Visualizing the Systemic Structures within the American Schoolhouse
Location
Session 3 Presentations - Curriculum Studies
Proposal Track
Research Project
Session Format
Presentation
Abstract
This presentation will highlight two teacher educators’ use of a docuseries in an online graduate level course for initial certification teacher candidates (TCs) at a large, multi-campus university in the Southeastern US. This course is taken at the start of the program, and introduces TCs to middle and secondary education classrooms. The course reviews characteristics of adolescent learners, developmental techniques for teaching adolescent learners, and philosophies for teaching and learning. Working as co-teachers, presenters assigned the 10-episode docuseries, America to Me, intent on asking TCs to analyze and, most importantly, visualize the systemic structures within school systems and school buildings that the course objectives address. Because “[o]ur visual experiences do not take place in isolation” (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001, p. 2), presenters will describe the pedagogical possibilities they recognized after assigning an extended documentary as a curricular text. Greene (1995) calls all people to become aware of the worlds they create and how they live together in those worlds. By asking TCs to analyze one school in peer groups and through accompanying reflections and writing prompts, presenters will share how they observed their TCs become aware of, while confronting, the worlds they had constructed about schooling in America.
Keywords
Visual Literacy, Teacher Education, Preservice Teachers, Adolescent Learners
Professional Bio
Janel Smith is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Middle Grades and Secondary Education at Georgia Southern University. Janel taught in the elementary and middle grades classrooms for ten years before transitioning to supporting teacher candidates at the college level. Her research studies focus on the use of literacy skills to deliver content instruction, embedding of practices to support teacher candidate identity, and best practices for mathematics education in P-12 classrooms. Taylor Norman is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle Grades and Secondary Education at Georgia Southern University. After a career as a rural high school English teacher, Taylor attended Purdue University for her graduate degrees in English Education. Taylor’s research stories the identities and practices of preservice and inservice middle grade and secondary teachers in order to build bridges between theory and practice.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Smith, Janel and Norman, Taylor, "Visualizing the Systemic Structures within the American Schoolhouse" (2021). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 52.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2021/2021/52
Visualizing the Systemic Structures within the American Schoolhouse
Session 3 Presentations - Curriculum Studies
This presentation will highlight two teacher educators’ use of a docuseries in an online graduate level course for initial certification teacher candidates (TCs) at a large, multi-campus university in the Southeastern US. This course is taken at the start of the program, and introduces TCs to middle and secondary education classrooms. The course reviews characteristics of adolescent learners, developmental techniques for teaching adolescent learners, and philosophies for teaching and learning. Working as co-teachers, presenters assigned the 10-episode docuseries, America to Me, intent on asking TCs to analyze and, most importantly, visualize the systemic structures within school systems and school buildings that the course objectives address. Because “[o]ur visual experiences do not take place in isolation” (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001, p. 2), presenters will describe the pedagogical possibilities they recognized after assigning an extended documentary as a curricular text. Greene (1995) calls all people to become aware of the worlds they create and how they live together in those worlds. By asking TCs to analyze one school in peer groups and through accompanying reflections and writing prompts, presenters will share how they observed their TCs become aware of, while confronting, the worlds they had constructed about schooling in America.
