Teaching Outside the Box but Inside the Standards: Making Room for Dialogue

by Bob Fecho, Michelle Falter, Xiaoli Hong

Overview

Many educators feel caught between mandates to meet literacy standards and the desire to respond to individual students’ interests, skills, and challenges. This book illustrates how a dialogical approach to practice will enable teachers to meet the needs of today’s diverse student population within a standardized curriculum. Chapters highlight the efforts of four high school teachers to create dialogical classroom space, documenting both the possibilities of and impediments to such an approach to teaching. Drawing on a theoretical framework and rationale for engaged dialogical practice, the authors present and analyze key classroom events that illustrate the productive and restrictive tensions for such work and suggest ways for teachers and schools to implement these ideas, especially for complementing and expanding the Common Core State Standards.

Book Features:

• Examples of teachers using dialogue to engage students, as well as colleagues, administrators, parents, policymakers, and other educational stakeholders.
• Guidance for teachers in how to differentiate instruction to meet literacy standards.
• Case studies illustrating how teachers navigate the tension between standardization and student-centered teaching.
• An exemplary collaborative effort among a university researcher, doctoral students, and high school teachers.
• The reflections and self-questioning of teachers who write honestly, engagingly, and insightfully about their dialogical practices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807774557
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	01/25/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	698 KB

About the Author

Bob Fecho is professor of English education at Teachers College, Columbia University and founding director of the Red Clay Writing Project at the University of Georgia. His books include Teaching for the Students: Habits of Heart, Mind, and Practice in the Engaged Classroom and “Is This English?”: Race, Language, and Culture in the Classroom, which received the James N. Britton award, CEE/NCTE. Michelle Falter and Xiaoli Hong are doctoral candidates at the University of Georgia in the Department of Language and Literacy Education.

Table of Contents

Foreword Meenoo Rami ix

Acknowledgments xi

Preface xiii

Introducing the University Folks xiv

The Story of Our Study in Brief xvi

1 The Story of This Book 1

Ian's Story 1

Paige's Story 2

Angela's Story 3

Lisa's Story 4

Our Concerns 5

Our Purpose 8

Recognizing and Appreciating Wobble 9

Engaged Dialogical Practice 10

Framing the Book 12

2 Paige's Story 15

Dialoging with Divergent Views 17

Raising More Questions 24

Paige's Suggestions for Action 26

3 Lisa's Story 29

Learning Through Kayla 30

Learning Through Emilio 36

What Have I Learned About Dialogical Teaching? 39

Lisa's Suggestions for Action 43

4 Ian's Story 45

A Confrontation 48

A Conundrum 53

Being Real and Writing It 59

Ian's Suggestions for Action 62

5 Angela's Story 65

Describing the Context 68

Leaning Toward Dialogical Practice 70

A Standards- and Dialogue-Driven Classroom 80

Angela's Suggestions for Action 82

6 Our Future Stories 85

Unpacking the Tensions Across the Wobble Moments 87

What Can We Learn from These Tensions? 94

Last Stories 102

Appendix A Research Design 105

Appendix B Oral Inquiry Process 107

Appendix C Questions from the Readings in Angela Dean's Class 109

Appendix D Writing Assignment from Angela Dean's Class 111

References 113

Index 117

About the Contributors 123

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"In an accessible and thought-provoking narrative, these four teacher-researchers and the three teacher educators present an alternative view into the complexity of the classroom."
—From the Foreword by Meenoo Rami, educator and author of Thrive: 5 Ways to (Re)Invigorate Your Teaching

"Teaching Outside the Box but Inside the Standards is rigorous though poetic, filled with theory and science, but not in the ways we’ve come to know them. The science and theory of teaching are shaped in the core of story, sketched in lessons well learned. Moreover, each story is offered as an invitation to reach beyond the moment while courageously teaching within it."
—David E. Kirkland, director, NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, New York University

"Fecho, Falter, and Hong have given Teacher Education, and English Education in particular, a true gift in this text. In their edited volume, a chorus of teachers demonstrate how they use their curricular powers to provide opportunities for students to experience 'engaged dialogical practice' as teachers attend to the nuances of the Common Core Standards. By encouraging educators to embrace the 'wobble'—that is, the tensions teachers often feel when their teaching and student learning are gaining momentum—this book is both a mirror and a window for advancing the use of dialogue in compelling ways in the classroom."
—Maisha Winn, Susan J. Cellmer Endowed Chair in English Education; professor in Language and Literacy in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison