Exploring the Backgrounds, Visions, and Practices of Six Literacy Teacher Educators with a Critical Stance
Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This study investigated the backgrounds, visions, practices, and pedagogies of six literacy teacher educators with a critical stance. In this qualitative research study, three semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant over a three-year period. Several significant findings emerged from this research study. First, the early life experiences of the literacy teacher educators significantly affected them, and as a result, directly influenced their stance as literacy teacher educators. Their early schooling experiences, which revealed to them how intertwined socio-political issues were in the roles of teaching and learning, influenced their practice as literacy teacher educators. Second, the literacy teacher educators with a critical stance held broad and expansive definitions of literacy. These definitions transcended traditional notions of literacy such as literacy as a set of autonomous skills (e.g., reading, writing) to include expansive notions of literacy including out of school literacy practices such as home literacies and community literacies. The literacy teacher educators modeled valuing expansive conceptions of literacy by including a wide range of texts in their courses, including: videos, blogs, spoken word, spaces (e.g., transit), and childrenâ s and young adolescent literature. Third, exploring issues of equity in a deliberate manner was a strategy to help student teachers appreciate the complexity of education and arrive at the understanding that literacy and schooling are not neutral practices. Implications for literacy teacher education courses include incorporating a range of texts and genres, which model expansive understandings of literacy, while modeling for student teachers how to effectively integrate them into literacy teaching. Implications for pre-service teacher education programs include building partnerships in the community including both traditional (e.g., schools) and non-traditional (e.g., community centres) learning spaces. Implications for future research include exploring how literacy teacher educators use the affordance of digital technologies to enact a critical stance in their teacher education courses.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Pooja Dharamshi
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2648396397