Getting “Up to Code”: Preparing for and Confronting Challenges when Teaching for Social Justice in Standards-Based Classrooms
Alison G. Dover
Research Problem:
In today’s educational culture of teaching to the standards and curriculum provided by the districts, many teachers are finding it difficult to implement social justice into their everyday classroom activities. Social justice activities do not need to be their own separate entities, but rather activities that can be integrated into other content lessons and activities. Alison Dover focuses on twenty-four secondary English Language Arts teachers who were able to balance the demands of a standards-based classroom, while still implementing social justice lessons into their daily routines. This article focuses on the struggles and challenges these teachers faced when trying to perform this balancing act, how they managed to overcome them and recommendations for future teachers who are looking to integrate social justice into their classrooms. Some of the challenges include, “restrictive school policies, a lack of support for colleagues, resistance from students, and insufficient personal, or professional resources”.
Research Question:
How can a teacher successfully balance the demands of teaching for social justice and a standards-based practice?
Data Collection Procedure:
Twenty-four secondary English Language Arts teachers were recruited participants who self-identified as teaching for social justice in standards-based, secondary ELA classrooms. In order to collect data from these individuals, the author had teachers respond to a six-item open-ended questionnaire that focused on their definition of “teaching for social justice”, in addition to their “school’s curricular and accountability-related requirements, how they implemented their vision of teaching for social justices within the context of a standards-based instruction and any challenges they faced when doing so”. Once the questionnaire was complete, participants “submitted and analyzed an original lesson plan that they considered an example for teaching with social justice with standards-based curriculum”. Through this, the author was able to assess the teachers “beliefs and priorities relative to a social justice curriculum as well as how their curriculum addressed state and federal content standards”. She looked to see if the submitted lesson plans addressed specific social justices and ELA topics, while also assessing the strategies used to balance the specific curricular standards.
Findings
The balancing act that Dover analyzes should be a skill that every pre-service and current teacher is able to implement into their classroom, even in standards-based classrooms. Teaching for social justice in the classrooms allows for classrooms to become more culturally aware of the community and world that they live in and become advocates of change in their community. It requires teachers to, “1. Assume all students are participants in knowledge construction, have high expectations for students and themselves, and foster learning communities; 2. Acknowledge, value, and build upon students’ existing knowledge, interests, cultural and linguistic resources; 3. Teach academic skills and bridge gaps in students’ learning; 4. Work in reciprocal partnership with student’s families and communities; 5. Critique and employ multiple forms of assessment; and 6. explicitly teach about activism, power and inequity in schools and society”. By using this criteria to create a social justice based classroom that fits the needs of the curriculum, the curriculum needs to, “1. Reflect students’ personal and cultural identities; 2. include explicit instruction about oppression, prejudice and inequity; and 3. Make connections between curricular standards and social justice topics”. In addition, the pedagogy strategies implemented to create a social justice based, classroom environment must be ones that, “creates supportive classroom climates that embraces multiple perspectives, emphasize critical thinking and inquiry, and promotes students’ academic, civic and personal growth. As teachers continue to look into the field of teaching for social justice, they need to make the connections between education and social action themselves, before they can teach their students to do so. Teachers need a sense of themselves as social activists in their classroom and community. The goal for implementing social justice into the classroom should be to raise students’ awareness of inequity and injustice while promoting student’s social action.
Citation:
Dover, A. (2013). Getting “Up to Code”: Preparing for and Confronting Challenges when Teaching for Social Justice in Standards-Based Classrooms. Action in Teacher Education, (35), 89-102.
Erica Paolucci
Full Inclusion: Understanding the Role of Gay and Lesbian Texts and Films in Teacher
Education Classrooms
Jill M. Hermann-Wilmarth
Research Problem:
Recently, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community has received an insurmountable amount of attention. It is arguable that the areas receiving the most criticism are same sex marriage and the inclusion of LGBTQ related content in schools. Jill M. Hermann-Wilmarth recognized the inequalities in the school system that surrounded the queer community and therefore attempted to provide a foundation for teachers who struggle with creating a comprehensive learning environment for their students. Within this paper, the author examines the reason’s in which the inclusion of LGBTQ related content is seen as taboo in schools worldwide. Once she narrows these reasons down, she provides future educators with tools necessary to be fully inclusive of their diverse body of students, particularly those who come from same gender families.
