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dissertation entitled

MOVING TARGETS: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
OF LITERACY, IDEOLOGY, AND STANDARDS IN ENGLISH
LANGUAGE ARTS TEACHER PREPARATION GUIDELINES

presented by

Leslie David Burns

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

PhD. in Curriculum,
Teaching, and Educational
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MOVING TARGETS:
A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF LITERACY, IDEOLOGY,
AND STANDARDS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS TEACHER PREPARATION
GUIDELINES

By

Leslie David Burns

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF CURRICULUM, TEACHING, AND EDUCATIONAL POLICY
Department of Teacher Education

2005

ABSTRACT
MOVING TARGETS:

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF LITERACY, IDEOLOGY,

AND STANDARDS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS TEACHER PREPARATION
GUIDELINES
By
Leslie David Burns

The following dissertation describes a critical discourse analysis of the
National Council of Teachers of English’s 1996 Guidelines for the Preparation of
Teachers of the English Language Arts. It proceeds from the premise that
literacy has expanded beyond traditional print-based practices to include
Iiteracies related to new technologies, diverse social groups, and social issues
including economic shifts and transformations in work and social discourses.
Meanwhile, the discourse of accountability documents in English education
operates to constrain the integration of new Iiteracies into the traditional
curriculum. By analyzing the Guidelines at multiple levels, the author seeks to
understand how discourse practices related to accountability interact with English
educators’ deployment of knowledge about their field as they design curricula for
preparing new professionals.

The study addresses the following questions: 1) How do the 1996
Guidelines represent English language arts and English teacher education? 2)

What discourses are at play in these representations? and 3) What are the

potential consequences of these representations?

These questions are addressed through literature reviews in the New
Literacy Studies, the history of NCTE and the teaching of English, standards-
based reform in the English language arts, and accountability theory. These
reviews represent the sociocultural and sociopolitical context for the textual
analysis that constitutes the study. Chapter 3 describes the study’s
methodology, including the nature of critical discourse analysis theory and its
function in activist scholarship, the analysis of ideologies, and the creation of
spaces for difference and change in discourse communities. Chapter 4
describes the methods used to select, transcribe, and code data, and also
discusses the analytical process used to develop findings, situating the author as
an English teacher, teacher educator, and researcher who is a member of the
National Council of Teachers of English. Chapter 5 offers a descriptive analysis
of the NCTE Guidelines, discussing the social actors represented in the text.
Chapter 6 describes the use of language in the Guidelines and highlights
patterns in the use of terms central to literacy curricula. Chapter 7 describes the
ways in which the Guidelines’ use of “effective teaching” as a central construct,
its explicit accommodation of the national education accountability movement,
and its deployment of accountability philosophies function ideologically to
produce a framework for English education that is potentially inequitable.
Chapter 8 concludes the study with a discussion of the findings and their
implications for curriculum design and professional activity in both the National
Council of Teachers of English and the field of literacy and English language arts

in general.

Copyright by
LESLIE DAVID BURNS
2005

DEDICATION

To my wife Bobbilynn, my parents Robert and Patricia, my brother Christopher,
my family, and all of the many teachers who helped me along the way. You all

have my thanks, my respect, and my love.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Anyone who claims to have authored a dissertation on his own is a liar. I would
not have been able to accomplish this task without the teaching, support,
friendship, and love of more people than I can name. Thank you to Ernest
Morrell, Susan Florio-Ruane, Lynn Fendler, Ellen Cushman, Steve Koziol, Jim
Porter, Janet Swenson, Patti Stock, Marilyn Wilson, Victoria Purcell-Gates, and
Rand Spiro for their teaching, their friendship, and their belief in my ability to
become a scholar. Special thanks to my dear friend Jenny Denyer, my teacher
and colleague, who has always made mefeel special and worked magically to
help draw out so many exciting ideas while I sat laughing in her rocking chair.
Thank you to Don Moore, Joseph Flynn, Jory Brass, Leah Kirell, Suzanne Knight,
Leigh Hall, Steve Wojcikiewicz, Kevin Basmadjian, and Emily Smith, among so
many others, for their friendship and support. Thank you to the Harper’s Crew
for letting me become a part of such a remarkable discussion about the work we
do. Special thanks to Steve Tuckey and Scofield Hemphill from the Red House
for joining me during one of the most creative periods of my entire life—a release
and an escape without which I don’t think I would have made it through this
experience. Thank you to my father, Robert Burns, who has always been and
will always be the most remarkable man I know, the kind of man I will always
strive to be myself. Thank you and love to my mother Pat. Finally, I want most
of all to thank my wife, Bobbi, who has been with me through so much change.

My greatest joy has been to learn, love, and grow together with you.

vi

PRELUDE:

A True Story

Just before Christmas last year, I had to go to the mechanic and get my
car ready for the annual cross-country Christmas trek to visit my in-laws in
Kansas. Normally, I’m not a very animated person when I go to the mechanic,
because they can smell fear. Any sense you might give to them that you don’t
know a thing about your car can be deadly, so it’s best to clam up. But today, I

was feeling chatty. Maybe it was the Christmas spirit. Or something.

Anyway, I went to the mechanic’s and had a conversation with the guy
who came out to sign me in. There was an ad on the lounge TV selling those
little video game modules that plug right into your television and instantly give
you classic games like Pacman and Space Invaders. The mechanic said he’d
just bought one for his young boy so that he could learn to play video games.
“That might not be the best idea,” he said ruefully, “but oh well. He loves it.”

I laughed and said, “Actually, I do research in literacy, and there’s
evidence to show that teaching your kid to use video games is a really smart
idea. They learn a lot about narrative, logic, and problem solving” (Gee, 2003;
but let’s be clear—I only said the citation inside my own head). “Say what you

want about the thematic content, but kids learn a ton from playing video games.”

vii

At this, another customer put her book down and peered at me with both
annoyance and oondescension. “I'm a teacher," she said. “And I can tell you
that the content of those games leaves an awful lot to be desired.”

“Right,” I replied. “Like I said, the content of the games may not always be
nice, but that doesn’t mean that kids don’t learn useful things from playing them.”

The teacher became visibly agitated, vibrating quietly in her seat. “Kids
still have to learn to read and write, you know. Kids today have to be told that
sometimes they can’t do just whatever it is they want to do whenever they want
to do it. Sometimes they have to be made to learn things that don’t interest
them, you know. They still live in a world of print, and they have to read if they’re
going to get along.”

“I don’t disagree with that at all,” I said. ‘What you’re talking about,
though, is an issue of motivation and engagement, right?” She agreed
skeptically. “It’s not really about whether video games teach useful skills. It’s not
even about whether kids should learn to read. But kids today grow up in a very
different culture from ours, and they think differently." She rolled her eyes and
gave me a look that said you poor, foolish little man, what could you possibly
know about it? “I’m an English teacher, too," I added.

At this revelation, we both began to regard each other with mutual dismay.
l half expected to be led into the Thunderdome for a battle to the death. “They
do NOT grow up in a different culture!” she bit at me. “They grow up in the exact

same culture as we do, and they need to learn how to get by.”

viii

“It IS different for them,” I insisted. “Yes, okay, they are in the same
general culture as we are, but their social contexts and perceptions of that culture
are different from ours, and their Iiteracies are not exactly the same as the ones
we grew up with. They think differently and process differently than we do. They
do still need to learn print literacy, but there are other things happening that they
need to know about too. And I don’t think schools do a very good job of
accounting for those other things.”

I got a classic teacher’s glare out of her for that last bit. “Oh! I don’t agree
with you at all. We’re just going have to agree to disagree. I can’t talk to you
anymore. We have to stop." She pulled her book back into position and began,
pointedly, to READ.

“I guess so,” I shrugged, and somehow the Christmas spirit prevented me from

saying things that would have shocked Scrooge. True story.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PRELUDE: A True Story .................................................................................... vii
LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................. xiv
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................ xvi
CHAPTER 1: Insiders on the Outside Looking In ................................................. 1
Contradictions of Accountability ............................................................................ 4
Accountability, Ideologies, and Professional Discourse ........................................ 9
Purpose, Site of Study, and Significance ............................................................ 12
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW, “Becoming Something Other" ............... 25
New Literacies, Old English, Accountability, and the National Council of Teachers
of English ............................................................................................................ 25
New Literacies .................................................................................................... 29
Expanding “Literacy" ........................................................................................... 31
What Is “New” Literacy? ...................................................................................... 34
New Literacy in the English Language Arts ........................................................ 39
Generation Gaps, Literacy, and English ............................................................. 43
The Teaching of English and the National Council of Teachers of English: A Brief
History ................................................................................................................. 46
Standards and Standardization in English and Education .................................. 69
A Framework for Accountability .......................................................................... 79
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY, Critical Discourse Analysis as Theory and

Method in Literacy Research .............................................................................. 87
Why Critical Discourse Analysis in Literacy Research? ...................................... 87
Critical Discourse Analysis: An Introduction ........................................................ 88
Ideology in Discourse .......................................................................................... 92
CDA as Method ................................................................................................... 95
CDA as a Policy Tool ........................................................................................ 101
CHAPTER 4: METHOD, Data Selection, Coding, Procedures, and Framing 104
Data Selection ................................................................................................... 106
Data Analysis .................................................................................................... 1 12
Positionality and Advocacy in Critical Discourse Analysis ................................ 118
Limitations ......................................................................................................... 121

CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS, PART ONE, Social Actors in the NCTE Guidelines .126

Big Backyard ..................................................................................................... 126
Friendly Fire ...................................................................................................... 129
What do the Guidelines Say? ........................................................................... 130
Underlying Principles For Teacher Preparation: ........................................ 131
Guidelines for the Preparation of English Teachers ................................... 132

Who is in the Guidelines? ................................................................................. 136

