A continuous, context driven form of professional development where university and school partnerships are based on mutual trust and deep engagement in solving collective problems.
Published in Chapter:
Becoming Teacher Researchers: Using English Learners' Linguistic Capital to Socially Re-Organize Learning
Aria Razfar (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA), Beverly Troiano (Elmhurst College, USA), Ambareen Nasir (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA), Eunah Yang (Independent Researcher, South Korea), Joseph C. Rumenapp (Judson University, USA), and Zayoni Torres (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA)
Copyright: © 2015
|Pages: 38
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8668-7.ch011
Abstract
Drawing on three years of data, we show how an embedded university research team and eleven K-8 educators reorganized learning and negotiated innovative curricular activities for English learners (ELs) in spite of restrictive curricular mandates in an urban Midwestern district. We analyze how participating teachers appropriated theoretical constructs such as cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), third space, funds of knowledge, as well as using discourse analysis to design curriculum aimed at improving language learning through mathematics, science, and community-based problem solving. The learning of teachers was purposefully designed to develop new professional identities. The learning was also designed to move teachers from deficit views of multilingualism to dynamic stances grounded in polyglot language ideologies. We examine the challenges and opportunities of participants' movement from resistant, procedural, and ethnographic identities towards teacher researcher identities.