Racial and Related Forms of Specialist Knowledge on English Education Blogs

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E n g l i s h E d u c a t i o n , V 4 7 N 4 , J u l y 2 0 1 5

E n g l i s h E d u c a t i o n , J u l y 2 0 1 5

Allison Skerrett, Alina Adonyi Pruitt, and Amber S. Warrington

Racial and Related Forms of Specialist Knowledge on English Education Blogs

This article explores how the computer-mediated communication (CMC) tool of blogging served

as a teaching and learning tool about diversity and inequity in English education. It analyzes the

blog writings of two preservice teachers who used their blogs as a space to encourage themselves

and their peers to consider racial, linguistic, and other forms of diversity and inequality, and what

these issues meant for English education. The analysis advances understandings of the potentials

and limits of CMCs to foster dialogue and knowledge building among preservice teachers in rela-

tion to diversity and inequality in education.

The field of English education has long been troubled by its discipline, mired in traditions disconnected from the lives of diversifying student

populations (Applebee, 1974; Morrell, 2005; Skerrett, 2010a). This concern, situated within recent reports that suggest a permanent trend of increasing racial, cultural, linguistic, and social class diversity among student popula-tions (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2013), juxtaposed with a static demographic of primarily white and middle class English teachers (Hancock & Scherff, 2010), reinforces the urgency of English teacher educa-tors to explore and innovate pedagogies that promote preservice teachers’ learning for teaching English in diverse settings. Promising instructional approaches in this regard include teaching critical literacy (Groenke, 2010a, 2010b; Morrell, 2005; Scherff, 2012; Skerrett, 2010b); using multicultural lit-erature within preservice classrooms and with preservice teachers and young adults (Glenn, 2012; Groenke, 2008, 2010b; Groenke & Paulus, 2007/2008); field experiences in diverse educational settings (Hallman & Burdick, 2011; Saunders, 2012; Scherff, 2012); and computer-mediated communications (CMCs) that bring diverse youth and preservice teachers together for teach-

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Copyright © 2015 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

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S k e r r e t t e t a l . > R a c i a l a n d R e l a t e d F o r m s o f S p e c i a l i s t K n o w l e d g e

ing and learning (Groenke, 2008, 2010b; Groenke & Paulus, 2007/2008) and create spaces for preservice teachers to dialogue about their teaching and learning experiences in diverse schools (Paulus & Scherff, 2008; Wade & Fauske, 2004).

As teacher educators and scholars of English education, we situate ourselves within this work of promoting secondary English preservice teachers’ knowledge and abilities to teach in ways that honor and draw upon students’ diversity for learning in language arts classrooms. In this article, we explore how the CMC tool of blogging served as a teaching and learning tool about diversity and inequity in English education in an ado-lescent literacy course taken by secondary English preservice teachers. We analyze the blog writings of two preservice teachers, a black woman we call Jasmine and a white woman we name Kelly, who used their blogs as a space to encourage themselves and their peers to consider racial, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity and inequality, and what these issues meant for teaching and learning in diverse English classrooms. Our analysis makes a contribution to English education by advancing understandings of how CMCs like blogging may foster dialogue and knowledge building among preservice teachers in relation to diversity, inequality, and English educa-tion. Two research questions guide our analysis: What perspectives on racial, linguistic, and other forms of diversity and inequity in English education did two preservice teachers articulate on their course blogs? And, what was the nature of peer response to the preservice teachers’ blogs about these topics?

Teaching and Learning about Diversity and Inequity in English Education

English teacher educators have engaged a range of approaches to develop preservice teachers’ capacities to recognize, critique, and teach in ways that redress the educational inequalities stemming from diversity. Criti-cal literacy instruction is one such prominent approach (Groenke, 2010b; Morrell, 2005; Scherff, 2012; Skerrett, 2010b). In one method of critical literacy instruction, Groenke (2010b) designed an equity audit within an action research course for preservice teachers in which they developed an inquiry question that attended to varied dimensions of (in)equity, such as student demographics across particular programs in the schools where they were learning to teach. Groenke (2010b) reported that the preservice teachers began feeling empowered by their abilities to identify, name, and critique forms of injustice, which, she asserted, could lay a foundation for their becoming teachers who are agents for social change.

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In another form of action research, Scherff (2012) used multigenre writing to frame an action research project in a language arts methods course for preservice teachers, most of whom were white and whose field placements were in diverse schools. Scherff (2012) noticed preservice teach-ers’ growth along four dimensions of a critical literacy stance: consciously engaging, that is, thoughtfully questioning, reframing, and rethinking their topic of inquiry; thinking alternatively, involving using the tensions of their inquiries to take risks, think differently, or take on new identities; actively inquiring, meaning critiquing their research findings and their thinking about those findings; and being reflective, entailing not merely thinking back on their research but retheorizing their initial assumptions and beliefs and even generating theories for understanding their findings.

English teacher educators have also engaged multicultural literature to assist preservice teachers’ critical understandings about diversity and inequality and foster their abilities to use this literature to support their students’ learning (Glenn, 2012; Groenke, 2008, 2010a; Groenke & Paulus, 2007/2008). Glenn and her colleagues (Glenn, 2012) created opportunities for their predominately white preservice English teachers to explore the topic of race and come to awareness of whiteness by reading counternar-rative literature—literature that introduces the voices and experiences of marginalized individuals and social groups. Some of the preservice teach-ers who read two young adult (YA) novels found points of connection and empathy with characters from racial backgrounds other than their own, noticed and challenged societal and their own personal assumptions about people of color, and developed and refined their understandings about race, privilege, and disparity in society, in their own lives, and in education. Glenn (2012) suggested that using counternarrative literature in teacher education could assist preservice teachers’ development of racial knowledge that would be useful to them in innovating racially literate and culturally responsive pedagogies.

English preservice teachers’ learning about diversity and inequity has also been situated outside university classrooms, in diverse community settings and schools (Groenke, 2010b; Hallman & Burdick, 2011; Saunders, 2012). Investigating the development of English preservice teachers across their English education coursework and field placements in diverse schools, Saunders (2012) observed how one preservice teacher applied her learning from university coursework by enacting critical and culturally responsive pedagogies with students of color who were placed on the margins of school life. Adding variety to the sites where preservice English teachers can learn about diversity and inequality and practice critical pedagogies, Hallman and

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Burdick (2011) arranged for preservice teachers to work in after-school, ESL tutoring, and elective curricular classes with culturally and linguistically diverse youths. These experiences troubled preservice teachers’ assumptions about teaching, roles and power in the teacher-learner relationship, and the dichotomy between official and unofficial languages in school and social life.

Getting closer to the focus of our analysis, a growing number of En-glish teacher educators are exploring the potential of CMCs for teaching and learning about diversity and inequity in English education. Taking critical literacy teaching into the realm of CMCs, Groenke (2008, 2010a) described a Web pen pals project that provided preservice teachers opportunities to prac-tice facilitating online discussions with youths about YA literature through a critical lens. Preservice teachers were prepared for these discussions, for instance, by reviewing and practicing dimensions of critical literacy in rela-tion to a YA book they read. Yet Groenke (2008, 2010b) found that preservice teachers’ questioning approaches with the youths relied primarily on initi-ating topics of discussion that were not particularly critical in nature and asking the youths to provide supporting arguments for the views they shared about their book. From these findings, Groenke (2008, 2010b) concluded that preservice teachers may be challenged by the traditional discourses of student-teacher interactions they bring to online discussions that discourage the greater participation and learning that CMCs are designed to support.

Paying close attention to the features of online discussions that may foster preservice teachers’ learning, Paulus and Scherff (2008) analyzed a semester’s worth of online discussions of 14 preservice English teachers and discovered the teacher candidates’ dialogue involved intense emotional engagement, responsiveness to others, and storytelling to make meaning of their teaching and learning experiences in schools. Inquiring into whether and how commonly held understandings of gender-specific discursive styles on CMCs would shape discussion and learning among preservice teachers, Wade and Fauske (2004) concluded that preservice teachers combined dif-ferent genres of dialogue as they participated in online newsgroups to make sense of diversity and teaching. Like these scholars who inquired into the potential of CMCs to promote preservice English teachers’ learning, our analysis concerns the ways in which two preservice teachers’ blogging about diversity and inequality in English education encouraged their and their peers’ learning and dialogue about these topics.