Teachers in the Guidelines ............................................................................... 136
Students in the Guidelines ................................................................................ 145
The Standing Committee in the Guidelines ....................................................... 150
Other Social Actors in the Guidelines ............................................................... 154
Teacher educators, teacher education programs, NCTE, professional
organizations, and the English language arts as “the profession.” ............. 154
Learning groups and literacy communities ................................................. 155
Ethnic groups, people of color and “others.” .............................................. 157
Critics ......................................................................................................... 157
Peers, parents, families, and community. .................................................. 158
Researchers and theorists. ........................................................................ 159
Readers and writers ................................................................................... 162
Summary .......................................................................................................... 163
CHAPTER 6: FINDINGS, PART TWO, Words, Words, Words, and Things ..... 166
The English Language Arts as a "Discipline" .................................................... 166
Integration and Holism in ELA Curriculum ........................................................ 172
The Nature of Discourse and Literacy ............................................................... 174
The Representation of “Critical” Activity and the Use of “Diversity" ................... 178
The Centrality of Literature in the Guidelines .................................................... 185
The Discourse of Appropriateness in the Guidelines ........................................ 193
Summary .......................................................................................................... 197

CHAPTER 7: FINDINGS, PART THREE, Ideological Relations: The Effective
Teacher, Accommodating Accountability, and the Technological Trumps of the

NCTE Guidelines .............................................................................................. 199
The Concept of the "Effective" Teacher ............................................................ 202
Interactions Between Ethical Liberalism and Technological Liberalism ............ 206
Five Moves: The Fabrication of Consensus for Accountability in the Guidelines
.......................................................................................................................... 217
Move 1: Excising research and theory from the Guidelines ................... 217
Move 2: Privileging the mainstream ....................................................... 224
Move 3: “Reform” by curriculum addition. .............................................. 225
Move 4: Excising activism from the Guidelines ...................................... 229
Move 5: Fabricating consensus in the NCTE Guidelines ....................... 231
Summary .......................................................................................................... 235

CHAPTER 8: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS, Moving Targets, Making
Space, and Attending to Discourse in Literacy Teacher Education, Curriculum,

and Policy ......................................................................................................... 238
Curriculum and the National Council’s Guidelines ............................................ 245
New Literacies and the NCTE Guidelines ......................................................... 248
Implications for English Language Arts Teacher Education .............................. 256
Implications for Political Activity in NCTE, ELA, and Literacy ........................... 260
NCTE and “Literacy” ......................................................................................... 265

xi

Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 267

Further research. ....................................................................................... 268
Moving targets. .......................................................................................... 270
APPENDICES ................................................................................................... 273
Appendix A ....................................................................................................... 273
Appendix B ....................................................................................................... 277
REFERENCES ................................................................................................. 296

xii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Assumptions About Literacy and Education in Standards-based

AccountabilityRefonn ............................................................................ 10
Table 2: Research-based Statements About Literacy and Education in the Field
of Education Studies ........................................................................................... 11
Table 3: 1996 NCTE Guidelines Chapter List ................................................... 111
Table 4: Data categories, codes, and definitions .............................................. 271
Table 5: Groups Represented in the NCTE Guidelines .................................... 135
Table 6: English Language Arts as an Academic Discipline ............................ 275
Table 7A: Holistic, Integrated, and/or Interconnected ELA Content ................. 277
Table 7B: Holistic, Integrated, and/or Interconnected Assessment .................. 279
Table 7C: Holistic, Integrated, and/or Interconnected Teaching ....................... 279
Table 8: A Discourse About Literacy: ............................................................... 279
Table 9: A Discourse About “Discourse” .......................................................... 281
Table 10: A “Critical” Discourse ....................................................................... 283
Table 11: A Discourse About Diversity ............................................................. 285
Table 12A: A Discourse of “Appropriateness” ................................................... 286
Table 12B: Appropriate Teaching and Instruction ............................................. 287
Table 12C: Appropriate Knowledge .................................................................. 287
Table 120: Appropriate Worldview ................................................................... 288
Table 12E: Appropriate Reading ....................................................................... 288
Table 12F: Appropriate Assessment ................................................................. 288

xiv

Table 13: Equivalents of Appropriateness/lnappropriateness, binary discourses:

academic/non-academic, formal/informal, standard/non-standard ................... 289
Table 14A: A Discourse of “Effectiveness”: Effective Teaching: ...................... 291
Table 148: Effective Language ......................................................................... 292
Table 14C: Effective Teacher Education Programs .......................................... 293
Table 140: Effective Professions ...................................................................... 293
Table 14E: Effective Instruction and Methods ................................................... 293

XV

 

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Kuchapski's Accountability Framework ............................................... 85

Figure 2: Fairclough’s Analytic Triad for Critical Discourse Analysis .................. 96

xvi

CHAPTER 1:

Insiders on the Outside Looking In

We think that the schools belong to the people, not the teachers, not the professors. So frankly,
we’ve never been concerned about what professors think. They fought us vigorously in the
beginning on testing. They fought us on all variety of things. And so we invited them out of the
meetings. We don't even talk to them (Shepley, 2002, p. 19, cited in Wixon, Dutro, & Athan,
2004, p. 94).

As the statement above indicates, teachers and teacher educators are
being marginalized in state and national conversations about school curriculum,
standardized testing, and accountability that will be used to determine and
govern their own work. They are insiders on the outside looking in. At the same
time, a prominent theme in national standards texts for teacher preparation,
certification, and professional development is that teachers are active agents of
change and reform, and that teachers are decision-makers whose job it is to
develop, translate, and deliver curriculum (National Council of Teachers of
English, 19963; National Council for Teaching and America’s Future, 1996;
Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, 1992; National
Board for Professional Teaching Standards, 1996). In these texts (often created
by professional teachers rather than private citizens and elected policy makers),
teachers are often characterized as “reflective” practitioners and “critical"
thinkers—“professionals” who undertake a process of “lifelong Ieaming” in order
to perform their jobs well and meet the needs of children in the communities
where they teach. Accepting such premises, it seems strange that politicians
and private citizens, who for the most part do not have expertise or experience in

teaching or education in general, largely determine curriculum policy at the state

and national levels while purposefully excluding the expertise and input of
teachers and teacher educators. While educators may be involved in developing
drafts for policy texts, they have little control over the final content used to govern
their daily practices.

This state of affairs has affected curriculum and policy in the English
language arts as well as other school subject fields. As an English teacher and a
teacher educator with over a decade of active participation in the field, I am
comfortable making the claim that, if there must be accountability measures for
the teaching of English, then English educators at all levels should be involved in
their construction at every stage, including final approval, publication, and
amendment of such texts for use in governing teachers’ professional activities. I
am further comfortable making the claim that no one knows more about the
teaching and Ieaming of English language arts than English language arts
teachers, a group that includes classroom teachers, literacy educators and
researchers, and English language arts teacher educators and researchers from
levels K-16. From such a perspective, it seems logical that English teachers
ought to participate in determining how to account for their own work. However,
in addition to asking who ought to set standards and how we ought to implement
them, or even asking whether we ought to create standards for the teaching of
“English language arts,” there are more fundamental questions that literacy and
English language arts educators, policy makers, and their constituents should
ask. Before asking 'Which standards?” or “How can we implement standards?” it

is important to understand the nature of literacy, the nature of our professional

discourses, and also to understand how such a thing as standards-based
accountability reform might interact with those discourses and literacy curriculum
design.

In addition to formulating sound rationales for how and why institutions,
teachers, and learners should be accountable, educators need to develop an
understanding of how standards-based reform impacts curricular content,
pedagogical practices, and the discursive structures operating in the field of
literacy. In the fields of literacy and English language arts education, educators
should ask what the consequences of any accountability system might be for the
work they do.

One of the motivating factors behind this dissertation study is the swell of
“accountability" measures that have developed over the last twenty years in the
field of education. For professionals involved with literacy and language arts
education in public schooling, teacher education, and educational research,
standards have become ubiquitous; they have become the dominant texts at
multiple levels in the field. Standards exist for subject matter content,
achievement expectations, and instruction across K-12 levels, departmental
curriculum and assessment in public schools and higher education, school- and
program-level assessment and outcomes for teaching and teacher education,
and so on. According to Robert Linn (2003), we live in a new era of
accountability. It is an era in which literacy and language arts teachers and

teacher educators are expected to implement standards for the instruction and

assessment of their own students while they also submit themselves to
standards that govern the work of teaching and teacher education.

On the surface, such accounting may seem necessary and reasonable.
Who would argue against the assertion that we should make sure that children in
public schools are Ieaming, and that their teachers are working to systematically
improve their instruction and meet the needs of all children? Still, at the same
time as educators are being held accountable for standards-based reform
measures, it is not always clear that those standards are equitable, and
professional English educators and classroom teachers have had only a limited
role in the construction and design of standards and policies that specify the
content and the processes involved with teaching, especially at the highest levels
of state and national educational policy (Wixon, Dutro, and Athan, 2004).
Further, standards-based accountability reform has generated a genre of policy
texts that demands a focus on discrete criteria, objective assessment, and
absolute measures for both process and product that inhibit the representation of
subject-matter teaching and Ieaming as complex, multifaceted, and non-linear
domains in spite of increasing evidence about the social and complex nature of
teaching and Ieaming (Cole, 1996; Lee & Smagorinsky, 2000; Lave & Wenger,
1991; Wixom, Dutro, & Athan, 2004; Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, and Anderson,
1988).

