Lesley A. Rex

Teachers’ Pedagogical Stories and the Shaping of Classroom Participation: “The Dancer” and “Graveyard Shift at the 7-11”

This article illustrates how teachers’ pedagogical stories inscribe worlds, beliefs, and identities that position their students’ participation and performance. Based on a view of storytelling as a rich site for observing teaching as the joint social construction of “self” as successful academic performer and social actor, the article analyzes two teachers’ storytelling practices that, unbeknown to them, were integral to teaching and learning in their high school classrooms. The two teachers held contrasting visions of education and accomplishment. The analyses of the teachers’ object lesson stories illustrate the particular dispositions, beliefs, and values that they manifested for their own roles as teachers as well as for their students’ roles as learners. Each set of stories appealed to a particular demographic group of students. By juxtaposing these unique narrative repertoires, the article extends sociocultural theories of how successful student participation is a local, interactive accomplishment tied in complex ways to larger social narratives.

Examining Studies of Inquiry-Based Learning in Three Fields of Education: Sparking Generative Conversation.

Many educational researchers across the United States have found that inquiry-based learning (IBL) supports the development of deep, meaningful content knowledge. However, integrating IBL into classroom practice has been challenging, in part because of contrasting conceptualizations and practices across educational fields. In this article, we (a) describe differing conceptions of IBL, (b) summarize our own studies of IBL in three fields of education, (c) compare and contrast the processes and purposes of IBL in our studies and fields, and (d) suggest numerous opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations on IBL curriculum, teaching, and research that could bolster its inclusion in K-12 education. We ground our exploration in knowledge-generating conceptualizations and practices in these fields.

Judy constructs a genuine question: a case for interactional inclusion

Abstract This case study offers teachers and teacher educators a sociocultural view of inclusion, showing how it was accomplished for a student who had long been segregated in special education classrooms. Judy, a student classified as learning disabled, participated and learned in collaboration with her peers in a diverse classroom environment. Through close analysis of segments of instructional discourse, the study illustrates how her general education teacher enacted “interactional inclusion”. By making particular discourse moves, he supported the building of an inclusional culture that repositioned Judy and her classmates. She achieved social affiliation and academic success, without limiting other students’ learning opportunities. The study provides guidelines for the implementation of classroom inclusive practices suggested by this profile; offers evidence of the benefits of this kind of research; and, argues for why we need more if it.

Critical Issues: What Counts When Context Counts?: The Uncommon “Common” Language of Literacy Research

Research into literacy published in journals such as the Journal of Literacy Research spans a range of disciplines and areas of study (e.g., reading, English education, composition). Even individual studies frequently take up interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g., anthropological, sociological, linguistic, educational, textual). The results are journals far ranging in their reach and rich in the knowledge they bring to literacy issues. However, such diversity of theoretical perspectives, research methods, and analytical methodologies also contributes to a confounding effect. In this article, we explore one such effect that occurs when a common term is used with different meanings. Although this may appear on the surface to be a problem easily remedied or even a rather trivial issue, in this article, we show just how consequential this practice can be when the goal is building knowledge from research that can inform practice, policy, and theory. This critical issue can be posed as a set of interrelated questions: Are we all talking about the same thing when we use words like literacy, reading, and even seemingly less resonant ones like context, the one addressed in this commentary? If we are, how do we know? And if we are not, what price are we paying for not considering the issue?

Exploring Orientation in Remaking High School Readers’ Literacies and Identities ☆

In taking as its focus classroom instructional discourse, this study builds upon a program of research into the academic literacy practices of a classroom for “gifted and talented” students that successfully integrated “general college preparatory” students. The study applies aspects of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and Gee’s theory of socioliteracy to observe “principles” in the teacher’s pedagogical discourses. By describing three dominant “orienting” discourses in relation to a student’s responses and performances, the analysis demonstrates concordances between the teacher’s and the student’s principles. The implications of these concordances for thinking about detracking or destreaming of students and teachers are considered.

Respecting the Struggle: Deciding What to Research and Why

In the spirit of making connections, I begin by referring to the keynote talks by ErikaMcWilliams and Bill Green. They both link to what I am addressing here – thecircumstances of education research knowledge at this time in history. Both authorstake up the issue of knowledge-building through research in education and how toregard it productively and hopefully as we move forward.McWilliam challenges us to rethink the linear-cumulative educational process modeland to take up the analogy of the knight’s move. She encourages us to think abouthow education researchers can build knowledge within tessellated partnerships asmethodological alliances from outside as well as inside education. Bill Green spellsout how building educational knowledge can be thought of as an impossible, neverfinished enterprise. Yet, rather than regard this condition as a negative, he construesit as the place for action. His focused meditation on “practice” encourages us toembrace the communicative gap between teachers and students as a site of action,learning, and possibility.I mean to add a third dimension to their treatises on education knowledge by focusingon its production and dissemination as constructive acts by interested people. That isto say, I will spend some time looking at the work we do as researchers. I will lay outa framework to give us pause to consciously reflect on how we create knowledge andfor whom.Talking about my scholarship to Australians is more than a bit nerve wracking. It israther like bringing coals to Newcastle because Australian scholars have fueled myown development. Two scholars in particular were early defining influences: BronwynDavies and Annette Patterson. A study in the 1980s by Bronwyn Davies and KathyMunro (1987) showed me how I could see classroom activity from the point of viewof a student ethnically and culturally positioned as a minority and an outsider. Not onlythat, the study illustrated how to view as quite sensible from the child’s perspective

Using Video Data to Map the Social Construction of Authorship

This essay explains how video records reshaped the logic of inquiry in a study of a college composition classroom. Excerpts from the studys video data are used to illustrate how it was analysed synchronically and diachronically to construct a warranted complex picture of authorship.