![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
In this article, we explore data from two studies that demonstrate how inviting teachers to take on the role of codesigners of interventions in social design experiments created opportunities for them to consider their own positionality and privilege as well as negotiate deficit and antideficit discourses underlying and shaping English-language arts curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The findings illustrate the potential for researchers engaging in design experiments to include teachers at the outset of such studies before designing curriculum, instruction, or assessment.
To counter historical and current deficit notions of students’ languages and literacies (e.g., Valencia, 1997), teachers must view students as capable and knowledgeable in order to build on the resources that students bring into the classroom (Bomer, 2011; Kinloch, 2010; Paris & Ball, 2009). Literacy researchers can support teachers in these efforts through the use of design-based research, a methodology that emphasizes testing and developing pedagogical theories within an authentic setting, aiming to improve teaching and learning (Reinking & Bradley, 2008). Drawing on the tenets of design-based research, Gutiérrez and Vossoughi (2010) and Gutiérrez and Jurow (2016) offer additional insight regarding Gutiérrez’s (2008) theorizing of social design experiments, a “humanist, equity-oriented” (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010, p. 103) approach aimed at confronting historical injustices and creating antideficit learning environments in underresourced schools and communities. In this article, we report on how inviting teachers to codesign interventions in order to counter deficit practices in English education provided opportunities for teachers to consider their own positionality and privilege as well as negotiate deficit discourses in ways that supported them in their journey of becoming critical educators (Freire, 1970; Lewison, Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002).
Methodological Framework and Related Literature
Although the literature on design-based research methodologies has often presented this methodology as one that encourages collaboration between researchers and teachers (Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003; Reinking & Bradley, 2008), researchers facilitating social design experiments argue that this collaboration process should invite participants to become “designers of their own futures” (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016, p. 2), working with researchers to transform the environments in which they are living and learning, rather than simply implementing interventions designed by researchers. This methodological approach combines tenets of design-based research with “democratizing forms of inquiry” (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016, p. 2). Unlike most design-based research studies, which aim to create change within existing institutions, social design experiments seek to transform the institutions themselves. The two cases we highlight in this article demonstrate a commitment to rethinking teaching and learning in English education, countering a history of deficit practices in which particular languages and literacies have been valued (Bomer, 2011; Valencia, 1997).
We see social design experiments as a humanizing approach to research, one that involves “the building of relationships of care and dignity and dialogic consciousness raising for both researchers and participants” (Paris & Winn, 2014, p. xvi). We found that we successfully sustained these relationships with participating teachers through inviting them to take on roles of codesigners. Rather than approaching this work with the intent of perfecting an intervention, we made efforts to support the teachers in a process of transformation, one in which they further developed agency (Engeström, 2011).
We argue for teachers’ active participation as codesigners of interventions in design-based research studies because we view teachers as “transformative intellectuals” (Giroux, 1985, p. 378), capable of engaging in critical reflection, questioning the choices they make in their own classrooms, and, in doing so, considering which traditions of schooling might be revisited in order to better meet the needs of a diverse group of learners. Giroux (1985) writes that transformative intellectuals must develop “a discourse that unites the language of critique with the language of possibility” (p. 379). The two cases that we highlight in this article demonstrate how teachers and researchers took up this discourse, as they codesigned interventions in an effort to counter deficit practices in the English classroom.
Methods
To engage in research that included teachers as codesigners of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, we conducted social design experiments (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016). We included teacher participants in each stage of this approach to design-based research: articulation of the goal, design of the artifact, and implementation and modification of the artifact. Within this methodological framework, we drew on qualitative research methods (Marshall & Rossman, 2011) and embedded multiple-case design (Yin, 2014).
Research Contexts and Participants
This article draws on data from two separate studies that included inquiry groups of researchers and secondary English teachers who collaboratively designed instructional interventions aimed at countering deficit thinking in English classrooms.
