Shannon M. Daniel

Curricular design and implementation as a site of teacher expertise and learning

Previously, research about teacher expertise has adhered to relatively fixed notions of teacher expertise. However, in this study, we share data from teacher study group (TSG) meetings, which demonstrate a dynamic understanding of teacher expertise. In these meetings, teachers discursively positioned themselves, their colleagues, and the research team as both experts and learners as they engaged in a community of enquiry around questions of curriculum design and implementation. We argue that teachers’ dynamic and multiple positionings generated especially striking opportunities for learning. As teachers externalized their expert knowledge, their assumptions were brought forth to be examined, challenged, and reconsidered, thus opening space for further learning. We argue that these TSGs thus existed as a site for teacher learning, in which teacher dialog around curricular design, redesign, and the student learning that occurred in the lessons influenced their own learning about their students’ capabilities. We make a case for further research that explores how teacher expertise is interwoven with episodes of teacher learning. We assert that a complex understanding of teacher expertise, grounded in principles of learning occurring through social interaction, has important implications for how the field should move forward in its approach to fostering teacher learning throughout teachers’ careers.

Developing a Zone of Relevance: Emergent Bilinguals’ Use of Social, Linguistic, and Cognitive Support in Peer-Led Literacy Discussions

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how emergent bilinguals discursively support one another during literacy activities in a cross-aged peer-tutoring program in their elementary school. Drawing from Vygotskian sociocultural theory, we frame peer supports as developing a zone of relevance that fosters and sustains peer engagement in literacy discussions. Microgenetic analysis reveals how children worked together and supported one another through discursive moves that provided social, linguistic, and cognitive supports. By analyzing how children encourage elaborative conversation toward meaning-making of texts, this study contributes to deeper understandings of how multilingual children can engage in high-quality interactions together in literacy classrooms. Our findings have implications for further research concerning discursive mediation emergent bilinguals do together as they engage in literacy practices and suggest that educators listen for, acknowledge, and encourage these rich mediational strategies in peer interactions.

Expanding Roles: Teacher Educators' Perspectives on Educating English Learners.

Although the underpreparation of teachers to work with English learners is a documented problem in teacher education, little research has addressed teacher educators’ perspectives in guiding prospective teachers to educate English learners. This case study of one 13-month elementary certification program highlights teacher educators’ efforts and challenges in providing preservice elementary teachers with opportunities to learn about educating students learning English as an additional language. A key finding is that all teacher educators who participated in this study felt responsible for and made efforts to guide teacher candidates to educate linguistically diverse students in elementary classroom settings, but they did not work toward this goal collectively or cohesively. Implications for integrating preparation of teachers to work with English learners in preservice teacher education, such as distributed leadership among faculty, are discussed.

Resettled Refugee Youth Leveraging Their Out-of-School Literacy Practices to Accomplish Schoolwork

ABSTRACT This ethnographic study explores how three resettled refugee teens leveraged their out-of-school literacy practices to accomplish their schoolwork. As teens drew upon their out-of-school literacy practices, such as translanguaging and social media practices to make sense of homework, they created third spaces wherein they strategically merged their literacies to achieve their goals. This research provides implications for how educators can design learning environments that enable teens to do this type of complex work.

Functional Systems That Afford and Constrain Elementary Teachers' Adaptation of Instruction to Support Multilingual Students.

ABSTRACT As elementary teachers in U.S. public schools strive to adapt their instruction to support growing numbers of students learning English as an additional language, they must also navigate institutional constraints and affordances beyond their classroom-level interactions. Even as teachers plan and implement instruction within their own classrooms, their work is strongly influenced by the functional systems at the school and district levels. Despite this growing awareness, few studies have examined how these functional systems impact elementary teachers’ efforts to redesign and refine their instruction for multilingual students, often labeled as English language learners (ELLs). Through the use of qualitative methods, this article illuminates elementary teachers’ perspectives on the functional systems that afford and constrain their abilities to improve their instruction to support ELLs. As teacher educators of a graduate-level ELL endorsement program for in-service elementary teachers, we sought to investigate what impacts teachers’ instruction on a daily basis. This article centers on this research question: How do elementary teachers perceive and navigate functional systems within schools as they endeavor to support multilingual students?

Engaging youth and pre-service teachers in immigration deliberations

In this report of innovative teacher practice, the author describes an arts-based event which brought together adolescent refugee and immigrant students and pre-service teachers to deliberate about immigration policies and attitudes in the United States.