Learning about and writing poetry is another strategy I used to affirm preservice teacher bilingual identities, strengthen their language proficiency as well as model how to teach poetry in schools. As another translanguaging task, at the beginning of the unit on poetry, preservice teachers brought their favorite Arabic poems to share in class. They each read their poem in Arabic and then explained in English the meaning of the poem, patterns the poet used, and why they liked it. I introduced patterned poetry
haiku, diamante, cinquain, I am, and bio poems, which help English language learners to understand and use grammar in context, and require a more sophisticated use of language. Diamante poems and cinquains focus on using of parts of speech
nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Using patterned structures helps learners to express their imagination and thoughts in an organized manner (Polette, 2012). Bio and I am poems gave preservice teachers the opportunity to reach into their lives to express themselves. This gave me insight into their “funds of knowledge” (Gonza´lez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) and I used this information to build relationships and inform my teaching.

INSIGHTS AND IMPLICATIONS In this self-study, I make public the tensions, dilemmas, and contradictions (Loughran & Northfield, 1998) I experienced teaching bilingual Emirati preservice teachers, and describe how I reframed and reconceptualized my teaching practices (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 1998) to affirm their cultures, biliteracy, and bilingual identities by tapping into their linguistic and cultural capital, while supporting their English language proficiency development. My reflections led

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to the recognition that I had ignored the linguistic strengths preservice teachers brought to my class, but most importantly this realization led to changes in my teaching. Preservice teachers found “carefully crafted practica” (Selvi, 2014, p. 594) consisting high leverage practices in schools (Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009) to be beneficial both linguistically and pedagogically. However, I cannot claim to have improved preservice teacher English language proficiency. I used various strategies to help them improve their English proficiency in both phases, which was essential if they were to become fluently bilingual and employed by ADEC. Informal surveys and reflection papers from both phases indicated preservice teachers perceived their language had improved. Preservice teachers taught during phase I commented, “The more we read books, the more we get inspired. Reading enriched my language,” and “I learned powerful writing skills.” In phase II, preservice teachers indicated most perceived translanguaging activities to be beneficial, and Arabic a scaffold which helped them build proficiency in both languages (Bismilla, 2011). They stated, “Assignments in Arabic and English build our cognition and thinking”; “It is better to develop both languages rather than English only.” Preservice teacher comments indicated, as does research on bilingualism, that language is inextricably tied to culture and that these practices affirm the importance of L1 in preservice teacher lives (Bismilla, 2011; Creese & Blackledge, 2015; Wei, 2011). Bismilla (2011) stated, “the creation of space for students’ mother tongues … is an ethical imperative, … their mother tongues are integral components of their identities” (p. 1). Learning about my context and building relationships with preservice teachers helped me became more socioculturally conscious (Villegas & Lucas, 2002), more able to effectively implement culturally responsive pedagogy (Gay, 2013), and create classroom environments which gave preservice teachers the space to draw from their strengths, their “funds of knowledge” (Gonza´lez et al., 2005), creativity and linguistic repertoires to learn and improve their biliteracy and pedagogical skills. Bismilla (2011) stated that using L1 in college classrooms is beneficial for students and teachers. Looking back at my experiences in the UAE, I realize the recognition of tensions and contradictions in my teaching; working to address these contradictions and effecting my espoused beliefs, “made me a better teacher, teacher educator and a more self-aware person” (Sowa, 2016, p. 91). This self-study describes how I approached teaching preservice teachers in the context of the UAE. It raises questions about how best to prepare bilingual preservice teachers in monolingual universities. English language teacher educators need to continue to have conversations about preparing bilingual preservice teachers, supporting their English language learning, and affirming their bilingual identities. Working with university administrators to ensure programmatic support of bilingual preservice teachers is also important. English language teacher educators can ask the questions below of themselves and each

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other to help develop new and different strategies for educating bilingual preservice teachers. • Who are my bi/multilingual preservice teachers? • What can I do to give them opportunities to demonstrate their “funds of knowledge?” (Gonza´lez et al., 2005). • Does my coursework draw on their linguistic repertoires? • Are there translanguaging practices I can incorporate in my course work? Answering these questions will serve to enrich EL teacher educators and all the preservice teachers they teach.

NOTE 1. All the names used in this study are pseudonyms.

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CYCLES OF RESEARCH: A SELF-STUDY OF TEACHING RESEARCH IN A SHELTERED ENGLISH INSTRUCTION COURSE Elizabeth Robinson ABSTRACT In the current political environment where nativist sentiments are driving policies that overtly discriminate against immigrants and refugees, most notably Muslims, it is crucial to prepare teachers who will value and serve all students regardless of their ethnicity, language, or race. It has never been more important than now to bring the stories, experiences, and languages of all the people who make up this country into our classrooms. This study employs self-study of teacher education practices to question how teacher educators might improve our practice to better meet the needs of the diverse students in our classrooms, most specifically English Language Learners (ELLs). Self-study allowed me to engage in cycles of design and analysis to examine how well I implemented critical research as praxis as a tool to prepare students in my Sheltered English Immersion class to critically engage in theories and practices of teaching ELLs. Keywords: Self-study; praxis; SEI; ELLs; teacher preparation; critical teacher research

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 223
240 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030016

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INTRODUCTION In the current political environment where nativist sentiments are driving policies that overtly discriminate against immigrants and refugees, it is crucial to prepare teachers who will value and serve all students regardless of their ethnicity, language, or race. It has never been more important than now to bring the stories, experiences, and languages of all the people who make up this country into our classrooms. Throughout the history of our country, the challenge of educating English Language Learners (ELLs) has been met by our schools and our legal system. The future is not so certain. The majority of “Americans” would not be in this country if it were not for immigrant ancestors. The US is a “living nation of immigrants” (Nieto, 1992, p. 333). Federal legislation, stemming back to the passage of the 1968 Bilingual Education Act, has targeted the education of linguistic minorities in the US (Crawford, 1989). However, inequitable access to resources persists and both our schools and our legal system are still a far way off from doing an adequate job of supporting the academic experiences of ELLs. The lack of educational services for ELLs has become a civil rights issue and a topic for federal legislation. For instance, Massachusetts was found to be in violation of the civil rights of its ELLs by placing vast numbers of these students in classrooms with teachers not qualified to meet their needs (Zubrzycki, 2011). As of July 1, 2014, in order to obtain licensure to teach in Massachusetts all teacher candidates must have an SEI (Sheltered English Immersion) endorsement. Teacher education programs were required to develop SEI course/s that had to meet state approval to prepare all teacher candidates regardless of content area, to work with ELLs. Massachusetts is the contextual background for this study but it also serves as an example of the challenges across the US in preparing teachers to meet the diverse needs of the growing population of ELLs within a national context of increasingly standardized curriculum and testing, and xenophobia. This study employs self-study of teacher education practices to question how teacher educators might improve our practice to address these challenges.

PURPOSE Through self-study, this chapter addresses my concern that graduates from the teacher preparation program in which I work were not adequately prepared to address the issues of diversity that arise in urban schools, including the needs of ELLs. This concern is compounded as our placement of teachers tends to be in Boston Public Schools and the majority of students in our teacher preparation program are white, native English speakers. Our teacher preparation program is small, graduating only a handful of teachers each year in all subject matters with initial licenses in middle and secondary school teaching. As the professor

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mainly responsible for all teacher preparation at our university, I wanted to assess how well I was preparing teachers who would operate from an assetbased approach (Campos, Delgado, & Soto Huerta, 2011) in working with all students. For me, “asset-based” instruction requires teachers to acknowledge, respect, and assess the abilities and skills of a student to determine the existing knowledge on which instruction can be built. Holding myself accountable for operating from an asset-based approach as well as modeling this approach is important for me professionally and for my goals of meeting the needs of my students and the ELLs my students will eventually teach. As a teacher and a scholar, I value research as a tool to assess and analyze how my practices meet my goals. I conducted a self-study implementing iterative cycles of research and reflection across the whole process of designing and teaching an SEI course to allow our teacher preparation program to meet the state requirement for providing all new teachers with an SEI endorsement. My overarching goal within this course was to teach and model what I hoped was critical research as praxis. Drawing on Patti Lather’s (1986) definition of research as praxis as being a change-enhancing, interactive, contextualized approach to knowledge building, grounded in respect for human capacity helped me to focus on the components I wanted to incorporate into my SEI course. I added “critical” to the definition drawing on the work of Paulo Freire (1970) and his focus on power and critiquing the structures of power. I wanted to ensure that the knowledge generated in my SEI course would question the dominant paradigms and structures that so often do harm to non-dominant students. I wanted to teach research practices in my SEI classroom to build the knowledge necessary for my students to meet the diverse needs of their potential students. Self-study allowed me to engage in cycles of design and analysis to examine if the research I implemented in my course could be considered critical research as praxis. My overarching question in this study asked what research practices best met the course goals of preparing students to critically engage in theories and practices of teaching ELLs in urban schools. More specifically I asked: • What language did I use in my syllabus, class agendas, assignments and journaling to construct ideas about research and research practices? • How did I teach and model critical praxis in the SEI class? • Where did I see evidence of critical praxis?

THEORETICAL FRAMING OF SELF-STUDY The theoretical underpinning of this study began with an understanding of the intersection of participatory research methods and self-study (Paugh &

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Robinson, 2009). This joining of methods can be demonstrated through iterative cycles of design and analysis. Cycles of critical inquiry enable all participants in the practice of teacher education to enter into democratic conversations that have local as well as broader implications. This is the point of intersection between the methodological traditions of Action Research/Participatory Action Research (AR/PAR), Practitioner Inquiry (PI) and Self-study. (p. 90)

Bringing participatory approaches together with self-study highlights issues of power and privilege and continually questions who produces knowledge and for whom. My previous work on research as praxis (Robinson, 2012) informs the research I conduct; and I argue that a theory of critical praxis when joined with self-study addresses the very issues of knowledge, power, and privilege central to my questions.

Praxis and Self-study Transformation of the world as it currently exists is the goal of praxis. Freire (1993) defines praxis as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (p. 51). In my work of teaching and researching, my goals are for the knowledge generated, the questions asked, and the actions taken to have some small impact on existing dominant structures. Like praxis, self-study’s aim is to “provoke, challenge, and illuminate rather than conform and settle” (Samaras, Hicks, & Garvey Berger, 2004, p. 908). Self-study is a method I can use to hold myself accountable to conducting research as praxis. To test that this praxis is also critical, and attends to issues of power, I draw on Kress’ (2011) work on critical praxis research, which relies on the interplay of identity, context, and purpose. I draw on feminist poststructural theories to understand the relationship between my identity, the contexts in which I work and research, and the purpose of my work and research. Feminist poststructuralism helps me make sense of these three components as being interconnected, and in a constant state of being informed by larger factors or discourses while also informing discourses. The writing of Elizabeth St. Pierre (2000) on feminist poststructuralism captures the importance of questioning and pushing back against dominant power structures by locating and recognizing knowledge generation and power within each individual. “Poststructural feminists believe the struggles of women are local and specific rather than totalizing. Relations of power are complex and shifting. Resistance and freedom are daily, ongoing practices” (St. Pierre, 2000, p. 493). It is especially important for me to point out that I am not studying myself as an essentialized or fixed self. The openness of self-study allows for the “self” I am now to analyze the relationships between contexts, my purposes, and myself in the fall 2014 when I taught the SEI course.

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My understanding and use of praxis comes primarily from two sources. First, I am very influenced by the work I did as a research and teaching assistant in a federally funded school-university program called ACCELA (Access to Critical Content and English Language Acquisition). This program included an on-site, inquiry-based master’s program, which supported the academic language development of ELLs. The ACCELA mission statement explains praxis as engaging in theory, practice, research, and action simultaneously to bring about social change through and for education. It is necessary in this work to examine one’s own role and the contextual system in which one’s work is embedded (Gebhard & Willett, 2008). Second, as mentioned above, I draw on Patti Lather’s (1986) work on research as praxis to further define praxis as the interactive approach to knowledge building that brings about change, is contextualized, and grounded in respect for human capacity. These components of praxis align with Barnes’ (1998) characterization of self-study as being open, collaborative, and reframing. Through dialogue and collaboration with others, researchers can frame and reframe a problem or situation from different perspectives (Samaras & Freese, 2009). Self-study is a reframing lens that allows me to investigate my own attempts at praxis.

DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY Designing Cycles The SEI course that is the focus of this chapter was designed between the fall 2013 and when it was taught in the fall 2014. This course was approved by the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) as fulfilling the SEI endorsement requirements. In order to study my development and teaching of the SEI course, I drew on previous work (Paugh & Robinson, 2009) to study my own practices through critical cycles of design and analysis. I modeled my study on the framework that was proposed in the Paugh and Robinson chapter for bringing together the processes of self-study and participatory research. …as we design initial cycles of research we “problematize” our practice in relationship to others. That is, we develop questions concerning its “purposes, participants and contexts” and choose methods of data collection and analysis to structure our study (realizing that additional questions, methods, and participants may be needed as our research progresses through various cycles). (p. 91)

I designed two cycles of research in order to “problematize” my practice. My first cycle was initiated by the need to design an SEI course for all graduates of my University’s teacher preparation program, and my second cycle examined the teaching of the SEI course. I analyzed myself in relationship to others keeping in mind the contexts of my own classroom and the macro contexts in which

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CYCLE I SEI Course Development (Fall 2013–Fall 2015) Analysis: thematic coding CDA

Purpose: incorporating critical research as praxis into SEI course design Participants & Contexts: Author in interaction with • MA DESE • MA Politics • University Politics

Data: iterations of syllabi, DESE SEI course template, e-mails w/DESE

CYCLE II Teaching SEI Course (January–May 2014)

Analysis: praxis check list CDA

Purpose: assesss teaching and modeling crtical research as praxis

Data: syllabi, class agendas, teaching journal, student assignments, course text book, end of course student course evaluations, personal correspondence w/students

Fig. 1.

Participants & Contexts: Author in interaction with • students • course text books

Components of Cycles of Research. CDA, Critical Discourse Analysis.

my work existed. I also analyzed myself in relationship to research and teaching. Fig. 1 provides an overview of the two cycles. I will elaborate on each cycle by explaining the purposes, including the question/s that guided me, the participants, the contexts, and the methods of data collection and analysis.

