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Another Opening, Another Show: Performing Teaching Identities in Literacy Classrooms
Author(s) -
Williams Bronwyn T.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of adolescent and adult literacy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.73
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1936-2706
pISSN - 1081-3004
DOI - 10.1598/jaal.49.6.8
Subject(s) - identity (music) , literacy , reading (process) , construct (python library) , mathematics education , psychology , pedagogy , negotiation , face (sociological concept) , teaching method , reflection (computer programming) , teacher education , sociology , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , physics , social science , acoustics , programming language
Teachers are constantly performing different identities at different moments, with different students, and for different ends. In turn, the roles students perform are in constant negotiation with their teacher's role. This column explores how literacy teachers consciously or unconsciously construct their identities and how students read these identities. What happens when teachers' identities shift in the classroom, in conference, or in commenting on student writing? How might more careful reflection on who teachers think they are, and how they got that way, help them to better understand how they teach reading and writing and how students respond to them? In practical terms, teachers face problems when they try either to perform an identity that is incomprehensible or inconsistent for their students, or to inhabit an identity that they know students believe a teacher should have but that doesn't work for them.