Kathryn Strom

Closing the Racial/Ethnic Gap Between Students of Color and Their Teachers: An Elusive Goal

This article examines minority teacher recruitment policies and programs of the past two decades and explores their influence on the racial/ethnic makeup of the teaching force in elementary and secondary public schools. The results show that while important progress has been made toward increasing the overall number and proportion of minority teachers in the public schools, those gains have been eclipsed by the rapid growth of the minority student population. As a result, the racial/ethnic gap between students of color and their teachers has actually increased over the years. The authors provide an overview of current minority teacher recruitment state policies and introduce the Teacher-Student Parity Index, a new metric for comparing the proportions of teachers and students from different racial/ethnic groups to gain a more textured understanding of the demographic reality of todays schools than is presently found in the literature. The authors conclude with recommendations for policy and research.

Finding a third space in teacher education: creating an urban teacher residency

This paper describes an urban teacher residency program, the Newark Montclair Urban Teacher Residency, a collaborative endeavor between the Newark, New Jersey Public Schools and Montclair State University, built on a decades-long partnership. The authors see the conceptual work of developing this program as creating a “third space” in teacher education. We detail the ways in which we conceptualize epistemology and clinical practice in teacher education, and changes in the roles of the community, and P-12 teachers that occur in a third space. Providing an account of our messy and nonlinear process demonstrates the struggles of creating new spaces for teacher education. We believe the theory that informs our work, the challenges we face, and the strategies for meeting those challenges illustrate the tenuous and ever-evolving nature of doing work in the “third space.”

Teaching as Assemblage Negotiating Learning and Practice in the First Year of Teaching

Recent accountability policies seek to “grade” teacher preparation programs by the teaching evaluations of their graduates. This article addresses the problematic nature of the linear thinking underlying such reforms by examining the construction of teaching practices of Mauro, a first-year secondary science teacher who taught environmental and earth sciences. Drawn from a larger data set, the study uses concepts from rhizomatics, a non-linear theory of thought and social activity, and elements of postmodern grounded theory. Despite holding key factors constant across the two subject area settings, differences in the ways the teacher, students, and contextual conditions worked together helped produce strikingly different teaching practices in each set of classes. This study provides evidence that enacting pre-professional learning is a complex undertaking shaped by the ways the elements present in the school setting work together, and, thus, teaching is a collectively negotiated activity. The author offers implications for teacher preparation practice and policy, advocating for an ontological turn in teacher education research that focuses on processes of teaching rather than outcomes alone.

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.

“That’s Not Very Deleuzian”: Thoughts on interrupting the exclusionary nature of “High Theory”

Abstract In the following essay, I discuss my own uneasy and nonlinear journey from the classroom to Deleuze, describing the concepts and lines of thought that have been productive in thinking differently about teaching and teacher education. I also detail my encounters with the surprising orthodoxies of using Deleuzian/Deleuzoguattarian thought. From these, I suggest that ‘being Deleuzian’ is itself a molar line that serves as an exclusionary mechanism, working to preserve high theory for the use of only a select few. Instead, I argue for the potential of making such nonlinear thinking accessible to mainstream audiences to interrupt the linear, status quo thinking undergirding a global educational neoliberal movement.

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.

Inservice Preparation for Mainstream Teachers of English Language Learners: A Review of the Empirical Literature

Abstract The empirical literature regarding the nature and outcomes of inservice learning opportunities for mainstream teachers of ELLs reveals that such opportunities give primary emphasis to developing teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and skills but also give attention to encouraging teachers to learn about their students, curriculum, and school context; engage in inquiry about their own practice; deepen their subject knowledge for teaching ELLs; analyze and change beliefs; and develop identities as teachers of ELLs.

Exploring Inquiry in the Third Space: Case Studies of a Year in an Urban Teacher-Residency Program

ABSTRACT Using case studies, we describe what happens from novice to apprentice when preservice teachers learn to teach in an urban teacher-residency (UTR) program with a focus on inquiry. Our UTR operates within a “third space” in teacher education, seeking to realign traditional power relationships and to create an alternate arena where the roles of the university, school, teacher candidate, and community can be reimagined. This third space encourages preservice teachers to be inquirers themselves in order for them to support their students as inquirers.

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.

Teaching for Social Justice through Funds of Knowledge in the Third Space

Drawn from a case study of a Newark youth, Alex’s narrative illustrates some of the insights he developed while mentoring a student during his initial summer semester in the program. A central goal of the secondary cohort of the NMUTR in general, and the summer semester specifically, was to provide the residents with opportunities to really get to know Newark youth within their own community rather than to support, confirm, or enhance the typical deficit ways in which we think about urban youth.