Contradictions of Accountability

In fact, it is possible to argue that standards-based accountability

frequently runs counter to and even undermines well-established knowledge
about the nature of literacy, teaching, and Ieaming. Based on my own analysis,
standards-based reform for literacy and the English language arts tends to
operate based on the assumptions listed below. Such assumptions are
necessary in order to make accountability a uniform and efficient practice that
can be generalized across contexts. The assumptions are as follows:
a) There is a clear consensus about the purposes of schooling and literacy.
b) The most significant purpose of school is the acquisition of academic
knowledge and skills.
c) Public school subjects like “English” are equivalent to their disciplinary
namesakes at the university academic level.
d) Learning happens in a linear and predictable fashion.
e) Learning can be easily measured using objective and standardized tests.
f) What is taught in a classroom should be equivalent to what students team.
9) Literacy is an autonomous and simple technology, and Formal Standard
English is a politically neutral language system that serves all students’
needs equally.
h) There are identifiable “best” practices that apply to teaching all students, in
all contexts, at all times.
i) Schools are equitable social institutions.
j) Teachers have access to the power they need in order to challenge,

resist, and change inequitable conditions.

Although these assumptions are often the foundation of literacy
accountability frameworks, these assumptions are demonstrably false if we
weigh them against existing research and scholarship in the field of education
studies. There is a significant body of literature that has involved research and
critique of the above assumptions dating back to the work of John Dewey in the
early 20th century (1904/1965). Related in particular to the areas of English,
literacy, and English education, it is possible to state the following counterpoints:

a) Consensus about the purpose of schooling is unlikely (Apple, 1990).

b) Schools teach much more than just academic knowledge; they also use
academic activities to govern student behavior (Popkewitz, 1998, 2002).

c) The content of school subjects is not always equivalent to the disciplinary
knowledge and structures of their university academic namesakes. (For
example, public school “English language arts” is not equivalent to
university-level “English.”) (Popkewitz, 1998, 2002).

d) Learning does not always occur in a linear or predictable fashion
(Smagorinsky, Cook and Johnson, 2003).

e) Assessment of student literacy achievement requires multiple formal and
informal measures of individual’s performance in context (Routman, 2005,
Doman, Rosen, and Wilson, 1997)

f) What is overtly taught in a classroom in a given year is unlikely to be
equivalent to what students learn (Smagorinsky et al., 2003; Lave and
Wenger, 1991)

9) Literacy is neither politically neutral nor a simple matter of coding and

decoding letters on a page (Street, 1984). Further, English is a complex

language that changes constantly and includes a number of legitimate

dialect variations (Conference on College Composition and

Communication, 1974). Further still, schools frequently emphasize and

institutionalize the language of middle/upper class white English as

“formal” and “standard,” mainstream, dominant, and neutral (Delpit, 1988).

h) Increasing diversity in US classrooms contradicts the notion of “best”

practices for all students (Peterson & Bainbridge, 2002).

i) Schools are not always equitable places (Anyon, 1981, 1997; Oakes,

1986a,1986b)

j) Teachers are only one factor among many that must be considered in

education reform. (Cuban, 1993; Tyack & Cuban, 1995)

These two sets of assumptions and counter claims are represented in

Tables 1 and 2 below. A comparison of the two raises this question: If we know

these things about literacy education and accountability reform, why are we

rushing to standardize educational goals and practices in ways that don’t fit our

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

knowledge?

L A EL i 5..
Consensus Academics School Learning is a Learning is
exists about are the most knowledge linear and easily
purposes of significant = predictable measured
school and purpose of Academic process

literacy school knowledge

 

Table 1: Assumptions About Literacy and Education in Standards-based
Accountability Reform

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.6.- L Q.- i 1_0-
Teaching Literacy is There are Schools are Teachers
= simple, and “best” equitable have power to
standard practices social change
Learning English is institutions schools and
sociopolitically Education
neutral
Table 1 (cont’d)
L A i 5.. i
Consensus Schools teach School Learning is Assessment
about the more than knowledge not always of student
purposes of academics, is not linear or Ieaming
school and and use equivalent to predictable requires
literacy is academics to academic/ multiple
unlikely control disciplinary formal and
behavior knowledge informal
measures of
individual’s
performance
in context
9. L i i 1_0-
Literacy is not Increased Schools are Teachers are
Teaching neutral or diversity in not always only one
does "OI simple; schools equitable factor among
equal learning English is a contradicts social many in
complex and the existence institutions education
dynamic of “best” reform
language; practices
academic
contexts of
school
privilege white
middle -class
English

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2: Research-based Statements About Literacy and Education in the
Field of Education Studies

In part, the rush to standardization can be attributed to the fact that many

proponents of standardization (for example, politicians, school board members,

 

 

business leaders, parents, etc.) do not read research literature produced in the
field of education studies closely or directly, and therefore many of those in
invested in educational reform may not be aware of problematic assumptions,
understandings, or beliefs they might hold about how education and literacy
work. Still another reason may be that proponents of standards-based reform
have political agendas and operate from ideological positions that involve a
purposeful ignorance or even denial of the existing systematic research and
knowledge. As the quotation at the beginning of this chapter reveals, literacy
education outsiders may often purposely and completely disregard the input of
teachers and university professionals while developing accountability policies

that directly influence the ability of such educators to perform their functions.

Accountability, Ideologies, and Professional Discourse

In a recent article, Delandshere and Petrosky (2004) argued that the issue
of standards-based accountability reform is ideological; that is, the current rush to
standardization reflects a dominant set of perspectives that have become
common sense at the policy level but that are incompatible with existing
knowledge at the level of professional practice. In addition to the fact that
standards have been imposed largely as the result of outside pressure on
educational institutions (even when educators participate in the process),
education insiders have tended to submit to the process and ask questions like
"What standards should we use?” and “How will we implement them?” when they

perhaps should have asked “Who decides which standards are accurate and

helpful?”, “Who benefits from different kinds of standards?”, and “What are the
consequences of implementing standards?”

Recent history complicates these questions for educators who want to
participate in debates about literacy education and accountability. In the early
19903, English and literacy educators leading the National Council of Teachers
of English and the lntemational Reading Association were charged by the federal
government to create standards for content in the language arts. In agreeing to
participate, NCTE and IRA produced a set of standards that attempted to
represent the complexity of language arts and literacy Ieaming. The document
they produced was a compromise between the task of standardizing a dynamic
subject and accommodating the desires of policy makers for an easy means of
accountability. The government rejected the NCTE/IRA (1996b) standards
because they were “too vague”—meaning too hard to assess with objective
testing—and ultimately cut both NCTE and IRA out of curriculum and standards

discussions (Wixon, Dutro, and Athan, 2004).

The 1996 NCTE/IRA standards were published, but not formally adopted
or sanctioned for use in state or national education policy, even though local
institutional programs may choose to use them as an aid in curriculum design.
This is the situation we find ourselves in today. As one member of the NCTE
Standing Committee on Teacher Preparation noted at their 2003 annual
convention, NCTE will be powerless in national accountability conversations
unless and until it begins to speak using discourses that lead to a standardized,

quantifiable, and easily testable curriculum for all students.

10

In addition to being excluded from state and federal policy discussions,
NCTE has also developed a complicated relationship with the National Council
for the Accreditation of Teacher Education—the nation’s largest accrediting body
for teacher education programs. In collaboration with NCATE, the NCTE
developed performance standards that will be used for the accounting of
university programs of English Education (NCTE/NCATE, 2003). Schools are
asked to review NCTE’s Guidelines as a prerequisite for accreditation review,
making the voluntary “guidelines” function as de facto standards—an application
of the Guidelines that runs counter to what Vinz (1997) notes was the particular
strength of labeling the policies as “guidelines.” NCTE has been distinctly
uncomfortable about its relationship with NCATE, because its experience has led
to the appropriation of professionally designed performance standards instead of
a collaborative relationship with accrediting bodies. Given NCATE’s relationships
with for-profit organizations such as the Educational Testing Service, NCTE may
be right to feel uncomfortable. They have had their work co-opted in the interest
of practices that take authority for the governance of English education out of
their hands and place it in the hands of those seeking to profit from the
standardized testing movement.

The complicated inter-relation of assumptions for accountability reform
and scholarship about the nature of literacy and English education raises a
number of important questions about the discursive functions of a text like the
1996 NCTE Guidelines. First, how do professional guidelines for English

language arts teacher preparation represent the English language arts, literacy.

11

and teacher education? Second, what are the consequences of these
representations given developing knowledge about literacy and education in the
21St century? And third, how might English teachers and teacher educators
manage their discursive practices in ways that increase their ability to achieve
goals and support equitable practices in public contexts, while accommodating
the perceived need for accountability measures?

These questions are all important to answer if professional teaching
organizations like NCTE intend to gain access to and influence in discussions
about educational policy at the state and national levels. As of now, our largest
and most powerful professional teaching organizations are not participants in the
reform movement as a result of conflicting ideological positions. Instead, their

fate is being determined by others.

Purpose, Site of Study, and Significance

What follows is a critical analysis of the National Council of Teachers of
English’s teacher education policies and their implications for curricula in both
teacher education and K-12 schooling. This study is undertaken with the
assumption that any satisfactory and effective reform of English language arts,
teacher education, or of literacy education in the United States ought to include
and in fact be led by those professionals who will deliver and administer the
instruction—those who create, deveIOp, and refine the knowledge of the field:
English teachers at the K-12 levels, literacy teachers, teacher educators, and

researchers in university contexts. Without these groups’ participation, no reform

12

is likely to be adequate, accurate, or sustainable. As such, these groups
constitute the primary audiences for this work, particularly teacher educators
interested in curriculum design and both literacy and English language arts
teachers who are interested in an alternative conception of their subject areas
that may help increase their professional agency.

A study such as this one is significant because the discourses of
accountability used at the national and state levels appear to increasingly restrict
what counts as “English” in our schools, what counts as “literacY’ in our lives, and
what counts as good teaching in our classrooms. By examining a set of
standards designed and written by English language arts teachers and teacher
educators in a context of standardization, it may be possible to demonstrate how
insider discourses of English and literacy education are interacting with outsider
discourses of accountability so that educators can begin the work of controlling
and shaping both professional and public discourses about the work they do.

In order to understand the kinds of interaction described above, this study
examines the National Council of Teachers of English’s work around standards,
guidelines, and curriculum development for the preparation of English teachers.
Secondary English language arts constitutes one of the major sites of literacy
and language instruction in K-12 education, and its roles in the culmination of K-
12 education and the transition to higher education make it a key site for
research on educational reform. As producers of the teachers who work in
secondary contexts, it is important and worthwhile to study the policies that help

govern English language arts teacher education programs. Moreover, NCTE’s

13

1996 Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of the English Language Arts is
a text created by a committee whose members included an exclusive
combination of university English teacher educators and English language arts
classroom teachers. By examining standards for English teacher preparation
developed by a committee of professional insiders, this study seeks to
understand how discourses and curricula in English education might affect or be
affected by discourses related to literacy, language arts, and accountability policy
in the larger sociopolitical context of literacy education and reform.

The purpose of this study is not to argue that standards are the
boogeyman, waiting in the dark beneath our collective bed with tentacles
uncoiling to clutch our legs and drag us off to Reform Hell. Instead, the intention
is to create a space for critical discourse around the problem of standardization
for literacy and English teacher preparation programs, and thereby open the way
to changing, broadening, and balancing our professional discourses and our
engagement in the processes of reform. This study is based on the belief that
guidelines and standards for literacy teaching have far-reaching effects on the
order of discourse in English education (Fairclough, 1995); that is, standards,
guidelines, and other policy texts function to legitimize certain ways of talking,
thinking, and acting as professional teachers. Given that standards and policy
are often presented as neutral products of consensus about what is “best,” they
are extremely powerful, frequently exclusive, and often subtle in the ways they

shape thought, values, and behavior.

14

The following describes the plan and rationale for a critical discourse
analysis (Fairclough, 1995) of the National Council of Teachers of English’s
Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of the English Language Arts (1996a)
and the ways that text represents discourses of English language arts and
English education. Critical discourse analysis, which I will discuss in Chapter 4,
involves textual analysis designed to uncover ideologies in social groups, using a
blend of neomarxist and poststructural concepts of discourse. The central
questions of this study are:

1. How do the 1996 NCTE Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of the
English Language Arts represent discourses of English language arts and
English teacher education?

3. Which topics and themes are included in NCTE’s vision for
curriculum and instruction, and which are excluded?

b. What rationales are used to justify these representations?

0. Who is represented in this policy text, and who is not?

d. How are people, groups, and practices represented, and with what
effects?

2. What discursive processes operate in NCTE’s Guidelines as a policy text?

a. What beliefs, values, activities, and ways of knowing are included in
and excluded by these guidelines?
b. Who is advantaged and disadvantaged by that text’s inclusions/

exclusions?

15

c. How do discursive processes related to the NCTE Guidelines affect
power relations in literacy, English language arts, and English
teacher education contexts?

3. What are the potential consequences of the NCTE Guidelines’
representation of literacy, English language arts, and English teacher
education curricula in light of A) continuing research and developing
knowledge in The New Literacy Studies (Street, 1984), English language
arts, and teacher education, and B) national accountability movements
related to literacy, teacher training, and student achievement?

a. What is the relationship, if any, between discourses of
accountability and discourses in the 1996 NCTE Guidelines?

b. How do the processes and structures involved with accountability, if
present in the Guidelines, affect literacy and English educators’
discourses?

4. What alternatives, if any, exist that might aid in the formation of effective,
inclusive, and relevant curriculum and policy for literacy and English
language arts education?

a. What altematives and considerations should be involved around

discussions of accountability in English education?

I begin addressing these questions in Chapter 2 by synthesizing reviews of the

literature in four areas:

1. The New Literacy Studies

16

2. The history of NCTE and the teaching of English

3. Standards-based reform in the English language arts

4. Ethical and technological liberal frames for accountability
This review (Chapter 2) focuses primarily on scholarship about the changing
nature of literacy in the 20th and 21St centuries from the perspective of the New
Literacy Studies (Street, 1993; New London Group, 2000; Lankshear & Knoble,
2003; Gee, 1996), the history of English as a school subject and the
development of the National Council of Teachers of English, and an analysis of
accountability theory (Kuchapski, 2002). The purpose of these reviews is to
represent the sociocultural and sociopolitical context for the textual analysis that
constitutes the main focus of this study. Following Chapter 2, I use Chapter 3 to
discuss the methodology of this dissertation study, including the nature of critical
discourse analysis theory and its function in activist scholarship, the analysis of
ideologies, the creation of spaces for difference, and the development of counter-
hegemonies. In Chapter 4, I discuss the methods used to complete this research
project, including a re-statement of the research questions, a description of data
selection, transcription, and coding processes, and a discussion of the analysis
used to develop findings. To close Chapter 4, I discuss my framing of this study
and my situated position as an English teacher, English teacher educator, and
literacy researcher who is a member of the National Council of Teachers of
English. Chapter 5 offers a descriptive analysis of the 1996 NCTE Guidelines,
followed by discussions of the social actors represented in the text. Chapter 6

traces the use of language in the Guidelines and highlights patterns in the use of

17

terms central to literacy curricula, while Chapter 7 illustrates the ways in which
the Guidelines’ use of “the effective teacher” as a central construct, its explicit
intention to accommodate the discursive requirements of the national
accountability movement, and its deployment of technological and ethical liberal
philosophies function ideologically to produce a potentially inequitable framework
for teaching literacy. The study concludes in Chapter 8 with a discussion of the
findings from Chapters 5, 6, and 7, and traces their implications for curriculum
design and professional activity in both the National Council of Teachers of
English and the field of literacy and English language arts in general.
Throughout this study, I will refer to English teacher educators and English
language arts teachers in a variety of ways. Across elementary, middle, and
secondary school contexts, I consider all English language arts teachers to be
teachers of literacy; that is, this group of teachers may be considered as the
primary group that has traditionally been viewed as responsible for teaching
children about language, reading, writing, speaking, and so on. Because of this,
I frequently refer to English language arts teachers as “literacy teachers.” In
addition, readers may notice that I use the following terms interchangeably:
“teacher,” “English teacher,” “language arts teacher,” and “language arts
educator.” At the level of teacher education, I also use the following additional
terms interchangeably: “teacher educator,” “English educator,” and “language
arts teacher educator.” Finally, I occasionally refer to all of these categorizations
collectively as “literacy educators” and/or “educators." Others in the field make

distinctions among these various labels, for example labeling elementary

18

teachers as “reading teachers," middle-level teachers as “language arts
teachers,” and secondary teachers as “English teachers.” I also acknowledge
that teachers across all subject areas ought to consider themselves teachers of
literacy; that is, reading and writing occur in all school subjects, and as such all
teachers should consider themselves teachers of reading and writing. However,
in the context of this discussion and this study of English language arts teacher
preparation guidelines, I do not find such distinctions useful. Instead, my use of
these various labels is frequently simply an issue of style, and where necessary I
have attempted to provide context in order to clarify when my use of a term is

dependent on teaching level or context.

********

Right now, there are changes afoot in the field of literacy, and the
implications of these changes for language arts curricula are important for
literacy educators to consider—especially if they are involved with the
preparation of teachers. New knowledge about the nature of literacy and the
literate activities of young people is emerging at a time when school
accountability movements are working feverishly to narrow and assess
curriculum, pedagogy, and student Ieaming in literacy. In addition to this set of
conflicts, the idea that young people today think, read, and communicate
differently from their parents often meets with hostility and cries for the protection

of traditional print skills and activities that older generations value.

19

To illustrate the flavor of these cries further, Dana Joya, president of the
National Endowment for the Arts, recently toured the country with a Chicken Little
routine about “the reading crisis” in the United States (The Diane Rehm Show,
National Public Radio, 9/7/2004). Specifically, Joya used national data on
declining rates of literary (print) reading to argue that Americans were consuming
(and therefore producing) less art. Additionally, Joya connected declines in print
reading to declines in “civic participation.” Essentially, Joya argued that low
democratic participation is a function of low literacy. Claiming that reading
literature provides individuals with “pleasure, consolation, and wisdom,” Joya
made a number of implicitly disparaging remarks about the proliferation of video
games, television, the lntemet, and other digital/electronic media. In his high
culture/low culture rhetoric, digital media were represented as “entertainment,”
“distractions,” and “passive activities” in opposition to the “active,” “pleasurable,”
and intellectuaIIy/ethically/civically superior qualities of reading printed
“literature.” This is not a new argument, but it is one that is increasingly troubling

and problematic in deliberations about literacy curriculum and instruction.

Over the last 20 years, a growing number of researchers, theorists, and
cultural commentators have begun to remark on and study literacy activities
beyond the realm of traditional print. Many of these inquiries are particularly tied
to technological advancements in computers and digital media, while other
activities have been described in the realm of “popular culture” (Alvermann,
2002; New London Group, 2000; Fiske, 1989). One example currently gaining

prominence in literacy studies is the function of video games in the cognitive and

20

social activities of young people as they acquire literacy (Cole, 1996; Gee, 2003);
where, it anywhere, do video games fit in the scheme of “literacy" education?
While Joya and my teacher friend at the mechanic’s garage, for example,
acknowledge that video games are popular and widely used by young people,
they argue that the form and function of those games makes them inappropriate
for school Ieaming and inferior to the “active reading” of printed literary texts,
even though video games today often involve complex narrative lines, require the
active participation of the user (or “reader”), and feature their own elements of
“style” and “grammar" that convey sophisticated semiotic messages. Joya’s
commentary underscores a rift between “high” and “low" culture when it comes to
literacy instruction in schools, and the beliefs of the teacher I encountered at my
mechanic’s garage illustrate how a traditional approach to literacy reinforces
Joya’s artificial split. New literacy practices appear to be rejected on the grounds

of everything from academic rigor to aesthetics to morality.