Cycle 1 The first cycle of design and analysis focused on my initial construction of the SEI course syllabus. I was concerned with incorporating critical research as praxis into the course design. In this first cycle, I questioned what research

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practices would best meet the course goals of preparing students to critically engage in theories and practices of teaching ELLs in urban schools. I researched myself as the primary participant, in collaboration with the different discourses or factors that were shaping my decisions within my immediate context as well as the larger context. The immediate context of this study was my university’s teacher preparation program, which was in the process of being phased out. Due to increasing requirements from the state for granting teaching licensure, our students were having a difficult time completing our teacher preparation program at the undergraduate level. Location was another factor in this decision to stop offering teacher preparation. In the Greater Boston area, there are many institutions of higher education that offer teacher preparation on a much larger scale. My university did not believe a continued financial investment in teacher preparation was warranted. The civil rights investigation at the state level by the Department of Justice was the macro context of this first stage of the study. Because all SEI courses within teacher preparation programs needed to undergo review from DESE, I researched myself in interaction with DESE as a secondary participant and the regulatory institution that held the power to approve my course. Better preparation of my students to work with ELLs was my own goal as well as a requirement of the state. I designed the SEI course to incorporate praxis and also meet the requirements laid out by the state. The data I collected in the first cycle consisted of the different iterations of my syllabi, the model templates the state provided for the SEI syllabus, and emails and feedback from the Department of DESE. The feedback from DESE included an evaluation tool (rubric) for assessing my SEI course design. In order to analyze these data I sought to recreate the narrative of designing my SEI syllabus. Pinnegar (1998) explains that self-study researchers operate from and embrace the premise of subjectivity and “present evidence of meaning and relationships among phenomena from the authority of their own experience” (p. 32). For me, this analysis happened after the completion of both cycles. My data analysis included spending time with my data sources to remember my own experience of the decisions I made in creating my syllabus. I read through my syllabi and my interactions with DESE while simultaneously reflecting through journaling about my experiences and goals of designing the course and the process I went through to incorporate research into the course design. Once I had recreated my process of designing the SEI course, I was able to identify important interactions I had with DESE, within the political context of our university and the state. These interactions impacted the decisions I made about how to incorporate research in my course. I then looked to answer my question about what language I used to construct ideas about research and research practices in the course assignments. I specifically looked for language in my syllabi and in the course texts that explained the process of conducting research. I drew on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Rogers, 2004) tools to focus my analysis on the relationship between language form and

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language function, within the relationship between discourse and context so that I might gain a better insight into learning (p. 8). Understanding Fairclough’s (1992, 1995) three-tiered model of analysis informed how I looked at the language of each of the texts. At the local level, I asked questions about what representations were being made through language, what forms of language were being used, and what might be left out of each text. At the institutional level, I was able to look at how my decisions were meeting the requirements of my university and the state. To think about the impact on the societal level, I asked questions about how these assignments would ultimately impact the ELLs we need to serve. Next, I will explain the components of the second cycle of design and analysis before sharing my story of working to embed critical research as praxis in my SEI course.

Cycle 2 The second cycle of design and analysis focused on my teaching and modeling critical research as praxis in the SEI course. I wanted my students to use research in very specific ways to learn about and support ELLs. Drawing on my own theoretical understanding of praxis, my objectives were for my students to be able to: • draw on theory as a tool to build knowledge of their own roles within the contexts in which they would potentially be working, • draw on theory and their knowledge to conduct research, and • implement the knowledge they generated into practice/action. My larger goal was to collaborate with my students to bring about social change through and for education. The second cycle of this self-study was to assess if and where I was meeting my pedagogical goals. The questions I asked to guide my self-study were how I taught and modeled critical praxis in the SEI class and where I saw evidence of critical praxis. As in the first cycle, I asked how the language I used constructed research and research practices. I was the primary participant in this second cycle of design and analysis. I analyzed myself in collaboration with my students, the secondary participants. My students were not the focus of this cycle but their work and presence in my class and in my journal reflections helped me assess my pedagogy. I also analyzed my use of the course text I chose to teach research: Using Data to Improve Learning for All: A Collaborative Inquiry Approach edited by Love (2009). I position Love’s text as another secondary participant. My SEI course was the context of this cycle. The course ran from January to May 2014. I had 11 students in the class and we met for an hour and fifteen minutes twice a week. The complex relationships that constituted this context existed between

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the participants: myself, students and course material, and my pedagogical goals of engaging in praxis, and the state’s academic requirements. In the second cycle of this self-study, I collected more data than in the first cycle because I was asking more questions and I needed to be able to analyze evolving and changing practices. My syllabus and specifically the research assignments within my syllabus as they evolved over the semester served as one body of data. Other data sources were the class agendas I created for each class I taught, the teaching journal I kept throughout the semester, student assignments, the Love (2009) research text, end of semester course evaluations, and personal correspondence between the students and me. It wasn’t until after the course had been taught that I analyzed all the data sources for Cycle 2. To analyze these various data sources I began once again by reading through each data set and journaling about the themes and answers to my research questions. I worked to recreate my experience of teaching and modeling research in the class. Next, I tried to create a praxis checklist. I thought it would be a good analytic tool to determine whether or not data could be considered praxis. However, because of the dialectical nature of praxis it was difficult and artificial to separate out specific components that could collectively make up praxis. Instead, I kept my definitions of praxis visible as I read through the data sets and took notes on where and how praxis might have existed. As the analyst, I needed to engage in a more theoretically informed reflective process of thinking through and about data as opposed to checking off a list. Drawing on the methods proposed by Paugh and Robinson (2009), I worked to hold myself responsible for the discourses I inhabited as the designer of the course, the instructor of the course, and the critical research praxis mentor by asking questions of pedagogy, questions of collaboration, and questions of power (p. 92). For instance, I analyzed the specific research assignments in the SEI course to determine if they were theoretically informed assignments. Drawing on my definition of critical research as praxis as being a change-enhancing, interactive, contextualized approach to knowledge building, and theorizing, grounded in respect for human capacity and focused on critiquing the structures of power, I asked if and how the assignments drew on collective and collaborative resources of all participants. Did the assignments meet the needs of our classroom context? Most importantly did the knowledge generated through the assignments have potential to be implemented in urban school contexts? Did our work question and raise awareness of issues of power and privilege? An important step in my analysis involved looking closely at the language in different data sets that was important to answering my research questions. I analyzed “not only what is present in the text, but what is absent” (Rogers, 2004, p. 7). CDA does not read political and social ideologies onto texts but rather it is the job of the analyst to discover relationships between texts, contexts, ways of being or discourses and the meanings made and conveyed through language.

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FINDINGS Cycle 1: Designing Praxis My self-study research story begins with relaying my process of incorporating critical research as praxis into my design of an SEI course. This story focuses on the interactions between my purpose, the participants, and the contexts (Paugh & Robinson, 2009). I knew from the time I had been employed at my institution in 2008 until this study in 2014 that students enrolled in our teacher preparation program were not receiving the instruction they needed to work with ELLs. Four of the eight required courses in our undergraduate teacher preparation program for initial licensure in all subjects incorporated texts, discussions, and strategies for working with ELLs into the course work: Reading and Writing in the Content Areas, Culturally Responsive Education, Classroom Communication, and Student Teaching Practicum. However, the pedagogical approaches to ELLs taught in these courses involved modifying curriculum for ELLs as opposed to designing curriculum for ELLs. Students in these classes generally included modifications in their lesson plans such as allowing ELLs to work in groups and providing dictionaries or translators for ELLs. These modification strategies met the state requirements for pre-service teachers to employ appropriate sheltered English strategies for ELLs but did nothing to foster understanding of language acquisition or appreciation for ELLs. In the fall 2013, I began designing the SEI course. I drew on several different graduate courses I had taught: English Language Acquisition Strategies and The Teacher and Cultural Change: Teaching Multilingual Students in K-12 Classrooms. I also consulted the SEI materials and sample syllabus circulated by the state (DESE) to find a text for teaching research in my SEI course. The text I decided upon was Using Data Improve Learning for All: A Collaborative Inquiry Approach (Love, 2009). I was very hesitant in choosing this book because data-driven instruction from my experience was terminology used within the discourse of scientifically based research. Within this discourse of research, studies should use: an experimental or quasi-experimental design with a control group or a multiple-baseline method that should be applied to all inquiry for education. Programs and methods found to be effective through such studies are then assumed to be generalizable across educational contexts. This has led to concepts such as “best practices” and “scripted curriculum” with the understanding that once something has been proven to work it should work in all classrooms with all students. (Robinson, 2012, p. 106)

I chose the book based on assumptions I made of the text while scanning through the introduction and table of contents and finding language that aligned with my beliefs. The book’s explanation of the problems schools face when using data provides an example of this language: “drilling students while

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failing to improve instruction; instituting practices that further exclude, label, or discriminate against students of color
will leave underserved students even worse off” (Love, 2009, p. ix). I read this statement as recognition of the inadequacy of school practices coming from an obsession with data. A footnote stating “It is with ambivalence and because we are still searching for a better term that we use the phrase ‘achievement gap’” (p. ix) signaled to me a critique of the dominant structures and discourses that blame students for inequitable opportunities. If I had read more deeply or widely, I would have found it more difficult to find forms of language that fit with the function of critiquing power and privilege. I hand-picked the language that supported discourses I wanted to bring into the context of my SEI course. I incorporated three research assignments into my syllabus, hoping that each would engage students in critical research as praxis. The first was an interview the students would conduct with a bilingual person. The second research assignment asked students to research and interview someone from a community organization that provided services for immigrants, newcomers, or refugees. Finally, based on the Love (2009) text I asked the students to conduct a collaborative inquiry project, where they would work in groups to identify a common issue or problem and conduct research in order to create an action plan. CDA helped me to analyze the language I used to ask where knowledge was located, who generated knowledge, and how in each of the research assignments. The interviews with a bilingual person and the community support professional were both about making connections. Each assignment positioned the person being interviewed as the expert and generator of knowledge. The knowledge generated by the interviewees in each assignment was different, however, and each assignment positioned ELLs differently. Bilinguals, potentially ELLs, would share their personal knowledge gained through different experiences making them the experts. On the other hand, the community support professionals would also be positioned as the experts, and would share professional knowledge aimed at helping ELLs. I asked students to make connections to themes and theories we had learned in class. The purpose was to share the personal knowledge and lessons they had collected from their interviews with bilinguals with one another as well as creating a resource list for our class of different community support organizations for ELLs. By design I asked students to build interactive and contextualized knowledge. I was perhaps most excited about the Collaborative Inquiry Project (Fig. 2). I envisioned an interactive, contextualized approach to knowledge building (Lather, 1986, p. 260) where my students would read about collaborative research practices and then design their own Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in order to research a question they had about working with ELLs. The last stage of designing the SEI course was to submit the syllabus to Massachusetts DESE for review. The feedback from the DESE reviewer

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COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY PROJECT Due: 12/3/14 Submit your research question by 10/1/14; hand in annotated references/data list 10/20/14 At the beginning of the class you will join a Professional Learning Community (PLC) made up of your class peers who will be teaching the same content (math, English, history, science). This is designed as an opportunity for each of you to experience the process of developing an inquiry-based PLC, identifying a common question based on a problem, need, or interest, conducting a collaborative inquiry project and developing an action plan based on your findings. The purpose of this collaborative inquiry project is to identify a question, problem, or concern in your academic field related to teaching ELLs and collaboratively create an action plan for addressing this issue. Time will be given during class for you to work but you may also need to meet outside of class. You will be asked to submit your research question, an annotated list of the data/research (articles, websites, information) you have found to answer your question. The final product will be a poster that you will present in class explaining your research.

Fig. 2.

Assignment from Syllabus.

indicated that the course needed more content to meet the requirement that all teachers know federal and Massachusetts laws and regulations pertaining to ELLs. I responded by crafting the collaborative inquiry project around questions students had about laws and regulations pertaining to ELLs. This approach was accepted by DESE and the course was approved to meet the SEI requirement.

Cycle 2: Analyzing Praxis The story of the second cycle of design and analysis is about what I learned from conducting a self-study focusing on how I taught and modeled praxis, and where I saw evidence of critical praxis as research within the SEI course. Of the three assignments I designed to incorporate critical praxis as research throughout the course, analysis of my multiple data sources at the local, institutional, and societal levels (Fairclough, 1992) demonstrated only one resulted in the class engaging in research in ways that I could define as critical praxis. Through studying myself as I taught and modeled research I learned that designing curriculum around theory led to students engaging in critical research as praxis while designing curriculum around research led to students engaging in traditional research projects. I will share my experiences and learning from the first few weeks of the SEI class which I believe clearly demonstrate ways in which I was successful in teaching and modeling praxis and ways in which I was not. I started off the first class of the fall 2014 semester by drawing on my theoretical understandings of Backwards Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). This meant that I began the course by explaining the course goals to ensure students understood the purpose of the course. Table 1 shows a chart from the syllabus explaining the course goals and objectives and how those objectives would be assessed.

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Table 1.

SEI Course Learning Goals, Objectives, and Assessments.

Goals

Objectives

Assessments

Upon successful completion of this course, students will:

Upon successful completion of How the student will be this course, students will be able assessed on these learning to: objectives:

Understand the importance of language and culture in teaching and learning in order to engage in culturally sustaining practices

• Identify and explain the basic structure and functions of language • Identify and explain the major concepts, theories, and research related to the nature and acquisition of language • Identify and explain the subsystems of language including phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, and semantics • Use understanding of oral language development in literacy development to support ELLs in developing academic as well as social literacy • Apply concepts and theories of first and second language acquisition to facilitate ELL students’ attainment of English in academic and social settings • Apply understanding of the major principles, theories, and research pertaining to the influence of cultural groups in designing instruction that supports ELL students’ cultural identities and academic needs

Understand through research and praxis (theory, action, and reflection) theories and practices of different strategies/ approaches to instructing ELLs

• Microteaching and providing • Implementation of strategies feedback on other’s SIOP for coordinating SEI and (sheltered instruction English language development observational protocol) instruction for ELLs lessons • Design lessons that support • Lesson plan (SIOP) ELL’s development of oral • Weekly journal reflections on language, literacy, and educational experiences and academic content ongoing inquiry projects

• Read Massachusetts Department for Elementary and Secondary Education (2012). User guide for DART (District Analysis and Review Tools) Detail: English Language Learners (p. 5
27) • Prepare notes to explain DART to someone else • Design lessons that support ELL students’ development of oral language, literacy, and academic content • Conduct interviews with bilinguals • Professional Learning Community Inquiry Projects (poster session) • Microteach a lesson

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Table 1. (Continued ) Goals Understand mechanisms through which social, cultural, or global differences are perceived, understood, and constructed

Objectives

Assessments

• Identify the differences related to the area of study in their historical or geographical context • Compare different standpoints and perspectives about diverse communities • Explain how differences are constructed or reinforced

• Review demographic and enrollment myths about ELLs (Samway & McKeon, 2007) • Share Identity Kits • Ongoing exploration of identity and ELLs through journals, and research projects • Interviews with bilinguals and 2
3 page analysis addressing: what was learned, what new questions were raised, and what kinds of class connections can be made

In an attempt to model inclusive practices for ELLs I began the first class by explaining that good classrooms are supportive communities that value and respect all members. Our first collaborative endeavor was to get to know each other and build our community. In our second class, I shared/modeled my “identity kit.” This is an activity where everyone has 5 minutes to share who they are with the class. This can be done through any form of communication, and creativity is encouraged. I generally share artifacts, personal information, and pictures that are important to me. I asked the students to informally define identity with a partner and discuss why their identity is important. Next, we worked to theorize identity through discussion of a quote: “Affirmation of identity refers to the establishment of the respect and trust between educators and students that is crucial for each to reflect critically on their own experience and beliefs” (Cummins, 2001, p. 4). In my journal notes from the second class I wrote: “great discussion about who we are and how our identity is linked to learning!” Another outcome of teaching, theorizing, and modeling identity work was to challenge the status quo of traditional classroom dynamics. Students made personal connections with one another and with me that they might not have made without the opportunities to explore identity. It was a small class, of 11 students, but our ability to discuss personal connections to the course material started from almost the first class. In our third class session, I was excited to introduce the PLCs and continue our meaningful discussions about supporting all students’ learning. I had asked students to read the Introduction of the Love (2009) book about using data to improve learning. The questions I asked in class were: • Why are we reading this book? • What is your groups’ impression of data and research in education? • Choose one of the assumptions informing this book (p. xiv) and discuss your beliefs about this assumption and be ready to share with the class.