Study 1: Critical language study
During the spring of 2013, Michelle formed an inquiry group with four secondary English teachers: Mattie, Sophia, Garrett, and Beth (all names are pseudonyms). The group met weekly throughout the summer of 2013 to explore theory and research about language and language study, to plan for inquiry projects, and to design units of study that aimed to further develop their students’ critical language awareness. During the 2013–2014 academic year, the participating teachers implemented their units, continuing to meet with Michelle to make modifications to the original unit design in response to the data collected in the classrooms. In the summer of 2014, the inquiry group met again to consider how they might continue to build on the efforts they made to counter deficit practices in the English classroom.
Study 2: Antideficit writing assessment
In the spring of 2014, Amber formed an inquiry group with four secondary English teachers: Billy, Octavia, Andrew, and Lily (all names are pseudonyms). This group met weekly during the spring and fall semesters of 2014 to read practitioner and scholarly texts related to writing assessment, examine teachers’ classroom practices around writing assessment, and design an approach that explicitly valued students’ strengths and countered traditional deficit-based assessment practices. During the spring of 2015, as the teachers implemented the designed approach to antideficit assessment in their classrooms, the group met to discuss the modifications they made to the group’s original design. The group met one final time in the summer of 2015 to reflect on the process of inquiry and discuss further modifications based on data from the spring implementation.
Positionality
The participating teachers taught in public schools within a large, urban southwestern city. All of them identified as White and middle class, reflecting the student/teacher demographic differences common in urban schools (Zumwalt & Craig, 2005). We invited these teachers to join our inquiry groups based on their shared understandings of and commitment to putting critical (Freire, 1970; Lewison et al., 2002) and culturally sustaining (Ladson-Billings, 2014; Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014) theory into practice, taking on appreciative stances (Bomer, 2011) in an effort to counter deficit practices in the English classroom. We came to know these teachers through mutual participation in the local National Writing Project site, through their involvement in coursework at the university in which we both worked as well as through colleagues who recommended them because of their commitments to our research agendas.
Like the teachers, we, too, identify as White and middle class. While we had experience working in secondary English classes in underresourced public schools, we recognized that, like the participating teachers, we had much to learn about the varied cultural and linguistic resources the students we worked with brought to their classrooms; however, both of us remained committed to countering deficit narratives and standardization that has historically marginalized culturally and linguistically diverse learners.
The inquiry groups served as safe spaces to question our own practices as well as to reflect on our own beliefs and biases that had the potential to impact student success. As we participated in the inquiry groups, we took on the role of what Erickson (2006) termed “observant participant.” In this role, we worked side by side with the participating teachers. This shifted the power dynamic from a top-down approach to a collaborative one. Similar to the teachers’ experiences, this led us to develop new understandings about our own positionality and privilege and encouraged us to think about how this might inform our data analysis, and, therefore, our efforts to support teachers in countering deficit practices in the English classroom. Thinking across both studies provided us with an opportunity to, once again, examine our biases, reflecting on how these biases may have influenced analysis.
Data Collection and Analysis
While design-based research methodology does not specify research methods, we approached our work with a sociocultural view of learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Vygotsky, 1978) and an understanding of languages and literacies as social practices (Barton, Hamilton & Ivanič, 2000; Gee, 2012; Scribner & Cole, 1981). Because of that theoretical frame, we relied on qualitative, ethnographic methods (Marshall & Rossman, 2011) for data collection. We collected data from inquiry group meetings in the forms of field notes, audio-recordings, artifacts that teachers and researchers brought to meetings, and drafts of documents that we created together. The data demonstrated how the teachers talked and thought about critical approaches to language study and antideficit writing assessment as well as how they went about designing and creating curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
As the teachers in each inquiry group participated in designing, implementing, and modifying the interventions (language study unit, antideficit writing assessment), they engaged in iterative cycles of reflection—making changes to classroom practice in response to the data collected. These cycles of reflection and modification served as one form of ongoing analysis during the implementation of the interventions. Other than engaging in member checking, the teachers did not participate in data analysis after the formal periods of data collection ended. While this was a conscious decision made by both researchers in recognition of the time that the teachers had already given to both studies, we recognize that inviting the teachers to participate in analysis after implementing the interventions might have led the teachers and the researchers to grow in new ways, similar to what we experienced in codesigning the interventions.
