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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the ways in which attention to programmatic vision and coherence – rather than foci on individual courses – might advance the work of justice-oriented, critical English education in important ways. The authors propose that consciously attending to the work of English education on the programmatic level can better enable English educators to cultivate democracy-sustaining dispositions in preservice teachers. Using Grossman et al.’s (2008) definition of “programmatic coherence”, the authors illustrate how one interdepartmental partnership is working to create a shared programmatic vision for English education.

Drawing on Cornel West’s call for the development of a three-piece democratic armor – Socratic questioning, prophetic witness and tragicomic hope – the authors describe their programmatic vision for cultivating democracy-sustaining dispositions in preservice teachers. They show how this shared vision constitutes the foundation for the organization, purpose and sequence of the four-semester cohort program. Finally, the authors describe how this vision helps facilitate meaningful and purposeful symbiosis between field experiences and university coursework.

In an effort to promote replicability regarding programmatic coherence, the authors share structural aspects of their program as well as pose generative questions for colleagues who are interested in approaching the work of critical, democratic English education from the programmatic level.

Addressing the challenges of teacher preparation – especially in this polarized and pitched historical moment – requires shifting the focus from individual courses to a more expansive view that might enable English educators to consider how courses within a program might collectively advance a particular vision of critical and democratic English education.

This chapter presents the results of the collective experience of two professors and three students in implementing WebQuests in a preservice English education component. The first part of the chapter provided a definition of WebQuests, situating this particular proposal within the literature on second language education and the Colombian and Latin American contexts. The authors found that the paucity of studies on designing WebQuests, specifically in Latin America, became one of the strengths of their work. The next section situated how implementing WebQuests in this preservice program enabled an expansion of the actual conceptual framework that is currently in place for WebQuests by adding ideas about competences and socio-cultural and critical thinking theories. However, there is an explanation about how WebQuests became a very feasible alternative to respond to the curricular demands of their institution. Next, the authors shared a multi-vocal account, from every author's vantage point, of how they carried out their work with WebQuests. This implementation process generated a series of changes in the way students saw themselves as learners and future teachers, gaining more ownership of the idea of WebQuests beyond a semester assignment. The instructors, as the result of their work, are now thinking of better ways to redefine how they use WebQuests and how they will get their other cohorts involved in collaborative academic efforts. This chapter is, then, not only an account of an experience, but an invitation to think about how to expand the boundaries of preservice teacher education through technological mediation.

Preservice English teachers are expected to use literary theories and criticism to read and respond to literary texts. Over the past century, two of the most common approaches to literary encounters in secondary schools have been New Criticism – particularly the practice of close reading – and Rosenblatt's transactional theory, both of which have been expanded through critical theorizing along the way. Elucidated by data produced in iterative experiments with Frost's “The Road Not Taken,” the authors reconceptualize the reader, the text, and close reading through the critical posthuman theory of reading with love as a generative way of thinking outside of the habitual practices of European humanisms.

In “thinking with” (Jackson and Mazzei, 2023) desiring-machines, affect, Man and critical posthuman theory, this post qualitative inquiry maps how the “The Road Not Taken” worked when students plugged into it iteratively in processes of reading with love, an affirmative and creative series of experiments with literature.

This study mapped how respect for authority, the battle of good v evil, individualism and meritocracy operated as desiring-machines that channeled most participants’ initial readings of “The Road Not Taken.” In subsequent experiments with the poem, the authors demonstrate that reading with love as a critical posthuman process of reading invites participants to exceed the logics of recognition and representation, add or invent additional ways of being and relating to the world and thereby produce the possibility to transform a world toward greater inclusivity and equity.

The authors reconceptualize the categories of “the reader” and “the text” from Rosenblatt’s transactional theory within practices of reading with love, which they situate within a critical posthuman theory. They eschew separating efferent and aesthetic reading stances while also recuperating practices of “close reading,” historically associated with the New Critics, by demonstrating the generativity of critically valenced “close reading” within a Deleuzian process of reading with love.

