A journey of becoming: Tracing preservice English teachers' practice

James, Carrie Lynn

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120273 Copy

Description

Title

A journey of becoming: Tracing preservice English teachers' practice

Author(s)

James, Carrie Lynn

Issue Date

2023-04-18

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

McCarthey, Sarah J

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

McCarthey, Sarah J

Committee Member(s)

• Prior, Paul
• Kalantzis, Mary
• Tissenbaum, Michael

Department of Study

Curriculum and Instruction

Discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• English teacher education
• preservice teachers
• English language arts
• human-centered design
• culturally sustaining pedagogy
• humanizing pedagogy
• asset-based pedagogies
• multiliteracies pedagogies
• semiotic becoming
• transliteracies framework
• design-based research

Abstract

How do teacher preparation programs prepare a predominantly white, female preservice teaching population to enact humanizing and culturally sustaining teaching practices? This question becomes even more complicated when preparing English preservice teachers (PSTs) to embrace sociocultural literacy theories, which conflicts with what they see in the field. This study takes up the challenge through the (re)design of an introductory methods course so that it centered culturally sustaining teaching practices, multiliteracies and multimodal literacies theories, and human-centered design. Through the lens of semiotic becoming (Prior, 2018), I traced five PST participants’ journeys as they navigated this course and their program, noting how specific contexts and moments may have shaped their journeys in becoming English teachers. I also adopted a transliteracies framework (Stornaiuolo et al., 2017), attending to how their understandings of English and teaching emerged and manifested in their uptake. As they moved into the rest of the program, I traced potential resonances and disconnections, reflecting on the (im)mobility of their newly developed teaching practices in new spaces such as during student teaching and in other courses in the program. Findings showed that the experiences of the course initially altered their trajectories of semiotic becoming toward culturally sustaining practices and multiliteracies pedagogies. Long-term, however, PSTs’ trajectories did not maintain course, often reverting toward other orientations, signally that one-semester’s worth of experiences is not enough to impact PSTs’ long-term practice. Despite this reversion, this study makes a case for implementing a human-centered design approach, when paired with culturally sustaining course concepts. It has the potential, when adopted across a program, to help PSTs operationalize culturally sustaining teaching practices through a concrete approach toward designing learning experiences that respond to their students’ lives.

Graduation Semester

2023-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2023 Carrie Lynn James

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