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Abstract
Working in conjunction with a local school district in the United States, we developed a professional development project – called the Multiliteracies Teacher Institute Project (M-TIP). It composed of a series of three interrelated university courses that were designed to provide university graduate credit and professional development to teachers whereby they would explore their own situated racial identities as well as the teachers' perceptions of the roles that their situated identities played in their literacy instruction. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of M-TIP by describing the design and implementation of the overall professional development project as well as the impact of this project on two case study teachers. While this work is contextualized in the United States where it occurred, findings from our work may be useful for teachers and researchers in international contexts sharing similar concerns in their own educational contexts.
Notes
1. We borrow the term non-dominant from Gutierrez (Citation2008). Gutierrez uses the term non-dominant to refer to US children who are not White, monolingual and upper or middle class.
2. We drew on the work of the New London Group (Citation1996) in the design, construction and implementation of M-TIP.
3. We have written other papers more specifically on linguistic diversity and/or sexual orientation. This point is significant because M-TIP focused on a variety of issues pertaining to diversity (e.g. race, linguistic diversity and sexual orientation), and each of these areas of diversity draws on different, and extensive, bodies of research and scholarship. For M-TIP-related work on sexual orientation, see Wiest, Brock, and Pennington (in press). For M-TIP-related work pertaining to linguistic diversity, see Brock, Pennington, Oikonomidoy, and Townsend (Citation2010).
4. The local school district had experienced a large and growing enrolment of children from non-dominant backgrounds. Officials in the school district sought to provide professional development for teachers (mostly White and monolingual English-speaking); thus, we developed the three-course sequence discussed here for the district, and the district paid for books and tuition for teachers to enrol in the courses. Drawing on scholarly literature (e.g. Johnson, Citation2007; Kress & van Leeuwen, Citation2001; Pajaras, Citation1993), we knew that learning experiences that were embodied, multimodal and engaged teachers' emotions would provide more powerful learning about race, culture, linguistic diversity and sexual orientation; consequently, we designed the courses with these ideas in mind.
5. In other work, Kress and van Leeuwen (Citation1996) have explored, in-depth, how individuals use semiotic resources within individual modes to make meaning.
6. Qualitative Research Methods Course (eight students – all self-identified as White; one White professor).
7. Each teacher was asked to write a description of her assumptions about the backgrounds and beliefs of the person across from her. At this point in time, the teachers did not know each other. Then, each pair met and discussed their identities, and then they shared their initial impressions with each other and later with the whole class.
8. Kirundi is Elavie's first language. She designed and taught a lesson totally in Kirundi to the English-speaking teachers in our class. She did not tell the students ahead of time that she would be doing this; she just started the lesson. The goal of this lesson was to help the teachers in the class experience what it feels like to participate (from the perspective of a student) in a lesson when they did not speak the language of instruction. After the mini-lesson in Kirundi, Elavie debriefed with the teachers, and they talked about their anxiety, frustrations and confusions during the lesson. The group then talked about how English-speaking teachers could provide lessons for students who are learning English in ways to help them to better understand the content of the lesson.
9. McIntosh (Citation1988) formulated a list of privileges she holds as a White person.
10. The Privilege Walk (Foss, Citation2002) is an adaptation of McIntosh's work that required the teachers to stand side by side hand in hand and take steps forward or backward in response to questions about their privilege or lack thereof in particular situations.
11. Qualitative Research Methods Course (eight students – all self-identified as White; one White professor).
12. While we have teased these domains apart in our discussion of them, in actuality, they are inextricably intertwined.
