1st Edition

Reclaiming English Language Arts Methods Courses Critical Issues and Challenges for Teacher Educators in Top-Down Times

Edited By Jory Brass, Allen Webb Copyright 2015
    238 Pages
    by Routledge

    238 Pages
    by Routledge

    Reclaiming English Language Arts Methods Courses showcases innovative work in teacher education that fosters teachers’ capacities as reflective practitioners and public intellectuals; extends traditional boundaries of methods courses on teaching the English language arts, literacy, children’s and young adult literature; and embodies democratic and critical politics that go beyond the reductive economic aims and traditional classroom practices sanctioned by educational policies and corporate educational reforms.

    Featuring leading and emerging scholars in English language arts teacher education, each chapter provides rich and concrete examples of elementary and secondary methods courses rooted in contemporary research and theory, on-line resources, and honest appraisals of the possibilities, tensions, and limits of doing teacher education differently in a top-down time of standards-based education, high-stakes testing, teacher assessment, and neoliberal education reforms. This book offers important resources and support for teacher educators and graduate students to explore alternative visions for aligning university methods courses with current trends in English and cultural studies, critical sociocultural literacy, new literacies and web 2.0 tools, and teaching the English language arts in multiethnic, multilingual, and underserved urban communities.

    Contents
    Preface 
    1. Reconstituting Teacher Education: Literacy, Critical Theories, and English
    Jory Brass
    2. A Critical Sociocultural Approach to English Education
    Cynthia Lewis, Tracey Pyscher, Erin Stutelberg
    3. Towards Critical Participatory Literacies through Digital Video Composition in an Elementary Literacy Capstone Course
    Jessica Zacher Pandya
    4. Digital/Media Literacies in a Media Literacy and a Digital Writing Methods Course
    Richard Beach
    5. Performance Pedagogies in Literacy Methods: Emergence, Embodiment, and Critical Practices
    Carmen Liliana Medina, Linda Skidmore Coggin, Gustave John Weltsek 
    6. Working toward Dialogically Organized Instruction through Video-Based Response and  Revision
    Samantha Caughlan and Mary M. Juzwik
    7. A Critical Resource Orientation to Literacy Assessment through a Stance of Solidarity
    Gerald Campano, Katrina Bartow Jacobs, Lan Ngo
    8. Communities of Practice: Bridging the Gap between Methods Courses and Secondary Schools
    James Cercone
    9. Synthesizing Formal and Experiential Concepts in a Service-Learning Course
    Peter Smagorinsky, Lindy L. Johnson, Christopher M. Clayton
    10. Generative Critical Pedagogy in English Language Arts Methods for Urban Schools
    Tonya Perry
    11. Learning to Teach Diverse Learners in a Writing Pedagogies Class
    Joyce Meier, Yunjeong Choi, Ellen Cushman
    12. A Trauma Studies Lens on Writing Methods: Crafting a Critical, Affective, Practice-Based Pedagogy
    Elizabeth Dutro, Ashley Cartun
    13. Critical Literary Theory in a Literature Methods Class
    Deborah Appleman
    14. A Cultural Studies Approach to Literature Methods
    Allen Webb
    15. Talking Policy in a Language Arts Curriculum Course for Reading Specialists
    Patrick Shannon
    Contributors
    Index

    Biography

    Jory Brass is Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, USA.

    Allen Webb is Professor of English Education and Postcolonial Studies, Western Michigan University, USA.