The Knowledge of Groups That Are Socially Oppressed

Because our analysis is centered on the perspectives two preservice teachers shared on their blogs about racial, linguistic, and other forms of diversity

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and disparities in English education, we turned to work that theorizes the knowledge produced by individuals and communities that experience racial, linguistic, gender, and other forms of oppression (Collins 1991/2000, 2012; Guinier, 2004). The production of knowledge has been defined in philosophi-cal terms of ontology, epistemology, and methodology (Collins, 1991/2000; Crotty, 1999; Sipe & Constable, 1996) that together constitute a knowledge paradigm, or a way of viewing and understanding the world. Ontology has to do with the nature of reality, what is “real” or “true.” Epistemology con-cerns itself with the nature of knowledge—what it is possible to know and what is possible to know about the knowable. Methodology pertains to the processes used for obtaining, verifying, and legitimating knowledge, pro-cesses that are themselves intertwined with what a person or group thinks constitutes reality and what is possible to know about it. Questions about legitimate knowledge often become political when individuals and groups who experience social oppression and inequality present knowledge claims and verification processes that derive from their historical and contemporary lived realities of oppression and injustice. The knowledge of these individu-als and groups comes to be viewed as specialized political knowledge that contests the prevailing systems of knowledge (or knowledge paradigms) that, in Western societies, have been developed and controlled to serve the interests of white, male, economically elite ruling classes (Collins 1991/2000, 2012; Guinier, 2004).

In this analysis, we rely on, and interrelate, two theoretical frame-works that conceptualize two forms of such specialized knowledge—racial literacy (Guinier, 2004) and black feminist thought (Collins, 1991/2000)—that individuals and groups generate from experiencing interlocked systems of oppression and social inequality. In interrelating these two theoretical frameworks and specialized forms of knowledge, we emphasize the concept of intersectionality that analyzes and challenges the “interrelationships among social inequality, power, and politics” (Collins, 2012, p. 446). Collins (2012) explained that “social structures such as neighborhoods, schools, jobs, [and] religious institutions . . . are institutional expressions of social in-equalities of race, class, gender, age, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and ability” (p. 446) that “result in unequal material realities” (p. 455) for individuals and social groups. The racial literacy and black feminist knowledge frameworks we employ attend to intersectionality. Collins (2012), for instance, theorized an “implicit intersectional stance” in early black feminist politics that led to a more comprehensive black feminist framework that argued that “race-only or gender-only frameworks advanced partial and incomplete analyses of the social injustices that characterize African American women’s lives

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and that race, gender, social class, and sexuality all shaped black women’s experiences” (p. 449). Moreover, we connect black women’s lived experi-ences of oppression and the associated knowledge framework that obtains to a constellation of groups of women of color that experience oppression (Collins, 2012). This connection suggests that the greater ethnic and language diversity among this broad group of women of color would emphasize eth-nic and linguistic oppression and frameworks of knowing emanating from those experiences.

Racial Literacy

Racial literacy (Guinier, 2004) is one form of specialized knowledge that derives from the lived realities of racial and other forms of oppression that individuals and groups experience. Racial literacy is an understanding of the powerful and complex ways in which race influences the social, economic, political, and educational experiences of individuals and groups, and a knowl-edge of race as the prevailing narrative in the lives of racially minoritized individuals and groups (Guinier, 2004). A racial literacy perspective acknowledges the “dynamic interplay” (Guinier, 2004, p. 113) between race and other social categories such as gender and class that also work to marginalize individuals, what Collins (1991/2000, 2012) elaborates on with the concept of intersectionality. Yet a racial literacy viewpoint asserts that race predominately determines privilege and power, or disenfranchisement and powerlessness, for people in racially diverse nations. Racial literacy involves discernment of the structural, po-litical, and economic circumstances or antecedents that underlie racism and disadvantage. For a racially literate person, race functions as a tool of diagnosis, feedback, and assessment of societal conditions and people’s lived experiences. While acknowledging individual agency, a racial literacy perspective admits the institutional and environmental constraints on in-dividuals’ actions.

Rogers and Mosley (2006, 2008) and Mosley and Rogers (2011) have argued for, and employed, a racial literacy framework in literacy education, including teacher education, to prepare teachers and students to “address race, racism, and antiracism . . . [and] participate in US democracy” (Rogers & Mosley, 2006, p. 465). For example, Rogers and Mosley (2006) strategically located texts that foregrounded race and racism to develop elementary students’ racial literacy within an accelerated literacy instructional ap-

While acknowledging individual agency, a racial literacy perspec-tive admits the institutional and environmental constraints on individuals’ actions.

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proach. This work facilitated students’ recognition of the various ways in which race is talked or not talked about in literature and society and also facilitated students’ and the researchers’ apprehension and critique of their own understandings about and practices of dealing with race. Taking a racial literacy framework that emphasized intersectionality into secondary English education, I (Skerrett, 2011) examined how English teachers’ abili-ties and dispositions to teach their subject in antiracist ways were linked to their personal and professional identities and experiences with race, gender, social class, and other forms of oppression and inequity.

Black Feminist Thought

Work such as that described above (Skerrett, 2011) illustrates the interre-lationships among the theoretical concepts of intersectionality and racial literacy. In this section, we explore how the concept of racial literacy comple-ments a black feminist perspective (Collins, 1991/2000), another form of specialist knowledge produced by individuals and groups who are politically and socially oppressed. In the section that follows, we bring together the concepts of intersectionality, racial literacy, and black feminist thought and relate them to the research questions of interest to this analysis.

Black feminist thought, according to Collins (1991/2000), is “a special-ized kind of thought that reflects the thematic content of African American women’s experiences” (p. 201). Black feminist thought is situated within the subjugated knowledge of groups that face marginalization and serves as an alternative way of producing and validating knowledge to Eurocentric masculinist processes. Considering intersections among race and gender op-pression, Collins (1991/2000, 2012) asserted that a black feminist perspective can emphasize the feminist way of knowing because of the linkages between race and gender oppression.

The four dimensions of black feminist thought that Collins developed in her earlier work (1991/2000) attended to race and gender intersections, among others, such as social class and sexuality. The first dimension is that individuals’ concrete experiences are a criterion for meaning. Second is the centrality of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims. Third is the ethic of caring that “suggests that personal expressiveness, emotions, and empathy are central to the knowledge validation process” (1991, p. 215). Emotion signals the strength of the speaker’s belief in the validity of her argument and portrays her capacity for empathy. Fourth is the ethic of personal ac-countability. Individuals must have personal (not just intellectual) positions on issues and assume full responsibility for arguing their validity. Moreover,

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an individual’s knowledge claims should be assessed simultaneously with an evaluation of her personal values, character, and ethics. As Collins (1991/2000) cogently put it, “every idea has an owner and . . . the owner’s identity matters” (p. 218). Finally, acknowledging black feminist thought as a politically contested knowledge paradigm, Collins (1991/2000) wrote that alternative knowledge claims such as a black feminist perspective “are rarely threatening to conventional knowledge . . . routinely ignored, discredited, or simply absorbed and marginalized in existing paradigms” (p. 219). Collins (2012) particularly emphasized this phenomenon of contestation in higher education as women of color brought their intellectual knowledge projects, and not just their bodies, into higher education and used their knowledge paradigms to analyze educational and other systems of inequity.

Relating the Theoretical Frameworks to the Research at Hand

In this analysis, we—three English teacher educators and scholars—explore how two preservice teachers, Jasmine and Kelly, exemplified the theoreti-cal concepts of racial literacy and black feminist thought in blogging about English education as an endeavor to be analyzed, challenged, and redressed in terms of racial, cultural, linguistic, and political injustices. We attend to intersectionality among forms of oppression, noting how Jasmine and Kelly identified race, ethnicity, language, and social class as interwoven dimensions of inequity experienced by individuals and communities, and that should be addressed in English education. Moreover, we recognized the concept of intersectionality in these two preservice teachers’ lived experiences and identities in relation to diversity and inequality, and also in our own lives and subjectivities, the details of which we provide in our methodology section below.

Methodology

This article draws from two research projects. The first is a longitudinal self-study (Loughran & Russell, 2002) of Allison’s teaching and preservice teachers’ learning in an adolescent literacy course that she has been teach-ing since 2007. Allison has institutional IRB approval to collect and analyze instructional materials she has created or selected, such as course syllabi, assignments, readings, and descriptive notes of teaching and learning events, and student work, such as blogs, produced as part of normal teaching and learning processes in her course that remain in her possession. The nature of this research falls under the Exempt category of research at our university, which means that preservice teachers are not required to give informed

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consent for their data to be used in Allison’s self-study research. Data related to the preservice teacher Kelly derive from this research project.