We analyzed all data using an inductive approach of qualitative data analysis (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014). The goals of this approach to analysis were to understand the complexities around teachers’ collaborative inquiry and design of antideficit curriculum, instruction, and assessment. We separately engaged in iterative cycles of coding to identify salient themes related to teachers identifying and countering deficit thinking. We drew on theoretical constructs of deficit thinking (Valencia, 1997), appreciative stances (Bomer, 2011), and resource pedagogies (Paris & Ball, 2009) to construct codes such as (1) deficit talk; (2) identification of deficit stance in curriculum, instruction, and assessment; (3) talk related to students’ cultural and linguistic resources; (4) talk related to students’ strengths and abilities; and (5) identification/development of curriculum, instruction, and assessment building on students’ resources and strengths. We then looked across our two studies, creating broader categories to examine common themes across the codes, paying attention to ways that teachers engaged in the work of examining, questioning, and countering deficit thinking. Examples of those categories included (1) researchers’ roles in inquiry groups, (2) teachers’ roles in inquiry groups, (3) teachers’ negotiations with deficit and antideficit stances, and (4) teachers’ design processes. We met multiple times to look across transcripts and artifacts from each of our studies and to examine ways that these data sources supported or disconfirmed the larger themes.
From this analysis, we identified two findings:
As teachers took on the role of codesigners of an intervention that aimed to counter deficit practices in the English class, they had opportunities to consider their own positionality and privilege, developing awareness of the impact this had in in their day-to-day interactions in their classrooms and in the world.
As teachers took on the role of codesigners of an intervention that aimed to counter deficit practices in the English class, they had opportunities to negotiate deficit and antideficit discourses underlying and shaping English-language arts curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
The following sections provide vignettes from both inquiry groups that illustrate how positioning teachers as “designers of their own futures” (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016, p. 2) led them to engage in reflection that ultimately supported them in taking on antideficit stances in their own work with students.
Findings
Vignette 1: Teachers Negotiating Positionality and Privilege While Codesigning an Inquiry Into Language in Practice in Their Classrooms
Through the first vignette, we tell a story of four teachers and a researcher participating in an inquiry group to codesign an inquiry into language in the participating teachers’ classrooms. Taking on the roles of codesigners created an opportunity for the teachers to consider their own positionality and privilege in ways that they had not consistently demonstrated prior to this experience. Although the teachers hoped that their participation in this experience would allow them to develop new understandings about their students’ language use, at times, they unintentionally made assumptions about what their students knew about language. For example, in an initial interview, Sophia shared that she had students who were “unconventional language users” who would, therefore, benefit from “talking more about syntax and sentence patterns” and doing more thinking about “where we can put words together to make meaning.” Although the participating teachers were committed to becoming critical educators, there were moments in which they demonstrated that they privileged particular “ways with words” (Heath, 1983). In an early inquiry meeting, while watching video clips that highlighted individuals drawing on their linguistic repertoires of practice (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003), Garrett shared, “I wish there were more examples…of the guy switching between slang and academic…I think my students don’t even know that there are people who speak like them but also speak like me.” However, in the act of codesigning an intervention, Garrett later problematized how he and other English teachers often thought about language with their students. In a subsequent inquiry meeting, he reflected, “It’s funny how we separate ourselves. We have this thing, and you don’t.”
As can be seen in the shift that Garrett begins to make, the teachers often considered alternative perspectives, challenged institutional norms, and reflected on the choices they made in response to others’ language use, as they took on roles of codesigners of an intervention aimed to counter deficit practices in the English classroom. In doing so, they took on a discourse that united “the language of critique with the language of possibility” (Giroux, 1985, p. 379), developing new understandings about their own positionality and privilege that impacted how they thought about language and planned for instruction.