English teacher candidates have limited opportunities to examine classroom-based discussions about LGBTQ-themed texts and heteronormativity in teacher education courses. This chapter presents one effort to address this issue using a video-based field experience in the English Methods course that demonstrated a critical unit of instruction about the play, Angels in America. The chapter provides a description of the project and English teacher candidates’ perspectives about what they learned for English educators interested in devising similar projects for their courses.

The purpose of this paper is to examine youth literacy and writing practices in select, contemporary young adult literature (YAL), especially how and why literate activity is sponsored, negotiated or occluded by teachers and schools.

The authors position young adult fiction as case studies of youth composing in and out of school. Drawing on Stake's (1995) features of case study research in education, the authors present readings of Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero and The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy by Kate Hattemer that highlight particular problems and insights about youth literacy practices that are worth extended examination and reflection.

Both novels feature youth engaging in powerful literacy and writing practices across a range of modes to critically read and write their worlds. These particular texts – and other YAL featuring youth composing – offer teacher educators and pre-service teachers opportunities for critical reflection on their evolving stances on literacy instruction; identities as writing and literacy educators; and pedagogies that enable robust literate activity.

In the US educational context, teacher education programs are required to provide pre-service teachers numerous opportunities to observe and participate as teachers in public school classrooms. YAL offers a unique setting of experience that can be productively paired with more traditional field placements to complement pre-service writing teacher education. Reading YAL featuring youth composing can serve as a useful occasion of reflection on pedagogies that limit and/or make possible students’ meaningful engagement with words and the world.

Liliana Alzate-Pérez is a fifth semester student in the Bachelor's in English-Spanish Education (Licenciatura Inglés-Español) at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia. She serves as a Research Assistant at the Research Group on Pedagogies and Didactics of Subject Knowledge (Pedagogías y Didácticas de los Saberes). She has helped with data collection and analysis procedures on two research studies: An exploratory study about teacher education policies in Medellín and a study regarding school violence. She is also a member of the Student Research Group on Second Language (SRG-L2), currently drafting a project about impact of teacher education programs. In addition, she works at a partnership project between UPB and local newspaper El Colombiano for the inclusion of the newspaper as a pedagogical tool. She has also been teaching a biology preparation course for the Colombian ICFES High School standardized test at UPB High School for four years. Her first research presentation was about her study (along with Mr. Gómez-Yepes) on teacher education practices in the new curricular proposal at the Faculty of Education at a research symposium at UPB. Her primary research interest is in the field of teacher education, specifically in the area of teacher education policies. Additional research interests include issues of technology and literacy in the high school setting, working in the inclusion of different educational needs in the curriculum, and the development of creative strategies for teaching improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to explore four Korean teacher learners’ academic experiences in an Australian Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) master’s programme. By investigating the ways they encounter the overseas teacher education programme and how to interact with different meanings, this study reveals Korean teacher learners’ multiple selves and several meaning systems embedded in them. The understandings from the case provide some implications for curriculum internationalisation in higher education as well as TESOL.

Interviews, a focus group discussion and metaphors were used as data, and from these narratives, the participants’ experience was categorised into the programme’s aspects of the methods, contents and applicability, materials and usefulness, assessment criteria and feedback and communication and support. Each interview was undertaken in a library for around one and a half hours. At the end of the interviews, participants were required to produce a metaphor of desirable teacher/lecturer roles. For triangulation, a focus group discussion was conducted for approximately two hours, in which three participants could represent social worlds, evaluate them and establish themselves as members of particular groups. All the questions were semi-structured and about teaching and learning experiences in Korea and Australia and ideas of lecturers’ roles, practices and desirable pedagogy.

From the analysis of the participants’ experiences in these, it was revealed that their identity was tangled with that of the (English) teacher, consumer, (international) student and non-native speaker. The meaning systems of these identities were based on the mixture of the Korean traditional and Western or modern educational values: positive attitude towards communicative language teaching and its contexutalisation, pursuit of practical knowledge and pragmatic ideas, favour for discussions and getting confirmation from authorities and being positioned in the weak and using different communication rules, etc.