This divide between “old” knowledge and “new” knowledge about literacy
is important, not least because of its implication of differing ideological systems
competing in our education system and particularly in terms of how people
conceive of “literacy.” Still, it is very important to stress that even students who
may be classified as members of what Tapscott (1997) has called the “Net
Generation” still engage in a wide range of print-based reading and writing
activities. Web-pages contain large amounts of print, and video games may

utilize print extensively, too.

21

Although literacy is clearly expanding as a domain, it might be more
appropriate to say that literacy is becoming a multi-layered domain. Literacy still
requires the teaching of alphabetic coding and decoding skills; however, these
skills are no longer always sufficient by themselves. Moreover, if we seek to help
students acquire print literacy skills, it will be necessary for teachers to
understand how students today engage print differently than is traditionally
conceived. In order to make the teaching and Ieaming of print literacy relevant to
students in the Net Generation, it will be necessary to fold the academic use of
print into a pedagogy of multiliteracies that provides today’s students with a more
authentic spaces in which such skills will be seen as important to their interests
and literate activities in everyday life. The printed book may longer be able to
stand as the center of literacy curricula. But that doesn’t mean that print literacy
is no longer important for us to teach in schools, or that children should no longer

learn to read novels, for example.

In addition to the important recognition that print literacy is most certainly
still relevant to literacy education, it is also necessary to point out that the current
shifts we are experiencing in our society’s literate practices and technologies do
not constitute a particularly “new” phenomenon. This is not the first time that the
world has experienced a literacy “revolution." The current generation is not the
first to witness an advancing technology as it actively transformed what it means
to be literate. Literacies are always new and changing, and they are always
defined in terms of the requirements for using the latest communications

technologies. As Morrell (E. Morrell, personal communication, July 2, 2005) has

22

commented, “It is important to contextualize our literacy revolution within a

history of literacy revolutions.”

But today, young people really do read fewer printed texts than they ever
did before. They really do spend more time playing video games, surfing the
lntemet, and instant messaging their friends. They really do have attention
spans that are tuned for the rapid consumption of modern media rather than
traditional print texts. Their activities constitute a real and significantly different
literacy environment. Schools, and specifically literacy curricula, need to be
adjusted so that they teach the relevant skills that young people need to navigate
these new literacy environments. At the same time, our societYs
communications systems really are still dominated by and founded on print
literacy. And, in the current context of school accountability and standards,
teachers are being held directly responsible for making sure that curricula focus
on the basic instruction of print literacy skills.

One of the maxims of school teaching is that people tend to teach as they
were taught (Lortie, 1975; Grossman, 1990; Marshall, Smith, & Schaafsma,
1997; Cuban, 1993; Jackson, 1968). In a limited way this makes sense. It
makes some sense to believe that children today need to learn the skills for
literate practices that dominate the current social context of the parents’
generation. However, there is a danger in taking this position that the concept of
literacy will become frozen and monolithic. Recent scholarship demonstrates

how literacy is diverse and fluid in concept and function, and points out the

23

dangers of assuming that A) literacy Ieaming is universal and sequential and B)
our children experience the same literate world as we perceive ourselves.

In spite of these dangers, current language arts curricula and teaching
guidelines are based on the belief that print literacy is the central goal of English
as a school subject, and that achievement of literacy should be measured using
large scale standardized assessments. Given that this is the case, a number of
complicated challenges are arising in the field of English education. What do
teachers need to know and do in order to be skillful in teaching children literacy
and the language arts? As today’s young people move more and more towards
new information economies, digital media delivery systems, and new attention
economies that merge print with other semiotic systems, how are traditional
approaches to language arts curricula and assessment relevant to their literate
lives? And, as the actual literacy practices of young people continue to expand
away from traditional print literacy, what are the consequences of current
accountability measures? How, if at all, do accountability measures account for
new knowledge about literacy and Ieaming? Finally, how do the discourses of
accountability interact with attempts to deal with new knowledge about literacy?

To address these kinds of questions, I begin by reviewing a branch of

research that has come to be referred to as the “New Literacy Studies.”

24

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
“Becoming Something Other”:
New Literacies, Old English, Accountability,

and the National Council of Teachers of English

Traditional and new media Iiteracies are intimately connected. It is not as
though print-based Iiteracies suddenly ceased to be relevant. To the contrary,
the cognitive and strategic skills used to decode and encode language in
symbolic systems have continued to be central in “new" literacy practices.
Hypermedia and multimedia texts, like print-only texts, are founded on the same
linguistic and symbolic systems; for example, reading hypermedia texts
composed in English and reading printed novels written in English both require
that the reader is able to decode alphabetic symbols, follow English syntax, and
make meaning from the linguistic units they see on the screen or the page.

It is also important to recognize that many strategies that now dominate
hypermedia texts—nonlinear reading, skipping ahead, re-reading, reading
overlapping texts simultaneously, and so forth—are also used in print-based
reading, especially as elements of metacognitive processes that fluent readers
use to gauge understanding and foster engagement and intertextual meaning
making toward improved comprehension (Pressley, 2002). It is tempting to
overstate the “newness” of New Literacies in modern society, but it is important
to remember that the ongoing literacy revolution does not involve the aggressive

overthrow of “orthodox” reading skills in favor of some new and radically different

25

skill set that then comes to be defined as “literacy" to the exclusion of what has
come before.

But although the literate practices of students in schools today may have
much in common with the practices of their teachers and parents, it is a mistake
to assume that all other things are also equal. While the skills of “traditional”
literacy are still relevant and even central for reading instruction in schools, it has
long been posited that these skills cannot function autonomously. As Street
(1984) has described, “autonomous” models of literacy are based on the
assumptions that A) the skills involved with literacy—defined as the ability to read
and write—are clearly bounded, cognitive, universal, and neutral, and B) this
autonomous brand of literacy is sufficient in itself to empower individuals; that is,
when one learns to read—regardless of any other social, cultural, economic, and
political factors—one will be able to gain access to greater opportunities,
knowledge, social advancement, and social equity simply by virtue of being able
to read. However, Street argues, literacy has never been actually autonomous
either as a discrete skill set or as a means of social empowerment. Rather,
literacy is and always has been ideological; it operates in and on power relations
in social systems, and is culturally defined and determined. Access to literacy is
frequently limited, and strongly tied to economic conditions, race, social class,
gender, geography, dialect, and numerous other contextual social factors. As
such, literacy is not and has never been neutral. And although there has been

some evidence that literacy acquisition may lead to greater empowerment and

26

access to opportunity, this is not always the case, and does not occur neutrally or
without potentially inequitable or even oppressive consequences.

Scholarship on the nature of literacy as an ideological apparatus has been
generated for at least the past forty years; however, autonomous models of
literacy have continued to dominate social conceptions of literacy, and are
pervasive in school curricula and policy texts and conversations. The advent of
hypermedia technologies and the new literate practices that accompany them
has begun to raise serious questions about access even in the context of literacy
as an autonomous concept. Given the computer-based nature of new Iiteracies,
there are significant economic considerations that educators must account for in
curriculum design for literacy instruction, certainly. But the new Iiteracies that
have emerged with hypermedia and new technologies have also had a significant
impact on the ways in which literacy is being used in society today. It may be
true that there has never been much agreement about what “literacy" is or what it
means, but the new technologies evolving right now have resulted in dramatic
shifts in the kinds of texts students are reading and the kinds of activities they
engage in where literacy plays a key role. These technologies have contributed
to shifts in the ways young people attend to and process information, the ways
they engage different kinds of literate tasks, the ways they determine relevance,
and, significantly, the ways they do not do these things. Where most of their
teachers continue to emphasize the reading of print-based literature and
extended linear printed texts along with traditional academic writing genres,

young people today have begun to move away from, through, and beyond those

27

literate practices toward engagement with texts and practices that are not
consonant with the academic literacy practices usually emphasized in schools.
The result, at the least, has been a crisis of relevance for literacy instruction—
and therefore English language arts curricula—in schools today. As Alverrnann
(2001) has argued, what we have is not the displacement of traditional literacy
practices, or a decrease in the literate capacities of today’s young people; rather,
she reframes the “crisis” to point out that contemporary society is experiencing a
rapid increase in literate demands. Young people today are more literate than
ever as a group, but they are entering into a professional and civic arena
couched in social, cultural, and economic structural systems where advanced
literacy skills are needed more than ever and require more than attention to the
academic literacy practices traditionally taught in schools.

As I asked in the conclusion of Chapter 1, what do teachers need to know
and do in order to be skillful in teaching children literacy and the language arts
today? As today’s young people move more and more towards new information
economies, digital media delivery systems, and new attention economies that
merge print with other semiotic systems, how are traditional approaches to
language arts curricula and assessment relevant to their literate lives? And, as
the actual literacy practices of young people continue to expand away from
traditional print literacy practices, what are the consequences of current
accountability measures?

The following series of interconnected literature reviews is intended to

begin addressing these questions. I begin with a more detailed discussion of

28

what have been labeled the “New Literacy Studies,” leading into a review of the
history of English as a school subject and the development of the National
Council of Teachers of English. These reviews attempt to account for the
historical foundations of current ideological positions operating in the discourses
of English language arts and literacy teaching today. The chapter continues with
a review of standards and accountability in the English language arts, and
concludes with a discussion of the accountability theories used in this study. I

begin with a review of scholarship in the New Literacy Studies.

New Literacies

“We have trouble conceiving that we could become something other than what
we are today” (Bruce, 2002, p. 15).