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As evidenced from notes in my teaching journal, the students were feeling comfortable enough due to our community building work to state their dislike of this book before we were able to get into a discussion of the assumptions informing the book. I explained my research agenda and told the class that I was going to be conducting research on my practices just as they would be conducting research on issues that they found important to them (related to ELLs and policies). The students were not persuaded. They felt the book was too “hard.” I directed their attention to a quotation I had highlighted as important to our discussion. “When schools build collaborative cultures, commit to all students’ learning, and use data systematically through ongoing inquiry into improving instruction they improve results for students” (Love, 2009 p. x). I tried to link the idea of collaborative cultures to our previous discussions of identity and community building. The discussion fell flat. My journal notes only that I didn’t get to put students in collaborative inquiry groups and I needed to form PLCs in the next class. The students’ responses at the beginning of the course signaled a building of praxis. They embraced theorizing about identity and building community to challenge inequalities through sharing personal narratives. I saw through my journal reflection as well as the student assignments some indicators of where I was successful in teaching and modeling praxis. Students’ response to knowledge generation that was personalized through our identity work carried over into their learning about themselves and others through conducting interviews with bilinguals and reading and reflecting on the narratives and stories of immigrant teenagers in Hauser’s (2011) book The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens. Students infused their lesson plans and microteaching with activities to draw on students’ funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 2001). “Schema” referring to a person’s life experiences that shape their worldview became our class word to explain everything! The place where I struggled with implementing research as praxis was in the PLCs. These groups needed continual support and renegotiation. Up until the last month of class the PLCs were still trying to work out their research questions. The final presentations were Power Points rather than the poster presentations I had designed in the syllabus. Students asked for this format because it was familiar and easy to present. The Power Point format signaled to me a re-creation of traditional research practices and presentations. There was no desire for open discussion of the research and there were no action plans. One group contrasted policies regarding ELLs in California and Massachusetts. Another group focused on techniques school counselors might use when working with ELLs. The theory informing these presentations was not explicit. The end purpose for the presentations was to fulfill a class requirement not enact change. In this second cycle of design and analysis journaling throughout my class allowed me to analyze assignments and class discussions and design classes that

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responded to my students’ needs. The context of our class evolved as I reflected, often with the students, about where we were in our learning process and the goals we wanted to achieve. However, it was not until after the class finished and I went back to my data that I was able to make sense of what had happened during the course. I wanted to know what factors had contributed to the success of certain practices and assignments as engaging in critical praxis as research and others as reproducing the status quo and dominant ideologies of knowledge. Returning to CDA I identified passages from the Love text that explained the book’s orientation to research. I analyzed these passages by asking questions about where knowledge is located, how it is generated and by whom. I also analyzed for what was missing from the text. Why had I originally chosen this book as fitting with my conception of research as praxis? Through a close analysis of the language in the book, I could claim that Love’s conceptions of knowledge generation fit with my sociocultural approach. The discussion in the book about the social construction of data demonstrates this point. “Data have no meaning. Meaning is imposed through interpretation. Frames of referencethe way we see the world- influence the meaning we derive from data” (p. xiv). I had originally read this passage and assumed this book would support building knowledge and conducting research as praxis. However, I did not code any of the assignments the students created relating to this book as demonstrations of praxis. What was missing? CDA allowed me to analyze the text for what was left out: a theoretical reference or grounding for the process of collaborative data-driven inquiry. Throughout the book, data is positioned as driving learning and inquiry. There is no mention of theory and no theoretical explanation or section within the book. The language I found resonated with my ideals of collaboration; however, language of equity, inquiry, and theory was distinctly missing. Theory, practice, research, and action are all key components of critical research as praxis. Without the tools of theory to help us understand and question why certain things occur, how might we begin to change the way things are? I cannot expect students to engage in critical research as praxis if theory is missing. Self-study analysis helped me recognize my students’ engagement in critical research as praxis. When students built on their own personal narratives as tools they were able to understand the theory of funds of knowledge. Respecting and recognizing knowledge generation as being contextualized, the students then interacted with bilinguals through interviews to change their views about ELLs and build knowledge of how to work effectively with ELLs. When I imposed a research structure and a non-theoretical book about collaborative data-driven research on my students, there was no praxis. Instead, they completed the assignments but had no action plans for change or no theories to explain their findings. Theory cannot be omitted.

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EDUCATIONAL AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY Through the reflective process of self-study, I have come to recognize the importance of theory within research practices as tools for preparing future teachers. This speaks to the need to keep teacher preparation programs housed within institutions of higher education. Without an academic, theoretical approach to teaching, there is little hope of interrupting the dominant structures that maintain inequality and injustice in our education system. When my students were not engaged in critical research as praxis, their research provided knowledge that perpetuated existing power structures. They were not able to create action plans or build change-enhancing knowledge. When my students were engaged in praxis they challenged their assumptions and built their potential to engage simultaneously in theory, practice, research, and action. Another realization that came from conducting this self-study relates to the power and privilege of English within the SEI model. If the goal is to use critical praxis to interrupt dominant paradigms then I must use theory to question the imbalance and inherent deficit perceptions of other languages through the SEI lens. The hegemony of English is made visible through examination of the language used in different research practices and assignments in my course. The lessons I learned and stories I heard from investing in identity development and community building point to the need for inclusive and culturally sustaining practices. Many practices in SEI rely on exclusion of all languages other than English. The English-only approach not only ignores the inherent tools of ELLs but also does little to acknowledge the culture and identity of ELLs. For my own practices, this means taking a critical research as praxis stance to look at alternative linguistically and culturally sustaining (Paris, 2012) approaches for working with ELLs.

REFERENCES Barnes, D. (1998). Forward: Looking forward: The concluding remarks at the Castle conference. In M. L. Hamilton, S. Pinnegar, T. Russell, J. Loughran, & V. LaBoskey (Eds.) Reconceptualizing teaching practice: Self-study in teacher education (pp. ix
xiv). London: Falmer Press. Campos, D., Delgado, R., & Soto Huerta, M. E. (2011). Reaching out to Latino families of English language learners. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Crawford, J. (1989). Bilingual education: History, politics, theory, and practice. Los Angeles, CA: Bilingual Educational Services, Inc. Cummins, J. (2001). Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment in a diverse society (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: California Association for Bilingual Education. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis. London: Longman. Freire, P. (1993/1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Herder and Herder.

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Gebhard, M., & Willett, J. (2008). Social to academic: University-school district partnership helps teachers broaden students’ language skills. Journal of Staff Development, 28(1), 41
45. Hauser, B. (2011). The new kids: Big dreams and brave journeys at a high school for immigrant teens. New York, NY: Free Press. Kress, T. (2011). Critical praxis research: Breathing new life into research methods for teachers. New York, NY: Springer Science þ Business Media. Lather, P. (1986). Research as praxis. Harvard Educational Review, 56, 257
277. Love, N. (2009). Using data to improve learning for all: A collaborative inquiry approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Massachusetts Department for Elementary and Secondary Education. (2012). User guide for DART (District Analysis and Review Tools) detail: English Language learners (pp. 5
27). Retrieved from http://www.doe.mass.edu/apa/dart/userguideDARTELL.pdf Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (2001). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, XXXI, 2, 132
141. Nieto, S. (1992). Affirming diversity: The socio-political context of multicultural education. In J. Fraser (Ed.), (2000). The school in the United State: A documentary history. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93
97. Paugh, P., & Robinson, E. (2009). Participatory research as self-study. In C. A. Lassonde, S. Galman, & C. Kosnik (Eds.), Self-study research methodologies for teacher educators (pp. 87
106). Boston, MA: Sense. Pierre, E. St. (2000). Poststructural feminism in education: An overview. Qualitative Studies in Education, 13, 477
515. Pinnegar, S. (1998). Introduction: Methodological perspectives. In M. L. Hamilton, S. Pinnegar, T. Russell, J. Loughran, & V. LaBoskey (Eds.), Reconceptualizing teaching practice: Selfstudy in teacher education. London: Falmer Press. Robinson, E. (2012). Research as praxis in ESL teacher education. Open Access Dissertations. Retrieved from http://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/661 Rogers, R. (2004). An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. In R. Rogers (Ed.), An introduction to critical discourse analysis. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Samaras, A., & Freese, A. (2009). Looking back and looking forward: An historical overview of the self-study school. In C. Lassonde, S. Galman, & C. Kosnik (Eds.), Self-study research methodologies for teacher educators. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Samaras, A., Hicks, M., & Garvey Berger, J. (2004). Self-study through personal history. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (pp. 905
942). Dordrecht: Kluwer. Samway, K. D., & McKeon, D. (2007). Myths and realities: Best practices for language minority students. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Zubrzycki, J. (2011, September). Feds prompt Massachusetts to require ELL training. Education Week, 31(5). Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles. Accessed on March 7, 2012.

TOWARD A COHERENT APPROACH TO PREPARING MAINSTREAM TEACHERS TO TEACH LANGUAGE TO EMERGENT BILINGUAL LEARNERS: SELF-STUDY IN TESOL TEACHER EDUCATION Laura Schall-Leckrone, Lucy Bunning and Maria da Conceicao Athanassiou ABSTRACT This chapter explores how TESOL teacher educators used self-study to respond to educational policies for emergent bilingual learners (BLs) and their teachers. The purpose was to examine tensions, challenges, and opportunities in our efforts as teacher educators to prepare teachers to teach BLs in mainstream classes through a state-mandated sheltered English instruction (SEI) course. Data sources, including emails, course artifacts, meeting agendas, and journals, pre and post surveys and course assignments were analyzed using mixed methods. Practitioners and participants agreed one SEI course is insufficient. In a coherent approach to preparing mainstream teachers to teach language, learning would be reinforced from coursework to the classroom. Without self-studies that provide an informed

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 241
261 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030017

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response to external policies that shape teacher education, the danger is new policies result in no substantive change. Keywords: Self-study; teacher education; sheltered English instruction; emergent bilingual learners; policy; linguistically responsive teachers; mainstream teachers

INTRODUCTION A persistent opportunity gap between emergent bilingual learners (BLs)1 and native English speakers in US schools impels teacher educators who seek to improve learning experiences for BLs to study their practice in ways that support teacher practice with BLs. The situation is particularly dire in urban areas of Massachusetts (MA). Dropout rates and classification of BLs with special needs increased dramatically after bilingual education was virtually eliminated and replaced with sheltered English instruction (SEI) through a voter referendum in 2002 (Brisk, Homza, & Smith, 2014; Uriarte & Tung, 2009). SEI is based on the premise that BLs learn English best by receiving comprehensible instruction in English, so instruction typically does not draw upon and support BLs’ existing cultural and linguistic resources. Following this policy change, most emergent BLs entered classrooms with mainstream teachers with little to no specialized language training (Lucas & Grinberg, 2008). In 2013, in response to pressure from the Federal Department of Justice, the MA Department of Education mandated that all teachers complete an SEI course to prepare them to work with emergent BLs. However, research examining the effectiveness of SEI preparation is urgently needed (Uriarte & Tung, 2009). To inform this line of investigation, teacher educators grappling with the paradigm shift from bilingual education to SEI instruction can document their efforts to equip teachers. Accordingly, the purpose of this self-study
an investigation of teaching and learning by teacher educators in a higher education setting (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2004, 2009; Loughran, 2004; Peercy, 2016; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015)
was to examine teacher educators’ and teachers’ views of how one graduate course prepared teachers to teach BLs in mainstream classes as explored through the lens of our experiences as teacher educators. Accordingly, in this chapter, Laura links her experiences to data from conversations with colleagues, including Lucy and Maria, from efforts over a two-year period to equip linguistically responsive teachers (LRTs). Specifically, the question investigated is: What are the tensions, challenges, and opportunities in preparing mainstream teachers to teach BLs through a state-mandated SEI course?

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK This study uses two theoretical frameworks to situate and interpret the findings, both of which are consistent with teacher education research with an explicit social justice mission. One is the scholarship on LRTs, and the other draws from self-study of teacher education practices (S-STEP). LRT and S-STEP methodologies support the social justice premise that teachers must be prepared to teach diverse learners well in the current educational climate while practitioners also work to transform educational systems, in part by studying their own practice (Cochran-Smith, 2010).

A Framework for Linguistically Responsive Teaching Lucas and Villegas (2011) outlined orientations, knowledge, and skills of LRTs: the specialized language-based expertise needed to effectively teach emergent BLs. For instance, LRTs must develop awareness of how language and culture influence teaching and learning and asset-based approaches to build upon BLs’ backgrounds and proficiencies during instruction (de Jong & Harper, 2005; Lucas & Villegas, 2011). LRTs also must scaffold instruction and integrate language and content instruction to provide BLs equitable access to rich content instruction as they develop academic English proficiency (Bunch, 2010; Echevarrı´ a, Vogt, & Short, 2013; Gibbons, 2015; Lucas & Villegas, 2011; Schall-Leckrone, 2018; Walqui, 2006; Zwiers, 2014). Finally, LRTs must demonstrate affirming views of multilingualism and work to change schools from within, all of which requires specialized language preparation. However, most US teachers are monolingual English speakers with limited second language skills and experiences (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; Selwyn, 2007). Harper and de Jong (2004) argue that language must become visible to teachers, before they can identify and teach classroom language demands (Bunch, 2010; de Jong & Harper, 2005; Lucas & Villegas, 2011; Santos, Darling-Hammond, & Cheuk, 2012; Schleppegrell, 2004). Language demands signify the “linguistic expectations … embedded within specific texts and tasks with which students are asked to engage” (Santos et al., 2012, p. 4). Effective teachers of BLs need pedagogical knowledge of language: a meta-language and tools to represent how language is used in their classrooms (Bunch, 2013; Humphrey, Sharpe, & Cullen, 2015) to be equipped to teach explicit language functions and features, so language no longer remains a hidden curriculum for children whose home language does not match the language of school (Schleppegrell, 2004).

