'Seeing the Everyday through New Lenses': Pedagogies and Practices of Literacy Teacher Educators with a Critical Stance

This article explores the practices and pedagogies of six literacy teacher educators with a critical stance. In this qualitative research study, three semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant over a three-year period. They were able to negotiate a critical stance into their teacher education courses in several ways: using an expansive definition of literacy; helping student teachers shed deficit perspectives; and integrating popular culture and media in the curriculum. The LTEs conceptualizations of literacy transcended traditional notions such as literacy as a set of autonomous skills (e.g., reading, writing) to include expansive notions of literacy including out of school literacy practices such as home literacies and community literacies. The literacy teacher educators modeled valuing expansive conceptions of literacy by including a wide range of texts in their courses, including: videos, blogs, spoken word, spaces, theatre, and social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook). The teacher educators' progressive views of literacy were negotiated into their classroom by creating invitations for student teachers to disrupt their assumptions of literacy. Implications for literacy teacher education courses include incorporating a range of texts and genres, which model expansive understandings of literacy, while modeling for student teachers how to effectively integrate them into literacy teaching. Implications for pre-service teacher education programs include building partnerships in the community including both traditional (e.g., schools) and non-traditional (e.g., community centers) learning spaces.