Ask a fifteen-year-old kid if he’s read any good books lately, and you might
not be surprised to find out that he only cracks a book when forced at gunpoint
by a teacher with a grade book and a bazooka. Recent studies have shown that,
although functional literacy is at an all-time high in the United States, book
reading is at an all-time low. For many Americans, and particularly many English
teachers, this is believed to constitute a problem of epic proportions. This is not
a new idea, and certainly many English teachers embrace it because they value
book reading highly as a central activity of their professional and personal lives.
In fact, the National Council of Teachers of English insisted less than ten years
ago that literature must be maintained as the core of its language arts curriculum

guidelines for both teachers and students because of its perceived value in

29

communicating social values and critical thinking skills (1996a). The decision to
do so frames literacy education in English classrooms as a project centered on
print literacy and oriented to the teaching of basic decoding skills, morals, and
aesthetic appreciation. But literacy has changed dramatically in the last thirty
years, and our understanding of literacy issues has grown, while “[I]iteracy
pedagogy...has been a carefully restricted project—restricted to formalized,
monolingual, monocultural, and rule-govemed forms of language” (New London
Group, 2000, p. 9).

Since the 1970’s, researchers, theorists, and cultural commentators have
begun to focus on literacy issues related to technological advancements in
computers and digital media. Others have explored Iiteracies in the realm of
popular culture, for example, studying the functions of sports or hiphop music in
the meaning-making literate activities of young people (Dyson, 2001; Morrell,
2004). Still others have studied the ways in which community memberships,
racial and ethnic backgrounds, class relations, and geographical dialects all
interact to influence children’s relative literacy skills and understandings (Moll &
Gonzales, 2001; Purcell-Gates, 2001; Heath, 1983). Collectively, these
investigations, focused on the sociocultural nature of literacy, have contributed to
discussions of a “new" conception of Iiteracies that remains mostly unaccounted
for in our nation’s public school curricula. English language arts curricula have in
some ways recognized that the subject has changed—that technology and
increased cultural diversity, in particular, have complicated the work of teaching

children the skills they need to be literate citizens. But in general, education

30

policy related to the language arts and literacy has failed to deal with the reality
of “new literacy.” Our curricula do not reflect the literate practices of the children

we are purporting to teach.

Expanding “Literacy”

It may be true that many people—especially many young people—are
reading fewer print books today than they used to read. However, it does not
necessarily follow logically that they are less literate than older generations
because they read fewer books, or that their lack of traditional reading has
caused a decline in political awareness, creativity, or civic participation. As the
Fresh Prince (DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, 1988) once rapped, we might
say that, “parents just don’t understand” what kids are up to today.

In terms of surface activities alone, the literate practices of young people
today are different from, and not inferior to, the literate activities of their parents.
I don’t wish to argue that young people should not learn the basic skills of
reading and writing. They should. However, I do wish to argue that young
people read differently. They undertake literate practices differently because the
array of technologies, texts, and text formats in today’s culture are different than
they were even a decade ago. One prominent example of these differences has
to do with the proliferation of hypermedia and multimedia technology.

Reading on the lntemet is different from reading a printed page. On the
lntemet, text appears on the screen much as it would appear on a printed page,

but the text is more fluid and the reader has much more control over how the text

31

is received and processed; that is, the reader gets to choose what order to read
the document in, and has a number of “hyperlinks” (highlighted words or icons
that take the reader to other pages and websites that might be external to the
text originally accessed) that s/he can click on in order to pursue information. In
other words, where traditional print reading is (mostly) linear and author-
centered, hypertext reading is not. While hypertext can be engaged linearly, this
is only one way. It is also possible, and sometimes desirable, to access one
document, read the first section, click on a hyperlink that leads to another
document, read a paragraph from the middle of that text, and then take another
hyperlink and another, and another until you are far from the text you originally
accessed to read. This would be absurd in the mode of traditional reading,
where one is usually expected to read a text from beginning to end in order to
fully understand the meaning and intention of the author. But in hypertext
reading, the reader has the freedom to make meaning out of a range of
interconnected texts, in many ways blurring the distinctions between authoring
and reading. While Barthes (1977) may have argued that the concept of a single
“author” for any text died more than fifty years ago, the advent of hypermedia
communications technology has placed more control than ever in the hands and
head of the reader.

People who were socialized in a world of traditional print may see the
process of reading hypertext as too messy and intuitive, and in some key ways
hypertext reading is a radical departure from sitting down and reading a novel

beginning with “Chapter 1.” In a study of the effects of hypertext on processes of

32

reading and writing, Chamey notes that hypertext “violates standard assumptions
of what texts are like” (2002, p. 93). From a traditional print perspective, Chamey
also writes that, “T he belief that readers can select for themselves which links in
a network to follow rests on the assumption that readers know best what
information they need and in what order they should read it” (p. 87) and that
“[h]ypertexts, by shifting a large portion of [the organizing] burden to the reader,
by proliferating the readers’ choices about what portions of a text to read and in
what order, compound the difficulties of creating a coherent mental
representation” (p. 91).

For someone who grew up reading books, then, hypertext can present
difficulties and may seem inappropriate or uncomfortable. But for a young girl
who has grown up reading hypertext, there is no problem at all—it’s just the way
reading is. Young people today have grown up with cell phones, pagers, and
instant text messaging as things they take for granted. “Texting” alone—the
practice of sending text messages peer-peer via cellphone—has evolved its own
complex symbol systems by using a mix of symbols that allow for abbreviated
conversations suitable for the small screens of cell phones. Access to video
technology is now commonplace in public spaces; access to computers and the
lntemet is widespread in the middle and upper classes. Both of these changes
have resulted in the easy integration of image, text, and sound in both public and
private spaces. Even in contexts where computer technology is not so readily
accessible, for example in impoverished urban and rural environments, young

people are influenced by the popular culture and mass media they consume.

33

Broadcast media—television, music, film, and radio—have responded to
technological advancements by incorporating multimedia displays so that video,
audio, and text are blended together in formats that capitalize on rapid shifts in
attention. Radio stations now broadcast on the lntemet and supplement their
audio broadcasts with links to all sorts of resources that can enhance the
experience of the “user” (who used to be just a “listener”). Television programs
(for example news programs) employ a broad array of banners, scrolling
headlines, graphics, sound, and commentary in a 24-hour up-to-the-minute
format that requires the viewer to interpret a vast amount of information
simultaneously and to cope with constant shifts in topic. Musical genres like
hiphop constitute new uses of literacy by presenting lyrics that are often
improvised, that often communicate political messages and social commentary,
and that are often not written down at all. This is not your father's Oldsmobile.

It’s your grandbaby’s hybrid SUV.

What Is “New” Literacy?

In addition to thinking about changes in literacy practices, it is also
important to consider how understandings of literacy have changed beyond the
advent of media technologies to constitute a “new” literacy. Although acquiring
technological Iiteracies is crucial, changes in our institutional structures and
economy don’t necessarily involve using those new technologies, at least not
foremost (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003). In addition to the acceleration and

proliferation of media, understanding literacy includes the need to recognize

34

literacy as social and ideological. Considerable efforts have been made to
understand literacy as more than a functional technology, more than “just” a tool.
Many have also theorized that a “new” conception of literacy is necessary in
order to deal with large-scale economic, social, and institutional changes in our
society.

Since the 1970’s, economic shifts toward globalization have changed the
nature of public and private Iife—particularty as related to work—and in many
ways these changes involve changes in the use of language. According to
Lankshear and Knobel, “...with a new work life comes a new language, with
much of it attributable to new technologies like ‘iconographic’, text, and screen-
based modes of interacting with automated machinery and to changes in the
social relations of work (Kalantzis and Cope, 1996: 5; see also Cope and
Kalantzis, 1999)” (2003, p. 12). These social changes include what might be
called a “flattening” of corporate hierarchies that appears to empower workers by
placing them in cooperative “teams” that are encouraged to innovate and share.
Flattening hierarchies has changed social relations in the workplace, but many
argue that the nature of power in the workplace is still oppressive; for example, it
could be argued that the developing corporate practice of “teaming” workers is
one means of increasing the responsibility of individual workers without giving
them any real power or authority. In the shift to cooperative work teams, workers
are required to develop new skills, especially communication and literacy
competencies, and they are expected to be more productive and adaptive, but

their position in corporate structure may be weakened. Lankshear and Knobel

35

point out that “[tlhis new work life can be even more highly exploitative and unjust
than its predecessor," (p. 12) via its manipulations of language.

In developing their concept of “multiliteracies” (an approach that attempts
to characterize literacy as a blend of technical and social competencies related to
multiple modes of communication), the New London Group (2000) has
expressed grave concerns about the nature of language use in the “fast
capitalism” that is driving the current neoliberal movement towards global market
economies. They characterize these changes as a “nightmare,” stating,

Corporate cultures and their discourses of familiarity are frequently more

subtly and more rigorously exclusive than the most nasty—honestly

nasty—of hierarchies. . .. And fast capitalism, notwithstanding its discourse
of collaboration, culture, and shared values, is also a vicious world driven

by the barely restrained market. (2000, 12)

In addition to its examination of corporate discourses in fast capitalism, the
New London Group notes other changes that have increased the necessity of
expanded literacy skills in our society. They remark that the culture of
interventionist welfare states is being reversed, that citizenship and public space
have been reduced and replaced by consumerism, and that schools and
universities are being deregulated and privatized as markets. They point out

that many changes in language use involve an institutionally motivated simulation

of conversational language that can be regarded as

cynical, manipulative, invasive, and exploitative, as discourses of private
life and community are appropriated to serve commercial and institutional
ends. This is a process. . .that in part destroys the autonomy of private and
community lifeworlds. The challenge is to make space available so that
different Iifeworlds can flourish. (16)

36

 

