“Exploring this whole thing of social justice” narrative as a tool for critical sociocultural knowledge development in teacher education

ABSTRACT

Many teacher education programs provide teachers with opportunities to read, write, and discuss critical pedagogy, with the hope that such work will allow them to develop more equitable and just teaching practices. Yet, there often remains a gap between the theoretical discussions of teaching and learning in teacher education classrooms and the pedagogical practice in those teachers’ K-12 classrooms. In this study, we examine how one teacher, Gabriela, used narratives to make connections between her third-grade classroom and the critical concepts she was exploring in a teacher education course. Embedded within an ethnographic case study of an inservice teacher education program, we used a discourse analytic approach to examine both the sociocultural knowledge and the identities Gabriela constructed through narrative as she engaged with issues of language, race, and power within the course. We consider some of the affordances of narrative in this space, including how it allowed Gabriela to integrate her understandings of multiple course topics, to position herself in multiple ways as a teacher, and to disrupt her existing understandings of race and racism in the classroom. This analysis suggests that critically oriented teacher education programs might more intentionally make space for narrative to connect critical theory and pedagogical practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Inservice teacher education
• sociocultural knowledge
• critical pedagogy
• teacher identity
• narrative analysis

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. James V. Hoffman, Dr. Beth Maloch, and the Coaching with CARE research team for their contribution to the project that framed this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saba Khan Vlach

Saba Khan Vlach is a PhD candidate at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on literacy preservice and inservice teachers’ enactment of critical pedagogy in the elementary classroom. Her research interests include discourse analysis, multicultural children’s literature, in and out of school literacy lives of Muslim children, and teacher education.

Laura Taylor

Laura Taylor is an assistant professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Her research focuses on the construction of critical approaches to literacy teaching and learning in urban schools, and her research interests include discourse analysis, social contexts of literacy practice, and teacher education.

Melissa Mosley Wetzel

Melissa Mosley Wetzel is an associate professor of Language and Literacy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching focus on how preservice teachers integrate critical literacy and culturally relevant practices into their field-based literacy teaching experiences. She also studies the preparation of teachers in relationship to mentoring and coaching.