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.

ContentsPreface
1. Reconstituting Teacher Education: Literacy, Critical Theories, and English
Jory Brass2. A Critical Sociocultural Approach to English Education
Cynthia Lewis, Tracey Pyscher, Erin Stutelberg3. Towards Critical Participatory Literacies through Digital Video Composition in an Elementary Literacy Capstone Course
Jessica Zacher Pandya4. Digital/Media Literacies in a Media Literacy and a Digital Writing Methods Course
Richard Beach5. Performance Pedagogies in Literacy Methods: Emergence, Embodiment, and Critical Practices
Carmen Liliana Medina, Linda Skidmore Coggin, Gustave John Weltsek 6. Working toward Dialogically Organized Instruction through Video-Based Response and Revision
Samantha Caughlan and Mary M. Juzwik7. A Critical Resource Orientation to Literacy Assessment through a Stance of Solidarity
Gerald Campano, Katrina Bartow Jacobs, Lan Ngo8. Communities of Practice: Bridging the Gap between Methods Courses and Secondary Schools
James Cercone9. Synthesizing Formal and Experiential Concepts in a Service-Learning Course
Peter Smagorinsky, Lindy L. Johnson, Christopher M. Clayton10. Generative Critical Pedagogy in English Language Arts Methods for Urban Schools
Tonya Perry11. Learning to Teach Diverse Learners in a Writing Pedagogies Class
Joyce Meier, Yunjeong Choi, Ellen Cushman12. A Trauma Studies Lens on Writing Methods: Crafting a Critical, Affective, Practice-Based Pedagogy
Elizabeth Dutro, Ashley Cartun13. Critical Literary Theory in a Literature Methods Class
Deborah Appleman14. A Cultural Studies Approach to Literature Methods
Allen Webb15. Talking Policy in a Language Arts Curriculum Course for Reading Specialists
Patrick ShannonContributors
Index

Jory Brass is Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, USA.

Allen Webb is Professor of English Education and Postcolonial Studies, Western Michigan University, USA.