Given the magnitude of these shifts in our society, researchers and
educators have called for a re-vision of literacy education that accounts for such
changes. According to Lankshear and Knobel (2003), the idea of “literacy” has
changed in four ways since the 1970’s, although educational policies and
standards have not kept pace. In their book, New Literacies, they trace the
historical development of literacy as an educational concept from its initial
reference to the mere decoding and encoding of printed text. The first shift in

Conceptions of literacy comes from Paulo Freire in the 1960’s and 1970’s, whose
work with South American peasants led to the conception of literacy as a political
DI'Oject for “critical social praxis” in oppressed populations—Ieaming to use
language to resist oppression in a cyclical and reflexive process of reflection and

action against social and political institutions in everyday life. The second shift

Came with the perceived literacy crisis of the 1970’s, when another restructuring

0f the labor market and widespread institutional changes began to be tied with
de'Tlands for greater communication competencies, especially the abilities to
read and write. At the time, this crisis led to calls for more large-scale

Sta fidardized testing and a focus on basic literacy skills, a pattern that persists
tog ay as literacy becomes an increasingly central target in accountability reforms.
Th6 third shift came when many researchers began to develop a sociocultural
De "Spective on literacy—a range of approaches that viewed reading and writing
not simply as matters of cognitive processing and technical skill but also of social
00 h struction and cultural variation that can be summed up in James Gee’s

a
gstertion that Iiteracies “can only be understood when they are situated within

37

 

their social, cultural, and historical contexts” (Gee et al. 1996: xii). Lankshear

and Knobel write that,
From a sociocultural perspective, it is impossible to separate out from text-
mediated social practices the ’bits’ concerned with reading or writing (or
any other sense of ‘Iiteracy') and to treat them independently of all the
‘non-print’ bits, like values and gestures, context and meaning, actions
and objects, talk and interaction, tools and spaces. They are all non-
subtractable parts of integrated wholes. (8)
Fourth, with the sociocultural shift in literacy research, it was further recognized
that if literacy was not just a matter of cognition—if it included social activity,
Values, cultural artifacts, and activity systems, then it was also, ultimately, always
Ideological (Street, 1994).
Lankshear and Knobel summarize the shift toward “new” literacy by
Cha racterizing its meaning in paradigmatic and ontological senses. They write
that the change, in a paradigmatic sense, “occurs in talk of the New Literacy
Stud ies (Street, 1993; Gee, 1996, 2000) to refer to a specific sociocultural
approach... In all such cases, the proponents think of their project as
comprising a new and different paradigm relative to an existing orthodoxy or
do "ninant approach” (2003, p. 16). In other words, “new literacies” exist because
researchers in the field say so and are developing a body of literature to support
I: -
he I r claims. However, these researchers also describe the ontological sense of
(2
ha Inge in literacy as referring to the idea that
changes have occurred in the character and substances of Iiteracies
associated with changes in technology, institutions, media, the economy,
and the rapid movement toward global scale in manufacture, finance,
communications, and so on. These changes have impacted on social
practices in all the main areas of everyday life within modern societies: in

work, at leisure, in the home, in education, in the community, and in the
public sphere. Established social practices have emerged and continue to

38

emerge at a rapid rate. . .. In this ontological sense, the category of ‘new
literacies’ largely covers what are often referred to as ‘post-typographic’
forms of textual practice. These include using and constructing hyperlinks
between documents and/or images, sounds, movies, semiotic languages
[...], manipulating a mouse to move around within a text, reading file
extensions and identifying what software will ‘read’ each file, producing
‘non-linear’ texts, navigating three-dimensional worlds online and so on.
(16-1 7)
Having characterized the nature of new literacy, I turn next to the
relationship between literacy and the English language arts—the field and school
Subject where literacy skills are most widely taught. Although it may be the case
that “English” classes are the main sites of literacy instruction in secondary
school settings, the school subject called English is not primarily characterized by
a focus on literacy instruction, even in terms of attention to the development of
Print-based reading skills. Rather, English language arts instruction, particularly
I" Secondary school settings, has traditionally been characterized by a focus on
literary studies, supported by instruction in traditional genres for written response
to and criticism of literary texts. Given the shifting nature of literacy in

Contemporary society, it is useful to explore the ways in which English language

arts and literacy might interact (or not).

Ne W Literacy in the English Language Arts

Although there has been a significant effort to understand literacy in
QC) “temporary society, and although “English” is the school subject where
Students are thought to learn and practice reading and writing skills, most of the
rgsearch and theorizing on literacy has come from outside of the English

a h'Quage arts. The majority of such scholarship has been conducted by

39

linguists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural theorists, only
some of whom are directly involved with literacy education; English education, as
I will detail below, has approached literacy issues from a different perspective,
one that remains caught up in a traditional literary (and therefore print-based)
mode. However, in American schools, English language arts is the subject most
concerned with literacy, and any discussion of literacy instruction must eventually
deal with the concerns of English education. Indeed, the shift in meanings of
literacy toward sociocultural perspectives requires that English educators look
closely at the ways in which English teachers are prepared to teach the subject.
AS Carmen Luke has suggested, “What better site to begin developing new
frameworks for knowledge and critical literacy than in teacher education?” (2000,
D- 425, cited in Lewis and Finders, 2002, p. 107, italics added).
According to Alan Luke (2004), English education and language arts
cu"Ticzula need to face the problem of accounting for New Literacies. He points
out. however, that doing so is not a simple matter. English, as a discipline and
as a school subject, has a complex history and constitutes a highly contested
space in our society. There are serious disagreements in the field about how to
identify English studies which can be summed up (though oversimplified) by a
d ivi sion between traditionalists, who wish to structure English as a clearly defined
“d iscipline” with a rule-based approach to language and an aesthetic-based
a D Droach to reading literature, and refonnists, who see English as a very broad
D"Qj ect that should be oriented around the concept of literacy rather than founded

Q
n fabricated disciplinary roots. Luke suggests that it is possible for English to

40

have it both ways by adjusting its orientation to include new visions of literacy.
He writes,

First. . .the future of English as field and curricular practice depends less
upon a sovereign host discipline, and more on changing sociologies,
economies, and demographics of English speaking and Ieaming
communities, and our travels as teachers and English speakers across
and through them. Second...to respond to these new material and
discourse conditions, we need to reassemble the field from a host of
disciplinary knowledges and epistemological stances. This includes
varied kinds of linguistics, English and other literatures, but also, broadly
conceived, cultural studies, sociology (and perhaps economics and
geography), semiotics, multiliteracies, and other work in media and
communications studies. Third. . .we can then return to the question of
pedagogy with a much stronger teleological sense of the purposes and
consequences of English for students, for populations, for communities,
and for nations—for communication and exchange, for power and
knowledge. This needn’t mean a discarding of literary theory, aesthetic
theory, language acquisition theory, and so forth (which we may need now
more than ever), but a reframing of them as part of a trans-disciplinary
response to new contexts and conditions. . .. [Without these adjustments],
we risk becoming a profession involved in the systematic production and
distribution of particular brands of linguistic capital, without an ongoing
critical appraisal of the force and consequences of our actions. (2004, 87)

As Luke concludes, English’ can no longer be equated with a national
la“Quage teaching” (2004, p. 92). What he and other educators are beginning to
reCemmend involves the re-casting of English language arts curriculum so that it
inc3| udes “a renewed sense of the purposes and consequences, powers and
p re ctices of English, of the intellectual, ideological, and moral force of all forms of

re D resentation and equally, a strong sense of ‘English’ as language, as mode of
information, as a multifaceted and ambivalent cultural force within and across the

D '3 ctices and technologies of economic and cultural globalization” (p. 94). The

N 3w London Group echoes Luke’s vision of English language arts as literacy

i
h s.‘lzruction, stating that the goal of their multiliteracies perspective is

41

to extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the

context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly

globalized societies; to account for the multifarious cultures that interrelate
and the plurality of texts that circulate. Second, we argue that literacy
pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms

associated with information and multimedia technologies. (2000, 9)

This shift in perspective on English language arts curricula flies in the face
of current movements to standardize the English language arts in particular, and
to standardize school accountability systems in general. At a time when federal
and state policies are forcing English teachers to narrow their curricula and focus
on easily testable and quantifiable skills associated with traditional print literacy,
literacy researchers and theorists are producing new knowledge which indicates
that such standardization misrepresents the nature of language and language
education in serious ways. For the literacy educators who attend to expanding
knowledge about literacy, current accountability measures are extremely
negative. Standardization, they argue, precludes the kind of ongoing critical
dialogue and reflection about literacy curricula that is essential if schools are to
help students understand the constantly evolving nature and context of literacy in
English speaking countries. For the New London Group, “There can be no
standard, only negotiation” (2000, p. 15). They call for states to be strong

supporters of education without imposing standards; instead, they argue that

states should be strong

as neutral arbiters of difference... Instead of core culture and national
standards, the realm of the civic is a space for the negotiation of a
different sort of social order; an order where differences are actively
recognized; where these differences are negotiated in such a way that
they complement each other; and where people have the charge to
expand their cultural and linguistic repertoires so that they can access a

42

broader range of cultural and institutional resources. (Cope and Kalantzis
1997, cited in New London Group, 15)

Still, those who seek to standardize public education, especially those
concemed with English education, often view diversity as a problem.
Consequently, they believe that curriculum designs that account for new
Iiteracies, which is supportive of diversity, appear as “evidence of a distressing
fragmentation of the social fabric" (New London Group, p. 15). They tend to not
acknowledge that schools regulate access to knowledge and power in ways that
are inequitable for students who do not come from the mainstream and dominant
social and cultural groups on whose language practices academic languages are
usually based. Instead, they believe that the goal of education is to unify and
homogenize the citizenry and reduce differences by adhering to a national
language system and a basic set of cultural, aesthetic, and moral values. They
are in direct conflict with those who argue that ‘What seems to be a problem—the
multiplicity of cultures, experiences, ways of making meaning, and ways of

thinking—can be harnessed as an asset” (New London Group, 2000, p. 13).