The second research project is another longitudinal study, begun in fall 2012, in which Allison and a group of graduate students (including Amber) are inquiring into how preservice teachers in a two-year, urban-focused master’s plus teacher certification program (whose inaugural year marked the onset of the study) experience their preparation for teaching English in urban schools and develop as urban teachers into their first five years of professional teaching. Data are being collected through qualita-tive methods (Miles & Huberman, 1994) of interviews of the preservice teachers each semester, observations of them across university classes and field settings, and collection and analysis of teaching and learning artifacts produced and used by them and their instructors across university courses and fieldwork. Jasmine, the second focal preservice teacher of interest in this paper, is a participant in this study. Jasmine and all of her classmates whose data appear in this article gave active written informed consent to participate in this study.

Below, we describe Jasmine and Kelly, and ourselves, in more detail, naming racial, cultural, gender, linguistic, and other identity constructs that contribute to particular lived experiences of privilege and disadvantage in and across different social structures. We follow with a description of the contexts of the adolescent literacy course and how the blogs worked within them. Thereafter, we describe our data corpus and analytic procedures related to the research questions at hand.

Participants

Jasmine identifies as a black woman from an urban, working-class family who immigrated to the United States and whose first language is Haitian Creole. She brought to the urban teacher preparation program a critical perspective and understandings of systemic racism from her life experiences and from her African American studies college background. During and right after college, Jasmine had co-developed and co-taught an after school educational enrichment program for adolescents in the same urban high school she had attended. Jasmine was aware that she held a wealth of personal and educa-tional experiences with diversity and inequity that had helped her generate critical perspectives and knowledge. In class discussions, written work, and interviews, Jasmine often stated that her personal, social, and educational experiences had helped her develop these ways of knowing and analyzing the world. Because we have interviewed Jasmine four times at the writing

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of this article, we have been able to use member checking with her to assess whether she agrees with the assertions we make about her critical knowledge and perspectives, and the extent to which the interpretations we make of her data align with her own meanings.

Kelly claimed the identities of white American, English speaking, mid-dle class, and female. Yet she presented herself as a woman who constantly noticed and critiqued gender disparities, who historically and contemporarily pursued deep personal relationships with people culturally and linguistically different from herself, and who worked to effect social change alongside new immigrants of color whose home languages were ones other than English. During the year in which she was enrolled in adolescent literacy Kelly held a part-time job tutoring ESL students who were having difficulty passing the state standardized reading test. Kelly also advised and supported these students and their families, some of whom were undocumented immigrants, about securing documented status and access to higher education in the United States. From analyzing Kelly’s written work, her oral contributions to class, and teaching and learning events in which she played a role, and based on Allison’s regular one-on-one discussions with Kelly in and outside of the official setting of the adolescent literacy class, we concluded that Kelly, as well, was aware of the critical perspectives and knowledge she possessed and applied to English education.

Researchers

Allison identifies as a black woman of African Caribbean descent whose first language is English and who immigrated to the United States as an adolescent. She teaches and conducts research in English education with a focus on diversity and social justice. Alina identifies as a multilingual Eastern European U.S. immigrant with racial literacy as a main focus of her research interests. Amber identifies as a U.S.-born white, middle-class, monolingual English-speaking female who has developed understandings of race, power, and privilege and has come to adopt a critical stance in her personal and scholarly lives. Amber and Alina are both doctoral students in English education. In relation to this article, Allison and Amber served in research and instructional roles (described below), and Alina served in a research capacity.

Context of the Adolescent Literacy Course

Our large public university is located in an urban center of the southwestern United States and is becoming increasingly diverse, serving a student popula-

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tion that is approximately half white, 18 percent Hispanic, 4 percent black, 15 percent Asian, and less than 1 percent American Indian and Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. The remaining percentage of the population is made up of international students who add to the cultural and linguistic diversity of the university. The university houses two separate preservice English teacher preparation programs, one in the College of Liberal Arts (COLA program), the program in which Kelly was enrolled; the other in the College of Educa-tion (COE program), in which Jasmine was enrolled. Preservice teachers in both programs take an adolescent literacy course. Allison was the instructor for the spring 2012 section of adolescent literacy in which Kelly was enrolled through the COLA program and for the fall 2012 section of adolescent literacy in which Jasmine was enrolled through the COE program. Amber served as the teaching assistant to Allison in the COE section of adolescent literacy in which Jasmine was enrolled. When we refer to our teaching throughout the article, we use “instructors” or “we” to mean Allison and Amber.

Table 1 describes the primary features of the COLA and COE English teacher preparation programs and displays similarities and differences between them.

Programs COLA Program COE Program

College College of Liberal Arts College of Education

Preservice Teacher Demographics

Approximately 97% undergradu-ate students majoring in EnglishApproximately 3% post-bacca-laureate students Approximately 85% white, 8% Latina/o, 2% Asian American, and 2% African American Approximately 92% female and 8% male

Post-baccalaureate students Approximately 68% white, less than 1% Latina/o, 12.5% Asian American, and 6% African American Approximately 70% female and 30% male

Certification Offered Secondary English teacher certi-fication for undergraduatesPost-baccalaureate secondary English teacher certification

Master’s Degree + secondary English teacher certification

Field Experiences in Local Secondary Schools

Field placement settings range across urban, suburban, public, and private schools with varying student demographics Two semesters of 36 hours of classroom observations and supervised teaching Full-length semester of student teaching

All field experiences occur in urban public schools that serve high percent-ages of students of color, who come from working-class or poor families, and for whom English is an additional language. Two semesters of 45 hours of classroom observations and supervised teaching Full-length semester of student teaching

Table 1. Secondary English Preservice Teacher Preparation Programs

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To further contextualize preservice teacher demographics for the pur-pose of this analysis, it is important to share that six students were enrolled in Jasmine’s section of the adolescent literacy course and she was the only preservice teacher of color in that group. Jasmine’s classmates comprised three white women and two white males, all of whom were U.S.-born, claimed English as their home language, and described their families as middle and upper middle class. As suggested in Table 1, all of these students were pursu-ing their master’s in education plus secondary English teacher certification in the COE urban teacher preparation program.

Twenty-five preservice teachers were enrolled in the section of ado-lescent literacy that Kelly took. Kelly and one other student, Tara (also a pseudonym), were pursuing the post-baccalaureate teacher certification option through the COLA program; the remaining 23 were undergraduate preservice teachers. The class comprised 16 white females, three Latina students, one Italian immigrant woman, and five white males. Most stu-dents in this group did not name their social class backgrounds but from what they shared on their blogs, other coursework, and in class discussions about their families and life experiences, Allison perceived that many of them came from middle-class homes. The Latina students and the Italian immigrant claimed Spanish and Italian, respectively, as their families’ home languages. Yet our analysis of course-related data did not provide evidence of any students besides Kelly drawing extensively or regularly on personal, social, or educational experiences with racial, linguistic, social class, or other forms of diversity or oppression. Student demographics suggested, however, that several of the preservice teachers may have had such experiences and chosen not to draw upon them in significant ways for learning in the course.

Foci of the Adolescent Literacy Course and the Blogs

The adolescent literacy course for preservice teachers in both programs has a shared theoretical orientation and similar readings and teaching and learning activities. The course focuses on expanding preservice teachers’ definitions of literacy as social practice, building an appreciative stance to-ward students’ multiple literacies and languages, and exploring ways English teachers can reposition diverse students’ language and literacy repertoires as strengths, rather than deficits, in their curricula and teaching. In this way, the course’s philosophical and pedagogical approach aligns with the work in English education of building preservice English teachers’ capacities to recognize, honor, and draw upon students’ cultural and linguistic repertoires in teaching and learning and develop a critical stance on diversity and

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inequity in English education (Glenn, 2012; Groenke, 2010b; Scherff, 2012; Skerrett, 2010b). The primary text is Bomer’s (2011) Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms and most of the research articles are drawn from the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (Appendix A offers a list of the articles used in the adolescent literacy course). Each section of the adolescent literacy course has a field experience component for the preservice teachers—36 hours of field observations and supervised teaching in the COLA section of adolescent literacy, and 45 hours of the same experi-ences in the COE section of adolescent literacy.

How the Blogs Worked in the Courses

Preservice teachers were required to blog outside of class at least once a week and more if they chose to (an invitation Kelly frequently took up). They created their blogs choosing from Internet platforms they were famil-iar with or that seemed comfortable to use such as Blogspot and Tumblr.

