Lisa Scherff

“This Project Has Personally Affected Me” Developing a Critical Stance in Preservice English Teachers

This study draws from a number of researchers who push for critical literacy and a critical stance to question power, inequality, and the status quo; to understand scholars’ own participation in power structures; and to reframe and retheorize scholars’ beliefs and understandings. In this article, the author uses the critical stance framework to analyze preservice English language arts teachers multigenre inquiry projects, projects that were meant to engage them in reflection, critical thinking, and action. The qualitative analysis of classroom-based work is guided by the following questions: To what extent do preservice teachers go beyond answering a question of interest to adopting a critical stance, and what does this critical stance look like?

Reality Check: A teacher educator returns home

This collaborative self-study, told through email excerpts and reflections, explores a teacher educators return to high school teaching. In this study, we juxtapose our voices and alternate between past and present to develop insights that reveal how going back can lead to moving forward with respect to educating prospective teachers. While the story is Lisas, we work together to use self-study as a research approach methodologically aimed at improving practice. As a teacher educator, Lisas experience of being a first-year teacher with her former students was one of the most powerful experiences of her professional life. Being a new teacher for a second time forced her to face novice-teacher issues as a participant rather than as an observer or researcher. At times Lisa had no choice but to put aside her doctoral training. When she subsequently returned to teacher education, she did so with renewed passion and enriched understanding of the challenges facing new teachers.