Teachers Considering Alternative Perspectives
In one meeting of our inquiry group, the teachers reflected on the ways that they demonstrated to students that their teachers, too, were language learners. Despite initially claiming the identity of a White speaker of English, Garrett shared that he, sometimes, chose to speak Spanish in his classroom in an effort to connect with his students as well as to demonstrate his interest in improving his Spanish-language use. Because it was his intention to create a space in which he and his students learned together, Garrett was caught off guard when his students were offended by this choice. Garrett explained, “It definitely took 2 or 3 weeks for my students to feel comfortable with it. They would even make comments like ‘That’s racist’ or something like that.”
The story Garrett shared opened up a space for the group to think more about what it meant to be White speakers of dominant American English in positions of power, exploring language with a linguistically and culturally diverse group of students. This resulted in conversation about the relationship between language use and the identities of speakers and their audiences. It also allowed the teachers to do more thinking about their students’ language histories, reflecting on how these histories might impact the choices the teachers made while putting this intervention into place.
Through this conversation, Garrett began to question whether his students thought he was coopting or mocking their language, although this was not his intention. After making efforts to understand why his students were resistant to his choice to speak in Spanish, Garrett voiced:
They don’t want to be seen as “I’m deficient in this thing that holds so much value.” “So why are you using Spanish with me, treating me like I can’t speak English? I can speak English. Speak English to me.”
Because Michelle aimed to support the teachers in a process of transformation, rather than perfect the intervention (Engeström, 2011), the participating teachers had space to reflect on and question past teaching practices, as they designed the intervention that would be put into place in their classrooms. These conversations led Garrett and his collaborators to reenvision what it meant to think about language with their students.
Teachers Challenging Institutional Norms
In order to become familiar with their own linguistic repertoires of practice (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003) and invite students to do the same, the participating teachers read pieces like Anzaldúa’s (2012) “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” from Borderlands la Frontera: The New Mestiza. Demonstrating her commitment to taking on an appreciative lens (Bomer, 2011), Sophia shared this piece with her students prior to the first meeting of the inquiry group, explaining to the group that she hoped her students would offer her new perspectives, as the teachers took on the roles of codesigners of an intervention that they would implement the following school year. The conversations that Sophia had with her students led her to better understand the “linguistic terrorism” (Anzaldúa, 2012, p. 80) many of her students had experienced both inside and outside the classroom. Sophia shared that though a number of her students felt resentment about the ways they had been positioned as language users, others seemed to take on the standard language ideology (Lippi-Green, 1997), valuing dominant American English over other languages. As the group reflected on the students’ responses to Anzaldúa’s (2012) piece, they, too, began to consider their own positionality, questioning the ways that teachers and schools had engaged in “linguistic terrorism” (Anzaldúa, 2012, p. 80), encouraging students to internalize the perspective that particular languages and language practices should be valued more than others. This can be seen in the following exchange between Sophia and Mattie.
If you know Spanish, if you speak Spanish at school, that’s not cool. There’s a much higher price on being able to speak perfect English than there is on being perfect in Spanish.
I wonder what changes between middle school and high school.
I almost wonder if it’s how the teachers talk to them (inquiry meeting, June 18, 2013).
In an effort to provide an example of what this looked like in her own school, Sophia shared a circumstance she witnessed in which a counselor admonished a group of students for speaking over her, failing to recognize that the students were attempting to translate the counselor’s words into Spanish to support those who were struggling to understand the message. This led Sophia and the other participants to recall how often they heard faculty at their schools make harmful assumptions and demonstrate deficit perspectives. This conversation led the group to reflect on the impact that these ways of thinking had on their students’ learning and identities.