Although an assignment with a cumulative end-of-semester grade, the assignment was an invita-tion for preservice teachers to reflect on course readings, fieldwork, and other experiences that were helping them make sense of the teaching and learning of literacy in schools. Though there were specific course readings and topics each week, the instructors did not give a prompt or requisite focus for the preservice teachers to blog about. Just as Scherff and her colleagues (Paulus & Scherff, 2008; Scherff & Singer, 2012)

designed online spaces for preservice teachers to talk “freely and openly” (Scherff & Singer, 2012, p. 266) about experiences in school and social life that were helping them make sense of teaching, each preservice teacher chose the focus of his or her blog posts while integrating ideas from course readings in articulating a self-selected topic. In the written description of the blogging assignment (see Appendix B), and in oral in-class reminders to preservice teachers across the semester, we emphasized that they should regularly discuss and refer to course readings as they composed their blog posts. These directions, our close monitoring of the content of the preservice teachers’ blogs, and preservice teachers’ awareness that we were closely at-tending to the content of their blogs kept the preservice teachers accountable to their reading even while they were exploring experiences from schools and social life. As teachers, we continuously assessed the extent to which the

Although an assignment with a cumulative end-of-semester grade, the assignment was an invitation for preservice teach-

ers to reflect on course readings, fieldwork, and other experiences

that were helping them make sense of the teaching and learn-

ing of literacy in schools.

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preservice teachers were engaging with course readings, and we intervened in individual cases where we wanted to see more evidence of engagement.

The preservice teachers posted to their blogs at least one hour before each class session began. Each week, the preservice teachers had time in class to read and respond to one or more of their peers’ blogs, and topics of class discussion came from the week’s posts and responses. The instruc-tors did not participate in the blogging exercise although, as we mentioned above, we read students’ blogs both during and outside class to notice points of discussion worth raising or emphasizing and also to encourage students to interact carefully with course readings. We stressed to the preservice teachers that their peers, rather than the instructors, was the audience for their blog. We did so, as have others (Scherff & Singer, 2012; Wade & Fauske, 2004), hoping students would write more freely (in their style of language as well as in the perspectives they shared) knowing they were talking primarily to and with their peers and not their teachers.

We used a variety of groupings for in-class peer response. With 25 students in Kelly’s section of adolescent literacy, Allison often used small groups in which each student would respond in writing to a blog post of at least one peer in his or her small group. Following the written responses, all members of that small group would discuss their blog posts and responses. Each small group would then share from their conversation with the whole class, allowing other peers and Allison, as the instructor, to speak and teach into significant topics and questions. Sometimes students formed their own small groups but Allison periodically assigned students to groups to ensure that all students had an opportunity to talk intimately with as many of their peers as possible across the semester.

With a smaller cohort of six students in Jasmine’s adolescent literacy class, the preservice teachers typically read and responded in writing to the blog post of a partner, spent some time discussing their written thoughts face to face, and then brought their most pressing or provocative discussion points to a whole-group conversation in which Allison, Amber, and all students participated. Sometimes we used a whole-class response format where each preservice teacher chose any one (or more) of their peers’ blogs to read and respond to. In both sections of adolescent literacy, this work around blogs typically took 60 to 75 minutes of a three-hour class session. The balance of class involved working on other teaching and learning activities such as exploring, designing, and modeling reading and writing instructional ap-proaches and curricula for diverse secondary English classrooms.

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Data and Analysis

Data include the blog posts of Jasmine and her five peers in the fall 2012 COE section of the adolescent literacy course, and the blog posts of Kelly and her 24 peers in the spring 2012 COLA section of adolescent literacy. In both courses, each student wrote an average of 13 of his or her own blog posts (and Kelly, though not Jasmine, exceeded that average). In Kelly’s section of adolescent literacy, each preservice teacher received, on average, nine responses to his or her posts across the semester. In Jasmine’s section of adolescent literacy, each preservice teacher received an average of 5 responses to his or her posts.

We conducted a thematic analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994), initially focusing on how blogging as a digital tool may have provided unique oppor-tunities for preservice teachers’ reflection on, and learning from, course readings and topics. We began looking at the data by reading across the blogs to notice ways the preservice teachers used blogging features such as hyperlinks, embedded videos, and informal writing styles. After three months of following this line of analysis, Kelly’s blog stood out to us because of the ways she regularly took up issues of language, class, and power. We further noticed that Jasmine had powerful blogging experiences when she wrote about race. We noticed that these topics were not common across the blogs but were particular to these two students. Directing our next round of data analysis toward noticing talk of diversity and injustice on Jasmine’s, Kelly’s, and their peers’ blogs we documented the following.

Kelly wrote a total of 21 blog posts, of which 14 (66 percent) addressed race, gender, culture, language, class, and power in her life, in society, and in English education. The remaining 24 preservice teachers in this class averaged a total of 13 posts across the semester. Fifteen of this group of 24 took up the topic of race, gender, class, and/or language twice (or about 15 percent of the time) across their semester’s worth of posts. Ten of the students in this class never took up issues of race, class, culture, language, or power in their blog posts. Jasmine wrote 12 posts in her semester of adolescent literacy, 11 of which, or 92 percent, took up issues of diversity and inequity in personal, social, and educational life. Her five classmates also averaged 12 posts for the semester. Two preservice teachers in this group of five posted twice about race, language, and other forms of inequality in English educa-tion, and one other preservice teacher wrote one post during the semester that mentioned language diversity. Two of Jasmine’s peers never took up issues of race, language, and social class in their blogs.

From this documentation of the saturation of race, gender, class, language, and power in Jasmine’s and Kelly’s posts, our analysis shifted to

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coding for the ways they presented these issues. Our initial codes included terms such as “Shares personal experience” and “Critiques society, struc-tures, and systems.” Using these codes as initial categories, we juxtaposed Jasmine’s and Kelly’s data in charts to notice the similarities and differences in content. Tables 2 and 3 provide sample sections of our data analysis chart.

Critiques society, structures, and systems

Kelly Jasmine

Date Data Date Data

4/19/12 In a complex web of black flight, gentrification and socioeconomics, it is clear what schools serve who in the public school system.

9/15/12 The structure of schools today favors and only work to legitimize the culture and vi-sions of the dominant class.

5/1/12 Many students get a fake Social, but the risk of getting caught, especially when it involves a career, are high. There is something to be said for obtaining an education, but at what cost? The student will accumulate debt and economically, in many cases, it won’t make sense. Higher education is an economic privilege.

9/15/12 And of course we can’t be surprised that [youths of color] have these kinds of ideas about themselves because our culture and society, from the media and day to day micro level interactions are constantly perpetuat-ing and reinforcing them.

Shares personal experience

Kelly Jasmine

Date Data Date Data

4/12/12

5/1/12

Every week, I am given a glimpse into the different socioeconomic classes in regards to education. Through my post-bac work, I student teach at a private christian [sic] school and a school in suburban [town just outside the major city]. I work at an urban school, where all the students I tutor either speak Spanish or AAVE.The more I research and work directly with students the more I realize how complicated it is to be undocumented. I realize my own cultural removal . . .

9/15/12

10/22/12

I can remember my classmates and later my students truly believing that they “had no business in school”, “school was for white people”, and that education wasn’t a strength or realm for “black folks”. I was almost embarrassed of that language because I knew the more educated and wealthy Haitians rarely spoke creole, and I was afraid that my family would be viewed in a negative way . . . accent and dialect is be-coming less popular for the same reasons I hid my language growing up and this a great example of why we should teach children to value all languages and to question the superiority of popular languages.

Table 2. Sample Section One of Data Analysis Chart

Table 3. Sample Section Two of Data Analysis Chart

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We discovered that Jasmine employed race as a primary heuristic to make meaning about teaching English in diverse settings. We further found that Kelly focused on language diversity and immigration status, particularly as it manifested in the state in which she lived, to conceptualize English education. Considering these two students’ blogs as part of the larger blog-ging activity in which their classmates also participated, we became inter-ested in how Jasmine’s and Kelly’s peers responded to their writings. Thus, we included in our analysis the responses of other preservice teachers to Jasmine’s and Kelly’s blogs that took up issues of race, language, class, and power in English education. Table 4, which we analyze in depth later in our findings, provides a broad picture of peer response to Jasmine’s and Kelly’s posts on diversity and inequity in English education.

Student Kelly Jasmine

Total blog posts from adolescent literacy course 21 12

Posts that raised topics of racial, gender, language, and social class diversity and inequities

14 (66%) 11 (92%)

Total responses from peers 5 4

Responses from peers that took up topics of diversity and inequity 2 1

Responses from peers that contested or diminished racial and other forms of knowledge of subordinated groups

2 3

Table 4. Peer Response to Jasmine’s and Kelly’s Posts about Diversity and Inequity

Final phases of data analysis involved exploring theoretical concepts and frameworks that assisted our noticing and understanding of the par-ticular knowledge bases these two teacher candidates employed in their blogging and that their peers utilized in responding to them. For example, we connected our codes of “Shares personal experience” to the dimension of concrete experience as a criterion for meaning within the black feminist per-spective (Collins, 1991/2000). We leaned on Guinier’s (2004) assertion that race primarily frames the lived experiences of people of color in understand-ing why Jasmine privileged a racial literacy perspective in her blog posts.