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Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) Self-study traditions can also support teacher educators who seek to engage in the challenging work of changing their practice in response to reform efforts (LaBoskey, 2004; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015). Through self-study, teacher educators systematically evaluate their instructional practices and course learning outcomes to uncover “student conceptions, misconceptions, and needs” (Darling-Hammond, 2016, p. 85) and to model the reflective practices they recommend to teachers (Loughran, 2004). Accordingly, critical selfexamination and collaboration are intrinsic elements of self-study; teaching practice is made public as students and colleagues are invited to contribute insights that inform the process (Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015). In other words, self-study can be used to assess one’s pedagogical practices within and beyond a university context. LaBoskey (2004) explains the relationship between a self-reflexive stance and improvement efforts in K-12 and higher education settings: [Self-study] seeks to determine whether … our practice is consistent with our … ideals and theoretical perspectives. The research is improvement-oriented; we wish to transform ourselves first so we might be better situated to transform our students, their students, and the institutional and social contexts that surround and constrain us. (p. 821)

In other words, through self-study teacher educators can examine whether there is coherence among teaching aspirations, approaches, and applications. Along similar lines, Vanassche and Kelchtermans (2015) recognize self-study also can be used to negotiate external factors that affect the extent to which teacher education is coherent: “Some self-studies analyse how the macro-level of the broader political-institutional context impacts one’s teacher education practices” (p. 514). Overall, self-study aligns with social justice efforts to continuously improve learning opportunities for teachers, their eventual students, inform the field of teacher education, and respond to policy mandates (Darling-Hammond, 2016; Loughran, 2004; Peercy, 2015; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015). This investigation builds on such self-study traditions (LaBoskey, 2004; Loughran, 2004; Peercy, 2015) and other types of empirical research that examined higher education preparation of teachers to work with BLs as Laura sought to critically examine her teaching practice and student learning along with Lucy and Maria who were also engaged in this work (Brisk et al., 2014; Nagle, 2014; Schall-Leckrone & Pavlak, 2015; Schall-Leckrone & McQuillan, 2012, 2014). In this self-study, we examine tensions: that is, challenges and opportunities that we perceived in our practice aimed at preparing mainstream teachers to work with emergent BLs. Specifically, we consider practitioners’ and participants’ viewpoints regarding the extent to which one course taught by four faculty2 within a university-based teacher education program prepared participants to teach language. This work aimed to explore our efforts to make

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our pedagogical practice explicit, coherent, and responsive to the policy context surrounding teaching and learning for emergent BLs and their teachers.

RESEARCH DESIGN A social justice vision, collaborative process, and multiple perspectives drove this self-study of teacher educator practices within a graduate school at a private university in the northeastern United States. We define our social justice stance as an effort to prepare teachers to affirm emergent BLs’ existing linguistic and cultural resources while providing them with the opportunity to develop language and literacy skills in school that will equip them for academic success, professional employment, and civic engagement. Consistent with practitioner inquiry, teacher educators and teachers were “regarded as knowers, learners, and researchers” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, p. 42), so our viewpoints were integral to the research. This self-study has been a collaborative process among four faculty within the TESOL and bilingual education program at our university: Solange Lira, the program director, Laura, a new faculty member in the program, Lucy, a doctoral candidate and SEI course instructor, and Maria, a longtime adjunct faculty member. Since it was our intention to provide a coherent teacher education experience, we explored the following research question: What are the tensions, both the challenges and opportunities in preparing mainstream teachers to teach BLs through the SEI course. In this self-study, coherence has three key components: (1) consistent with research (i.e., the LRT framework of Lucas & Villegas, 2011), (2) consistent approaches in teacher education coursework within a program of studies, and (3) consistent with best classroom practice. This last component can be challenging given the change-oriented nature of social justice teacher education/preparation (see Schall-Leckrone & Barron, 2018, for a small-scale effort to align a research framework and pre-service and in-service teacher education with explicit language and critical literacy instruction for adolescent BLs in a K-12 setting). To better understand our teaching practices in the SEI course, we analyzed SEI course syllabi, email exchanges, meeting agendas, and journal entries from the fall of 2013 through spring of 2015. In addition, we collected pre and post surveys and assignments from students in the SEI course to augment our self-study with secondary data that enabled us to consider participants’ perceptions of the SEI coursework experience. Systematic examination of practitioners’ intentions and interpretations is juxtaposed with evidence of participant learning (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2004). Practitioners Laura became an assistant professor in the summer of 2013 coinciding with the onset of the SEI course mandate. She began her career as a bilingual

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(Spanish
English) educator in New York City teaching Latino third and fourth graders and later taught social studies in Spanish in a dual immersion program in MA. After 16 years in K-12 education, she pursued doctoral studies aimed at improving learning opportunities for adolescent BLs. While the SEI course mandate supported her belief that all teachers should be equipped to teach our increasingly linguistically diverse student population, the course’s emphasis on English immersion troubled her. She wondered how to negotiate the prescribed course content and equip teachers with asset-based approaches to working with emergent BLs within a single course. She also recognized that teaching anything for the first time in a new context is an adjustment. When the SEI course was introduced, Lucy was a PhD candidate at the university, writing her dissertation on adult immigrants’ development of intercultural communicative competence in a community-based ESOL program. Previously, she had taught other TESOL courses and ESOL in university-based and private language programs in the United States, Kenya, and Rwanda. She also had studied French, Swahili, and Wolof. As an adjunct professor, beginning a career in higher education, teaching a new course that was being developed, Lucy really wanted to do the “right” thing. She wondered if she was as qualified as she needed to be to teach the SEI course, because although her doctoral studies focused on ESOL, and she had many previous years of ESOL teaching experience, she had not been a K-12 teacher or taught in an SEI model. As a long-time adjunct faculty, Maria began teaching graduate courses designed to support the teaching of BLs in 1997. Previously, she had taught content using Portuguese as the medium of instruction in the bilingual program in the public school system in the same city where the university is located. Following the dismantling of bilingual programs in Massachusetts in 2002, she continued to teach in the newly implemented SEI program, supporting collegebound students in strengthening their reading and writing skills. All these teaching and learning experiences together with her own linguistic background in Portuguese, French, and Greek informed how she taught the SEI course to graduate students at the University.

Description of the SEI Course The state-mandated SEI course is intended to equip teachers with knowledge and skills to meet the needs of the growing population of bilingual students taught in mainstream classrooms in Massachusetts.3 At our university, it is a 4-credit course offered in elementary and secondary versions to pre-service teachers toward the end of their program of studies before they student teach. The course addresses the diversity of experiences among BLs, how culture and language influence teaching and learning, the second language acquisition

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process, and how to promote academic language, content, and literacy development concurrently. Participants practice instructional techniques that are modeled by the course instructor, analyze their practice, provide and receive feedback, and reflect on teaching and learning experiences. Through this cycle of reflective practice, the intent is for participants to gain skills, knowledge, and dispositions aimed at improving educational opportunities for emergent BLs. Accordingly, the coursework combines field-based assignments, such as an interview study of a BL and strategy implementation with BLs, with lesson planning and reflective writing. Throughout the SEI course a key goal is to equip teachers with sufficient pedagogical language knowledge (Bunch, 2013) to be able to assess BLs’ proficiencies and to teach language through listening, speaking, reading, and writing during content instruction. For this reason, participants practice creating language objectives with language functions and features for lesson plans, so they develop a meta-language and tools to enact linguistically responsive instruction. We also aim to support participants’ abilities to negotiate the policy context of teaching BLs in K-12 schools and to advocate for students.

Participants From the fall of 2013 through spring of 2015, 136 students consented to participate in the study. Although participants ranged in age from their early twenties through fifties, most fell between the ages of 25
35. As is typical in US teacher education programs, approximately 82% of participants were female and 18% male (Zumwalt & Craig, 2008). Approximately, 79% enrolled in an elementary version of the course and 21% in the secondary course. Almost 95% of participants were native English speakers and 90% of students had studied a second language with Spanish as the most popular language. Most participants were pre-service teachers, but a small subset were already classroom teachers. In this self-study, we were concerned with how new educational policy influenced our teacher education practices and how we might adapt our practice in response to commitments within our specific context, to teachers, and to bilingual students (Loughran, 2004; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015). The TESOL and bilingual education program director, Solange, and Laura implemented a self-study plan from the start of the SEI mandate to better understand our teaching practices in the course and the effectiveness of SEI preparation. From the fall of 2013 through spring of 2015, we collected data in Solange’s, Laura’s, Lucy’s, and Maria’s semester-based SEI classes to understand the extent to which we were able to prepare LRTs.4 As practitioners, we share some common characteristics: bilingualism; significant prior experience working with second language learners; and doctoral degrees in TESOL, applied linguistics, or a closely related field. Our approach to SEI course development, implementation,

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and subsequent course revisions has built upon this experience, been iterative, collaborative, and informed by data analysis with ongoing communication via email, monthly meetings, and semi-annual retreats throughout the two-year period reported in this chapter.

DATA SOURCES AND ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES Although qualitative research is most common in self-studies (LaBoskey, 2004; Loughran, 2004; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015), mixed methods seemed uniquely appropriate for our investigation to offer insights into the perspectives of four practitioners and a relatively large number of participants. In this chapter, we examine inherent tensions: both challenges and opportunities in preparing mainstream teachers to teach BLs through one SEI course. We explore our teaching practices by analyzing email exchanges, course syllabi, and meeting agendas over a two-year period. Given our focus on promoting linguistically responsive instruction for BLs, we also study the extent to which participants felt they were prepared to teach language. Along these lines, pre- and postcourse surveys and course assignments were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative analyses.

Survey We elicited participants’ views of the extent to which the SEI course prepared them to identify and teach language through pre- and post-survey responses. More specifically, paired T-tests using SPSS software determined whether there were statistically significant changes in participants’ perceptions of preparedness. In addition, we coded open response portions of the surveys using standard qualitative analysis (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996; Sipe & Ghiso, 2004) to reveal trends related to teaching language. We administered pre- and post- surveys to 136 participants in the SEI class that were adapted from an earlier mixed methods study of the influence of English language learning modules in a history methods course (see SchallLeckrone & McQuillan, 2012, 2014), which drew from survey research conducted by Reeves (2006, see pp. 258
264). With the pre-survey, we were interested in building on course participants’ prior knowledge, so we inquired about prior experiences with second language learning, teaching, and working with BLs. We also asked participants about their perceptions of preparedness to work with BLs using a Likert scale (1
strongly agree to 5
strongly disagree). On the post-survey, participants responded to the same questions about preparedness, noted strategies they had learned for teaching BLs, and what they would like to learn more about. Specific survey components were constructed

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to reveal participants’ perceptions of change in their ability to identify and teach language because of the SEI course. Analysis of quantitative data revealed changes in participants’ perceptions of their preparedness to teach language. Standard qualitative content analysis also was used to code raw data from open response portions of the survey and from the email exchanges among the four of us related to the SEI course during the two-year period (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996; Sipe & Ghiso, 2004). Laura also analyzed a final course assignment to determine participants’ ability to create language objectives with language functions and features and the types of language objectives created. In summary, multiple forms of data were employed in tandem to enhance the trustworthiness of findings (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

PRACTITIONER PERSPECTIVES: TENSIONS, CHALLENGES, AND OPPORTUNITIES The SEI course mandate introduced tensions: both challenges and opportunities for teacher educators committed to preparing teachers to serve an increasingly linguistically diverse student population. As Lucy commented: What keeps coming to mind are the circumstances that gave rise to the course and that it’s a flawed approach to educating bilingual learners. However, it also occurs to me that it’s a positive thing that all teachers in Massachusetts are required to learn more about bilingual learners and language development. And, everyone I have come in contact with is really trying to make the best of this situation. (May 2017)

Similarly, Laura reflected: I have mixed feelings about the SEI mandate. For a long time, I felt that all teachers should be prepared to teach linguistically diverse students, since emergent bilingual learners are an increasing presence in “mainstream” classes. [W]ell-designed coursework required for all teachers seems like a step in the right direction. However, one course seems insufficient to provide … depth of knowledge, skills, and asset-based orientations to working with culturally and linguistically diverse learners. I also am troubled by the focus on English inherent in SEI instruction, which presupposes English immersion and the reduction of bilingual learners to monolingual expression. (May 2017)

On the one hand, Lucy, Laura, Solange, and Maria agreed that all teachers should be equipped to teach BLs, but on the other hand, one course, premised on the idea of sheltered English immersion, seemed inadequate, so we wrestled with the following question throughout the first two years of the SEI mandate: What to include in the course? With just one course, there was an inherent tension in what and how much could be included without overwhelming participants, especially since the SEI course already had prescribed content, and the syllabus had to be approved by the state education department.5 Nonetheless, from the start, we augmented prescribed curriculum with additional contact hours and two core texts.

