Kennedy, M. M. (1999). The role of preservice
teacher education. In Darling-Hammond, L., and Sykes, G. (Eds.), Teaching
as the learning profession: Handbook of teaching and policy (54-86). San
Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Author: Mary M.
Kennedy mkennedy@msu.edu – At Michigan State University
since 1986 (to direct the National Center for Research on Teacher Learning) in
Dep. Of Teacher Ed. Research questions center around the nature of teaching and
how external events influence teaching. Recent publications: Kennedy, M. M. (2010) Attribution Error and the Quest for
Teacher Quality. Educational Researcher, 39(8), 591-598.
Date:
1999
Research Questions: Can
preservice education alter initial understandings of the nature of teaching?
Context (need for
study): Teacher educators are the most vocal
group that does not support “received wisdom, [that] teaching is fundamentally
a self-evident practice,” (p. 54) that content and will drive what and how to
teach. Preservice Teacher Education, aims to change frames of reference from
seat hours and experience.
Methods: Used
Teacher Education and Learning to Teach study – presenting teachers with
hypothetical situations – to find teachers’ interpretations and responses. Over
100 teachers followed through nine different programs. Asked about response to
hypothetical situations “several times during this process” (p. 57).
Findings:
Responses to the situations varied over time and “ideas and ideals they claimed
to care about could be, and often were, incompatible with the ideas that occurred
to them in the face of these specific situations” (p. 57). Teachers tend to be
influenced more by prescriptive ideas of conventions and organization the
closer they get to the action of teaching. Preservice teachers tend to talk
with a frame of reference for teaching based on what they experienced as
students, whereas university faculty talk as if reformers.
Discussion (my
connection):
McKinney, M. & Giorgis, C. (2009). Narrating
and performing identity: Literacy specialists’ writing identities. Journal
of Literacy Research, 41(1), 104-149.
Author:
Marilyn McKinney –Univ. of Iowa, Professor in Dep. Of Teaching and Learning at
UNLV. marilyn@unlv.nevada.edu
Research interests in technology in teaching and learning, teacher research,
literacy, writing, and collaboration (learning communities). Director of
Southern Nevada Writing Project. Working in 2012 on “Legacy 3” with NWP to
examine 10 teacher-consultants who attended WP before 1994.
Cyndi Girogis – Univ. of Arizona,
Associate Dean and Professor (of literature education) at UNLV (DTL). giorgisc@unlv.nevada.edu Research
interest in children’s lit/media, literacy and culture, writing. Recent (2007)
publication of The Wonder of It All: When
Literature and Literacy Intersect with Nancy J. Johnson – K-8 look at incorporating
children’s literature into daily rhythm of the classroom.
Date:
2009
Research Questions:
In what ways do literacy specialists construct their identities as writers and
as teachers of writing? How do they negotiate the performance of those
identities in different contexts? (p. 108) “In what ways do literacy
specialists’ identities as writers interconnect with their identities and
performances as teachers of writing and/or as supporting the teaching of writing?”
(p. 109).
Context (need for
study): “A number of researchers…have pointed
to the invisibility of writing in contrast to the prominence of reading in the
professional literature” (p. 108). Few states require writing for reading
endorsements.
Methods: Four
literacy specialists within a large, urban school district in 3 schools as part
of one state’s Reading Excellence Act grant. 2 year period. Writing samples –
writer’s autobiographies during first year as part of researchers’ PD class for
literacy specialists. Semi-structured interviews near end of second year with
11 participants. Analyzed through Wortham’s (2001) process of dialogic narrative
analysis. Bi-monthly PD sessions and site-based support as needed from grant
personnel. Chose one participant from each category in Phase I (see below) for
representative analysis.
Findings: During
Phase I, identified 4 categories of writer/teacher of writer identity: “writers
who taught writing, sometimes writers who taught writing, non writers who
taught writing, and nonwriters who did not teach writing” (p. 115). Identities
as writers and teachers of writing are complex facets of self and sometimes
seem contradictory in nature. School writing has an impact on adult identity as
a writer and ToW. The claim of reading as a prerequisite to writing is a way to
resist the teaching of writing. Successful students of writing use those
experiences to inform pedagogy. Some are conflicted between what they see as
useful or purposeful writing and falling back on the “mandates” of programs and
formulas.
Discussion (my
connection):
Whitney, A., Blau, S., Bright, A., Cabe, R.,
Dewar, T., Levin, J., … & Rogers, P. (2008). Beyond strategies: Teacher
practice, writing process, and the influence of inquiry. English Education,
40(3), 201-230.
Author:
Anne Whitney – University of Northern Colorado, Ed.D. 1989 in Special
Education (BS and MS from CSU; hearing and speech science, communication
disorders); Coordinator of Speech-Language Services at Univ. of Col. As well as
owner of Spectrum Educational Consulting Services Anne Elrod Whitney – PhD.
Education UC Santa Barbara 2006, Associate Professor of Education at Penn State
awhitney@psu.edu; areas of focus are: The
teacher as a writer; Writing and learning; Teacher education and professional development;
and How writing fits into a life.
Date:
2008
Research Questions:
Context (need for
study): Maxine Hairston (1982) said that
traditional writing paradigm emphasizing style, organization, and conventions
correctness is ready to give way to invention and revision within a
process-oriented one (201). Teachers seem to have misappropriated the term “writing
process” as naming any other model of learning to write. Evaluating one of
SCWriP’s inservice programs using a comparative reference – study’s goal was to
“assess the effects of participation in a sustained site-based inservice
program” (p. 204).
Methods: Case
studies of two teachers (from a larger study) “who represent different ways of
envisioning and enacting a process-influenced pedagogy” one who participated in
South Coast Writing Project inservice program and one who did not. Inservice
Program: inquiry groups of 5-7 teachers from same school; inservice workshops
for 3 full days; modeling in colleagues’ classrooms; practice in own rooms and
reflection; and coaching and classroom demonstrations in the participants
classrooms. Two cases drawn from 15 and 17 teacher participants from two school
years – half were program participants and half were not. Classroom
observations twice a school year; interviews; and “self-selected collection of documents
from one week of classroom activity” (p. 208).
Findings: Teachers
who attended and did not attend SCWriP inservices used similar classroom strategies
when dealing with writing as a process, but the use, talk about, and attitudes of/toward
them differed. “While at times program teachers used strategies that comparison
teachers did not use, more typically teachers in both groups used the same
basic terms and strategies but used them in different ways or for different
purposes” (p. 210) – explicitly in level of help and encouragement for students
as they prepared, developed, and invested in the writing process. The program
teacher was less rigid with procedures, seeing steps more as choices writers
might make. The program teacher went beyond encouraging fun and hard work, but
also encouraged the thinking of writing, taking ownership/authorship, and pushing
students to develop themselves as writers. Inquiry-oriented teacher development
seems to have a democratic impact on the adoption and promotion of particular
strategies.
Discussion (my
connection):
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