Limitations

Our analysis and findings carry the constraints of all qualitative research dealing with small numbers of participants in bounded and unique social contexts (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Moreover, our data—the perspectives that

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preservice teachers shared on their blogs—should also be considered in light of how teacher candidates may monitor, unconsciously or consciously, the beliefs about teaching and learning they share within the ideological sites of teacher education (Boling, 2008). Admitting these limitations, our analysis is strengthened, given two teacher-researchers with extensive engagement in the two course sites of study and an additional researcher focused solely on the data emerging from it, who thus provided an etic perspective. Moreover, our yearlong immersion within these data and careful and extended rounds of data analysis included exploration of several robust and appropriate theo-retical frames. These strengths allow us to propose that our analysis, and resultant findings, advance understandings of how CMCs such as blogs can encourage communication and learning among preservice teachers about diversity and injustice, including in English education.

Findings

Two findings respond to our research questions—What perspectives on racial, linguistic, and other forms of diversity and inequity in English education did two preservice teachers articulate on their course blogs? And, what was the nature of peer response to the preservice teachers’ blogs about these topics? First, Jasmine’s and Kelly’s perspectives on diversity and inequity in English education reflected specialist forms of knowledge (Collins, 1991/2000, 2012, Guinier, 2004) developed by individuals and groups that experience intercon-nected forms of social inequality and oppression. The two preservice teachers employed these specialist knowledge frameworks to analyze and challenge racial, linguistic, and other forms of injustice in English education and sug-gest curricular and instructional approaches that would promote educational equity for diverse students. Second, the specialist forms of knowledge that Jasmine and Kelly employed were minimized and contested by their peers in terms of the frameworks’ legitimacy and adequacy for conceptualizing English education in diverse settings.

Employing Racial and Other Specialist Knowledge to Frame English Education

Jasmine had developed racial literacy and black feminist forms of knowledge (Collins 1991/2000; Guinier, 2004) from her lived experiences as a black girl in urban schools and communities. Jasmine drew on these knowledge bases to frame English education in terms of the racial, cultural, and other forms of oppression and marginalization that are the lived realities of many urban youths. One set of course readings argued that teachers and students

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in literacy classrooms should engage in critical reading and discussion of books that represented the moral and ethical dilemmas some youths in urban communities face. In response to these articles, Jasmine wrote on her blog,

Sometimes it is really odd reading these articles because I see myself in a lot of the adolescents these writers and researchers are discussing. I think that is why this endeavor into teaching in urban schools is so important to me. I am that student, and so is my sister, my brother, my boyfriend, my best friend, and a slew of other people that I know and love. I was definitely the young Black girl reading The Coldest Winter Ever and Flyy Girl. I also loved [these books] because they represented a world that I was living in. I could relate to the characters and so could my friends. After school we would have long conversations about the characters and how we would react similarly or differently to certain situations they were involved in. I would have loved if we could have had classroom discussions about those books with a teacher who helped us go beyond what we were thinking and critique the greater social implications of those very heavy texts. (blog post, November 26, 2012)

In this blog post, Jasmine drew on her lived experiences as a black, female, urban student, and the worldviews emerging from those lived reali-ties, to advocate for critical literacy instruction. Jasmine further situated her personal experiences and viewpoints within those of a broader commu-nity—of siblings, a boyfriend, her best friend, and “a slew of other people” who shared those identity constructs and lived realities (Collins, 1991/2000, 2012). Beyond the claim of “knowing” these people, Jasmine emotively added that she also “love[s]” them. Hence, Jasmine’s perspective reflected a black feminist one (Collins, 1991/2000), rooted in community with and humaniza-tion of black people, who are often “demonized by the dominant culture,” as Jasmine had written in an earlier post (blog post, November 12, 2012). In the post above, we saw Jasmine drawing on specialized knowledge developed from belonging to urban communities that experience racial and other forms of oppression to validate and concretize the theoretical and pedagogi-cal propositions of the authors she has read. Jasmine verified that she and her friends loved, read, and related to these YA books and their characters; had substantive textual interactions around them outside school; and, as Rogers and Mosley (2006) found, would have benefitted from the guidance of a skilled teacher in building critical racial literacies for discerning and analyzing the larger sociopolitical meanings (Guinier, 2004) of the ideas in “those very heavy texts.”

Kelly also drew on her knowledge developed from substantive rela-tionships and involvements with individuals and groups who experience

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linguistic, ethnic, and political oppression to consider issues of diversity and inequity in English education. In writing about linguistic diversity that was the focus of a set of course readings, Kelly invoked her own close personal relationships growing up with people who claimed identities other than the white, middle-class, American, and English-speaking subjectivities she owned. Kelly drew on those experiences to encourage understanding about the intersections among language, race, gender, and social class inequali-ties (Collins, 2012).

In regards to code switching, it’s all nice ’n easy when it comes to reading about this. It’s on paper. The truth is, the practical application in the real world is complex, convoluted with social class, race, gender and personal background. I grew up with close friends who code switched, either from another language, or from another dialect. I recall one of my friends tell-ing me how she was “talking too white” and was chastised by her peers of her same race. These issues are real. And, for people, like me, who grew up speaking a form of mainstream English at home and at school, with exposure only through my friends, I am limited. . . . Hill’s article on code [switching] exposes the sociocultural complexity that comes with code switching and identity and culture. (blog post, April 5, 2012)

Elsewhere on her blog, Kelly further articulated her linguistic location of social and political privilege: “In a world where only 20% of America is multi-lingual, ESL students can easily be marginalized. I myself, speak . . . only one language, and a dialect that aligns itself with mainstream and consequently, power” (blog post, April 19, 2012). While acknowledging her understandings of language inequality are limited because it is others in her social worlds that experience linguistic oppression, Kelly claimed some legitimate specialist knowledge from which to speak on matters of linguistic diversity and marginalization. Her linking of language oppression to race, class, gender, and family background displayed her understanding of the intersections among forms of social inequality (Collins, 2012). Moreover, Kelly’s situating of her specialist knowledge within concrete experiences of human relationships bore the distinct character from which the black feminist perspective speaks (Collins, 1991/2000).

As an adult, Kelly further identified as a social justice activist in her work of tutoring and providing educational guidance for ESL students at a local high school, some of whom were undocumented immigrants. Kelly’s post below portrays how she developed and drew on knowledge produced from these concrete experiences and relationships to legitimize the argu-ments in course readings that teachers should encourage linguistic diversity in language arts classrooms.

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I work part-time at a high school where many of the students I tutor, resemble the students discussed in the article/study. These students are struggling to create a traditional cohesive sentence structure, they do not pass the standardized test, or receive high marks on their report cards, but when they are able to free-write and find the natural rhythm of language, they flourish in their expression. (blog post, January 26, 2012)

Our analysis found that Kelly and Jasmine made substantive use of racial and related specialist knowledge on their blogs to consider issues of diversity and oppression in personal, social, and educational life, and to conceptualize English education as an endeavor in which social inequalities manifested but could also be redressed. The limited literature in English education pertaining to CMCs (Paulus & Scherff, 2008; Wade & Fauske, 2004) suggests, however, that these tools hold potential for promoting not just individual but also community thinking, dialogue, and learning about diversity in education. To explore how this communal learning opportunity unfolded in our courses, we turn now to analysis of how Jasmine’s and Kelly’s classmates engaged with their blog writings about diversity and oppression in society and in English classrooms.

Peer Response: The Politics of Legitimating Specialist Knowledge

Our second finding was that the specialist forms of knowledge Jasmine and Kelly employed to analyze, critique, and suggest revisions to English

education in diverse contexts were minimized or contested by their peers as to the frameworks’ legitimacy and adequacy for understanding and practicing English education with diverse youths. Table 4, which we presented in our methodology section, depicted the saturation of content about race, language, and other forms of diversity and inequality on Kelly’s and Jasmine’s blogs in com-

parison to their peers’, and the number of peer responses Kelly and Jasmine received that engaged, avoided, or minimized these issues. We now delve deeper into the content of the peer responses Jasmine and Kelly received to particular posts, analysis of which allowed us to conclude that the specialist forms of knowledge Jasmine and Kelly employed on their blogs were mini-mized or refuted by their peers in terms of these frameworks’ necessity or adequacy for conceptualizing English education in diverse settings.

In one blog post, Jasmine had submitted the claim of the fragile racial identities of black children and asserted that teachers need to consider those identities as they plan for teaching and learning.

