English Teacher Interpretive Communities: An Exploratory Case Study of Teachers’ Literacy Practices and Pedagogical Reasoning

ABSTRACT

In this exploratory case study, the authors employed an “interpretive communities” lens to investigate the ways in which 12 high school English teachers of one district read and reasoned with literary works. Primary data sources were verbal protocol interviews and semistructured interviews. Analysis revealed that the focal teachers represented three distinct interpretive communities: questing, finding, and associating. Further, there were distinct patterns in their pedagogical reasoning about literacy teaching that seemed to be aligned with their dominant interpretive community. Results have implications for literacy research, professional development, and teacher education. Results may be of particular interest to proponents of disciplinary literacy teaching and learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Content area literacy
• middle/secondary schools
• qualitative research
• literature-based instruction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.