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Throughout the two-year period, we studied our teaching practice and adjusted readings, assignments, and class activities. Review of changes in syllabi from the state template through the first two years of the course demonstrates how we sought to promote linguistically responsive teaching. Under Solange’s leadership, we required students to take a 4-credit course instead of the customary 3-credit course, creating additional class sessions focused on linguistics, second language acquisition, and primary language support: how even monolingual teachers can use bilingual students’ home language in the classroom to support instruction (see Wright, 2015). The second year, we removed stand-alone class sessions on vocabulary and integrated vocabulary instruction throughout other sessions. Instead, we added an additional session on the development of oral language: listening and speaking skills as a foundation for literacy development. We also integrated two texts into the course not included in the state curriculum and differentiated readings for elementary and secondary teachers. From year one to two, we changed the required text for elementary teachers to Gibbons (2015) in efforts to help teachers develop pedagogical language knowledge needed to scaffold content instruction. Finally, from year one to year two, and drawing on Lucy’s expertise in intercultural understandings, we replaced a cultural autobiography with an assignment in which students assessed a bordercrossing experience. The intent was for course participants to analyze an experience of misunderstanding from multiple perspectives and suggest goals for their own practice as culturally responsive teachers given the likelihood of teaching bilingual students whose cultural orientations differed from their own. Overall, we aimed to pack an entire program of studies into a single course. As Lucy remarked, “This course is not enough to provide equitable access to content and language. It is a start” (December 2014). For this reason, we also tried to distill SEI core principles and share them with participants and colleagues as evident in the following email by Laura: Two big SEI ideas [should] be foregrounded. These are scaffolding rigorous (authentic) content instruction and identifying and teaching language to provide students the opportunity to access, engage in and demonstrate content learning. The other guiding principle is that the student(s) are at the center of instruction, so that English proficiency levels are considered from the beginning rather than as an accommodation. (April 2015)

As a matter of social justice, we felt BLs’ strengths and needs should be central to instructional design not included as differentiation or an accommodation. We aimed to model for SEI course participants, that you teach the students you have, not a prescribed curriculum or some notion of a normative monolingual student. On a related note, another tension in our teaching practice was the extent to which a single course taught by several faculty to different student groups had consistent content. While there were consistent principles undergirding the course, there were also changes evident in course implementation by different

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faculty and over time. As Laura expressed in an email to another SEI course instructor after the first year of the SEI mandate, Although we are making some changes, we also have almost everything organized and ready to go after teaching it multiple times this year: down to the power-points (PPTs) and handouts …You also will have some latitude to make it your own. (August 2014)

Since multiple faculty members taught the same course simultaneously, differences, among ourselves, about how to approach class sessions and assignments were evident in Lucy’s reflection: As an adjunct professor, at the beginning of my career in higher education, teaching a new course that was being developed, I really wanted to do … the “right” thing. I [asked] many times for clarification on the major assignments to find out if my interpretations … were “accurate.” When I heard differing perspectives from Solange and Laura, I was actually a bit relieved that there wasn’t one “right” way. [E]ven within this highly structured course, there was some room for me to work with my students to make sense of it all in our way. (May 2017)

With different faculty teaching the same course, a tension presented between consistency and variation that we aimed to negotiate so that all might benefit from the collective wisdom. We made changes to the SEI course collaboratively. Still, there would be differences in the SEI preparation offered in the course based on strengths of individual faculty and needs of varied course participants. Course participants included practicing teachers, individuals working in another capacity in a school setting such as teaching assistants, interns, or student teachers, and career-changers who had yet to transition to a school setting. The SEI course was developed by the state according to the assumption that participants would implement strategies with BLs in a classroom, so we wrestled with the challenge of what to do if course participants were not currently in a school setting. Solange felt strongly that course participants should rehearse SEI strategies within the course and become adept at them before working with bilingual children, but the state would not approve our course until the syllabus indicated that all participants would engage in fieldwork to implement SEI strategies. Yet, each semester, a subset of participants were not in a classroom. Accordingly, Laura would reach out to students prior to the course each semester with the following message: [Please] send me an email introducing yourself … .[I]nclude … experiences you’ve had learning another language, working with English language learners, and whether you are in a classroom as a teacher, teacher assistant, or doing your practicum. One course assignment requires that you implement an SEI strategy with a student, group of students, or in a classroom setting. If you are not currently in a classroom, please let me know so we can strategize how you will meet this requirement. (January 2015)

Solange also facilitated an online exchange in which all SEI faculty shared their approaches to working with participants, who were not in a classroom.

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Do you have students who do not have a classroom to practice their strategies? This year, I don’t have that issue, but last year I had. My suggestion was for them to practice the strategy with a child of PreK-6 age or 5
12 (their child, friend’s, family’s, neighbor’s, a child in a friend’s classroom, etc). I found that this was more effective than just practice the strategy with a peer. (Solange, email, September 2014)

Maria provided the following response: Yes, indeed! I have a few students who do not have a classroom of their own. In the past, those … students made arrangements with willing teachers, who were taking the same course to visit those teachers’ classrooms to practice the SEI strategies. (Maria, email, September 2014)

Similarly, Lucy shared: In past semesters, I have had several students who don’t have a classroom or access to students, so we … practiced the strategies in class with each other. I like Solange’s suggestion of finding a child to work with if someone doesn’t have access to a classroom. There are also a few students who are teaching or in a classroom in some capacity, but do not have contact with any ELLs. (Lucy, email, September 2014)

Beyond the practical matter of how to arrange for students to complete fieldwork, there was a deeper issue at hand. For students not in a classroom setting that included linguistically diverse students, course content could seem like an abstraction. As Lucy indicated: As I was teaching the course, I found what was often needed in the beginning, and throughout, was more humanization of bilingual learners. The [participants] … that had first hand experience with bilingual learners didn’t need much convincing of this. However, there were others who had very limited previous interaction with bilingual children and families. They seemed to see learners who were culturally or linguistically different … as completely foreign. For me, the delicate balance was navigating the similarities and differences. In other words, what do we have in common that we can use as a starting point to come together and get to know one another? Once we have established some similarities that unite us, we must start learning about, appreciating, and working across our differences. (Lucy, reflection, May 2017)

Lucy, with expertise in intercultural communication, was focused on how to support her students in “learning about, appreciating, and working across differences,” in other words, orientations toward BLs that support their learning (Lucas & Villegas, 2011). Along similar lines, Maria, drew upon significant prior K-12 experience, which informed her practice helping participants not currently in classroom settings to make sense of the SEI coursework experience. As she noted: Many graduate students do not have opportunities to put into action what they … learned throughout the course, since they do not have their own classrooms yet. Some student teachers lack the flexibility to apply the SEI skills and strategies, as they are not the lead teacher in the classrooms [in which] they practice. (Maria da Conceicao, reflection, May 2017)

Because the SEI course mandate required changes in K-12 classrooms that had yet to be initiated in schools, Laura found that occasionally participants

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questioned aspects of the course, such as the need to create language objectives for lesson plans, that they did not see reflected in schools. Given these challenges presented by the SEI mandate, we set priorities for the course, that students develop dispositions, knowledge, and skills associated with linguistically responsive instruction (Lucas & Villegas, 2011). Primary among them, Laura sought to help teachers develop knowledge of language. As she said, Specifically, I am wondering how we proceed with an understanding of the role pedagogical knowledge of language plays as a matter of social justice for many students. This understanding is at the heart of the SEI course and how we teach it. (Laura, email, March 2015)

Through the SEI course, we aimed to make language visible to students (Harper & de Jong, 2004), so they could assess their own language use, that of bilingual students, and plan explicit language objectives for content lessons. As Laura explained to a colleague: In the … SEI course, we teach students how to write language objectives, a key part of SEI instruction, based on the content objectives (aligned to frameworks), so if they have not had experience writing content objectives, they seem to struggle with this. They are also exposed to the idea of content and language objectives as part of the Sheltered Immersion Observation Protocol (SIOP), which is a very popular form of SEI instruction. (Laura, email, February 2015)

Participants had varying levels of experience lesson planning; few had knowledge of grammar, so after the first year of the course, we added readings and activities that offered a theory of language and meta-language to inform their instruction (see Droga & Humphrey, 2003). Our goal was to build language knowledge and pedagogy, so language would not be a hidden curriculum in their SEI classrooms (Schleppegrell, 2004).

PARTICIPANT PERSPECTIVES: TO WHAT EXTENT ARE WE PREPARED TO TEACH LANGUAGE? We sought to determine whether the SEI course would increase participants’ capacity to teach language. Consistent with self-study, which actively engages multiple viewpoints in the inquiry process (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Loughran, 2004), we also showcase participants’ perspectives on the extent to which the course equipped them to identify language demands of classroom tasks and texts. Participants’ Views Participants perceived an increase in their ability to identify and teach language following the SEI course. Two survey statements related to their knowledge of language demonstrated a statistically significant change (see Table 1).

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Table 1. Statements Regarding Participants’ Ability to Identify and Teach Language. Statements

Premean

Postmean

Mean Change

t

p-Value

Direction of Mean Change

I can identify basic structures and functions of language.

2.15

1.93


0.22

2.9

*0.004

Agree to Strongly agree

I know how to plan language objectives for my classes.

2.84

1.90


0.94

10.2

*0.000

Uncertain to Agree

* indicates p-values that are less than .001.

On average, participants felt that they could “identify basic structures and functions of language” and strongly agreed with this statement on the post-survey. With a mean change of
0.22, responses shifted from agree toward strongly agree. A t observed value of 2.9 indicates that this is a statistically significant change and a p-value of less than 0.005 suggests it is unlikely this change is due to chance. Similarly, on the post-survey, participants agreed with the statement, “I know how to plan language objectives for my classes.” With a mean change of
0.94, responses shifted from “Uncertain to Agree.” A t observed value of 10.2 also indicates that this is a statistically significant change and a p-value of less than 0.000 suggests that it is extremely unlikely that this change is due to chance. Fig. 1 shows these differences between participants’ responses to statements related to pedagogical language knowledge from the pre- to post-course surveys. Even though participants agreed that they could identify basic structures and functions of language and plan language objectives on lesson plan assignments, their post-survey open responses suggest that they recognized the need for more support to implement coursework understandings of language in classrooms. Participants felt they would benefit from more practice implementing language objectives with real students in classroom settings. As one student noted, “At this point, I feel like practice is the best teacher [and] would like to implement the strategies I’ve learned in my own classroom” (emphasis in the original). Similarly, another student suggested more opportunity to work directly with students during the course would have been beneficial. And another added, “Since I don’t have a lot of classroom experience, I … need support from an SEI expert [to] help me in a classroom situation.” Generally, participants recognized the need to implement coursework understandings related to teaching language in classrooms with real BLs and receive site-based support. To understand how students conceptualized language in lesson plans, Laura analyzed how 56 students from four courses sections that she taught in 2014 created language objectives. Specifically, she noted whether language objectives contained language functions and features, and which types of features appeared in their objectives (see Fig. 2).

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Fig. 1. Statements Regarding Participants’ Ability to Identify and Teach Language. Note: 1 ¼ Strongly agree, 2 ¼ Agree, 3 ¼ Uncertain, 4 ¼ Disagree, 5 ¼ Strongly disagree.

The y-axis of the table represents how many students in each class section, typically capped at an enrollment of 15, included functions and features in their language objectives. Based on the work of Kinsella (2011), participants in the SEI course were taught language objectives should include language functions (e.g., identify, describe, explain, compare) and language features named elements of language: phonemes, morphemes, vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and so on. For instance, one participant created the following math language objective: “Students will compare and contrast categories within a picture graph

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Fig. 2.

Language Objectives: Functions and Features.

using complete sentences with comparative adjective (more, less, fewer) and a conjunction (than).” Virtually all participants included language functions in their language objectives, which is how WIDA standards (2007, 2012) with which students worked throughout the course are expressed. The first year the course was taught; however, some students had difficulty identifying language features. Participants, who were unable to name actual language features, were encouraged to create an example in the form of a sentence starter or frame they could use as a model for their own students, which several did. In the fall of 2014, the second year we taught the SEI course, students’ ability to identify language features seemed to improve dramatically. All but one student included language features in language objectives. Although the one student (an international student from mainland China) did not include a language feature in a language objective, he indicated a linguistic feature in another section of his lesson plan: “sequential words needed to explain multi-step math problems.” Participants’ ability to identify language features increased in subsequent iterations of the course, which Laura attributes to instructional improvements not student differences. SEI course revision focused on supporting students in identifying and teaching language features through language objectives, so Laura also examined what types of language features were identified in language objectives (see Fig. 3). Eighty-four percent of language objectives featured vocabulary words or grammatical components of clauses or sentences (i.e., parts of speech). Phonemes or morphemes, such as how to form plurals or create word families with specific sounds, were a linguistic focus for early childhood educators, a much smaller subset of participants.

Toward a Coherent Approach to Preparing Mainstream Teachers

Fig. 3.

257

Type of Language Features Identified in Language Objectives.

DISCUSSION The importance of equipping teachers with pedagogical language knowledge to identify and teach linguistic features of content texts and tasks to emergent BLs (Bunch, 2013; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008; Harper & de Jong, 2004; Schleppegrell, 2004) through language objectives that can be identified, taught, and assessed has been established (Echevarrı´ a et al., 2013). This self-study juxtaposed analysis of practitioner and participant perspectives of the extent to which one graduate course provided specialized language training to teach BLs. In listening to students, we adapted the course in efforts to better meet their needs. For instance, it is encouraging to note that as practitioners we seemed to become more skilled at teaching how to create language objectives over time and in subsequent iterations of the course as we learned what worked for participants. At the same time, student voices confirmed inherent tensions and challenges we as practitioners identified in the SEI approach. While the SEI course seemed to promote participants’ awareness of their dual role as content and language teachers (de Jong & Harper, 2005) and their ability to operationalize this awareness by creating integrated content and language objectives, surveys and class assignments suggest students need further support to put languagebased teaching strategies into practice in classroom settings with emergent BLs. Participants and practitioners agreed one course is insufficient. At this point,

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we seem to be preparing linguistically aware teachers rather than linguistically responsive ones.

IMPLICATIONS A coherent approach to preparing LRTs requires learning to be reinforced in multiple contexts from coursework to the classroom. Ongoing professional development for SEI faculty, teacher educators in other program areas, practicum supervisors, and cooperating teachers are recommended to infuse SEI knowledge and skills related to identifying and teaching language throughout teacher education programs. Participants recognized the benefit of including language objectives in lessons but wondered why they had not been exposed to language objectives earlier in their program of studies and supported in implementing them during student teaching. They sought opportunities to put their learning into practice with real students in classroom settings and receive onsite support, which would require coordination between K-12 and higher education settings to ensure compatible approaches to identifying and teaching language. Further practitioner research, including self-studies and classroombased teacher research, are recommended as a means to better equip educators to teach diverse learners in the current educational climate while we also work to transform schools. In response to research and advocacy work by a consortium of teachers, teacher educators, scholars, and political leaders, legislation recently passed in Massachusetts that will enhance opportunities for all students to develop bilingualism and biliteracy in schools. Without self-studies that provide an informed response to external policies that shape teacher education, the danger is new policies result in no substantive change. As such, this chapter aims to contribute to the development of a research-base for a pedagogy of teacher education that promotes linguistically responsive instruction and improves learning opportunities for bilingual children (Sharkey, 2016).

NOTES 1. We use the asset-based term “bilingual learners” rather than English learners or English language learners because these students speak another language. This study focuses on emergent bilingual learners still developing sufficient academic English to succeed in school. 2. Dr Solange Azambuja Lira, the Program Director for TESOL and bilingual education when we initiated the SEI study, has since retired and was unavailable to co-author the chapter. 3. The course syllabus is adapted from a 3-credit in-service course for practicing teachers overseen by the State Department of Education. Our 4-credit state-approved course includes more research and practice with applied linguistics, primary language support, and second language acquisition.

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4. The University, which caters to the needs of older working students including fulltime teachers, also offers weekend and summer intensive versions of the course, which are not included in the study. 5. Laura served as a voluntary reviewer for the state education department at the same time our university was seeking approval for its course to garner insights as to how other universities were handling the mandate.