In order to consider how to prepare their students to design personal inquiry projects about language, the participating teachers planned for their own inquiry projects while codesigning the intervention, with the intention of using their inquiry work as models in their classrooms. Building on the conversations that she had with her students in response to Anzaldúa’s (2012) piece as well as those that had taken place during our inquiry group meetings, Sophia decided to explore individuals’ perceptions of their own multilingualism, reaching out to former students about their experiences in academic spaces, developing new understandings of the ways that teachers often failed to embrace students’ heritage and community practices (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014) in the English class. In addition, she made efforts to think about how this played out in the larger community, collecting language samples, artifacts, and attending a poetry reading featuring the work of bilingual writers who spoke about their bilingualism. As Sophia shared these language samples and artifacts with the group, she invited us to think more about the positioning of multilingualism in our schools and in society as well.
Teachers Reflecting on Their Own Responses to Language Use in Their Classrooms and in the World
While Sophia explored the status of multilingualism in the communities in which she spent time, Garrett encouraged our inquiry group to think about the use of discriminatory language, considering whether or not we have responsibilities to challenge the use of these discourses. Inquiring into “the gendered language of sports fandom,” Garrett shared language samples he collected at various social events in which people had come together to watch sports. The examples demonstrated how women were continually positioned as “weaker” or “less than.” He explained to our inquiry group, “It rarely gets questioned, except if you are in a group like this. In sports fandom, it is completely acceptable.” As the group looked at the language samples Garrett planned to share with his students, the group participated in conversations in which they reflected on the choices they made in the past, posing and responding to questions like, “Do you think you have engaged in that kind of talk?” eventually considering, “If we don’t say stuff, does it change? Are we limiting who people can be in the world?” As the participating teachers engaged in conversations about how they wished to live in the world, as teachers and as people, they became “designers of their own futures” (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016, p. 2), often making choices to journey on a new path in search of equity both inside and outside the classroom.
Vignette 2: Teachers Negotiating Antideficit Discourses in Codesigning an Appreciative Writing Assessment
In this vignette, we share stories from the writing assessment inquiry group, which included four teachers and a researcher. The group engaged in study and design of an antideficit approach to writing assessment—a “humanist, equity-oriented” (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010, p. 103) goal for collaboratively rethinking assessment within English-language arts classrooms. The group’s inquiry began with the idea that assessment should recognize and value what students were doing well in their writing, but this initial understanding of an “appreciative” (Bomer, 2011) stance led teachers to think more about what that term meant in practice. By “acknowledging [students’] already-existing interests, experiences, knowledge, and skill in order to build upon them” (Bomer, 2011, p. 22), teachers in the inquiry group shifted their positions as knowledge holders and considered ways to include students in the assessment process through dialogue and self-assessment. Through their participation in the design process, teachers had opportunities to negotiate deficit and antideficit discourses underlying and shaping writing assessment in English classrooms.
Teachers Building a Shared Repertoire of Antideficit Discourses
As the inquiry group collaboratively engaged in study and design of appreciative writing assessment, group members constructed a shared repertoire (Wenger, 1998) of concepts, texts, and discourse that served as resources for the negotiation of meaning around antideficit writing assessment. One way the inquiry group did this was through reading and discussing shared texts. In the spring, we read and discussed the book Hidden Gems: Naming and Teaching From the Brilliance in Every Student’s Writing (Bomer, 2010). During a discussion of this book during one inquiry group meeting, Billy drew on Bomer’s (2010) concepts and commented that “teachers find value in how authors say things, how they say them differently,” but when reading student work, teachers are most often “looking for what’s wrong.” Billy took up Bomer’s (2010) shift from looking for what’s wrong in student writing to valuing students’ strengths. As we continued to discuss Hidden Gems (Bomer, 2010) the following week, Andrew drew on Bomer’s concepts in forming his thinking about assessment; he commented, “Every line [of student writing] should be viewed as real work from a real author.” Octavia built on Andrew’s comments, saying that the stance Bomer (2010) advocated for “gives [student] work substance and meaning.” As the group adopted these concepts into its repertoire, they provided the starting place for antideficit discourses in our conversations about writing assessment. We wanted to hold student writing in high regard and look for the ways in which students were bringing their knowledge and resources to their writing, and we wanted our writing assessment design to support that stance.
Along with reading shared texts, the inquiry group also built a shared repertoire by examining existing assessment tools, such as The Learning Record (Syverson, 2006), a framework in which students and teachers collect work samples and observations throughout the process of writing, interpreting that evidence to assess learning and growth. During one inquiry meeting, Billy commented on The Learning Record and writing assessment more broadly, saying, “The most valuable thing is that [students’] voice has a place; they are agents in their own learning.” Amber had used The Learning Record to assess student work in a university course she had taught the previous fall, and she explained, “The most powerful part for me was seeing the students recognizing, naming, and describing their own learning.” Just as in the discussions of texts, the inquiry group constructed a shared discourse around writing assessment by drawing on the discourses shaping other assessment tools. We adopted discourses around student voice and agency into our repertoire of antideficit discourses informing our design work.
In addition to outside texts and tools, the inquiry group included in its repertoire participants’ existing assessment practices. During our first few meetings, we realized that Billy assessed writing in ways that mirrored the approaches we were reading about and discussing, so we arranged a visit to Billy’s classroom to learn more about his writing assessment tools and practices. Billy began by showing us his students’ writing folders containing their work from the most recent nonnarrative/nonfiction writing unit. We noticed that each student had in his or her folder multiple drafts of writing, feedback from fellow student writers, and a self-reflection sheet. Our conversation at this meeting centered on Billy’s use of student reflection sheets in his approach to writing assessment.
Inquiry group members talked about the ways that students received feedback from peers rather than only from the teacher. During an April meeting, as she looked at students’ reflection sheets, Amber said to Billy, “I like that your feedback is attached to the classmates’ feedback.” Andrew followed saying,
[The reflection sheet] doesn’t position you as an expert or anything. You’re just another voice in the choir of praise or critique. What’s cool too is that when you look at [the reflections and feedback], all you get is student. You know what I mean? It’s just student.
We noticed that the reflection sheets shifted power from the teacher to student writers by asking them to assess their own writing and provide feedback on one another’s writing. These reflection sheets provided concrete examples of a teacher shifting authority to students and including students’ voices in assessment, two of the antideficit discourses the inquiry group had discussed.
Billy’s writing assessment tools and practices became part of our shared repertoire, and this aspect of his assessment practices—student participation in assessment—became part of our shared discourse that shaped the ways we thought about an antideficit writing assessment. By drawing on teachers’ classroom experience, the inquiry group coconstructed knowledge among participants during the design process rather than the researcher holding a privileged position in knowledge construction and design (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016).
In the fall, Andrew had left the group, Lily had joined, and Octavia had graduated from the master’s plus certification program and had become a classroom teacher. As our group and the identities within it changed, group members brought new tools, texts, and discourses to our shared repertoire.
Lily had participated in the summer institute in the local site of the National Writing Project, and for her inquiry project in that institute, she had taken up the idea of democratic writing assessment. In a September meeting, she brought that term, “democratic,” to the inquiry group, saying that she did not want to be the “arbiter of [students’] grades.” This concept of democratic writing assessment that Lily brought to the group became a key concept in our shared discourse that guided our design.
Lily explained to us the ways she assessed students’ writing during and after a memoir writing unit. In her final, formal assessment of students’ memoirs, Lily took into consideration students’ self-assessments of their writing processes. During an October meeting, Lily mentioned that in students’ written self-assessment, they referenced evidence of their decision-making during the writing process, such as pointing to ways they had used their writers’ notebooks or ways they had chosen to revise.
As we learned from one another, we imported the concepts and tools from the teachers’ classroom practices—reflection sheets, reflective writing, and assessment of students’ writing process—into our shared repertoire. The teachers’ tools and practices positioned students as knowledgeable writers and authorities on their own writing processes and that discourse, that way of knowing students, shaped our thinking about and design of antideficit writing assessment. By drawing on, reflecting on, and critiquing teachers’ assessment practices during the design process, this approach to research positioned teachers as “transformative intellectuals” (Giroux, 1985, p. 378), who engaged in critical reflection on their own practices and larger school structures. As teachers in the inquiry group took on roles as transformative intellectuals, they became more critical of deficit discourses underlying writing assessment practices, discourses that positioned students as lacking authority and voice in assessment decisions.