The specialist forms of knowl-edge Jasmine and Kelly employed to analyze, critique, and suggest revisions to English education in diverse contexts were minimized

or contested by their peers.

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The [June] Jordan piece was very heavy and I made a huge mistake not reading it last because what came [after] seemed so small in comparison. I think that piece also has a lot to do with identity as it shows how some Black students see themselves, and how just being you can get you “kilt” . . . . It goes to show how much Blacks have internalized the slew of nega-tive ideas and images that stand out so strongly in our society. At times we are even embarrassed to be our true selves. . . . I think as teachers what this article teaches us is that when it comes to African-American children, there is an identity . . . that is very sensitive . . . continuously being crushed and stepped on by society. And it’s something we should always take into consideration. (blog post, November 12, 2012)

Chloe was a preservice teacher in the COE program and was also a member of the adolescent literacy course (and cohort) in which Jasmine was enrolled. Across the semester of adolescent literacy, and through two subse-quent semesters and English education courses in which Allison and Amber taught this cohort of preservice teachers, Chloe typically diminished race as a framework for knowing by absorbing it into other knowledge paradigms. We, her instructors, noticed Chloe’s difficulty in admitting race as a legitimate framework for knowing in her blog writings, in her blog responses to her peers, and in class discussions where issues of race were raised. Jasmine’s comments above evoked this response from Chloe.

I love this idea of identity construction as important in the classroom. I think that it’s vital for all students, regardless of race, to build an identity and realize their own voice in the classroom in order to orient themselves as learners. It’s the teacher’s responsibility to facilitate this construction, as well as to value each student’s identity and communication style as they develop. (blog post, November 12, 2012)

Chloe’s assertion that “regardless of race” all students should be supported in developing their voices and identities is an inarguable one. Yet this restatement of Jasmine’s original claim marginalized, at best, and, at worst, dismissed race as the dominant narrative in the lives of people of color (Guinier, 2004). Chloe’s words diminished the troubling history of race in the United States that has created particular social, economic, and educational realities, and attendant identities, for people of color (Collins, 2012; Guinier, 2004). Chloe’s response, then, could be read as a political act that sought to de-racialize Jasmine’s racially literate perspective and absorb it into an overarching paradigm of teachers valuing students’ unique voices, interests, and personalities.

In another instance, Jasmine, having just read about youths’ zine writing outside school, articulated the commonality of literacies outside

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school in all youths’ lives, despite their social class or cultural background. She then asked her peers for help in understanding what those ideas meant for English education.

I was really impressed with the young women in the Guzetti [sic] and Gam-boa article for taking time outside of school on such a political project. It was also interesting to read about students from a different socioeconomic background just to get a different perspective. But I am having a hard time figuring out what this alternate perspective means to me in relation to what we have been studying in class. I think the point that the authors want to make is that students from upper socioeconomic backgrounds are also expressing their literacy out of school and in creative ways. This sort of reminded me of the article about tagging and I’m trying to figure out what it all means. If these students are similar in that they engage in alternative literacies outside of school despite their economical and cultural backgrounds, what does this imply? I’m really finding it hard to answer that question and if you guys have any idea, I’d love for you to share. (blog post, October 29, 2012)

Chloe attempted to answer Jasmine in a response that lifted the idea of sameness across difference.

I loved the Guzetti [sic] and Gamboa article and really identified with the girls and their zine (although they were way younger than I was when I got to work on something like that). I’m not sure that I can answer your question on how it connects to what we’re studying, but I’ll give it a shot. When I think of being literate in school and why that doesn’t work for some kids (due to race or class or anything that makes them feel isolated in the classroom) literacy practices like zining and tagging allow them to be literate and engage in meaning making in a way that is outside of classroom authority. I think that the article was trying to give value to this alternative meaning making, because when students realize that their form of subversive literacy IS valued in the classroom after all, they’re more likely to continue connecting with it and engaging in other types of literacy, maybe even classroom literacy with a kind and supportive teacher. (blog post, October 29, 2012)

It interested us to note that Chloe, who is white and described herself as upper middle class, felt a personal connection to the girls in the Guzzetti and Gamboa (2004) article as she herself, in a more distant social world, had taken up a similar kind of writing outside school. Chloe recognized and then diminished race as a frame of understanding with her parenthetical statement that literacy education in school does not work for some youths “(due to race or class or anything that makes them feel isolated in the class-room).” With this parenthetical and paralleling articulation of race and class

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with just about anything else, Chloe absorbed Jasmine’s racial framework into a more dominant perspective of the isolation adolescents sometimes experience if they are outside of normalized social groups. Furthermore, by placing all youth literacies under the umbrella of “subversive” literacies, Chloe also emphasized sameness amid racial and cultural diversity. In do-ing so, she abated deeper discussion of “what it all means” as was Jasmine’s question. Going deeper into Jasmine’s question within the racially literate framework she typically employed, we saw (and, as instructors, took up in further class conversation) opportunity to question together how particular literacies associated with Latina/o youths, such as tagging, are typically viewed as delinquent and dangerous (MacGillivray & Curwen, 2007) rather than as political and social critique as in the case of zining by middle- and upper-class white youths (Guzzetti & Gamboa, 2004).

One of the two responses Kelly received to her talk about inequality was from a white peer, Tara. In her response, Tara covered issues Kelly had raised across two blog posts, one on April 5, 2012, the beginning portion of which we analyzed earlier, in which Kelly attested to the realities of code switching in the lives of linguistically diverse people. Kelly had concluded her April 5 post writing,

What I have deduced, with this course and another course of mine, is that I will allow students to have the freedom of expression in way [sic] that makes the most sense to them, creatively. In a scholarly manner, I will try and fuse together mainstream English practices with their dialect. Allowing students to keep ownership of their dialects, and consequently, culture, will hopefully empower them. Words are tied so closely with identity. . . . I’ve learned that Mainstream English is a skill students need. But disregarding a dialect or native language is cultural [sic] disrespectful and narrow minded. Code Switching and voice are intertwined. If I take away the ability to code switch, I take away a piece of the student’s voice. (blog post, April 5, 2012)

The second post of Kelly’s that Tara’s response treated was one from February 23, 2012, in which Kelly had challenged her peers to decide what kind of teachers they wanted to be in school systems rife with educational injustices.

[T]here is a broad, clear divide in college access. . . . It’s a prime example of institutionalized power dynamics and structures very hard at work. You and I, we will have to work within this system. As future teachers, we need to know what kind of teacher we want to be in a system that, I believe, isn’t serving or preparing youth to their fullest potential. (blog post, February 23, 2012)

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In her single response to Kelly, Tara congratulated Kelly on encourag-ing the ESL students she tutored to use all their language repertoires in writ-ing for school. Tara also answered Kelly’s February 23 challenge to decide what kind of teacher she wanted to be.

Freedom of expression is a great thing to strive for, and I am glad that you are utilizing that in your current classroom. I also loved your questions about what kind of teachers and leaders that we want to be. Personally, I would like to be a leader who allows for all form[s] of expression in her classroom and teaches students to appreciate each other for the difference that they have AND the similarities they share. Great analysis. (blog post, April 5, 2012)

As with Chloe’s responses to Jasmine, Tara restated Kelly’s political language about encouraging linguistic diversity into a less political state-ment of encouraging “freedom of expression.” From instructional and personal interactions with Tara, Allison knew that Tara cherished the arts and had a strong theater background, and so our analysis considered that this choice of words reflected Tara infusing her lived experiences and values into English education. Nevertheless, Tara depoliticized linguistic diversity by absorbing into a framework of a teacher who “allows for all form[s] of expression” in her classroom. Furthermore, with her capitalized “AND,” Tara insisted that teachers should equally emphasize to students how they are similar and not just different. We viewed this rhetorical move on Tara’s part as another politicized act. For as Guinier (2004) cautioned, a focus on sameness threatens the visibility of the historical and continued effects of racial, cultural, and linguistic oppression that shape the lived realities and opportunities of particular individuals and groups. As such, we understood Tara to be engaged in political work of affording some legitimacy to Kelly’s stance on linguistic diversity in English education while simultaneously dispersing (thus weakening) that power by urging equal consideration of how students are alike as well as diverse.

