Volume 26, Number 3, 2024 Special Issue: Literacy Teachers Navigating Turbulent Times in Canada

FR:

Les auteurs de cet article visent à comprendre comment les conceptions de pratiques sociales de référence peuvent contribuer à reconfigurer un objet d’enseignement. Dans le cas présent, ils s’intéressent à l’objet « poésie ». Une analyse de contenu du discours de 32 poètes québécois contemporains confronté à celui de 20 enseignants du secondaire a été réalisée de façon à cerner les complémentarités et les distinctions dans leurs conceptions. Quelques aspects communs ont été identifiés à première vue : la poésie est associée à un travail sur la langue, à l’expression de soi, à des visions du monde représenté et à des dimensions de l’expérience esthétique. Toutefois, les justifications que donnent les uns et les autres pour décrire ces aspects diffèrent à plusieurs égards. Les résultats ouvrent la voie à une reconfiguration de la poésie en tant qu’objet d’enseignement. Ainsi, une transposition didactique de savoirs permettant de développer un rapport plus expérientiel et créatif à la poésie comme le défendent les poètes s’ajouterait à la dimension cognitive qui domine dans les conceptions des enseignants.

EN:

The authors of the article aim to understand how the conceptions of social practices can contribute to the reshaping of a teaching object. Specifically, they focus on the “poetry” object. They undertook a content analysis of the discourse of 32 contemporary Quebecer poets compared to that of 20 secondary school teachers to identify the complementarities and distinctions in their conceptions. At first glance, there are some common aspects where poetry is associated with work on language, self-expression, represented worldviews, and dimensions of aesthetic experience. However, the justifications provided by teachers and poets to describe these common aspects differ in several ways. The findings suggest the potential for redefining poetry as an object of teaching. This could begin with the didactic transposition of knowledge, fostering a more experiential and creative approach to poetry, as advocated by poets. This approach complements the cognitive dimension dominant in teachers’ conceptions.

EN:

Young people engage daily with various social media platforms to communicate with one another across the globe. Adolescents not only share text, but also use images and sound to express themselves on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to provide access to user-created content. The recent emergence of InstaPoetry—poetry with images on Instagram—has been part of such communication and provides an entry point into adolescents’ engagement with literature and the arts. Limited research exists, however, on how this literacy practice, paired with virtual and in-person museum visits, influences young people’s self-expression. In addition, there is little known about how teachers can incorporate these literacy practices in the classroom. In this article, we offer ways of integrating and involving these dynamic dimensions into research projects based on four sites of inquiry located in Canada and Australia. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, this research project provides concrete teaching to foster adolescents’ engagement with literature and the arts (i.e., contextual design, procedures, environment) in post COVID-19 times.

EN:

This paper shares findings from a Self-Study of Teacher Education practice (S-STEP) where we leveraged our long-standing relationship as critical friends to examine our teacher education pedagogies in our elementary English Language Arts courses in 2022-2023. Guided by posthuman perspectives, we consider the relational movements that produced our pedagogies during a currently contentious field mapped by polarizing views in reports, social media, and teacher professional texts. We name movements our literacies pedagogies with/in these challenging times highlighting instances where the context shaped our pedagogies and where our pedagogies moved against the context. This paper offers an invitation to other educators to consider ways that we can create a culture that honours expansive understandings of literacies and creates spaces for curriculum-making and pedagogical inventiveness.

EN:

Learning to read and write is crucial for children’s success in school and in life, yet many Indigenous children encounter risk factors linked to lower school achievement. This study explored Indigenous perspectives on early language and literacy through surveys and interviews with 22 participants using Indigenous methodologies. These perspectives were compared with mainstream views to highlight cultural mismatches that lead to misinterpretations of Indigenous children’s abilities. Findings emphasize the need for culturally sensitive pedagogical practices, development of self and cultural identity, the preservation of cultural traditions, and the acknowledgment of intergenerational trauma in supporting early language and literacy.

EN:

Kindergarten educators are experiencing tensions with pedagogical approaches for early literacy learning (Forgie et al., 2022; Pyle et al., 2018). They feel pressured to abandon play-based approaches in favour of direct instruction due to changes in provincial curriculum and school board policies (OHRC, 2022). This paper explores themes and responses by participants in a study with kindergarten educators during the first half of the 2023-24 school year. Challenges expressed included changing messages from school boards, a lack of clarity regarding direction, and the introduction of prescriptive programs. Suggestions of ways educators can build knowledge and agency through collaborative conversations are shared.

EN:

This conceptual paper extends the Re-imagining Literacies Assessment knowledge mobilization project and its goals of undoing, decolonizing, liberating, and righting assessment, explored through examples of assessment-in-use in classrooms with young children, a Cree language immersion program, anti-racist writing pedagogy, and research in reading instruction and assessment. In conversation with one another, three assemblings of stories, relations, complications, and questions are presented, drawing attention to assessment in relation to noticing, positioning, and dis/re/connecting. Undoing, decolonizing, liberating, and righting become concepts to use in thinking through the use of assessment and in proposing urgent and emergent questions, practices, and possibilities for students and teachers.