Teachers Negotiating and Expanding Antideficit Discourses
As the group worked in the fall to draft a design for an appreciative approach to writing assessment, group members discussed and negotiated the discourses informing and shaping our design of an antideficit writing assessment. In a November meeting, Lily said, “I want [students] to walk out feeling stronger, in terms of identity. I want that. That’s it. That’s actually more important to me…,” and Octavia responded, “Can I write that? I want to write ‘identity’ here [on the draft paper] because I like that you keep coming back to that.” Amber continued, “And that goal of feeling stronger, I think that’s huge. Will you write that too?” As Lily articulated her values related to antideficit discourses around student identity, Octavia pointed out values that Lily emphasized in her talk, particularly those around student identity and strength. Octavia wrote down these words to capture the guiding concepts upon which Lily drew in her understandings of antideficit writing assessment. Octavia even drew a star next to the words “feeling strong” to highlight the importance of this concept in our design.
Octavia asked Lily to expand on her statement, asking, “Stronger as what?” to which Lily responded, “As a thinker, a writer.” As we began to see our thoughts on paper, we dug further to explore those concepts. As Lily and Octavia listed the student identities they wanted to strengthen through antideficit discourses, Octavia wrote down, “thinker, writer, reader, citizen, human.” Lily continued, “I talk to [students] like, ‘You have a voice, you have a right, you have a right to join in.’” As Lily continued to talk, Amber wrote down the words “expertise,” “voice,” and “right,” which represented student agency and authority as key components in our design. The draft paper held still these discourses so that we could together see the vision that we were constructing for antideficit writing assessment in our classrooms.
As teachers designed classroom writing assessment practices that reflected antideficit discourses, they had to consider and clarify for themselves what they meant when they used the term “antideficit.” Through their participation in the assessment design, teachers negotiated what it meant to have an antideficit stance toward students and student writing and what that stance might look like in practice. Through this work, the teachers developed “a discourse that unite[d] the language of critique with the language of possibility” (Giroux, 1985, p. 379); they critiqued writing assessment practices that positioned students as deficient or incapable and codesigned possible alternatives that positioned students as having knowledge, voice, and authority in the writing classroom.
Discussion
Through the vignettes shared in this article, we illustrate how we used a social design experiment methodological framework (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016) that foregrounded teachers’ participation in the design of antideficit English education. As researchers, we positioned ourselves as colearners and codesigners with teachers, inquiring into what antideficit stances look like in practice. In looking across these two studies, we were interested not only in what happens as a result of social design experimentation but also what emerges when teachers are invited to take on the role of codesigners. Treating the design process as “open-ended” and “continuously co-configured” (Engeström, 2011, p. 606) created an opportunity for teachers to take on antideficit stances, articulating their own positionality, privilege, and the antideficit discourses shaping English curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
We believe that researchers conducting design-based research have an opportunity to privilege teachers’ existing practices, ideologies, and ways of knowing at the outset of studies, before designing interventions. Classroom teachers often feel a lack of autonomy in implementing programs handed to them by school administrators; researchers must consider our role in this construction of teacher agency and autonomy. The work of the inquiry groups shows the potential for research that comes from teacher/researcher collaboration in all stages of design-based research.