Nina, another white preservice teacher, was the only other classmate of Kelly’s to respond directly to Kelly’s discussions of linguistic oppression. Moreover, Nina extended Kelly’s comments about language into a conversa-tion about race. Speaking back to Kelly’s April 5, 2012, blog post about code switching, Nina wrote:

I love how your passion for your students comes through in this blog! I find your comments about code switching really insightful. I agree that students need to be taught when to use various forms of English, but that they should not be made to feel that their cultural linguistic patterns are inferior. . . . This even extends beyond language. In my history class, my

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students and I have been discussing race issues in America, and they have brought up issues that it is important to discuss various historic narratives to get a broader picture of what happened and how it has effected [sic] racial groups. (blog post, April 5, 2012)

Above, Nina both lauded Kelly for her passion about linguistic diversity and confirmed the legitimacy of the specialist knowledge framework Kelly employed in developing her stance on teaching English in diverse settings. Nina agreed that students should have opportunities to develop their capaci-ties with the language of power while also feeling empowered about their other linguistic repertoires. Significantly, Nina linked language oppression to racial oppression, pointing out the historical and contemporary intercon-nections among race and other forms of oppression (Collins, 1991/2000, 2012; Guinier, 2004). Nina further established connections between the specialist racial knowledge in use in the blogging situation of the adolescent literacy course and the context of a history class in which this form of knowledge was also employed. We appreciated this observation of how the knowledge of groups that experience oppression were being employed as legitimate knowledge frameworks across other spaces of teacher education—work that scholars such as Rogers and Mosley advocate for in relation to racial literacy (e.g., Mosley & Rogers, 2011). Yet overall, the number and nature of responses to Jasmine’s and Kelly’s posts reminded us of Collins’s (1991/2000) position that as an alternative epistemology, a black feminist perspective is continuously placed at risk of being ignored, devalued, or swept beneath more dominant paradigms, and of the difficulty all groups that experience social injustices encounter in gaining acceptance of their knowledge frameworks into educational and other societal institutions (Collins, 2012).

Discussion and Implications

Because English has a long tradition as a specialized discipline that privileges Eurocentric, masculinist knowledge (Applebee, 1974; Skerrett, 2010a) we were particularly interested in how the CMC tool of blogging might assist preservice teachers’ dialogue and learning about how the discipline could be made more responsive to diverse students. Yet like other English teacher educators (Paulus & Scherff, 2008; Wade & Fauske, 2004), we were commit-ted to preservice teachers’ agency in their learning and curious about the knowledge and perspectives they would bring to course readings and topics related to diversity and English teaching and learning. Hence, we carefully selected course readings that encouraged deliberations about diversity and inequality in English education and invited preservice teachers to blog about

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these readings as well as their lived social and educational experiences. Moreover, as instructors, we closely watched over online discussions and conscientiously facilitated class discussions about the blogging topics that emerged, providing an open yet still guided learning environment.

We view blogging, within this instructional design, as a productive approach to teaching and learning about diversity and inequity in English education. This method allows ample space for preservice teachers to bring their lived social and educational experiences and attendant knowledge frameworks to curriculum and instructional activities that are thoughtfully designed to guide their thinking and learning about diversity and disparities in education. Blogging, as designed in our courses, provided each preservice teacher with freedom and space for substantive personal and intellectual exploration while also making his or her individual thinking available to a group of peers and instructors involved in that work. Hence, we add our instructional use of blogging to other instructional models in English teacher education that have enlisted CMCs to promote preservice teachers’ thinking and learning about diversity in schooling (Groenke, 2008, 2010a; Wade & Fauske, 2004), and to the growing list of innovative approaches for preparing preservice teachers for English teaching in diverse settings (Glenn, 2012; Groenke, 2008, 2010a, 2010b; Morrell, 2005; Scherff, 2012).

We do, however, acknowledge the challenges we encountered in promoting deep discussion and collaborative learning among groups of pre-service teachers in relation to diversity and inequity in English education. Notwithstanding the features of blogging that provided substantial opportu-nities for preservice teachers’ talking, thinking, and learning together, our analysis uncovered the difficulties two preservice teachers encountered in establishing the legitimacy of racial and other related specialist knowledge in English education, and sustained dialogue about English education through these knowledge frameworks. We found that the blogging situation both reflected and produced a political situation in which the specialist forms of knowledge (Collins, 1991/2000; Guinier, 2004) that Jasmine and Kelly shared were minimized, and sometimes almost wholly discredited, by their peers in terms of their relevance for English education. Although we can conclude that blogging assisted Jasmine’s and Kelly’s growth in ways conducive to teaching English in diverse schools, and encouraged some dialogue among their peers about diversity and inequality in English education, we are less sure about the depth of their peers’ learning in these regards, and particularly as a consequence of these two preservice teachers’ blogging. This discovery is particularly troubling in programs and courses explicitly designed to en-courage critique of the traditions of English that fail to serve diverse students

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well and that seek to equip preservice teachers with knowledge and abili-ties to revise English education to better reflect the experiences and needs of diverse youths. We feel compelled to suggest that the knowledge frames Jasmine and Kelly promoted on their blogs encountered the resistance of an academic discipline, into which their peers had been socialized and come to value, that historically and contemporarily challenges the knowledge of groups outside Eurocentric, male, and economically privileged social sectors (Applebee, 1974; Skerrett, 2010a).

Accordingly, we recognize the tension between allowing preservice teachers substantial autonomy in considering their own and others’ knowl-edge frameworks in relation to diversity and education while challenging them to notice and problematize the dominant paradigms of English edu-cation that have historically failed diverse students. Judicious selection of course readings and topics that advocate for teaching to diversity, close monitoring of online discussion topics, ensuring that, as instructors, we in-ject and allow ample time for topics and perspectives that might otherwise be ignored or summarily dismissed, and maintaining our leadership roles as facilitators of class discussions are all instructional methods we use to disrupt interaction patterns that may limit preservice teachers’ engagement with critical perspectives on English education. Moreover, we continue to consider additional ways to guide and support preservice teachers in shar-ing and productively engaging with surprising, challenging, or alternative knowledge claims that can expand and complicate their understandings about, and approaches to, the teaching and learning of literacy in diverse settings. One thing we know we need to do better at is initial teaching, and revisiting, about having productive online and in-class conversations. Such teaching about conversation, we believe, must include examination of emer-gent group or individual habits of (dis)engaging with particular perspectives that may marginalize nondominant perspectives.

Furthermore, we see possibilities for explicit inquiry with preservice teachers into the different frames of knowing that shape their and others’ interactions with particular ideologies about, and approaches to, English education. One course in our urban master’s in education program is an introduction to educational research where the preservice teachers explore various ontologies and epistemologies underpinning different paradigms of knowing and knowledge in education and educational research. The focus of this course, then, allows us to explicitly connect preservice teachers’ knowledge frameworks related to English education and student diversity to broader ways of knowing, valuing, and being in the world. Because we have the privilege of teaching students in this urban-focused master’s pro-

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gram over a two-year period, one learning activity we have included across these preservice teachers’ coursework is autobiographical inquiry in which they reflect on significant life experiences that have shaped who they are as people in the world and that may also affect their values, beliefs, and prac-tices as English teachers. Preservice teachers revisit their autobiographies in each semester of their two-year program, adding significant teaching and learning experiences in coursework, schools, and social life that are further shaping their philosophies and instructional approaches related to English education. We see such a learning activity on autobiography and knowing as feasible in English education programs of shorter duration or even in a single course, and we think it is important enough to make the time to do so as a way to support preservice teachers’ learning about their own and other perspectives on diversity and education.

As instructors and researchers, we continue to believe in the potential of CMCs such as blogs to provide preservice teachers platforms for individual as well as community thinking and learning. In this sense, we align ourselves with literacy scholars and teacher educators who note the potential of new technologies provided those tools are understood deeply, engaged critically, and accompanied by appropriate pedagogical supports (Boling, 2008; Boling & Adams, 2008; Doering, Beach, & O’Brien, 2007; Paulus & Scherff, 2008; Scherff & Singer, 2012; Wade & Fauske, 2004). In keeping with this thinking, our analysis demonstrates that blogging is yet another learning environment within English teacher education, yet one more teaching and learning tool within our repertoire of approaches (Glenn, 2012; Groenke, 2008, 2010a, 2010b; Scherff, 2012) for preparing English teachers to teach in diverse con-texts. Although a forum for building and exploring diverse knowledge about, and perspectives on, English education, blogging must also be understood as another space of English teacher education where alternative voices and perspectives are placed at risk of marginalization and silencing.

Appendix A. Adolescent Literacy Course Readings

Ajayi, L. (2009). English as a second language learners’ exploration of multimodal texts in a junior high school. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52, 585–595.

Behrman, E. H. (2006). Teaching about language, power, and text: A review of class-room practices that support critical literacy. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 49, 490–498.

Berg, M. A. (2011). On the cusp of cyberspace: Adolescents’ online text use in con-versation. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 54, 485–493.

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Black, R. W. (2009). English-language learners, fan communities, and 21st-century skills. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52, 688–697.