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143. Peercy, M. M. (2016). What is self-study?: Self-study and its potential for language teacher education. TEIS news: The newsletter of the teacher education section. TESOL International. Retrieved from http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolteis/issues/2016-09-08/1.html Reeves, J. (2006). Secondary teacher attitudes toward including English-language learners in mainstream classrooms. Journal of Educational Research, 99(3), 131
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12 (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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MOVING BEYOND “TRE`S BIEN”: EXAMINING TEACHER MEDIATION IN LESSON REHEARSALS Francis John Troyan and Megan Madigan Peercy ABSTRACT Situated within the recent scholarship on core practices in teacher education, this chapter presents a collaborative self-study that explored one aspect of our developing practice as teacher educators through examination of Francis’s use of mediation in lesson rehearsal. Using examples from his practice, we explore the following research question: How does a teacher educator learn to provide mediation to create a responsive zone of proximal development within lesson rehearsal? Specifically, we use Vygotskian sociocultural theory to examine Francis’s use of mediation during the rehearsal of the core practice supporting interaction and target language comprehensibility (I-TLC), one of the core practices addressed in his world language teacher preparation program. This self-study of mediation in lesson rehearsal illuminated Francis’ evolving practice as a facilitator of lesson rehearsal of novice teachers who are culturally and linguistically diverse, and who are preparing to use practices that are responsive to culturally and linguistically diverse students. Keywords: Lesson rehearsal; core practice; language education; collaborative self-study; sociocultural theory; zone of proximal development

Self-Study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 30, 263
282 Copyright r 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720180000030018

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Situated within the recent scholarship on core practices in teacher education (Kazemi, Ghousseini, Cunard, & Turrou, 2016; Lampert et al., 2013; McDonald, Kazemi, & Kavanagh, 2013), this chapter presents a self-study (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009) of Francis’s mediation of dialogic interactions in the lesson rehearsal of a novice teacher in a world language methods course. Using a theoretical framework that views dialogue as mediation (Johnson, 2009; Vygotsky, 1978; Wells, 2000), this study is positioned both within the overall literature on the development of novice teacher practice, that is, practice-based approaches to teacher education (e.g., Ball & Forzani, 2009; Kazemi et al., 2016; Lampert et al., 2013), and the work on second language (L2) teacher development informed by a sociocultural view of learning (Freeman & Johnson, 1998; Johnson, 2009, 2015, 2016). Drawing on the tradition of selfstudy of teacher educator practice, this study seeks to inform the work of teacher educators enacting a practice-based pedagogy in the preparation of novice teachers by focusing attention on the mediation of teacher learning as supported by the teacher educator during the rehearsal. To this end, this chapter uses collaborative self-study to explore one aspect of our developing practice as teacher educators through examination of Francis’s use of mediation in lesson rehearsal. Using examples from his practice, we explore the following research question: How does a teacher educator learn to provide mediation to create a responsive zone of proximal development within lesson rehearsal? Specifically, we use Vygotskian sociocultural theory to examine Francis’s use of mediation during the rehearsal of the core practice supporting interaction and target language comprehensibility (I-TLC), one of the core practices addressed in his world language teacher preparation program. As part of a responsive pedagogy across the field of language teaching, the comprehensibility of the language of instruction has been cited as a critical practice for teachers in world language (e.g., Troyan, Davin, & Donato), TESOL (e.g., Echevarrı´ a, Vogt, & Short, 2013), and bilingual education (e.g., Howard, Sugarman, & Coburn, 2006). Further, as will be discussed in the presentation of the study, the focal novice teacher in the study was raised outside of the United States and did not speak English as his home language, as was the case for most of his classmates. Because of the diversity of this cohort of novice teachers in this world language education program, this study represents the enactment of teacher education practice with novice teachers who are culturally and linguistically diverse, and who are preparing to use practices that are responsive to culturally and linguistically diverse students.

SITUATING THE STUDY Teacher preparation programs are called upon to develop teacher candidates with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to teach in a given field. Thus, a

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vital component of the work of teacher educators is facilitating the development of novice teachers who can enact instruction that is informed by and responds to the most recent understandings of effective practice. To respond to this need, some teacher education scholars have worked to identify, implement, and investigate pedagogies and tools that support accomplished novice teachers in their early years of practice. Both general practices for teaching (TeachingWorks, 2018) and a variety of discipline-specific practices have been identified as centrally important to teaching (e.g., Fogo, 2014; Lampert et al., 2013; Windschitl, Thompson, Braaten, & Stroupe, 2012), including practices for teaching world language learners (Glisan & Donato, 2016; Hlas & Hlas, 2012; Troyan, Davin, & Donato, 2013) that focus particularly on supporting language development. These “core” practices are intended to situate the work of novice teacher development within a framework explicitly focused on developing key features of practice (Kazemi et al., 2016; Lampert et al., 2013; McDonald et al., 2013). We refer to this conceptual framework supporting the development of novice teacher practice as the core practices (CP) cycle. The CP cycle develops novice teachers’ abilities through a series of intentional phases
deconstruction, demonstration, rehearsal, and implementation/ reflection
that guide the novice through the systematic analysis and enactment of a particular CP (Fig. 1).

Deconstruct CP

Implementation and analysis

Demonstrate CP

Rehearsal and coaching

Fig. 1.

The CP Cycle.

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In rehearsal, the third phase of the CP cycle, the rehearsing novice teacher spends time practice-teaching a lesson in the university methods course that will later be implemented with P-12 learners. The rehearsal provides the context for the enactment of a focal CP in the university methods course with other novice teachers in the classroom and the teacher educator playing the roles of both P-12 students and critical colleagues providing feedback. During the lesson rehearsal, the teacher educator provides interactive support and feedback to the rehearsing novice teacher, which we refer to and position theoretically as mediation. Our previous work in L2 teacher education has focused on the development of pedagogies for CP in language teacher education (Peercy & Troyan, 2017) and investigating various aspects of those pedagogies (Davin & Troyan, 2015; Peercy, 2014; Peercy, DeStefano, Kidwell, & Ramirez, 2016; Troyan et al., 2013; Troyan & Peercy, 2016), including the perspective of novice teachers regarding rehearsal as a means for mediating their ability to enact ambitious instruction for L2 learners (Troyan & Peercy, 2016). This chapter contributes to our prior work on rehearsal by focusing specifically on the mediation that Francis provided during two lesson rehearsals of one novice teacher, Brahim, as he learned to enact two different CP in a world languages methods course for preservice teachers beginning their practicum. As we develop our pedagogies for practice using the framework of the CP cycle, including lesson rehearsal, self-study has been an essential tool in understanding our teacher educator practice. Thus, this examination of Francis’s learning to provide meditation within lesson rehearsal as a potential zone of proximal development contributes to our collective understanding of how we do our work as we develop our pedagogy for a practice-based approach (Peercy & Troyan, 2017).

Self-study Work in self-study of teacher education practice (S-STEP) provides a compelling methodology for the present study for several reasons. First, the goal of self-study is based in the understanding that teacher educators develop knowledge of the theory that underpins their pedagogy of teacher education through careful examination of the enactment of their own practice (e.g., Berry & Loughran, 2002; Loughran, 2006; Loughran & Berry, 2005). Second, within the field of practice-based teacher education, self-study methodology and its related analytical tools provide an important lens on and opportunity for the development of teacher educator pedagogy for a practice-based approach (Peercy & Troyan, 2017). Third, this particular self-study of the role of interaction within lesson rehearsal is part of our effort to hold ourselves, as teacher educators, accountable to the L2 teachers with whom we work in our respective teacher preparation programs (Johnson, 2015). In other words, self-study functions as

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the lens through which we examine our practice in a reflective manner through dialogue with a critical friend (Schuck & Russell, 2005) who serves as a mirror for and on our practice. In this study, Francis, together with Megan as a critical friend, examined his process of learning to mediate dialogic interactions to support novice teachers’ enactment of two CPs in lesson rehearsal.

THE EVOLUTION OF OUR COLLABORATIVE SELF-STUDY OF MEDIATION IN LESSON REHEARSAL A key component of both CP and S-STEP pedagogy is that of doing practice rather than talking about practice, which Korthagen, Loughran, and Russell (2006) refer to as “teaching itself” in contrast to “teaching about teaching” (p. 1034). As part of our developing practice-based pedagogy, we have struggled with rehearsal from the beginning of our collaboration in 2013. For instance, in one of our initial meetings, Megan drew upon Francis’s knowledge of using rehearsals with novice teachers as she prepared to begin including rehearsals as a part of her course: Megan: Based on your experience and/or the reading of the literature, what are elements of a successful rehearsal? In other words, if I am giving students guidelines or a rubric for engaging in rehearsals, what would be behaviors, outcomes, procedures, activities, etc. that would be desirable for a “good” rehearsal session? … Is part of the central purpose of the rehearsal to get feedback from a “more experienced other” (ZPD)? (email, July 29, 2013)

In our first videoconference meeting, Francis explained how he saw the purpose of rehearsals, as Megan was preparing to engage her students in the rehearsal process for the first time in a couple of weeks. Francis: A rehearsal is an opportunity for a teacher candidate or an in-service teacher who is studying a particular core practice to try it out, to take what has been deconstructed or what has been under analysis, and do it in a way in which you can get some feedback along the way…. This is a way to isolate a key component of the practice, try it out, and give some explicit and targeted feedback about that particular practice … It feels like a series of looking for those teachable moments, really. (Meeting, September 30, 2013)

Throughout our work together, part of developing our pedagogy for practice-based teacher education has been reflecting on our ability to enact lesson rehearsal with our teacher candidates (Peercy & Troyan, 2017; Troyan & Peercy, 2016). In this study, we advance this work, both theoretically and in practice, by positioning rehearsal as a potential zone of proximal development.

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The Role of Rehearsal in the Core Practices Cycle Building upon and extending the work of Lampert and colleagues (Kazemi et al., 2016; Lampert et al., 2013; McDonald et al., 2013), in this chapter we advance the discussion related to rehearsal by focusing on teacher educator practice in the enactment of lesson rehearsal by integrating a robust theory of novice teacher learning that allows us to develop our teacher educator practice in ways that are responsive to the idiosyncratic nature of interaction in lesson rehearsal. Like our colleagues enacting lesson rehearsal in other content areas, we view rehearsal as an important component in fostering novice teachers’ capacity to enact ambitious practice within the CP cycle. In our work, we define rehearsal as “engaging in practice teaching episodes during which the novice teacher is coached as she moves through moment-to-moment pedagogical maneuvers” (Peercy & Troyan, 2017, p. 28). Within a practice-based approach to teacher preparation centered around the CP cycle, rehearsal interactions have increasingly been the focus of scholarly inquiry. Lampert and colleagues (Kazemi et al., 2016; Lampert et al., 2013) collectively analyzed 90 lesson rehearsals over a period of three years and across three teacher preparation programs. In this work, they described the nature of the lesson rehearsals in terms of how novice teachers and teacher educators interact (Lampert et al., 2013) as well as the decision-making processes of the teacher educators in rehearsal (Kazemi et al., 2016). In our earlier study of novice teacher perspectives regarding rehearsal as a learning opportunity, novice teachers pointed to the dialogic nature of rehearsal as an important means of externalizing their thinking or as one novice teacher commented, “getting ‘outside of [her] own head’” (Troyan & Peercy, 2016, p. 194). In this chapter, we advance the discussion related to our learning to enact a practice-based pedagogy by focusing on the rehearsal interaction itself and how Francis learned to provide mediation that supported the development of novice teacher practice within a zone of proximal development (ZPD).

Lesson Rehearsal as a ZPD Informed by a Vygotskian sociocultural perspective on development (Vygotsky, 1978), we position rehearsal as a critical developmental activity because of the mediation that the teacher educator provides to the rehearsing teacher candidate. Our position is supported by the work of Johnson and her colleagues (Johnson, 2015; Johnson & Dellagnelo, 2013), who have applied a Vygotskian perspective on the mediation that is provided to the novice teacher by the teacher educator during a rehearsal phase they have called the “practice teach” (Johnson, 2015).

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Vygotskian sociocultural theory offers a useful framework for examining the lesson rehearsal interactions between the teacher educator and the rehearsing novice teacher. Specifically, it is a lens to explore how lesson rehearsal can be enacted in ways that may support novice teacher development because it situates the mediation offered by the teacher educator as a more experienced other within the developmental activity of learning to teach. The mediation serves as a graduated and responsive support that facilitates the development of the novice. In other words, it is only through collaboration and in dialogue with an expert that the novice develops. Development of the novice teacher occurs within a ZPD, in which the teacher educator identifies and offers mediation to support the novice in completing a particular task that would be inaccessible to the novice without the mediation of the expert. As Fig. 2 depicts, this initial level of development is referred to as the “actual” level of development (Vygotsky, 1978). The desired outcome or goal of the activity is the potential level of development, which, in the context of lesson rehearsal, is the instructional goal of the teacher educator. Within the ZPD, the novice reaches the potential developmental level through appropriate mediation attuned to the learner’s ZPD that is provided by the expert. Ultimately, the goal is for the novice to perform at the potential level of development without mediation from the expert, at which point a new actual level of development and a new

Novice teacher’s potential developmental level of the core practice

Novice teacher’s actual developmental level of the core practice

Fig. 2.

Lesson Rehearsal as Mediation within the Zone of Proximal Development.

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potential developmental level are identified and a corresponding ZPD with a new type of mediation is tailored to the needs of the novice. Fig. 2 depicts our use of Vygotskian sociocultural theory to examine the rehearsal of the core practice supporting I-TLC, one of the CP rehearsed by the novice teacher in this study. The innermost circle represents the novice teacher’s actual developmental level related to the core practice to be rehearsed. In the case of I-TLC, this might involve the novice teacher enacting the core practice inconsistently
using complex syntax, speaking too quickly, providing few or no examples to support language
that is, being generally incomprehensible to the students in the target language or less comprehensible than required to maintain students’ attention, interest, and engagement in the learning activity. This actual level of development is what the novice teacher can do unassisted and which allows the teacher educator to identify how to tailor mediation in accordance with the novice’s ZPD. The outermost circle represents the novice teacher’s potential level of development related to I-TLC. The potential level of development is the goal performance of the activity within the ZPD. In this case, the goal is the unassisted enactment of the features of the core practice I-TLC. During the rehearsal, the teacher educator aims to work within the ZPD to provide mediation that is responsive to the needs of the novice teacher in the moment, given the contextual factors (e.g., the context and content of the lesson, the background of the target students, the background of the novice teacher, and the particular instructional activity in which the core practice is being rehearsed). The mediation within the ZPD is represented by arrows because this graduated and responsive assistance provided by the teacher educator is intended to move the novice teacher toward his or her potential level of development. In sum, when these conditions are present in rehearsal in the CP cycle, rehearsal supports teacher development within one’s ZPD (Johnson, 2015). From this perspective, rehearsal within the CP cycle can potentially become a dynamic, responsive, and contextualized sociocultural activity that is informed not only by the knowledge for enacted practice that is the goal of the activity (i.e., unassisted implementation of the core practice), but also by the broader individual, historical, and contextual factors, including the kind of mediation provided, that construct the activity setting of learning to teach a second language (Donato & Davin, 2017; Johnson, 2016; Johnson & Dellagnelo, 2013). Through this self-study, we extend Johnson’s work on teacher development through interaction in “practice teach,” in which groups of novice teachers collaboratively taught lessons that were mediated by the teacher educator. In our work with lesson rehearsal, the novice teacher rehearses a lesson individually, consistent with the work in CP (Kazemi et al., 2016; Lampert et al., 2013). Thus, given the idiosyncratic nature of mediation in learning to teach (Johnson & Dellagnelo, 2013) lesson rehearsal within the CP cycle can not only provide more responsive mediation to each novice teacher, it can also allow the teacher educator to develop the ability to provide effective mediation in rehearsal to

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each novice teacher. Thus, the goal of the reflection on practice in this self-study is to examine and ultimately further develop Francis’s ability to mediate novice teachers’ development of CP in rehearsal as a ZPD, part of our overall development as teacher educators enacting a practice based pedagogy.