Research Questions:
In order to guide her research, Hermann-Wilmarth asks: How can teacher educators better prepare their pre- and in-service teachers to address gay and lesbian issues in elementary school classrooms? What kinds of resistance should teacher educators be prepared for from their students? What types of literature and literacy strategies would support a goal of full inclusion?
Discussion:
The author discusses children’s literature textbooks, picture books, and films as valuable resources in creating an all-encompassing classroom. Furthermore, Hermann-Wilmarth expands on these types of media by explaining what can be learned from each and how the lessons received from them can be incorporated into the elementary classroom.
Findings:
Jill M. Hermann-Wilmarth concludes by explaining the power texts and film have in classrooms. Rather than allowing heteronormativity to govern the classroom, she suggests that pre- and in-service teacher challenge heterosexism and therefore, includes forms of media that fall outside the norm. The author believes that the more teachers integrate LGBTQ issues into their classrooms, the more elementary schools will be willing to address these issues which in turn, will aid in creating a safe school environment for all students.
Richards, S. (n.d.). What strategies can I incorporate so that The English Language Learners in My Classroom Will Better Understand Oral Directions? In Action Research Studies (pp. 59-77).
By: Maria Zullo
Research Problem:
A second and third grade teacher at John Muir Elementary school has a class of 14 second graders and 10 third graders. Her class consists of native English speakers as well as English Language Learners. She notices that when she gives her students oral directions, she says them and then asks the students if they have any questions. Most of the time, none of the students have questions at this time. However, when she sits down to let her students work independently, most of the ELL students then come up to her with questions. She is confused as to why they do not respond when she asks if they need clarification, but then come up to her once she is done.
Research Questions:
Why are the students asking questions after she is done giving directions?
How can she find out why the students are doing this?
What can she do differently so that they will ask questions once they are prompted to?
What can she do so that her oral directions are clearer in general?
Data Collection Procedure:
In order to find out why the students were not asking questions when she prompted them to, but rather asking them once she had left them to work independently, she decided that she was going to journal everyday and also interview her students. She found that she quickly forgot to journal or gave up on it, but the interviews were a helpful method of discovering reason for the students’ actions. In these student interviews the ELL’s told her that they did not understand what she was saying or that she was talking too fast.
Findings:
Through the student interviews, she discovered that her students did not understand her oral directions to ask questions because they did not know what she was saying or because she was talking too fast. In order to make her oral directions clearer she began to slow down her speech, repeat the directions, write the directions on the board and also model what the students were supposed to be doing. She noticed that these strategies drastically changed the dynamic of the classroom and even the native English speakers benefitted from the changes. Although there will always be times when the ELL students have questions, these new methods allowed for the students to stop asking questions later on and to start asking them when prompted.
Lapayese, Yvette V., Ursula S. Aldana, and Eduardo Lara. “A Racio-Economic Analysis Of Teach For America: Counterstories Of TFA Teachers Of Color.” Penn GSE Perspectives On Urban Education 11.1 (2014): 11-25. ERIC. Web.
Erica Rolek
Research Problem:
Over the years, many alternative teacher training programs have been developed in order to address the issue of the miseducation of students in the nation’s neediest areas. One of these programs that has risen above the rest in terms of popularity is Teach For America (TFA). While the students that TFA serve are 90% African-American, Latino, and Native American, only 14% of hired corps members are African-American and 11% are Latino, leaving 75% of White corps members entering these urban and rural schools attended by primarily children of color. This article examines the insights and experiences of fifteen teachers of color who have participated in TFA by sitting them down for extensive interviews about how TFA handled the topic of race while they were active corps members.