The vignettes highlighted in this article demonstrate how teachers, participating in the design process, grappled with and negotiated antideficit stances toward students with the support of the inquiry group in which they participated. Playing an active role in these inquiry groups provided opportunities for change and agency, as teachers shaped practices and meanings around antideficit curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Engeström (2011) explains the potential for agency in the design process, saying, “Breaking away from a pre-existing pattern of activity requires expansive agency” (p. 611). As teachers engaged in this work, they strengthened their identities as designers of curriculum, instruction, and assessment and transformed their classroom communities through antideficit English education.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
References
|
Anzaldúa, G. (2012). Borderlands la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Google Scholar | |
|
Barton, D., Hamilton, M., Ivanič, R. (Eds.). (2000). Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context. New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Bomer, K. (2010). Hidden gems: Naming and teaching from the brilliance in every student’s writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Google Scholar | |
|
Bomer, R. (2011). Building adolescent literacy in today’s English classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Google Scholar | |
|
Cobb, P., Confrey, J., diSessa, A., Lehrer, R., Schauble, L. (2003). Design experiments in educational research. Educational Researcher, 32, 9–13. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Engeström, Y. (2011). From design experiments to formative interventions. Theory & Psychology, 21, 598–628. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Erickson, F. (2006). Studying side by side: Collaborative action ethnography in educational research. In Spindler, G., Hammond, L. (Eds.), Innovations in educational ethnography: Theory, methods, and results (pp. 235–258). Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis. Google Scholar | |
|
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London, England: Continuum. Google Scholar | |
|
Gee, J. P. (2012). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Giroux, H. A. (1985). Teachers as transformative intellectuals. Social Education, 49, 376–379. Google Scholar | |
|
Gutiérrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a sociocritical literacy in the third space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43, 148–164. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Gutiérrez, K. D., Jurow, A. S. (2016). Social design experiments: Toward equity by design. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 25(4), 1–34. Google Scholar | |
|
Gutiérrez, K. D., Rogoff, B. (2003). Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits or repertoires of practice. Educational Researcher, 32, 19–25. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Gutiérrez, K. D., Vossoughi, S. (2010). Lifting off the ground to return anew: Mediated praxis, transformative learning, and social design experiments. Journal of Teacher Education, 61, 100–117. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Kinloch, V. (2010). Harlem on our minds: Place, race, and the literacies of urban youth. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: Aka the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84, 74–84. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Lave, J., Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Lippi-Green, R. (1997). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Lewison, M., Flint, A. S., Van Sluys, K. (2002). Taking on critical literacy: The journey of newcomers and novices. Language Arts, 79, 382–392. Google Scholar | |
|
Marshall, C., Rossman, G. B. (2011). Designing qualitative research (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., Saldaña, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: A methods sourcebook (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy a needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41, 93–97. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Paris, D., Alim, S. H. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84, 85–100. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Paris, D., Ball, A. F. (2009). Teacher knowledge in culturally and linguistically complex classrooms: Lessons from the golden age and beyond. In Morrow, L. M., Rueda, R., Lapp, D. (Eds.), Handbook of research on literacy and diversity (pp. 379–395). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Paris, D., Winn, M. T. (2014). Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Reinking, D., Bradley, B. A. (2008). Formative and design experiments: Approaches to language and literacy research. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Scribner, S., Cole, M. (1981). The psychology of literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Syverson, M. A. (2006). The learning record. Retrieved from http://www.learningrecord.org/ Google Scholar | |
|
Valencia, R. R. (1997). Conceptualizing the notion of deficit thinking. In Valencia, R. R. (Ed.), The evolution of deficit thinking: Educational thought and practice (pp. 1–12). New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer. Google Scholar | |
|
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: Development of higher psychological processes. Cole, M., John-Steiner, V., Scribner, S., Souberman, E. (Eds. and Trans.). Cambridge, MA: The President and Fellows of Harvard College. Google Scholar | |
|
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Yin, R. K. (2014). Case study research design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Zumwalt, K., Craig, E. (2005). Teachers’ characteristics: Research on the indicators of quality. In Cochran-Smith, M., Zeichner, K. M. (Eds.), Studying teacher education (pp. 157–260). New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar |
Author Biographies
Michelle Fowler-Amato is an assistant professor of English education at Old Dominion University. Her research interests include adolescent literacy, writing teacher education, and the use of design-based research and teacher inquiry groups to put critical and culturally sustaining theory into practice.
Amber Warrington is an assistant professor of English education at Boise State University. Her research interests include writing teacher education, writing assessment, teacher inquiry, and critical literacy.