METHODOLOGY To explore our specific question of how Francis’s mediation of dialogic interactions in rehearsal supported novice teacher learning by realizing a ZPD in rehearsal, we focus on Francis’s mediation of the dialogic processes that unfolded between him, the rehearsing novice teacher, and the other participating novice teachers in the rehearsal of one world language novice teacher of French, Brahim. The objective of the self-study was to understand the nature of the mediation Francis provided so that we could better understand responsive mediation in rehearsal overall. The data we share here were gathered from two 25-minute videotaped and transcribed rehearsals that took place during a world language methods course taught during the fall semester 2014. While the course consisted of graduate and undergraduate students, only the five graduate students in the course consented to participate in the study. As Table 1 depicts, the five novice teachers were from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds and all but one were not born in the United States. Brahim, the focal novice teacher in the study, came to the United States after graduating from high school in Tunisia. In the United States, he completed a Bachelor’s degree in computer science and subsequently worked in food service management. At the time of the study he was completing a Master of Education in World Language Education in to order to be licensed to teach French and Arabic. His field placement at the time of this study was in a high school French classroom. Table 1. Participants. Student Name

Age Country of Origin

Languages Spoken/Languages Planning to Teach

Length of Time in US If Not from US

Johnna

25

USA

English, French/French




Lin

25

China

English, Cantonese, Mandarin/ Mandarin

4.5 years

Yujie

24

China

English/Mandarin

2 years

Tatiana

43

Russia/Ukraine

English, Russian, French, Ukrainian/French

18 years

Brahim

34

Tunisia

English, French, Arabic/French

15 years

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Within the CP cycle for each of the course’s focal CP (Fig. 1), the first step experienced by Brahim and his peers was the deconstruction of the particular core practice. This involved modeling of the core practice by Francis, while the novice teachers reflected on his use of the practice according to the criteria on rubrics designed by him and colleagues (Troyan et al., 2013). Later, novice teachers and Francis worked together to further deconstruct the same core practice using video exemplars of other educators enacting the focal CP and the same rubrics to guide their discussion. Before their own implementation of a lesson that included use of the focal core practice in the field, the novice teachers rehearsed their lesson in their methods course, EDWL 500. As suggested in the literature (e.g., Lampert et al., 2013) and represented in Fig. 1, each core practice was deconstructed, demonstrated, and rehearsed within one common instructional activity. Each novice teacher rehearsed twice during the semester, once for each core practice. Rehearsals followed a structured protocol (McDonald, Mohr, Dichter, & McDonald, 2007) to facilitate the activity and lasted 25 minutes each. During the rehearsal, Francis provided coaching and feedback that were based on the criteria that had been identified during the deconstruction of the CP. Throughout the semester, novice teacher peers observing the rehearsing novice took an increasingly active role in offering feedback as they also developed control over aspects of the same core practice (Kazemi et al., 2016). The two CPs examined in this course that were the focus of the present study have been identified “as essential to ambitious teaching in a world language context by the world language profession” (Troyan et al., 2013, p. 162). They are (1) supporting I-TLC and (2) using questioning as a strategy for eliciting further student talk to build and assess student understanding (Questioning). I-TLC consists of the following three categories of competencies that the novice teacher must develop through enactment: creating comprehensible language, creating contexts for comprehension, and creating comprehensible interactions with students. Like I-TLC, Questioning consists of three categories: (1) questions, lesson objectives, and contexts; (2) question types; and (3) question form and follow-up.1 The enactment of each core practice within the CP Cycle was situated within an instructional activity (Table 2) that novices regularly enact in their teaching, as recommended in the literature (e.g., McDonald et al., 2013; Troyan et al., 2013). The instructional activities as they corresponded to the CPs were: (1) introducing new vocabulary words situated in a meaningful and interesting context and (2) leading a text-based discussion in the target language. To analyze the data, we engaged in an iterative process of individual and collaborative reflection on the data. Within this collaborative self-study (e.g., Bullock & Christou, 2009; Bullock & Ritter, 2011; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009), Megan was a critical friend who functioned as a reflective partner and

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Table 2. Rehearsals, the Corresponding Core Practices, and Instructional Activities. Rehearsal

Core Practice

Instructional Activity

1

Supporting interaction and target language comprehensibility (I-TLC)

Introducing new vocabulary words situated in a meaningful and interesting context

2

Using questioning as a strategy for eliciting further student talk to build and assess student understanding (Questioning)

Leading a text-based discussion in the target language

assisted by posing provocative questions, providing important alternative perspectives, and learning alongside Francis as we worked together to understand our developing practice through our inquiry (Schuck & Russell, 2005). This particular study is part of our larger long-term study of our developing pedagogy of teacher education for supporting novice teacher practice (Peercy & Troyan, 2017; Troyan & Peercy, 2016). Our goal was to determine to what extent Francis was successful in creating a ZPD in which to mediate Brahim’s development of the two focal CPs. By examining Francis’s mediation of rehearsal, we sought to advance our collective rehearsal practice. To begin, using the constant comparative approach (Corbin & Strauss, 2014), we each reviewed transcripts of Brahim’s two rehearsals individually. After the individual review, we met electronically to discuss the initial themes (mediation taken up, mediation rejected, mediation decreases over time) that were emerging in the data. Next, we individually reviewed the data again to discern the deeper functions of the mediation that was taken up, or rejected, as well as why the mediation decreased over time. In this stage of analysis, we identified three themes related to Francis’s learning to mediate lesson rehearsal, which represent rich sites of substantial learning regarding Francis’s practice in terms of both a successful and an unsuccessful attempt at creating a ZPD for Brahim. In focusing on these themes, we seek to further develop our collective repertoire of teacher educator practice for enacting lesson rehearsals as potential sites for responsive mediation within a ZPD.

FINDINGS Given our focus in this chapter on how Francis learned to mediate dialogic interactions during Brahim’s lesson rehearsal to support his learning within a ZPD, we sought to understand characteristics of the mediation that Francis provided: the ways in which it supported a ZPD for Brahim and the ways in which it did not. Our overall goal in undertaking this work is to more

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consistently enact rehearsal that is within the ZPDs of our rehearsing novice teachers. To this end, we present the findings related to the following themes that emerged in the data: (1) supporting the interaction through assisting questions, (2) promoting reflection by linking theory and practice, and (3) learning when to back off.

Theme 1: Supporting the Interaction through Assisting Questions Our analysis of the interactive data from the rehearsals showed that the most common function of Francis’s mediation was to assist Brahim in the rehearsal interaction by posing assisting questions. In the rehearsal excerpt below, Brahim was introducing new vocabulary about leisure time activities in a lesson for a Level 1 high school French classroom. In the lesson rehearsal, Brahim used the verb “to prefer” to question students about their preferences related to the set of vocabulary terms that he introduced to the students in the lesson. In the rehearsal, he asked a “student” (a novice teacher peer, Yujie, with no knowledge of French) about her preferences using the modifer “pre´fe´re´” in French, which is a cognate of “preferred” in English. This skill of using and recognizing cognates is a feature of the CP of supporting I-TLC that had been discussed and examined extensively in this course and across the courses in the program but had yet to be enacted in practice by Brahim and the other novice teachers.

Brahim (B):

… Tu peux me dire c’est quoi “pre´fe´re´”? Pre´fe´re´ en anglais? (… Can you tell me what “pre´fe´re´” means? “Pre´fe´re´” in English?)

Yujie (Y):

Is it like…

B:

Pre´fe´re´… (Preferred.)

Y: B:

I like. Preferred. Exactement. Tre`s bien. Tre`s bien. Chapeau. (Exactly. Very good. Very good. Well done.)

Francis (F):

Follow up by asking how she knows that.

B:

Et… How did you know that? [laughter]

Y:

Cognate. [points at the screen]

B:

Ok

Y:

Cognate. [points at the screen]

B:

Well, they [the target learners] won’t say…

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(Continued ) F:

But what else might they say if they don’t know cognate?

Y:

Looks like preference.

B:

Ok, ok tre`s bien. (Ok, ok, very good)

F:

That’s important to point out because some students may not know or they may resist and you can prompt them a little more. But this is a savvy language learner, so you know, “cognates” (Brahim, Rehearsal 1, CP 1: I-TLC)

In this interaction, we found that Francis focused the mediation on supporting Brahim to move beyond a simplistic initiation
response-evaluation (IRE) interactional pattern (Lemke, 1990; Mehan, 1998) which has been critiqued by scholars (e.g., Barnes, 1992; van Lier, 1998) because it limits students’ opportunities to engage in meaningful, dialogic interaction with the teacher and other students in the target language (Nassaji & Wells, 2000; van Lier, 1998). Because the focus of this rehearsal was on developing Brahim’s ability to use questions to elicit further student talk, Francis provided a direct prompt by telling Brahim to “Follow up by asking how she knows that.” In response, the student identified that she knew that pre´fe´re´ meant “preferred” because it was a cognate with English. Given the possibility that a P-12 student would not know the label “cognate,” Francis asked Brahim what else a student might say to explain her strategy for understanding the word without identifying it as a “cognate.” Finally, Yujie, serving a role somewhere in between the role of the P-12 student and a reflecting novice teacher, offered that a student might say: “Looks like preference.” Finally, Francis summarized that “cognate” understanding that “pre´fe´re´” is a cognate of “preferred” was the important concept, rather than student knowledge of the word “cognate” and that each of the target students would come to the learning activity with different background knowledge and experiences related to cognates. In this excerpt, the interaction between Francis and Brahim demonstrates the realization of a ZPD that successfully led him to identify and use an interactive strategy to help students identify the meaning of pre´fe´re´, while simultaneously encouraging him and the other novice teachers to consider other responses that students might offer. Further, in addition to mediating Brahim’s questioning within the interaction, Francis also mediated the interactions between Brahim and the other novice teachers, who played the role of students, to further support Brahim during the lesson rehearsal. We found that Francis was most successful in mediating the closing of this type of interactive loop. In other areas, he struggled to provide mediation that realized a ZPD for Brahim.

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Theme 2: Promoting Reflection by Linking Theory and Practice In the second rehearsal, Brahim enacted CP 2 (Questioning) in a lesson that led students through a text-based discussion comparing the average hours of work in France and the United States according to particular professions. The discussion was focused on a chart that outlined the average number of hours French citizens spend in a set of activities each week, compared to those in the United States. As questioning in the target language was situated within the instructional activity of a text-based discussion, the chart a suitable context within which Brahim could develop his ability to use questioning in this and similar instructional activities.

B:

…and I welcome ideas in English here. [waits] Pourquoi? Qu’est-ce que vous pensez? Qu’est-ce que vous pensez? (Why? What do you think? What do you think?)

Johnna: Maybe because of the society, they… faster… B:

Oui, la socie´te´. La socie´te´ est plus rapide. (Yes, the society. The society is faster.)

Yujie:

The economy.

B:

L’e´conomie, oui. Quoi d’autre? Pourquoi? (The economy, yes. What else? Why?)

Lin (L): I was thinking like the concept of individualism. B:

Oui, ok. Tre`s bonne raison. (Yes, ok. Very good reason)

F:

So, when you put that up here, earlier when you were giving the two answers 28 and 22 percent, when you would get them, you would say “excellent”…. What’s happened in these interactions, you’re doing something different. Do you know what that is? Do you know what you did in response to their answers? Does anyone notice what he did in response to your answers?

T:

We said it in English and he said it in French?

F:

Yeah, you’re repeating, you’re recasting in French. So, that’s a variation of IRE ... which is a pattern you want to be aware of. (Brahim, Rehearsal 2, CP 2: Questioning)

In this excerpt, Francis’s mediation drew Brahim’s and the other novice teachers’ attention to Brahim’s departure from his use of an IRE sequence earlier in the rehearsal (as well as in the rehearsal for CP 1) to a recast in French of what the students were saying in English because they didn’t have vocabulary to express all of their thoughts in French about the topics related to the text. Francis’s intention in this exchange was to assist both Brahim and the other novice teachers in shifting roles from rehearsing novice teachers and P-12 students to reflective practitioners making observations about Brahim’s

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developing practice and linking it to the theory underpinning the practice. However, as we analyzed and discussed this exchange, we found that the interaction between Francis and the novice teachers was focused primarily on guiding Brahim toward completion of the interactive turns rather than linking theory to practice. In other words, Francis’s questioning did not promote a ZPD focused on the theory
practice link. As we discussed this particular interaction, we found that if Francis had used an additional question, such as What does theory tell us about the role of this type of interaction?, he could have explicitly mediated the novice teachers’ noticing of the link between theory and practice related to the IRE vs IRF interactive sequence within the space of the rehearsal. Instead, Francis’s utterances summarized the theory that was enacted in Brahim’s interactive moves, rather than supporting Brahim and the novice teachers to make this link with mediation. Further, as we noted in another interaction in the same lesson, sometimes Francis may not have needed to mediate at all.

Theme 3: Knowing When to Back Off

B: Oui, alors, en France, parce qu’ils travaillent moins [puts hand near ground to show less], ils ont plus [raises hand to signify more] pour prendre soin [mimes rocking again] des enfants. (Yes, so in France, because they work less [puts hand near ground to show less], they have more [raises hand to signify more] to take care [mimes rocking again] of kids.) F: Et pour les vacances? (And for vacation?) B: Et pour les vacances oui. Alors Lin ton pe`re, ton pe`re [underlines the word on the board], il travaille? Oui [thumbs up] or non [thumbs down]? (And for vacation, yes. So Lin, your father [underlines the word on the board], does he work? Yes [thumbs up] or no [thumbs down]? L: Oui [thumbs up] (Yes [thumbs up]) (Brahim, Rehearsal 2, CP 2: Questioning)

In this excerpt, the mediation offered by Francis was rejected by Brahim. Francis offered a prompt for Brahim to ask a follow-up question related to the amount of time each week that the French work. In asking “Et pour les vacances? [And for vacation?]” Francis intended to prompt Brahim to ask another question and contrast the amount that the French work with the amount of vacation that they have. However, this was not in line with Brahim’s plan for the interaction. Brahim acknowledged Francis’s mediation in his utterance “Et pour les vacances oui.” However, in his next utterance, Brahim

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asserted his agency by continuing along in his plan for the interaction: “Alors Lin ton pe`re, ton pe`re [So, Lin your father, your father].” In this move, Brahim’s intention was to shift from the discussion of the text to connect to the experience of the student. In our discussions of this particular aspect of the attempted mediation, we found that this extreme focus on the completion of interactive turns led to Brahim’s rejection of the mediation offered by Francis, an overall unsuccessful attempt at creating a ZPD focused on theory
practice link. We examine this and the other unsuccessful attempt at mediation in the discussion below.

