Julie L. Pennington

Pedagogies of critical race theory: Experimentations with white preservice teachers

We have taken to heart the call of critical race theorists and critical Whiteness scholars to open up a White discourse on White racism. As White, female, teacher educators, we endeavored to openly address Whiteness and White racism with our White students to help them become more aware of the advantages and biases inherent in their positionality as White teachers. As we did this, we were critically aware of both the negative and positive possible outcomes of our endeavors. Throughout our work with our students and our subsequent reflections on the results, we were able to establish ways of speaking about Whiteness that moved our students, and ourselves, to a more critical, more empowered understanding of race and Whiteness.

Silence in the Classroom/Whispers in the Halls: Autoethnography as Pedagogy in White Pre-Service Teacher Education.

This study examines the use of autoethnography as a teaching method to work with pre‐service teachers in an elementary school setting. Focusing on Whiteness and critical race theory as a lens for reviewing their experiences while working with children of color, the author includes her own story of exploring her racism as a classroom teacher, a researcher and a pre‐service teacher educator.

Translating Autoethnography Across the AERA Standards Toward Understanding Autoethnographic Scholarship as Empirical Research

The purpose of this article is to move readers toward a deeper understanding of and widened respect for autoethnography’s capacity as an empirical endeavor. An argument is presented in favor of autoethnography as empirical by translating information from its epistemological and methodological history across the AERA standards for reporting empirical social science research. Supporting evidence is drawn from samples of autoethnographic scholarship that emerged from an extensive literature review of first-tier, blind peer-reviewed journals with relatively low acceptance rates (i.e., 17% or less accepted for publication) that cater to an international audience of educational researchers. The journals include Harvard Educational Review, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Teaching and Teacher Education, Qualitative Inquiry, Urban Review, Educational Studies, Journal of Latinos and Education, and Race, Ethnicity, and Education. The article concludes by imagining a rubric that may assist researchers, editors, and reviewers in translating autoethnographic scholarship as credible and defensible empirical research. To date, no such article has worked to demonstrate this important connection to open the potential empirical publication venues for autoethnography in our real world of promotion and tenure decision making in the academy that hinges increasingly on the integrity of the blind peer-review process.

Text Leveling and Little Books in First-Grade Reading.

In this study, we investigated the reliability of two current approaches for estimating text difficulty at the firstgrade level: the Scale for Text Accessibility and Support (STAS-1) and the Fountas/Pinnell system. We analyzed the performance of 105 first-grade students in texts leveled using these systems in the areas of rate, accuracy, and fluency. Students read these texts under three support conditions: sight reading, read-aloud (modeled), and previewed. The predictive validity of the two rating scales was supported by the performance data. Statistically significant effects were found for the various support conditions. Further, our analysis suggests potential benchmarks for first-grade performance: 95% accuracy; 80 words per minute; and a fluency rating of 3 (on a 1–5 scale).

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.

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.

The veil of professionalism: An autoethnographic critique of white positional identities in the figured worlds of white research performance

Two white researchers critique the professional veil of silence they created as they reflected on a qualitative study they performed 12 years earlier. Autoethnography and performance ethnography are utilized to examine the ways in which whiteness can remain unexamined throughout the research process due to the construction of white positional identities within the figured world of research. White privilege and white talk, specifically white silence and hyperpoliteness as they relate to white researchers conducting research, are used critique the research purpose and process. The researchers conclude that white researchers should attend to questions of privilege and white racial identity as they plan, conduct, and disseminate their research.

Angela: On a Critical Curve.

This qualitative case study examines one secondary social studies teachers enactment of her critical constructivist beliefs in teaching for democratic citizenship education. Results are organized around the knowledge, skills, and dispositions addressed, and their consistency with critical constructivism. The teachers practices were consistent with her beliefs; however, she struggled to balance her critical perspectives with her developing knowledge of critical scholarship and the belief that her students needed to come to their own conclusions.

As Easy as ABC: Facilitating Early Literacy Enrichment Experiences.

Laura is the lead teacher of the 4and 5-year-old class at Littlewood Academy, an inclusive preschool setting. She has a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education and serves 12 children in a half-day preschool class. She is supported by Sheila, a bilingual paraprofessional. The class consists of five monolingual English speakers, four children, for whom Spanish is the first language, one for whom Hmong is the home language, and two children whose home language is Mandarin. Ryan, whose native language is English, has been diagnosed with fragile X syndrome and Maria, a native

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.