Navigating a Literacy Landscape: Teaching Conceptual Understanding with Multiple Text Types

The authors draw on Cognitive Flexibility Theory (Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, & Anderson, 2004) as a lens to examine one seventh-grade English language arts teacher\u27s pedagogical approach to using multiple text types to develop students\u27 conceptual understandings about the 1957 integration of Little Rock\u27s Central High School. Multiple text types included but were not limited to memoir, expository texts, photographs, documentaries, docudrama, and Web documents. Findings suggest the teacher\u27s use of multiple text types required a systematic and strategic juxtaposition of texts along with questioning, resulting in a teacher-centered approach

Web-Based Inquiry Learning: Facilitating Thoughtful Literacy With WebQuests

An action research study investigated how the multiple tasks found in WebQuests facilitate fifth-grade students\u27 literacy skills and higher order thinking. Findings indicate that WebQuests are most successful when activities are carefully selected and systematically delivered. Implications for teaching include the necessity for adequate planning, organization, supervision, and scaffolding of learning in a Web environment. For students, benefits of WebQuests include enhancement of thoughtful literacy through multiple knowledge representations and making learning meaningful through connections to real-life contexts. The study also highlighted interdisciplinary teaching and learning of social studies, science, and language arts

Video Pedagogy in Action: Critical Reflective Inquiry Using the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model

Even though there is long-standing use of video in education to develop preservice and inservice teachers' reflective practices, teachers and those requiring teachers to reflect on video (e.g., teacher educators, state departments of education, or school administrators) must be mindful that it is not the video that makes the difference. It is the practice of reflective inquiry and engagement with video by the teacher that makes the difference. We, like many other teacher educators, have realized that at times our preservice and inservice teachers were reflecting at superficial levels—revisiting events but without the deeper perplexity and pondering that Dewey, Schon, and others have long called for teachers to engage in.This is the Table of Contents and Preface of the book published as McVee, Mary B., Lynn E. Shanahan, H. Emily Hayden, Fenice B. Boyd, P. David Pearson; with Jennifer Reichenberg. Video Pedagogy in Action: Critical Reflective Inquiry Using the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model. Routledge, 2018. Available online: https://www.routledge.com/Video-Pedagogy-in-Action-Critical-Reflective-Inquiry-Using-the-Gradual/McVee-Shanahan-Hayden-Boyd-Pearson/p/book/9781138039803 Copyright 2018 Taylor & Francis. Posted with permission

Dispositions towards diversity: two pre-service teachers’ experiences of living and teaching in a remote indigenous community

Teacher education programmes are often tasked with preparing predominantly White, middle class, pre-service teachers to be effective in diverse contexts. Many teacher educators consider practicum experiences critical to forming values and dispositions necessary for the teaching profession. This article focuses on the work of two White, middle-class, pre-service teachers, Charlotte and Seraphina, who volunteered to do their practicum in a remote indigenous community in Australia on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. At the beginning of the practicum, both pre-service teachers’ attitudes about the experience were similar; yet, over time they began to develop divergant dispositions or ‘positionality towards diversity’ relative to their unique backgrounds and APY Lands experiences, highlighting certain sensitivities and biases regarding racial, cultural and linguistic diversity. We focus on how Charlotte and Seraphina interpret their experiences, what this can tell us about their professional development, and the possible implications for teacher educators teaching in post-colonial contexts