Cynthia H. Brock

Unraveling the Threads of White Teachers’ Conceptions of Caring: Repositioning White Privilege

This study explored two White inservice teachers’ understandings of Whiteness in relation to privilege and caring. A yearlong professional development set of courses used a multimodal construction of three significant course experiences designed to reposition Whiteness and illuminate White teachers’ predisposition to care for their students in ways aligned with their own conceptions of caring.

Negotiating Displacement Spaces: Exploring Teachers' Stories About Learning and Diversity

Abstract The purpose of this qualitative investigation was to explore the learning of six in‐service U.S. teachers who engaged in a cross‐cultural learning experience during the summer of 2001. The teachers were enrolled in a graduate seminar conducted in English and entitled “Literacy Across Languages and Cultures.” Cindy (the first author of this manuscript) was the course instructor. The primary emphasis of the course was exploring current conceptions of quality literacy instruction for children from diverse backgrounds in mainstream U. S. classrooms. One credit of the three‐credit course was conducted on WebCT in the United States. Two credits of the course were conducted at the Universidid Nacional in Heredia, Costa Rica. The teachers who were enrolled in the course lived with Costa Rican families for the month that they were studying in Costa Rica. In this investigation we sought to explore what we learned about literacy instruction for students from diverse backgrounds from course readings, one another, and a cross‐cultural experience in Costa Rica. Our experiences positioned us to reexamine our own cultural frames of reference and our thinking about instructing children in our classrooms whose cultural and linguistic backgrounds are different from ours.

Constructing critical autoethnographic self-studies with white educators

Autoethnography was used as a tool for white in‐service elementary teachers to examine their racial identity from a Critical White Studies (CWS) perspective. Two white in‐service teachers participated in two yearlong university courses focused on teaching linguistically and culturally diverse students. Each teacher collected their own data at their school site and used autoethnographic methods to critically analyze their own teaching experiences and personal reflections. Results from the study illustrate the ways in which autoethnographic study can be used as an instrument for white teachers to frame their own critique of their white racial identity, as it relates to their classroom instruction.

No Habla Ingles: Exploring a Bilingual Child's Literacy Learning Opportunities in a Predominantly English-Speaking Classroom.

Abstract In this investigation, we explore the nature of language-based social interactions of a Spanish-speaking child (pseudonym Adriana) in her predominately English-speaking classroom. In particular, this study examines ways in which a monolingual English—speaking teacher (the first author) and her research colleagues critically analyzed classroom discursive practices in the first authors third-grade classroom with an eye toward exploring Adrianas literacy learning opportunities in that classroom.

Learning to conduct teacher research: exploring the development of mediated understandings

There is a growing trend in education to advocate for the inclusion of teacher researcher voices in local, state, national and international conversations about classroom teaching and learning. While many scholars agree that teacher researchers can, do, and should make important contributions to the educational research community, much remains to be learned about how teachers learn to engage in quality reflective inquiry. Our goal in this work is to explore instances of one practicing teacher’s opportunities to learn to conduct teacher research. The practicing teacher (pseudonym, Dot) was enrolled in a university seminar that focused on learning to conduct classroom research. For this qualitative investigation we analyzed field notes taken during 13 class sessions across the semester, audiotapes of classroom interactions during class sessions, and artifacts such as written class reflections about course topics and drafts of course assignments. Results revealed that a complex set of significant instances of Dot’s learning about teacher research shaped both what and how she learned. The careful descriptions of Dot’s instances of learning can inform individual instructors about moment‐to‐moment instructional decisions when working with teachers in teacher research courses. Additionally, this work can inform a broader educational community with respect to how classes pertaining to teacher research might be re‐conceptualized to promote systematic research of one’s practice as a ‘way of being’ as a classroom teacher.

Exploring an English Language Learner's Literacy Learning Opportunities A Collaborative Case Study Analysis

This investigation is an ethnographic case study of the literacy learning opportunities of a fifth-grade Hmong child (pseudonym Deng) who came to the United States from Laos via Thailand at the very end of his third-grade year in school. Deng was one of 25 students in a mainstream urban classroom in the Midwest during his fifth grade in school when this investigation took place. Because Deng had only been in the United States for a little more than a year at the time this investigation began and because English was a relatively new language for him, I was concerned about his opportunities for literacy learning in a classroom where English was the medium of instruction. Deng and I worked collaboratively to explore his literacy learning opportunities in the context of a trade book unit pertaining to the text Maniac Magee.

Opportunities to teach: confronting the deskilling of teachers through the development of teacher knowledge of multiple literacies

Two inservice teachers participated in an online master’s course focused on multiple literacies. Their learning in the course is used as a means to explore what teachers need to know about multiple literacies in order to adapt their instruction in the context of prescribed reading programs. This essay presents how both teachers navigated their programmatic reading curriculum constraints and used their knowledge of multiple literacies and new literacies in their pedagogy.

Demos as an Explanatory Lens in Teacher Educators' Elusive Search for Social Justice.

Borrowing insights from the Ancient Greek ideal conceptions of a democratic civic space (demos), this article examines the applicability of this framework to four teacher educators’ journey to implement social justice in their programs. It is proposed that the three constitutive dimensions of demos (freedom of speech, equality to vote and hold office, and equality against the law) could provide explanatory lenses to bottom-up collaborative projects in teacher education and beyond, through the illumination of both successes and failures.

Creating Possibilities To Read Others' Worlds: Exploring a Mediator's Role in Bridging Cultural and Linguistic Boundaries.

The population of ethnically and linguistically diverse children in U.S. public schools is increasing dramatically. Unfortunately, however, these children are often ill served in our public schools. Scholars such as Erickson and Schultz (1992) maintain that members of the educational community must explore carefully diverse childrens actual experiences in schools in order to understand how to meet the educational needs of these children. This investigation focuses on the critical role of a cultural and linguistic mediator named Vue as he helped to elucidate the literacy learning opportunities of Deng, a Hmong child, in Dengs fifth grade mainstream classroom.

Exploring three White American teachers’ dispositional stances towards learning about racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity

This study, situated in the United States, is set in a context where large and growing numbers of children from non-dominant backgrounds populate American public schools while the vast majority of teachers teaching in US schools are White, monolingual women who may not have the requisite expertise to teach children from non-dominant backgrounds. This work focuses on the learning of three White teachers enrolled in a literacy course designed to foster teachers’ understandings of racial, linguistic, and cultural diversity. Results revealed that the three focus teachers, all members of a small online Book Club within the focus course, assumed different dispositional stances towards learning about diversity. Moreover, their overall dispositional stances shaped the ways they positioned themselves as learners in the course as well as what they learned in the course.