Transforming Teacher Voice through Writing for Publication.
2006; Volume: 33; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0737-5328
Autores Tópico(s)Literacy, Media, and Education
ResumoIf you're a teacher researcher and you are sharing what you know, then you've found a for yourself. I think once you find that and find the people who will listen to it, then it's hard to turn it off. The of this teacher researcher reflects the transformative potential of engaging in research. This potential is one we have personally experienced in our work as teacher researchers and as teacher educators supporting other teacher researchers. We know the power of teacher researchers being able to immediately use understandings from research to inform teaching and, at the same time, gaining voice with other educators. We have experienced the thrill of having something to say that others value and that can inform the field. We share the excitement of realizing that the process of preparing for and presenting understandings to others transforms and deepens our understandings as well as influences the transformation of others. We have completed our teacher research projects and courses with teacher researchers at a level of great excitement, ready to share what we know with others only to see all of us get caught up in the reality of surviving the everyday struggles of life as educators. In the end, we are grateful for new understandings, but decide to be content with that. As journal editors, we see this reality played out in journal submission statistics that reflect the low number of submissions from teacher researchers and the even lower number of manuscripts accepted by reviewers. Despite a commitment to publishing the work of teacher researchers, little changes beyond the publication of a couple more articles a year. When we began working with the editorial team for a major journal in our field, we decided to go beyond commitment to taking action by establishing support structures for teacher researchers who were novice writers and who wanted to publish their work in professional journals. Through our interactions with many teacher researchers and their manuscripts, we gained insights into the major struggles that they encountered in trying to shape their ideas into a publishable manuscript. This article focuses on identifying these struggles and sharing the ways in which we worked with teacher researchers to respond to the obstacles they faced, both in writing a strong manuscript for submission and in making their way through the review process. Before describing these struggles, we first establish a context for this work through examining the role of writing for teacher researchers and describing the project within which this work took place. The Role of Writing for Teacher Researchers There are many ways in which teacher researchers express their voices and share with others, such as conducting workshops for other teachers (Stock, 2001). For teachers who want to reach beyond these immediate audiences to the broader field, one possibility is writing for publication in journals. Teacher research, however, continues to be underrepresented in professional publications, even though many educators recognize the potential of teacher inquiry for building knowledge and generating theory about teaching and learning (Mills, 2003). This lack of representation is understandable, considering teachers lead hectic professional lives that require their full time and energy, leaving little time or incentive to write. Furthermore, teachers who do make the time to write have difficulty finding forms and forums to publish and present their work. Often their research does not take forms familiar to conference planners and journal editors, many of which are based in an experimental research tradition (Fleischer, 1994). Yet, teachers have published their research, both in journals and books, and this work has had tremendous influence on the teaching community, some transforming the profession in important ways (Hubbard & Power, 1999). Classroom teachers such as Nancy Atwell, Bobbi Fisher, Karen Gallas, Linda Christensen, Vivian Paley, and many more have authored seminal works of rich classroom descriptions and theoretical reflections. …
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