Adrian D. Martin

Mapping not tracing: qualitative educational research with political teeth

In this article, we deploy ideas from Deleuze and Guattari to argue for the importance of engaging in educational research practice designed to be productive (mapping) rather than representational (tracing). First, we introduce the significance of our approach for educational research practice. Second, we unpack key constructs from Deleuze and Guattari required for constructing our argument, and we outline the shape of mapping as productive or transformative research practice. Third, we share critical summaries of several studies that utilized mapping to engage in this kind of research practice. Finally, we discuss the nature, effects, and relevance of mapping as educational research practice.

Putting Philosophy to Work in the Classroom: Using Rhizomatics to Deterritorialize Neoliberal Thought and Practice

As two teachers/researchers committed to the values of social justice in the classroom, we are deeply disturbed by the explicit and implicit ways that our education system, operating through neoliberalism, reproduces the inequalities of larger society. To problematize and deterritorialize dominant neoliberal notions of schooling, education, teaching, and learning in our classrooms, we embarked on a co/autoethnographic self-study of our teaching practice. Our methods are underscored and informed by the Deleuzo-Guattarian notion of the rhizome, the multiplistic, nonlinear nature of which serves as an antidote to the hierarchical, dichotomous, and process–product rationality of neoliberal logic. Findings, or becomings, indicate that the concepts of the rhizome can be practically put to work in the classroom to raise consciousness and inform thinking about resisting the neoliberal status quo. Combined with co/autoethnography, rhizomatics and rhizoanalysis offer the potential to connect across teaching practice, understand the political nature of teaching, and open possibilities for transforming teaching.

Preparing Future Mainstream Teachers to Teach English Language Learners: A Review of the Empirical Literature

Abstract This article systematically reviews and critically appraises the research published since 2000 on preparing preservice teachers for English language learners (ELLs). Employing Feiman-Nemser’s framework for teacher learning, the authors address what the research suggests about the nature and outcomes of preservice learning opportunities offered to mainstream teachers for teaching ELLs. The review sheds light on how preservice teachers learn to teach ELLs and the learning opportunities they are offered to support this process.

Pursuing Lines of Flight: Enacting Equity-Based Preservice Teacher Learning in First-Year Teaching.

This article examines how one first-year physics teacher translated his inquiry-based, socially just pre-professional learning into classroom practice in his first several months of teaching, using rhizomatics, a non-linear theory of social activity, as a theoretical and methodological frame. This case highlights the complexity of enacting a social justice-oriented pedagogical practice as a new teacher in a constrained school environment. Although the participant experienced positive interactions with his students, he faced multiple external challenges as well as his own internal conflicts about teaching methods. These conditions influenced him to adopt more traditional practices than those that were espoused in the participant’s teacher education programme, although some evidence of progressive teaching surfaced inconsistently. Authors provide recommendations for teacher educators and policy makers to better support new teachers as they transition into the first year of teaching, and call on researchers to explore methodologies and theories that can account for nonlinearity, complexity and multiplicity in investigating teaching and learning.

Toward a Linguistically Responsive Teacher Identity: An Empirical Review of the Literature

ABSTRACT Despite current demographic imperatives, little is known about how teachers understand, construct, and enact their professional identities in relation to teaching English learners (ELs). This article, an empirical review of the literature on teacher identity and ELs, examines how teacher identity has been investigated among educators working in English-dominant teaching contexts. Findings suggest that the literature has largely focused on three main facets of teacher identity: characteristics of teacher identity, factors contributing to teacher identity development, and contextual influences on teacher identity. Implications for promoting the development of a linguistically responsive teacher identity in education include the diversification of the teacher workforce, the incorporation of reflective practice among education practitioners, and fostering professional identity development for teachers of ELs.

Using Multiple Technologies to Put Rhizomatics to Work in Self-Study

This chapter explores using digital resources to facilitate methodological processes of a previous self-study that employed rhizomatic concepts to examine the influence of neoliberalism in our praxis. Acknowledging that we are products of a society with deeply ingrained discourses privileging capitalism, our aim was to “deterritorialize,” or interrupt, teaching practices informed by neoliberal norms. However, we found that traditional textual methodologies constrained our efforts to analyze and express complex, multi-directional, recursive, ongoing processes while working together from opposite U.S. coasts. To aid us in non-linear, long-distance self-study research, we experimented with multiple digital tools, including Google Docs, FaceTime, email, and the software Inspiration. These technologies facilitated our “thinking with” rhizomatic concepts, such as the rhizome and affect, to interrogate the influence of neoliberalism in our thinking and teaching practice, as well as supported our own collaboration.

Teacher identities and English learners in mainstream classrooms: A discourse analysis

ABSTRACT The increasing placement of English learners (ELs) in mainstream classrooms in conjunction with scant attention given to teaching these students in preservice education and professional development suggests a need to better understand how mainstream teachers understand their professional identities as teachers of these students. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain insight on how two mainstream teachers of ELs use language to construct their teacher identities and their engagement with EL students. Participants were interviewed multiple times and discourse analysis was employed to analyze their use of language. Overall, their teacher identities possessed a value for ELs being comfortable and welcomed in the classroom. However, participants positioned linguistic differences between ELs and themselves as barriers to learning and communication. The findings suggest a need to move beyond an inclusive disposition toward supporting mainstream teachers to recognize the development of ELs’ academic and language progress as integral to their professional identities.

Using Rhizomatics to Think Differently about Teaching

In this study, we investigated the teaching practices of three first-year science teachers, Mauro, Bruce, and June, who taught in the same urban, diverse, highpoverty district in the Northeastern United States. To study their teaching practices as complex, situated phenomena, we used concepts from rhizomatics (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) to construct three case studies describing the practices that emerged over the fall semester of their school year.

Disrupting the Status Quo Through Lines of Flight

In this chapter, we return to the concept of assemblage and build on the ideas introduced in the last chapter—molar, molecular, and lines of flight. We draw on these concepts as analytic tools to discuss the case of June, who taught tenthgrade biology in a self-contained special education setting in the same large urban district as Bruce and Mauro. In some ways, June’s case seems very typical of the experiences of the first year teacher—she took on an assignment for which she was under-prepared (a special education biology position) in a school that had a reputation for being one of the most challenging in the city.

Molar and Molecular Activity

In this chapter, we discuss Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concepts of molar lines, molecular lines, and lines of flight, by examining the case study of Bruce, a first year physics teacher. A graduate of one of the most highly prestigious and well-known Jewish universities in the United States, Bruce possessed degrees in physics, theater arts, and Jewish studies. Although this 25-year-old native of the Northeastern United States initially sought to complete a PhD and become a professor of science, after one semester of study he rethought his career path and elected to pursue a career in teaching.