Rachael Gabriel

Exemplary Teacher Voices on Their Own Development.

Three factors influenced the development of exemplary teachers: specific kinds of professional development, collegial support, and a sense of engaged autonomy.

Committees and Controversy Consultants in the Construction of Education Policy

The increasingly common practice of engaging consulting firms to assist states with educational policy agendas requires an analysis of the role these consultants play in what is positioned as a democratic decision-making process. In this study, we examine the discourse of a state-level advisory committee formed to develop a new teacher evaluation policy under Race to the Top. We used discourse analysis methods to analyze audio recordings of 11 meetings of this committee. We identified two patterns of consultant talk as it related to committee decision making: making decisions through validationand deferring and redirecting decisions, and we describe their implications.

Middle Schoolers and Magazines: What Teachers Can Learn from Students' Leisure Reading Habits.

Abstract Teachers, parents, and librarians are constantly looking for methods and materials that engage students as readers and motivate them to increase the time they spend reading. In this article we describe findings from a study of middle schoolers’ magazine reading habits that gave us a close look at the power of magazines as supplemental supports for struggling and reluctant readers as well as the specific reasons students gravitate toward magazines for leisure reading. We provide suggestions for the ways in which classroom teachers can leverage student interest in magazine reading to increase independent reading in school, and validate students’ out of school literacies.

Reading and Dyslexia Legislation: Analytic Techniques and Findings on the Framing of Dyslexia

In this chapter, we review recent legislation and analyze transcripts of public hearings and associated legislative documents using frame analysis to understand how reading has been constructed as a policy problem. We then engage in a discourse analysis of frames by examining constructions of reading as a policy problem and the positioning of stakeholders made relevant within written testimony. We then discuss the various constructs of reading/reading difficulty in legislative documents within a single state and discuss their implications for implementation and future policymaking.

Valuing differences:: Neurodiversity in the classroom

K-12 educators often overlook the needs, talents, and skills of neurodiverse learners, including students with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. However, while such human differences tend to be misunderstood and even pathologized, there are distinct strengths associated with each unique neurological design. Drawing on their own experiences as students, educators, and researchers, the authors discuss ways in which teachers can empower different thinkers to participate in and contribute to mainstream life, thought, and culture.

Constructing Teacher Effectiveness in Policymaking Conversations

State teacher evaluation policies codify definitions of what it means to teach, what teachers are expected to do, and which ways of teaching and learning are to be encouraged or resisted by articulating a set of values for classroom teaching and student learning. By identifying tools and approaches for the measurement of teaching quality, such policies inscribe particular definitions of teacher effectiveness—a construct that has often been debated and reconstituted over the history of research and evaluation in US public schools. In this chapter, I analyze transcripts from the Teacher Evaluation Advisory Committee meetings in Tennessee, an influential case of teacher evaluation policymaking within which the discourses of evaluation and effectiveness policies can be examined.

Rubrics and Reflection: A Discursive Analysis of Observation Debrief Conversations between Novice Teach for America Teachers and Mentors.

ABSTRACT Drawing upon discursive psychology as a theoretical and methodological framework, the author analyzes a set of five postobservation debrief conversations between novice teachers and their mentors. The author presents analysis and findings by highlighting how the interpretative repertoires of the rubric and protocol documents may be used to shape and limit what counts as reflective practice. Next, the author highlights contrasts in the ways in which participants oriented to reflection protocol documents either as authoritative or irrelevant. Finally, the author consider the implications of these orientations in terms of varied versions of reflection on practice.

Engaging in Performance Ethnography in Research Methods Courses

In this article, we share the process and practice of integrating a performance ethnography, in the form of a written play, into research methods and education courses, as well as methods-based workshops. We begin by briefly sharing some of the ways in which we have come to position this work within our classroom and instructional workshops and point to its possibilities as a pedagogical approach. We then illustrate the process of introducing this methodological perspective to our students in research courses. We also highlight the implications for introducing alternative, arts-based approaches to data representation to students and describe the impact on their trajectories as producers, critics, and consumers of qualitative research.

Interactive Writing in the Disciplines: A Common Core Approach to Disciplinary Writing in Middle and High School.

Abstract In this article we argue that interactive writing (IW), an approach to writing instruction, is uniquely supportive of secondary content-area teachers working to integrate meaningful writing instruction without sacrificing time or attention to content. Drawing on research and our experiences with IW in middle school settings, we explain the roots of IW and its potential to support powerful writing instruction in the disciplines because of its emphasis on externalizing thought, negotiating meaning, and teaching conventions of writing and language in the context of real writing.

The discursive construction of intelligence in introductory educational psychology textbooks

The meaning(s) of intelligence has varied across time and place, with these varied constructions holding consequences for people and society at large. There is, however, little consensus around what intelligence actually means and how the construct should be applied. Educational discourses, including textbooks used to train teachers, have commonly been the site for the dissemination of ‘authoritative’ information surrounding intelligence. In this article, we present findings from a discourse analysis informed by discursive psychology of passages related to defining and measuring intelligence taken from 10 educational psychology textbooks designed for university students studying to become teachers. Our research question was: How is the dilemmatic nature of the construct of intelligence managed in introductory educational psychology textbooks at the level of discourse? We discuss the function of sequencing and topic displays and how the textbook authors navigated the ideological dilemmas surrounding the construct of intelligence. We conclude by pointing to the implications for teacher training and the importance of social constructionist projects that place into question presumably ‘real’ psychological constructs.