Research Questions:
While the interviews are based on the broad topic of race in TFA, the two main questions that guide the study of the article are: “How does TFA address issues of race and racism in the recruitment and support of its teacher corp?” and “How do TFA educators of color perceive the impact of alternative teaching programs in economically disenfranchised communities of color?”
Data Collection:
A total of fifteen teachers who were part of a Master’s educational program with an emphasis on social justice were selected to participate in the interviews conducted for this study. They all had been teaching for at least two years and were all extremely knowledgeable in issues regarding race and power. Five of these teacher participants identified as African-American and ten identified as Latino. Each teacher participated in an in-depth interview, which addressed these three things: “knowledge and beliefs about race, power, and education, the information on the participant and her/his experiences in the program, and the perception of the program’s impact in economically disenfranchised communities of color.”
Findings:
The participants stated that TFA develops superficial “racial know-how” for its white teachers, but does not address the issues of race nearly as in-depth as it should. The participants stated that they did not get much out of the large group discussions due to the fact that they seemed to be designed for White teachers who had never had a class on race, and that discussions never got too controversial, out of fear of making the White teachers uncomfortable. The participants also seemed to come to a consensus that TFA benefits the economic interest of Whites, but it has a questionable impact in improving the education of poor youth of color. At the end of the article, the researchers suggest ways for TFA to improve recruitment, the application and interview, the summer training institute, and ongoing training and support with a greater emphasis on race awareness and education.
McLeod, J., & Reynolds, R. (2010). Teaching Human Rights across the Curriculum. Ethos, 18(3), 17-21.
Desirée Ganz
Research Problems
Millennium Goals have set forth to implement a curriculum in classrooms where social justice, liberty and equity are practiced. The Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989) was designed to protect students under age 18 and implementing such a curriculum as mentioned by millennium goals will be a step in the right direction so that learners can develop to their full potential and live peacefully while schools become centers of peace education. Teachers may use the transmission model to have students learn about human rights, but the best method is to have students learn through human rights, social justice and equity.
Research Questions
Julie McLeod and Ruth Reynolds question the difference between learning about and learning through human rights for the best educational model for social justice. The two authors also question the benefits of learning through human rights versus learning about human rights.
Data Collection Procedure
Three different schools were used as case study subjects in order to see how human rights curriculum can be used and how it can be best implemented in order to cover a range of topics in the classroom. The implemented curriculums were observed to see how students could transform from transmission subjects to human rights activists with knowledge about their community and new ideas of how to transform their communities into a place where social justice was practiced.
Findings
Three different schools implemented the Millennium Goals in order to cover very different topics. School A’s students lived in a coastal town and were upset about a long standing conflict between local residents and tourists. This teacher had the students learn through human rights when the students understood their right to freedom of expression. This human right helped students to understand the value of tolerance and to value social responsibility. School B’s students were angry about local graffiti on the school fence and pollution in the river. These students learned through human rights and became environmentally conscientious about their right to a healthy environment. Student C’s students focused on the human rights involved in the intensive language program for new immigrant children. The students learned to value their new country and the responsibility of life in a free society. Although all students learned different values through the curriculum, all students had the opportunity to experience critical thinking, conflict resolution, self-management and coping, communication and to negotiate decisions.
Spalding, Elizabeth. “Social Justice and Teacher Education: A Hammer, a Bell, and a Song.” Journal of Teacher Education. May/June 2010: 191-196.
Erica Roberts
Research Problem:
Social justice serves as “an umbrella term to cover projects” whose goals are to prepare teachers to recognize, name, and combat inequity in schools and society. The author recognize that there are many preservice and inservice teachers who want to teach in socially just ways but have little to no idea how to do so. Even when some people have the tools needed to teach in socially just ways, those tools can sometimes “create resistance, frustration, and confusion among individuals who intend to help…Methodological tools are needed to examine how [teachers and] teacher educators can learn to teach for social justice.”
