Reclaiming English Language Arts Methods Courses Critical Issues and Challenges for Teacher Educators in Top-Down Times

Reclaiming English Language Arts Methods Courses showcases innovative work in teacher education that fosters teachers’ capacities as reflective practitioners and public intellectuals; extends traditional boundaries of methods courses on teaching the English language arts, literacy, children’s and young adult literature; and embodies democratic and critical politics that go beyond the reductive economic aims and traditional classroom practices sanctioned by educational policies and corporate educational reforms. Featuring leading and emerging scholars in English language arts teacher education, each chapter provides rich and concrete examples of elementary and secondary methods courses rooted in contemporary research and theory, on-line resources, and honest appraisals of the possibilities, tensions, and limits of doing teacher education differently in a top-down time of standards-based education, high-stakes testing, teacher assessment, and neoliberal education reforms. This book offers important resources and support for teacher educators and graduate students to explore alternative visions for aligning university methods courses with current trends in English and cultural studies, critical sociocultural literacy, new literacies and web 2.0 tools, and teaching the English language arts in multiethnic, multilingual, and underserved urban communities.

ContentsPreface1. Reconstituting Teacher Education: Literacy, Critical Theories, and EnglishJory Brass2. A Critical Sociocultural Approach to English EducationCynthia Lewis, Tracey Pyscher, Erin Stutelberg3. Towards Critical Participatory Literacies through Digital Video Composition in an Elementary Literacy Capstone CourseJessica Zacher Pandya4. Digital/Media Literacies in a Media Literacy and a Digital Writing Methods CourseRichard Beach5. Performance Pedagogies in Literacy Methods: Emergence, Embodiment, and Critical PracticesCarmen Liliana Medina, Linda Skidmore Coggin, Gustave John Weltsek6. Working toward Dialogically Organized Instruction through Video-Based Response and RevisionSamantha Caughlan and Mary M. Juzwik7. A Critical Resource Orientation to Literacy Assessment through a Stance of SolidarityGerald Campano, Katrina Bartow Jacobs, Lan Ngo8. Communities of Practice: Bridging the Gap between Methods Courses and Secondary SchoolsJames Cercone9. Synthesizing Formal and Experiential Concepts in a Service-Learning CoursePeter Smagorinsky, Lindy L. Johnson, Christopher M. Clayton10. Generative Critical Pedagogy in English Language Arts Methods for Urban SchoolsTonya Perry11. Learning to Teach Diverse Learners in a Writing Pedagogies ClassJoyce Meier, Yunjeong Choi, Ellen Cushman12. A Trauma Studies Lens on Writing Methods: Crafting a Critical, Affective, Practice-Based PedagogyElizabeth Dutro, Ashley Cartun13. Critical Literary Theory in a Literature Methods ClassDeborah Appleman14. A Cultural Studies Approach to Literature MethodsAllen Webb15. Talking Policy in a Language Arts Curriculum Course for Reading SpecialistsPatrick ShannonContributorsIndex

Jory Brass is Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, USA. Allen Webb is Professor of English Education and Postcolonial Studies, Western Michigan University, USA.