Jocelyn Glazier

Tinkering Towards Socially Just Teaching: Moving from Critical Theory to Practice

This article narrates the experience of one middle‐school English teacher as she comes to learn about and practise critical literacy. This research documents some of the challenges associated with integrating this innovative practice in todays US classrooms. Furthermore, the author raises questions about how teacher educators can provide realistic portraits of critical literacy for their students to encourage future teachers to embrace rather than abandon this socially just practice.

The Elusive Search for Teacher Collaboration

ABSTRACT Collaboration is a well-used term in the field of education, identified as promising practice for student learning and teaching learning alike. However, collaboration comes in different shapes and sizes, leading to radically different ends. The authors examine teachers’ own understandings and practices of collaboration with teacher colleagues within their school contexts and within a professional development model designed to allow for collaborative conversation between teachers. Implications for teacher education are then considered.

“You don’t have to travel the world”: accumulating experiences on the path toward globally competent teaching

As classrooms become increasingly diverse and students need more complex skills for collaboratively addressing transnational issues, we need a better understanding of the factors that contribute to globally competent teaching. Education research has highlighted the benefits of study abroad and overseas teaching, as well as local cross-cultural immersion, but these options are not always feasible. We sought to identify the various means by which teachers develop global competence. Through this qualitative case study of 10 global educators, we found that international travel, though present in some instances, was not always necessary. In fact, it was an accumulation of experiences that prompted teachers to incorporate global perspectives, lessons, and skill development throughout their careers. Thus, globally competent teaching may be better conceptualized as a path, rather than as an end goal.

The Choreography of Conversation: An Exploration of Collaboration and Difficult Discussions in Cross Disciplinary Teacher Discourse Communities

Abstract:This qualitative study explores three years of data from an ongoing professional development program for alumni of one university’s varied teacher education programs. Participants cross secondary grade levels and disciplines. Researchers examine what transpires when controversial topics are raised within this diverse teacher discourse community. Findings across the data suggest that when faced with more difficult topics such as race and sexual orientation, participants engage in comfortable collaboration rather than critical colleagueship, preferring to provide uncritical, though helpful, support rather than challenge one another. Implications for current teacher education programs include encouraging more open and analytical dialogue that moves students beyond their comfort zones, both inside and outside of their respective grades and disciplines.

Unstable Ground: Unearthing the Realities of Experiential Education in Teacher Education

Experiential education (EE) leads to positive outcomes for K-12 students; however, such practice remains on the periphery of schools. One key to centering EE in classrooms is to do so in teacher education. This study explores what it means to delve into EE as teacher educators alongside our students in field sites far removed from traditional university classrooms. For this self-study, we analyzed instructor journal reflections, research-assistant field notes, and a collective interview transcript. From these, we developed narrative cases of our individual experiences at field sites. Cross-case analysis revealed themes rarely associated with the work of teacher education professors. Like our students, we were confronted in the field with what Christian Itin refers to as physical, social, moral, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual challenges. The shifting realities of our roles as teacher educators revealed what it means to do EE alongside our students. The experience and accompanying reflection prompted us to consider how centering experience in teacher education shifts the oft-directive and didactic nature of our work. To shift their pedagogy, teacher educators must have new images of possibility. Here, we make transparent our journey as teacher education travelers on the path of experiential education.

The promise of experiential education in teacher education: transforming teacher beliefs and practices

Abstract Building from the theories of Dewey and Kolb and Fry, we sought to examine the impact of experiential education in teacher education on teacher beliefs and practices. The teacher education model described in this article sets out to challenge the seduction of the apprenticeship of observation and create an opportunity for in-service teachers to re-imagine their teaching in concrete and transformative ways. Immersed in a weeklong experiential residency in either the mountains or at a local environmental education farm, the teachers in the study were challenged physically, intellectually, socially, and emotionally in and through the experience. The experiential work ultimately led to changes in teacher participants’ beliefs and practices related to teacher and student roles and potentialities. Although challenges exist for this type of practice in K-12 classrooms and in teacher education, experiential education has a significant potential to change the way teachers think about and act in their practice.

New Teacher Socialization and the Testing Apparatus

Given the well-documented pervasiveness of high-stakes assessment in preK–12 schools, many researchers have investigated how testing affects students. In this article, Sarah Byrne Bausell and Jocelyn A. Glazier explore the ways that high-stakes testing influences beginning teacher socialization and the ways that teacher colleagues shape one anothers responses to these policies. The authors use discourse analysis to examine six years of transcripts collected from a series of quarterly teacher discussion groups, during which elementary school teachers talked about their work within the testing landscape. Their findings indicate that high-stakes testing deeply affects teacher beliefs, practices, and socialization behaviors, thus revealing a troubling tendency to position students as numbers and a sharp decline in talk about teaching philosophies and practices develops alongside the testing policy landscape. Bausell and Glazier recommend that teacher educators prepare future teachers with an understanding of...

Reconnect and Recharge: Plugging New Teachers into Support Outlets

ABSTRACT A critical issue in teacher education is the ongoing support and professional development of novice teachers. This study explores a professional development project, Reconnect and Recharge, for newly inducted teachers. Participants met three to four times during the school year from 2009 to 2013 to explore their teaching successes and challenges. Teachers shared their teaching challenges in daily practice defined as dilemmas and engaged in problem-solving discussions with fellow colleagues modeled after a Critical Friends Group format. Analysis of the data across the 4 years of the study revealed consistency in the challenges teachers shared such as issues regarding curriculum, students, collegial and parent-teacher collaborations, and internal conflicts. Reconnect and Recharge is described as a teacher support model and proposed as a means to inform teacher education curricula.