Data Collection / Findings:
The author decided to use the song, “If I Had a Hammer” by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays to write an editorial on the status of social justice in teacher education. In the editorial, the author took the three tools from the song, the hammer, the bell, and the songs used during a normal work day in 1949 (when the song was written) and translated them into tools that can be used in the fight to teach social justice in schools. In the author’s metaphor, the hammer had become the hammer of justice; the bell the bell of freedom, and the songs the songs of love and caring for one another. The hammer of justice represents the theories and ideologies educators have for learning and teaching about social justice; the bell of freedom acts as the means of sending the message to teachers and teacher educators that social justice; and the songs of love and caring serve to unite those who agree and disagree on the goals of social justice on the idea that in order to create a just, democratic society, everyone must work together.
The author believes that the hammer, the bell, and the song serve as symbols that can help change society and inequities in schools to make them better for students and teachers. She describes the hammer of justice as a tool that can be used to build and construct, but also tear down and destroy. She suggests that educators and teacher educators learn to use the hammer to deconstruct and breakdown institutions of –isms that marginalize students in schools. She insists that the bell of freedom must send a clear message to educators: In order to teach well, you have to know yourself, your students, and their community. Finally, the song of love and caring hones in on care theory and how teachers caring about students is what is needed for the hammer and bell to make socially just teaching possible and effective.
Whipp, J. L. (2013). Developing Socially Just Teachers: The Interaction of Experiences Before, During, and After Teacher Preparation in Beginning Urban Teachers. Journal Of Teacher Education, 64(5), 454-467.
Gianna Esposito
Research Problem:
This article aims to evaluate the effect of urban teacher preparation in terms of developing a social justice orientation in preservice teachers. It looks directly at what elements of urban teacher training programs lead teachers to use socially just teaching practices and takes a look at how teachers concept of socially just teaching changes over the course of the first year in the field.
Research Questions:
This article discusses the definition of socially just teaching and what experiences, during training and during the first year in the field, contributes to the development of socially just teachers. The author explores the importance of using both an individual and structural orientation in dealing with social justice in the classroom. She questions what experiences lead first year teachers to tackle problems from each perspective or from the dual perspective.
Data Collection:
The author conducted a case study on 12 first year teachers who all graduated from the same urban teacher education program. The author asked questions about the new teachers’ own understanding of their orientation towards social justice, how they practice social just teaching, and what they believe has influenced their orientation towards and practice of social justice in the classroom. The majority of the participants in this study were 23 year old while females who had grown up in the suburbs. Data was collected through a combination of phone interviews, a survey, and teaching evaluations of the participants by supervisors.
Findings:
The author found that eight of the teachers studied were both individually and structurally oriented, some of which favored a structural framework (S/I) and some of which favored a more individual framework (I/S). The first group (S/I) used sociocultural and equity frameworks to define socially just teaching. These teachers stood out because of their emphasis on advocacy and consciousness raising. These teachers not only worked to inform and empower their students but also engaged in advocacy projects themselves within their schools. The second group (I/S) used individualist and sociocultural frameworks to describe their teaching practices. This group of teachers focused on culturally responsive caring relationships between teacher and students, they felt strongly that creating rapport with students was crucial to socially just teaching. The other four participants were only individually oriented (I). Overall they struggled to define social justice focusing on the students as individuals without using any sort of sociocultural framework. Without tying in any culture to their views of individual students, this group of teachers showed themselves to be caring but “colorblind”. The eight teachers who saw social justice as a combination of structural and individual frameworks came into their preparation program with prior cross-cultural experiences, additional cultural immersion experiences during college (for example work with the Big Brother Big Sister program), meaningful experiences during training (inspiring mentor/teacher, eye opening classroom discussion/reading), and support during the first year of teaching. Those teachers that remained unable to determine what socially just teaching was and how to embody it were those students who lacked cultural experiences and most importantly did not feel that the subject matter in their justice oriented preparation classes spoke to them, changed them or challenged them. The author suggests that urban education programs consider applicants prior cross-cultural experiences before admission as it seems to indicate the level of commitment towards social justice. She also suggests that cross-cultural experiences should be made more available and perhaps mandatory.
*Great flow chart for developing an orientation towards socially just teaching on page 463