Browsing by Author "Boggs, George L."
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- Emerging Dialogic Structures in Education Reform: An analysis of Urban Teachers’ Online CompositionsStewart, Trevor Thomas; Boggs, George L. (2016-05-04)This paper contextualizes contemporary urban teachers’ online dissent in public discussions of education reform inrelation to past educational crisis narratives to interpret recent shifts in the structure of education reform dialogue inthe United States. It does so by examining the form and content of compositions in which teachers respond toeducation reform. The analysis is intended to describe the digitally mediated roles teachers are asserting in acomplex public debate over the future of education in the United States. The structure and content of educationreform discourse has often cast teachers in static roles, which inhibits their active participation in discussions ofeducational policy. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s position that language choices serve to stifle and/or reinvigorate dialogue,we examine contributions to online discussions and debate composed ostensibly by urban teachers in response todominant discourses. The data were analyzed with respect to discursive choices and grouped subsequently asthemed arguments and rhetorical moves. We argue that teachers’ strategic responses to education reform challengestifling truisms that seek to suspend discussion of all other factors besides teacher quality. Teachers’ critical digitalcompositions thus re-create critical, multi-voiced conversations in place of monologues about school improvement.The online, public compositions point to the dynamic structure of reform discourse that has the potential to benefitthose currently faulted for a variety of social problems. Nurturing and even exploiting the dynamic potential ofeducational reform discourse can create opportunities for teachers, policymakers, and educational researchers tomutually inform one another’s shared interest in educational improvement.Keywords:
- Urban teachers’ online dissent produces cultural resources of relevance to teacher educationStewart, Trevor Thomas; Boggs, George L. (2018-07)This paper explores urban teachers’ published responses to education reform. These compositions published online are examined as sources of cultural knowledge that are relevant to teacher education. Using sociolinguistic theory and method, the compositions’ arguments and rhetorical moves are analyzed to interpret the use of digital compositions to respond to education reform initiatives in the United States. The patterned speech contained in these compositions demonstrates forms of agency important to the pursuit of professional autonomy. This finding has implications for teacher education and raises questions about whether and how cultural resources being developed by urban (and other) teachers through online composition may be ethically appropriated to benefit pre-service and in-service teachers.