Deficits, therapists, and a desire to distance: Secondary English preservice teachers’ reasoning about their future students.
Abstract
This article explores how secondary English preservice teachers reason about their future students and the consequences these systems of reasoning have for their thinking about pedagogy and their roles as teachers. By examining these systems of reasoning, this article helps to denaturalize normalized discourses about adolescence—discourses that oftentimes help to name and position young people in powerful, predictable, and problematic ways. Finally, this article suggests ways English teacher educators might create spaces for preservice literacy teachers to rethink how their experiences with adolescents are always mediated and produced by discourses that authorize how young people are known and acted upon.
Reference
Petrone, R., & Lewis, M. A. (2012). Deficits, therapists, and a desire to distance: Secondary English preservice teachers' reasoning about their future students. English Education, 44(3), 254-287.
Journal
English Education
Analysis
Is this article part of a larger project or series of studies?
yes
Does this study draw on a large, preexisting data set?
yes
Research Approach
Geographic Setting
Institutional Context
Certification Level
Programatic Focus
Research Location Context
Preservice Participants
- Undergraduates (university based program)
Preservice Sample Size
Duration of Data Collection
Data Sources
- course materials
- Document Analysis
- Survey
Data Analysis Tools
- coding (non-specific)
- grounded theory
- Inductive analysis
Researcher Positionality
- inside (staying their own students)
Research Questions
How do the participants of this study (secondary English preservice teachers) conceive the population of people with whom they will work as teachers?
Is this research question explicit from the manuscript? Yes
What are the relationships between these participants' conceptions of their prospective students and their thinking about the role/func tion of the school subject English and their own roles/identities as teachers?
Is this research question explicit from the manuscript? Yes
What are the systems of reasoning that undergird the participants' conceptions of their prospective students and the relationships these have to their thinking about the school subject English and their own roles/identities as teachers?
Is this research question explicit from the manuscript? Yes