DISCUSSION Our goal in this self-study of lesson rehearsal practice was to identify some of the features of successful and unsuccessful attempts to establish and maintain a ZPD within rehearsal, the cornerstone of responsive pedagogy in lesson rehearsal. We found that the challenge for the teacher educator, as Francis’s experience revealed, is learning to provide mediation that is appropriately tailored to the needs of the novice teacher at the time of the particular rehearsal. As we analyzed and discussed the rehearsal interactions, it became clear to us that a certain tension exists between our goals for the mediation and the emerging goals of the rehearsing novice teacher. In our analysis of the interactive data, we found that Francis’s attempts at mediation were more successful early on when the mediation of Brahim’s rehearsals focused primarily on the successful completion of an interactive turn. In the first rehearsal, Francis’s mediation focused on calling Brahim’s attention to the content and topics of the follow-up questions that he might ask to extend a particular interaction with a student and reduce his use of the less linguistically demanding IRE sequence. We noted the important role of questions in helping Brahim to make his way through the initial rehearsal. This suggested to us that Francis’s particular strength was in mediation when the goal was the successful completion of the interactive turn in the target language. However, the goals of rehearsal go well beyond completing the interactive turn, as we discovered in our analysis of the second rehearsal. As Brahim progressed in his use of the CPs, we found in the second rehearsal that Francis missed opportunities to establish a ZPD for Brahim and ultimately advance his understanding of the relationship between theory and practice. Specifically, Francis missed opportunities to encourage Brahim and the other novice teachers to notice the enactment of theory in the rehearsal through mediation in the form of open-ended questions. In this regard, mediating novice teachers’ understanding of the theory
practice link, while the essence of the work in a practice-based approach, is challenging to accomplish

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within the activity of the rehearsal. This balancing act in rehearsal was further complicated by the competing goals of Francis and Brahim. In another instance in the second rehearsal, Francis struggled to provide mediation that was appropriately targeted toward Brahim’s needs, presumably because the mediation served neither the goal that Francis had established nor that which Brahim had for the rehearsal. In any case, Francis did not establish and provide mediation within a ZPD in this rehearsal; it was not responsive to Brahim. Given Brahim’s expression of agency, perhaps it would have been more appropriate for Francis to remain silent and not provide mediation at all. Our findings suggest that learning to create a ZPD within lesson rehearsal is a complex endeavor. Francis’s experience in attempting to establish a ZPD for Brahim within lesson rehearsal speaks to the challenges in developing a responsive approach to lesson rehearsal that considers the rehearsing novice teacher’s individual needs as she/he develops teaching practice. To be sure, Brahim’s resistance and rejection of certain attempts by Francis to provide mediation is a key lesson for teacher educators seeking to enact rehearsal as a ZPD. The factors
whether contextual, instructional, personal, or other
that led to Brahim’s rejection of Francis’s prompt point to a need to examine and better understand individual variables in creating a ZPD for each rehearsing novice teacher. As Donato and Davin (2017) argue, it is critical to understand the novice teacher as influenced by “history-in-person” (p. 17). In other words, the novice teacher comes to the activity of rehearsal with a dynamic set of experiences, expectations, and goals for learning that influence the interactions in the rehearsal (see also Johnson, 2016). Enacting a responsive lesson rehearsal that represents a ZPD for the rehearsing novice teacher requires knowing the novice teacher in history.

CONCLUSION While the broader literature on teacher preparation centered around CP recognizes the significant influence of novice teachers’ interactions within the social, cultural, and historical contexts involved in learning to teach (McDonald et al., 2013), deeper investigation into the development of teacher educators’ practice in successfully mediating lesson rehearsal is needed. As Kazemi et al. (2016) suggested, the findings from this self-study reveal that this work is full of “tensions and dilemmas” (p. 29) because it is a dynamic, socially imbued, and dialogic act. Expanding upon a sociocultural view of rehearsal (McDonald et al., 2013), our perspective positions it as a potential ZPD that is a dialogic co-construction of knowledge about language teaching within and across sociocultural contexts (Freeman & Johnson, 1998; Johnson, 2009, 2016; Johnson & Dellagnelo, 2013; Peercy et al., 2016; Troyan & Peercy, 2016). To that end, we view enacting rehearsal as a ZPD as a core practice for teacher educators

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developing novice teachers to work in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts. Further, the diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds of Brahim, the novice teacher in this study, and his colleagues enabled us to study Francis’s developing ability to mediate rehearsals for culturally and linguistically diverse novice teachers. By positioning rehearsal as a potential ZPD in which the teacher educator mediates the development of the novice teacher’s ability to enact a specified set of CPs, we were able to grapple with the successes and challenges in Francis’s attempts to dialogically construct lesson rehearsals as a responsive pedagogy for culturally and linguistically diverse novice teachers. Through our collaborative study of Francis’s enactment of rehearsal, we have a better understanding of the complexities of enacting successful lesson rehearsals that may result in a ZPD for the rehearsing novice teacher. By understanding the idiosyncrasies of lesson rehearsal interaction in this way, we can learn to enact a more responsive practice-based pedagogy in the future, as we continue to develop our teacher educator pedagogy.

NOTE 1. A thorough discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of these two core practices is beyond the scope of this chapter. See Davin and Troyan (2015) for a detailed description.

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INDEX practitioners’ intentions and interpretations, 245
246 SEI course, description of, 246
247 theoretical frameworks, 243
245 Bilingual preservice teachers, 206
207 Bismilla, V., 217 Boundary-cross learning, 58
59 Brock, M. E., 180 Bunch, G. C., 148, 157, 160

Academic diversity, 123, 128 Akkerman, S. F., 58 Al Khaili, M. K., 204 The American Dream Is Emigrating (Nicholas Kristof), 152 Autobiographical self-studies data construction and analysis, 23
25 development as a literacy teacher, 25 episodes, analysis of, 25
34 in-service teacher education and professional development, 30 martial arts, connecting students through, 28
29, 32 transition from science teacher to literacy teacher, 24
25

Chalk Talk activity, 65, 68 Cho, J., 157 Clavijo, Amparo, 48 Cochran-Smith, M., 90 Collaborative Inquiry Project, 233
234 Collaborative research, 41, 44, 49, 51 Collaborative self-study approaches, importance of, 69
70 Collective reflective texts, 60 Colombian language teachers’ awareness of local resources, 38
39 Comber, Barbara, 44 Common Core State Standards (CCSS), 148, 199 Community-based pedagogies (CBPs), 41
42, 44
45, 47
48, 51 bilingual education, 43
44 influence of family background, 42
43 international collaboration, 43
44

Bakker, A., 58 Berry, A., 69 Bilingual education, 43
44 Bilingual Education Act, 1968, 224 Bilingual learners (BLs), effectiveness of SEI preparation for data sources and data analysis, 248
249 findings participant perspectives, 253
257 practitioner perspectives, 249
253 implications, 258 insights, 257
258 research design, 245
248 participants, 247
248 283

284

for low socioeconomic and culturally diverse students, 41
42, 44 MA program, 47 Coulby, D., 169 Critical literacy, 206 Cross-conversational texts, 60 Cross-disciplinary collaborative teaching, 119, 136
138 Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners, 146 Culturally responsive pedagogy, 205
206 Digital literacy autobiographies, 215 Disciplinary cultures, 116, 119, 132, 138 Educational leadership, 116
119 English language as additional language (EAL), 21 as foreign language (EFL), 7, 38, 46
47 learners (ELLs), 20, 31, 169, 224 to speakers of other languages (ESOL) program, 9 teaching (ELT), 38 English learners (ELs), 146 PK-12, 146
148, 150
152, 156
158, 160 preparing preservice teachers for rural area, 147
149 English teacher education in Colombia, 44
45 European ancestry of Toronto, 21 Experiential learning, 156 Fairclough, N., 82 Feminist communication theory, 123
125 Freese, A. R., 40 Freire, Paulo, 43, 225 Fullan, Michael, 22

INDEX

Galguera, T., 148, 157
158 Globalization, influence on education, 41 Gonzalez, A., 44 Goodman, Kenneth, 43 Goodman, Yetta, 43 Hansen-Thomas, H., 159 Harre, R., 59 Horan, Elizabeth, 43 Hudelson, Sarah, 43 Identities-in-practice, 57 Informal practice-based teacher education, 34 episodes analysis, 25
34 in library, 27
28 martial arts, connecting students through, 28
29, 32 Inquiry-based teaching and learning, 94 in CELD teacher preparation programs, 108, 111 p4cHI approach to, 98
99, 101, 110 recommendations for teacher educators, 108
110 role of self-study and online journaling in, 94 common practices for developing inquiry stance, 105
106 informing policy work for creative and critical inquiry, 106
107 intersection of inquiry and context, 97
98, 103
104 multiple perspectives on translating theory to practice, 104
105 theoretical framework and research study data analysis, 102

Index

data sources and data collection, 100
102 findings, 102
107 methodology, 99
100 research questions, 99 In-service teacher education and professional development, 30, 33 Inspiration software, 31 Instructional intelligence, 22 Intellectually safe community, 105 Interaction and target language comprehensibility (I-TLC), 264, 270 Intercultural learning and self-study, 169 indicators of transformation acquisition of confidence, 178 approaches of engaging students, 179
180 behavioral changes, 178
179 critical reflection and assessment of one’s assumptions, 177
178 disorienting dilemma, 176
177 insights and implications, 180
182 self-study research methodology and transformative learning theory, 169
172 context, 172
174 course design, 173 data source and data analysis, 174
175 Intercultural Learning Partnership (ILP) project, 168, 172
176 Jimenez-Silva, M., 156 Lagenhove, L., 59 Language and literacy teacher, 19
20 advantages of teaching in southern end of Toronto, 26

285

being a literacy coach, 29
30 in-service teacher education and professional development, 30, 33 lack of regular classroom, 22 leadership role of, 21
22 professional development sessions, 22
23 teaching experiences, 30 Language education, 27
28 Lather, Patti, 225 Lave, J., 57 Learning Plus teachers, 22 Lee, S., 80 Lewis, A., 80 Linguistically responsive teaching (LRT), 242 framework for, 243 Linguistic-experiential reservoir, 126
128 Literacy experts-in-the-making, 22 Llurda, E., 44 Local knowledge, significance in curriculum and teaching, 38
39, 45 intercultural exchanges, 43
44, 48 low socioeconomic and culturally diverse students, 41
42 Loughran, J., 70, 147 Love, N., 233, 236, 238 McCarty, Theresa, 43 Mediation in lesson rehearsal, 264, 267, 271, 274, 278
279 Mezirow, J., 177 Moll, Dr. Luis, 43 Multicultural teacher education courses (MECs), 56, 59
70 discursive view of diversity in, 89
90 importance of social diversity in, 88 for pre-service teachers, 59
60

286

Nota Bene notes, 177 Novice teacher educators (NTEs), 56 boundary-cross learning, 58
59 in contexts of multicultural education classrooms, study, 59
70 MEC for pre-service teachers, context, 59
60 positionality and potential boundaries, 61
64 use of individual positionalities, 67
69 Nye, N. S., 212 Olson, K., 156 Online learning journal, 94 Pedagogies and policies for linguistic diversity and language development, 8
11 Pedagogy of teacher education, 18
19 Peercy, M. M., 151, 158 Personal and professional histories as English Teacher Educators, 41
50 Philosophy for children Hawai‘i (p4cHI), 94
95 Practice-based approaches to teacher education, 33
34 Public education, 46 EFL in, 47 “Public Scholarship to Educate Diverse Democracies,” 4 Pueblo: Engaging Teachers and Community (PETAC), 186 goal of, 187 Pueblo School District (PSD), selfstudy work at, 186
187 aims and objectives, 187
188 context, 187 framework, 188
190

INDEX

important personal and professional changes, 195
201 changes in teaching styles, 197 evolution of teacher education course design, 197
198 focus on culture and context, 195
197 professional development of teachers, 199
200 Project Based Learning (PBL) activities, 191
193 Pueblo language teachers, professional development of, 194
195 research design and analysis, 190
191 Race and racial stereotyping in schools, study of class readings on classroom context, 78
79 collaborative discussions, 82
83 color-blind ideology, 80 differences between racial ascription and racial identity, 80 findings, 83
88 Reflection, significance in S-STEP, 39
40 Ruiz, Richard, 43 Rumford, J., 212 Russell, T., 69 Samaras, A., 40 Secondary literacy, 119
120 Second language teacher education (SLTE), 2 pedagogies of, 3 research, 6 Self-reflective texts, 60 Self-study Collaborative Conference Protocol, 128
130

Index

Self-Study in Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP), 2, 38, 147, 243
245 challenges, 4 connection between personal reflection and action, 23 knowledge about teacher education practices, 147 literature, 2 personal history self-study, 23
24 scholarship, 5 self-study as an approach to teacher inquiry, 40
41 Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), 3 value of reflection in, 39
40 Self-study research collaborative self-study, 128
130 significance of, 137
139 Sharkey, Judy, 44, 48 Sheltered English instruction (SEI) course, self-study of teaching research in, 224, 242 design and methodology, 227
231 theoretical underpinnings, 225
227 Sheltered instruction observation protocol (SIOP), 211 Short, Kathy, 43 Sleeter, C., 90 Sociocritical literacy, 31 Special education, 116
117, 120
122 Special Education and Resource Teacher (SERT), 27 Systemic functional linguistics (SFL), 148 Taylor, E. W., 169 Teacher education development with novice teachers context, 264
267

287

self-study of lesson rehearsal practice collaborative self-study, 267
271 development of core practices (CP) cycle in rehearsal as a ZPD, 265
268, 270
272 Teacher education interest section (TEIS) listserv, 3 Teacher educator development, 6
8 Teacher preparation program for rural area, study, 147
149 connecting preservice teachers with international students on campus, 151
152 Teacher professional development (PD), 49
50 Teaching bi/multilingual learners, 206
207 TESOL (Teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages), 3
4 Third Space-oriented teacher educator, 32 Tidwell, D. L., 160 Tidwell, Deborah, 76 Toronto, microcosm of, 21 Toronto District School Board (TDSB), 21 TPDP, 49 Transactional reading and learning theory, 124
128 Transformative intercultural learning, 168 Translanguaging, 207
208 Arabic English book review, 215 United Arab Emirates (UAE) educational landscape of, 208
209 preservice teachers’ English proficiency development, 214
216

288

Vertical notion of literacy, 32 Visual literacy practices framing, 122
123 interpretive act of viewing visual texts, 133
135 textualizing lived experiences to understand teaching practices, 135
137 visuals as both objects and mediums, 130
133

INDEX

Wei, L., 208 Wenger, E., 57 W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 186 York Region District School Board (YRDSB), 21 Learning Plus program, 21 Zeichner, K., 147, 158