From the insights from this case, the lecturers and programme coordinators in intercultural TESOL courses will gain some ideas for a curriculum responsive to international needs. While it cannot be denied that the small scale of the study has limitations for generalisation, this research will be one of the required literatures which examines East Asians or Koreans in Western academic institutions, given that this qualitative study complements the findings of the quantitative studies by specifically disclosing the ways Korean teacher learners’ identity and the meaning systems of desirable pedagogies.

For the curriculum internationalisation in TESOL and several higher education (HE) courses, the lecturers’ and the institutions’ awareness of cultural differences and reducing stereotyping, language support and being explicit about new rules in the new game and communication for support and respectful and professional encounters are essential, alongside the learners’ voluntary endeavour for academic adaptation in their overseas learning.

The effort to understand each other in education is a good start for intercultural communication, that is, curriculum internationalisation in TESOL as well as higher education.

Different from other studies in similar areas, this study discloses the multiple selves/identities and meaning systems of the teacher learners in TESOL, by maximising the benefits of a qualitative study. The understandings from this approach help the researcher draw out practical implications for curriculum internationalisation in TESOL and HE.

This chapter examines how the author, a teacher educator, uses self-study to reframe and reconceptualize her teaching of Emirati preservice teachers. The author describes how conducting self-study helped her shift from using monolingual approaches to teaching Emirati preservice teachers and a focus on improving their English language proficiency, to affirming their bilingual identities, and becoming more culturally responsive. Initially, the researcher posed the question, “how do I frame and reframe my teaching to support the English language learning of my Emirati preservice teachers?” then progressed to asking and answering the question “how can I affirm the bilingual identities of my Emirati preservice teachers and support their English language proficiency?”

A major challenge in teacher education in the United States is how to address the academic and linguistic needs of the growing numbers of emergent bilingual students. A second challenge is how to prepare predominantly White monolingual preservice teachers with little exposure to speakers of languages other than English to educate culturally and linguistically diverse students. With these two challenges in mind, this study examines how a course on literacy, language, and culture grounded in pedagogies of discomfort shifts preservice teachers’ deficit orientations toward emergent bilingual students’ language and literacy resources. Using Ofelia García’s (2009) definition for emergent bilingualism, this mixed-method study was conducted from 2011 to 2013 with 73 preservice teacher participants enrolled at an urban mid-Atlantic university. Quantitative data consisted of pre and post surveys while qualitative data comprised written responses to open-ended statements, self-analyses, and participant interviews. Findings evidence preservice teachers’ endorsement of monolingualism before coursework; however, pedagogies of discomfort during coursework provoke critical reflection leading to significant shifts in preservice teachers’ dispositions toward teaching language diversity in the classroom with implications for teaching emergent bilingual students.

This chapter discusses the findings of a qualitative study conducted on the US–Mexico border to investigate preservice bilingual teachers’ understandings of the effective practices needed to teach content in bilingual classrooms. Specifically, participants’ understandings of teaching language through content to emergent bilinguals and the role of academic language in a content methods course taught in Spanish for preservice bilingual teachers were explored. The results of the study show that preservice bilingual teachers struggled to internalize how to develop language objectives that embed the four language domains as well as the three levels of academic language into their content lessons. Although participants emphasized vocabulary development, they integrated multiple scaffolding strategies to support emergent bilinguals. Moreover, although preservice bilingual teachers struggled with standard Spanish, they used translanguaging to navigate the discourse of education in their content lessons. The use of academic Spanish was also evident in participants’ planning of instruction. The authors contend that bilingual teacher preparation would benefit from the implementation of a dynamic bilingual curriculum that: (a) incorporates sustained opportunities across coursework for preservice bilingual teachers to strengthen their understanding of content teaching and academic language development for emergent bilinguals; (b) values preservice bilingual teachers’ language varieties, develops metalinguistic awareness, and fosters the ability to navigate between language registers for teaching and learning; and (c) values translanguaging as a pedagogical strategy that provides access to content and language development.