Perceptions of Pre-service Teachers on Mentor Teachers’ Roles in Promoting Inclusive Practicum: Case Studies in U.S. Elementary School Contexts

This case study examines a Chinese and Korean-Chinese pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their mentor teachers’ role in supporting inclusive practicum experiences in U.S. elementary school contexts. The findings demonstrate that a mentor teacher’s open conversations and willingness to host those students bring positive influence on their learning and growth. The findings also indicate that the facilitative roles of mentor teachers in the promotion of inclusive environments are intersected with the socio-cultural and political contexts of practicum schools and universities. The study concludes with implications for enhancing the inclusion of diverse pre-service teachers through collaborative roles of multiple practicum stakeholders, including pre-service teachers, mentor teachers, practicum schools, and universities

Issues of Language, Insider/Outsider Positionality, and Advocacy Dilemmas in Researching Plurilingual Asian Im/migrants

Drawing on the notion of reflexivity, I examine researcher positionality concerning the issues of language and tensions in navigating perceived insider/outsider positioning, and advocacy dilemmas that I experienced in ethnographic qualitative research with plurilingual Asian im/migrant students in South Korea and in the U.S. Through reflexive analysis of my ethnographic fieldwork, I studied about my researcher’s positionality and voice during and after research and highlighted the partial, situated, and subjective nature of knowledge production through qualitative research. My view is that qualitative researchers should critically reflect on their social location and power relations interlinked with their analysis and positionality, and articulate how that may affect their research

Can Subaltern, Multilingual and Multidialectical Bodies Feel? An Aspirational Call for Undoing the Coloniality of Affects in English Learning and Teaching

When Spivak (1988/2010) provocatively raised the question “Can the subaltern speak?” and concluded that they cannot, she did not mean that the subaltern literally or physically cannot speak. She meant that Western/Eurocentric/White ways of knowing and languaging produce colonial, epistemic violence that silences subaltern bodies. In this conceptual paper, I pose a related question: “Can subaltern, multilingual and multidialectical bodies feel?” Little attention has been paid to understanding the affect of multilingual and multidialectical students during English Learning and Teaching (ELT) . As a teacher educator/researcher positioned within ELT in the white settler context of the U.S., I reach a conclusion similar to that reached by Spivak. When dominant ELT research and practice rejects the languaging and affective experiences of multilingual and multidialectical students, those students are treated as subaltern bodies that cannot speak or feel. Here, I ask how subaltern, multilingual and multidialectical bodies can speak and feel in learning English. I argue that the (de)coloniality of affects must be a key conceptual framework for teaching English to multilingual and multidialectical students

Transnationality and Teacher Educator Identity Development: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Study

Transnational teacher educators, who cross national, social, and cultural boundaries to prepare teachers, play a vital role in nurturing teachers’ awareness and appreciation of learner diversity. However, transnational teacher educators tend to encounter tremendous challenges in developing their professional identities. To date, though many studies have investigated how teachers and teacher educators in general develop their professional identities, scant attention has been paid to that complex process of “transnational” teacher educators. To begin to close this research gap, this collaborative autoethnographic study examines how we develop our teacher educator identities through teaching a diversity course in the United States as transnational teacher educators from China and South Korea. The findings reveal that our transnational backgrounds (e.g., speaking English as a second language and holding particular cultural beliefs) initially challenged our identity development, but our continuous teaching and learning within a supportive institutional context turned the marginality of our transnational backgrounds into professional assets. The research findings can extend our understanding of teacher educators’ identity development. The study also suggests practical implications for teacher education programs to create an inclusive and supportive professional community in which all teacher educators may grow

Experiences of African American Teachers in Desegregated PK–12 Schools: A Systematic Literature Review

This literature review reports findings from 19 empirical studies on the experiences of African American teachers in PK–12 desegregated schools. The research questions were: What do we know about the experiences of African American teachers in desegregated PK–12 schools? What are the challenges African American teachers experience in desegregated PK–12 schools? In response to these questions, the article first discusses school desegregation after the Brown v. Board of Education decision and its impact on African American teachers as a historical backdrop. Findings from 19 studies were analyzed through grounded theory. Two core themes were identified from our findings: persistent structural challenges and new challenges since Brown. Subthemes, such as intercultural conflicts, teacher experience as a social construct, and a gap in research, were also identified. These themes were discussed in comparison to challenges of African American teachers during the process of school desegregation after the Brown decision

Contrasting Tick Species Behaviors: A Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE)

Tick-borne diseases are on the rise throughout the world, and there is a need to better understand tick behavior in order to identify potential new interventions. Ticks have a complex life history and can survive months off-host. There is a lack of large-scale data on off-host tick behavior, which leaves a gap in understanding of tick biology outside of tick-host interactions. Introducing undergraduate students to authentic research early in their studies can help prepare them for independent inquiry in upper-level classes. To address the student needs and fill gaps in tick research, students in introductory biology courses recorded observations of ticks in sealed terraria each week for one semester. Students recorded 11,905 observations of two species of nymphal ticks over 10 weeks. The results showed that Amblyomma americanum nymphs were observed more frequently and quested higher than Ixodes scapularis nymphs

Gain-of-Function Experiments With Bacteriophage Lambda Uncover Residues Under Diversifying Selection in Nature

Viral gain-of-function mutations frequently evolve during laboratory experiments. Whether the specific mutations that evolve in the lab also evolve in nature and whether they have the same impact on evolution in the real world is unknown. We studied a model virus, bacteriophage λ, that repeatedly evolves to exploit a new host receptor under typical laboratory conditions. Here, we demonstrate that two residues of λ’s J protein are required for the new function. In natural λ variants, these amino acid sites are highly diverse and evolve at high rates. Insertions and deletions at these locations are associated with phylogenetic patterns indicative of ecological diversification. Our results show that viral evolution in the laboratory mirrors that in nature and that laboratory experiments can be coupled with protein sequence analyses to identify the causes of viral evolution in the real world. Furthermore, our results provide evidence for widespread host-shift evolution in lambdoid viruses

Gain-of-Function Experiments With Bacteriophage Lambda Uncover Residues Under Diversifying Selection in Nature

Viral gain-of-function mutations frequently evolve during laboratory experiments. Whether the specific mutations that evolve in the lab also evolve in nature and whether they have the same impact on evolution in the real world is unknown. We studied a model virus, bacteriophage λ, that repeatedly evolves to exploit a new host receptor under typical laboratory conditions. Here, we demonstrate that two residues of λ’s J protein are required for the new function. In natural λ variants, these amino acid sites are highly diverse and evolve at high rates. Insertions and deletions at these locations are associated with phylogenetic patterns indicative of ecological diversification. Our results show that viral evolution in the laboratory mirrors that in nature and that laboratory experiments can be coupled with protein sequence analyses to identify the causes of viral evolution in the real world. Furthermore, our results provide evidence for widespread host-shift evolution in lambdoid viruses