What More Can We Do? A Scalar Approach to Examining Critical Digital Literacies in Teacher Education

ABSTRACT

In this manuscript, we explore sites of struggle in the inclusion of critical digital literacies (CDL) in teacher preparation programs. Our worked examples explore two authors’ teacher-preparation classrooms and the ways in which each attempts to teach about CDL, in the scope of each class, across varying scales. Through a scalar approach, we explore the sites of struggle that each of the instructors face despite the differing contexts within each scale. These sites of struggle include control, bureaucracy, and isolation. In doing so, we aim to shift the narrative around a lack of meaningful, engaging CDL practices in the classroom away from blaming individual educators towards more nuanced understandings of the systemic struggles present within teacher preparation classrooms, programs and educational institutions and structures.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• sites of struggle
• digital technologies
• collaboration
• worked examples

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olivia G. Stewart

Olivia G. Stewart is an Assistant Professor of Literacy at St. John’s University in the Department of Education Specialties in Queens, NY. Her multiliteracies-framed and critical digital literacies-framed research interests center around multimodal authoring paths and digital-age literacy practices to expand notions of “what counts” as writing, particularly for academically marginalized students. She also is currently examining how a critical digital literacies practices can help to humanize online learning environments to engage learners more authentically.

Betina Hsieh

Betina Hsieh is an associate professor of teacher education at California State University, Long Beach. Her work centers on how personal and professional identities shape the actions, beliefs and choices of teachers and teacher educators. Current research interests include identity-informed mentoring in teacher education, teacher and teacher educator identity, cross-content literacy practices and the 21st century literacy practices in schools and universities.

Anna Smith

Anna Smith (PhD, NYU) is currently an Assistant Professor at Illinois State University, following an IES Postdoctoral Fellowship in Writing and New Learning Ecologies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an elected board member of the American Educational Research Association Writing & Literacies SIG and the National Council of Research on Language and Literacy. Her scholarly work is buttressed with over 20 years of work in public schools as a teacher, district-level specialist, and teacher educator.

Jessica Zacher Pandya

Jessica Zacher Pandya is Professor of Teacher Education and Liberal Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Her work investigates the literacy practices of English learners. Her latest book is Exploring Critical Digital Literacy Practices: Everyday Video in a Dual Language Context (Routledge, 2018). Pandya has published in journals such as Research in the Teaching of English, Teachers College Record, Language Arts, and Written Communication.