Boatright, M. D. (2010). Graphic journeys: Graphic novels’ representations of im-migrant experiences. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53, 468–476.

Bomer, R. (2011). Building adolescent literacy in today’s English classrooms. Ports-mouth, NH: Heinemann.

Chun, C. W. (2009). Critical literacies and graphic novels for English-language learners: Teaching Maus. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53, 144–153.

Glenn, W. (2008) Gossiping girls, insider boys, A-list achievement: Examining and exposing young adult novels consumed by conspicuous consumption. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52, 34–42.

Hill, K. D. (2009). Code-switching pedagogies and African American student voices: Acceptance and resistance. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53, 120–131.

MacGillivray, L., & Curwen, M. S. (2007). Tagging as a social literacy practice. Jour-nal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50, 354–369.

Marshall, E., Staples, J., & Gibson, S. (2009). Ghetto fabulous: Reading black adoles-cent femininity in contemporary urban street fiction. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53, 28–36.

Molden, K. (2007). Critical literacy, the right answer for the reading classroom: Strategies to move beyond comprehension for reading improvement. Reading Improvement, 44, 50–56.

Schillinger, T. (2011). Blurring boundaries: Two groups of girls collaborate on a Wiki. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 54, 403–413.

Steinekuehler, C. (2010). Videogames and digital literacies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 54, 61–63.

Weinstein, S. (2006). A love for the thing: The pleasures of rap as a literate practice. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50, 270–281.

Appendix B. Blog Assignment Description from Adolescent Literacy Course Syllabi

• Your blog is a space for you to reflect on weekly readings. You are required to write one response each week. Your posting should be a well-developed discussion. You should not be providing a summary of the readings. Instead, in your discussion, you should be integrating ideas across the articles, rais-ing thoughtful questions or critiques about the issues raised in the read-ings, making connections among the readings and what you have seen or experienced in classrooms or other contexts in which youth participate, and considering what the ideas in the readings mean for your teaching now and in the future.

• During each class, you will have opportunities to read and respond to others’ blogs and then to meet in pairs or small groups for further discussion with people to whom you have responded online.

• The criteria for this assignment, as with all others in this course, are thor-oughness, thoughtfulness, and timeliness.

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• Although the requirement is one posting per week, it is my hope that your blog becomes a useful personal learning tool for each of you. Consider the blog as a space to reflect continually on what you are learning and to have interactive online discussions with your peers.

• Your peers are the audience for your blog. Of course, I will be reading your blogs throughout the semester although I will not be providing weekly written comments. I will be drawing from across your posts in our weekly class discussions and your composite grade for your weekly responses will be given at the end of the semester.

ReferencesApplebee, A. N. (1974). Tradition and reform in the teaching of English: A history.

Urbana: NCTE.

Boling, E. C. (2008). Learning from teachers’ conceptions of technology integra-tion: What do blogs, instant messages, and 3D chat rooms have to do with it? Research in the Teaching of English, 43, 74–100.

Boling, E. C., & Adams, S. S. (2008). Supporting teacher educators’ use of hyperme-dia video-based programs. English Education, 40, 314–339.

Bomer, R. (2011). Building adolescent literacy in today’s English classrooms. Ports-mouth, NH: Heinemann.

Collins, P. H. (1991/2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.

Collins, P. H. (2012). Social inequality, power, and politics: Intersectionality and American pragmatisim in dialogue. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 26, 442–457.

Crotty, M. (1999). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. London: Sage.

Doering, A., Beach, R., & O’Brien, D. (2007). Infusing multimodal tools and digital literacies into an English education program. English Education, 40, 44–60.

Glenn, W. J. (2012). Developing understandings of race: Preservice teachers’ counter-narrative (re)constructions of people of color in young adult literature. English Education, 44, 326–353.

Groenke, S. L. (2008). Collaborative dialogue in a synchronous CMC environment? A look at one beginning English teacher’s strategies. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 2(2), 41–47.

Groenke, S. L. (2010a). Missed opportunities, misunderstandings, and misgivings: A case study analysis of three beginning English teachers’ attempts at authentic discussion with adolescents in a synchronous CMC environment. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 18, 387–414.

Groenke, S. L. (2010b). Seeing, inquiring, witnessing: Using the equity audit in practitioner inquiry to rethink inequity in public schools. English Education, 43, 83–96.

Groenke, S. L., & Paulus, T. (2007/2008). The role of teacher questioning in promot-ing dialogic literary inquiry in computer-mediated communication. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 40, 141–164.

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Guinier, L. (2004). From racial liberalism to racial literacy: Brown v. Board of Education and the interest-divergence dilemma. Journal of American History, 91, 92–118.

Guzzetti, B. J., & Gamboa, M. (2004). Zines for social justice: Adolescent girls writing on their own. Reading Research Quarterly, 39, 408–436.

Hallman, H. L., & Burdick, M. N. (2011). Service learning and the preparation of English teachers. English Education, 43, 341–368.

Hancock, C. B., & Scherff, L. (2010). Who will stay and who will leave? Predicting secondary English teacher attrition risk. Journal of Teacher Education, 61, 328–338.

Loughran, J., & Russell, T. (2002). Improving teacher education practices through self-study. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

MacGillivray, L., & Curwen, M. S. (2007). Tagging as a social literacy practice. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50, 354–369.

Miles, M. B., & Huberman, M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded source-book. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Morrell, E. (2005). Critical English education. English Education, 37, 312–321.

Mosley, M., & Rogers, R. (2011). Inhabiting the “tragic gap”: Pre-service teachers practicing racial literacy. Teaching Education, 22, 303–324.

National Center for Educational Statistics. (2013). Characteristics of public and private elementary and secondary schools in the United States: Results from the 2011–12 schools and staffing survey. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Paulus, T., & Scherff, L. (2008). “Can anyone offer any words of encouragement?”: Online dialogue as a support mechanism for pre-service teachers. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 16, 113–136.

Rogers, R., & Mosley, M. (2006). Racial literacy in a second grade classroom: Critical race theory, whiteness studies, and literacy research. Reading Research Quar-terly, 41, 462–495.

Rogers, R., & Mosley, M. (2008). A critical discourse analysis of racial literacy in teacher education. Linguistics and Education: An International Research Jour-nal, 19, 107–131.

Saunders, J. M. (2012). Intersecting realities: A novice’s attempts to use critical literacy to access her students’ figured worlds. Multicultural Education, 19(2), 18–23.

Scherff, L. (2012). “This project has personally affected me”: Developing a critical stance in preservice English teachers. Journal of Literacy Research, 44, 200–236.

Scherff, L., & Singer, N. R. (2012). The preservice teachers are watching: Framing and reframing the field experience. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28, 263–272.

Sipe, L., & Constable, S. (1996). A chart of four contemporary research paradigms: Metaphors for the modes of inquiry. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Educa-tion, 1, 153–163.

Skerrett, A. (2010a). Of literary import: A case of cross-national similarities in the secondary English curriculum in the United States and Canada. Research in the Teaching of English, 45, 36–58.

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Skerrett, A. (2010b). Teaching critical literacy for social justice. Action in Teacher Education, 31(4), 54–59.

Skerrett, A. (2011). English teachers’ racial literacy knowledge and practice. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 14, 313–330.

Wade, S. E., & Fauske, J. R. (2004). Dialogue online: Prospective teachers’ discourse strategies in computer-mediated discussions. Reading Research Quarterly, 39, 134–160.

Allison Skerrett is an associate professor of language and literacy studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The University of Texas at Austin. Her teaching and research focus on secondary English curriculum and instructional approaches, adolescent literacy, and the preparation and support of English teachers for teaching diverse learners. She has been a member of NCTE since 2007.Alina Adonyi Pruitt is a doctoral candidate in Language and Literacy Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include racial literacy, antiracist education, English teacher identity, and teacher agency. She has been a member of NCTE since 2014.Amber S. Warrington is a doctoral candidate in Language and Literacy Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked previously as a public school teacher at the secondary level and as a writing instructor at the university level. Her research interests include urban teacher educa-tion, writing instruction, and writing assessment. She has been a member of NCTE since 2006.

Call for Papers

NCTE’s Assembly on American Literature (AAL) is accepting articles for its peer-

reviewed journal Notes on American Literature. Articles may range from 1,500 to 2,500

words and should follow the most recent MLA style guide. If you would like to submit

an article describing your research on American authors’ works and your ideas for

teaching them, please send an email attachment with a short biographical note (100

words) to [email protected] and [email protected]. The deadline for the

next round of the blind peer review process is July 30, 2015. For more information

about AAL, visit http://www.ncte.org/assemblies.

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Racial and Related Forms of Specialist Knowledge on English Education Blogs

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