Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Possibilities, Challenges, and Changes in English Teacher Education Today: Exploring Identity and Professionalization

This book focuses on English teacher educators' experiences concerning professionalization and teacher identity. The term professionalization, itself, can be problematized (Popkewitz, 1994), as it connotes adherence to realities to professional norms that are based within particular histories. Yet, teacher educators must confront how to mentor prospective teachers into the field and how changes to the field manifest changes to what it means to be a professional. In research about changes in English teacher education over the past twenty years, Pasternak, Caughlan, Hallman, Renzi and Rush (2017) presented five distinct foci of ELA programs that have evolved: 1) changes to field experiences within teacher education programs, 2) altered conceptions of teaching literature and literacy within the context of ELA, 3) increased adherence to standardization, 4) changing demographics of students in K-12 classrooms, and 5) increased expectations for use of technology within ELA. These foci impact how professionals in ELA are viewed both from inside and outside the profession and how they navigate these tensions in teacher education programs to define what it means to identify as an English teacher. Throughout the book, chapter authors articulate dilemmas that focus around professionalization and teacher identity, questioning what it means to be an English teacher today. While some chapters suggest methods for increased awareness of tensions within practice, other chapters approach professionalization and teacher identity by asking what the limits of methods classes and teacher education might be in preparing ELA teachers and supporting them to remain in the profession. Today's political environment devalues teachers and teaching, a situation that has critics deriding the educational standards at institutes of higher education while concurrently lauding alternative programs that do not have to adhere to the same rigorous teacher certification requirements. English teacher educators are now being asked to design programs, soften requirements, and recruit and mentor teacher candidates to a profession that, in the past, certified more new English teachers than it could employ. The chapters in this book explore what it means to educate and be an English teacher educator under these conditions. Review As teacher candidates work their way toward a license and a career, they each strive to define a viable persona. The methods class can support or inhibit this effort, especially when the methods class operates within institutional constraints that can seem counter to the goals of the course. The many contributors to Possibilities, Challenges, and Changes in English Teacher Education Today explore the intentions, efforts, and tensions common to the methods class. The essays in this collection, and the responses to them, reveal the complexities involved in using the methods class to foster a keen sense of professional identity that ultimately advances the cognitive, social, and emotional development of learners.--Thomas M. McCann At a time when we need to actively recruit, fully prepare, and then continue to support novice English teachers, Hallman, Pastore-Capuana, and Pasternak have assembled an urgent and essential volume. The contributors present critical perspectives and rich dialogue around topics such as culturally sustaining pedagogies, technology integration, and handling the day-to-day stresses of classroom life. As an occasion for rethinking their methods courses--as well as the design of student teaching experiences--English educators can use this book to examine the social, emotional, and intellectual demands placed on our teacher candidates, and how we can respond to those challenges with empathy, tenacity, and hope.--Dr. Troy Hicks, professor of English & Education, Central Michigan University, author, Crafting Digital Writing (2013) & Because Digital Writing Matters (2010) Possibilities, Challenges, and C