Generation Gaps, Literacy, and English

It is important to stress that there is much that we still have to learn about
how new technologies and social changes will impact literacy practices. For
example, as Baron (2002) has noted, it remains to be seen exactly how and to
what extent the expansion of digital media technologies will eventually alter the
ways we read, write, and think. However, it is difficult to ignore the fact that

literacy practices have changed when students spend more time playing video

43

games and surfing the web than they do reading books. It is difficult to ignore the
fact that while many students today perform poorly on traditional standardized
measures of literacy, there is evidence that these same students are extremely
effective language users capable of producing sophisticated texts for their own
purposes (Alverrnan, 2001 ). As Gee (2003) discovered in his study of literacy in
video games, children today learn to read and to practice Iiteracies that draw on
an array of semiotic technologies and multimodalities that are simply not featured
in the kinds of reading texts and activities featured in school English. They are
conditioned to read in a much narrower “attention economy" where texts compete
for the reader’s time and rapid shifts are the norm instead of sustained attention
to a single narrative. As a result, language arts curricula that are centered on
reading printed literary texts simply do not match the kinds of practices that
young people engage in during their literate lives. Essentially, we are faced with
a present set of language arts curricula that are outdated, designed by and for
those of us from older generations who expect all people to read and learn the
ways that we did ourselves. To echo the epigraph to this section, we have

difficulty imagining that we might become different than we are now.

Lankshear and Knobel label the generational split described above as a
conflict between ‘newcomer/outsider’ and ‘insider’ perspectives on literacy and
technology. The “newcomer/outsider perspective describes, in very broad terms,
individuals over the age of 25-30 who “affirm the world as the same as before,
only more technologized” (p. 32); these individuals are ‘newcomers’ in that

emerging technologies are “new" or foreign to them, and they frequently have

44

less experience with and understanding of them. ‘lnsiders’—individuals under the
age of 25 who grew up after the advent of digital media technologies— “affirm
the worid as radically different, precisely because of the operation of new
technologies” (p. 32); having acquired their literacy skills while immersed in a
culture of digital technology, insiders are generally comfortable and familiar with
reading and writing using new technologies. Unfortunately, the older generation
of newcomer/outsiders is the one that is responsible for designing present
language arts curricula that are supposed to serve the needs and practices of the
younger insider generation. And newcomer/outsiders often proceed with either
lower or incomplete awareness of the ways in which new Iiteracies might
influence language arts curriculum and instruction.

Lankshear and Knobel (2004) argue that school Iiteracies are a part of a
credentials system that helps allocate social goods; because of this, school
Iiteracies play an important role in excluding some students from access to power
and knowledge and also help to legitimate that exclusion. Whether one decides
to believe such exclusion is intentionally built in or incidental to our education
system, Lankshear and Knobel assert that the “deep grammar” of school
(administrative hierarchies, policy implementations, curriculum development,
etc.) institutionalizes the privileging of the newcomer/outsider mindset over the
insider mindset. Using an outdated map, newcomer/outsiders tend to design
curricula that are inadequate to the literacy needs of students today. As
Lankshear and Knobel ask, “What happens when the new is faced through the

lenses and filters of the old?” (p. 18). They suggest that schools tend to "bring

45

the stamp of the ‘old’ to bear upon what should be ‘new"” (p. 18-19); even when
newcomer/outsider educators do attend to issues involved with new literacy,
“Many simply accommodate new motifs to old ways” (p. 24). If, as these
researchers and educators argue, the purpose of English education has been to
provide students with the literacy skills they need in order to live in contemporary
society, then the effectiveness of literacy instruction in American schools is in
doubt. One result of excluding insider perspectives on literacy from current
language arts curricula is a degree of irrelevance that results in the exclusion of
many students from opportunities to acquire the Iiteracies they need in order to

be successful in either new or old terms.

The Teaching of English and the National Council of Teachers of English:
A Brief History

In order to help further establish the context of this discourse analysis of
the 1996 Guidelines, I next turn to an examination of English education, including
the development of English as a discipline and as a school subject, and
concerning the production of English teachers in university teacher education as
framed by accountability reform. The project of English education currently
involves a range of policy documents and education guidelines that span
national, state, and professional organizations. The foci of study in the English
language arts, the underlying value assumptions of the school subject, and
philosophical motivations for teaching English as a subject in American public
schools require a review of historical documents to understand how what might

be called “discursive residues” continue to interact in literacy curriculum and

46

policy today. Moreover, a review of these topics contributes to the production of
an archive (Foucault, 1972)—a collection of texts and artifacts that may be used
to more fully represent how discourses both disperse and coalesce across time
and space to influence the episteme—the discursive network of language,
values, activities, and affiliations that constitute a particular social time or
historical period. The review work presented here is by no means
comprehensive, and is not intended to represent a definitive history. Rather, it
attempts to represent major movements and shifts in the field of English
language arts and literacy over the last 100 years.

Almost from the inception of public schooling in the United States, literacy
curricula have been inextricably bound with school accountability movements.
English education, largely through the work of the National Council of Teachers
of English, has developed a relationship to the accountability movement that
reflects many of the problems discussed above in the sections on new literacy.
Efforts to develop viable curricula for language arts teaching have been marked
by splits between technological newcomers and insiders, by those who see
English as a national language for homogenizing the population and those who
seek to represent English as a diverse and fluid language marked by difference,
and those who see language arts Ieaming as a linear and neutral project as
opposed to those who recognize literacy and the language arts as contextual and
ideological projects that must involve a critical component. While these binaries
are not stable or consistent, they are convenient ways of characterizing

contentions in the field.

47

Before detailing the historical background on the development of the
language arts and the progress of NCTE as a professional teaching organization
involved with accountability, I want to stress that many English educators have
worked hard to represent the complexity of their subject in discussions of teacher
preparation, standards, and accountability. In fact, English educators have in
many ways been highly resistant to the demands of the standards movement in
the US. Anecdotally, many, even most, English educators subscribe to the idea
that English is a fluid language, that English speakers are a diverse group
characterized by differences, and that linguistic diversity should be cast as a
strength and not a problem in our society. This is certainly a dominant theme in
the 1996 Guidelines. Many English educators recognize that technological and
institutional changes require our field to develop new curricular approaches to
literacy. And, perhaps to a lesser extent, some English educators recognize that
literacy and the language arts are difficult ideological projects that require a high
degree of critical awareness (in the Frierian sense of liberation and reform),
reflexive negotiation, and ongoing attention to equitable change. However, in
spite of the awareness of some English educators, these issues are frequently
either missing from or inadequately addressed in English education policy texts.

There are likely to be a number of reasons for this difference between
educators’ beliefs about English and the content of published policy/curriculum
texts, some of which are documented in the review below. Many of these
reasons are attributable to the discursive processes involved with creating

standards for the language arts. First, federal guidelines for school accountability

48

and language arts/literacy curricula have largely been developed without the
input of literacy and English specialists or English educators affiliated with NCTE.
As a result, English education standards and demands for accountability are
framed by an externally imposed ideological approach to language that often fails
to reflect the complexity or depth of knowledge in the field, and in fact such
complexity and depth are generally excluded from conversations about
accountability. In order to be recognized outside of their parent organization,
curriculum policies produced by NCTE have been marked by compromises that
reflect how discourses from national standards projects have colonized the work
of NCTE. Forced out of national and federal standards projects, NCTE’s policies
sometimes reflect the organization’s concessions to an outsider perspective that
misrepresents practitioners’ understandings and beliefs about literacy and
language instruction. Second, curriculum policies are usually developed within
institutional bureaucratic structures. NCTE is a large organization marked by
committee systems that involve hierarchical structures and bureaucratic controls
that can stifle innovation and change in spite of individual agents’ or even groups’
intentions. Third, policy development has generally proceeded based on a model
that privileges consensus, which is difficult if not impossible to achieve in a field
as broad and value-laden as literacy and the language arts. Finally,
accountability at the federal and state levels generally does not recognize
language education as a political or ideological project. When concerned and
aware English educators have attempted to introduce their concerns about

complexity, diversity, and ideology into conversations about English education

49

accountability, they have often found themselves excluded from the process
entirely.

This study is designed in part, then, to understand how the discursive
processes involved with accountability in English education have resulted in a
narrowing of what it is possible to say about English education and literacy
instruction in the United States. It is also designed to make sense of the ways in
which English education’s historical development as a subject centered on the
study of literature has positioned it for dealing with new knowledge about
language and literacy. Finally, the study is designed to explore the choices
English educators have as they continue to deal with the problem of accounting

for language instruction in an increasingly diverse society.

It is likely that portions of this study and its commentary will seem critical
of English educators in the past and present. It is possible, too, that these
criticisms will seem harsher than they actually are. My intention is to offer
“friendly fire’ and to be a critical insider. My goal is to do some “culture
jamming'—to interrupt the conversation in English education about accountability
so that we can interrogate it more completely and critically than we have perhaps
done in the past, to point out contradictions and weaknesses in the policies we
have developed for ourselves, and to seek out ways that English educators can
take greater control in conversations about literacy accountability and exercise
more agency as that discussion continues nationally.

So, recognizing that English educators have in some ways resisted a rigid

status quo and resisted efforts to standardize the subject with varying success, I

50

next offer a review of the history of English education in America and a review of

the development of the National Council of Teachers of English.

********

Currently, the United States is undergoing a movement toward
“accountability" in education that focuses on teacher quality (Linn, 2000; National
Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996). Numerous sets of
standards, both coordinated and competing, have been produced by federal,
state, and professional education organizations in attempts to represent what
teachers and students should know and be able to do. These standards are
represented as common sense, current, up-to-date “best” practices that reflect
large-scale consensus about knowledge in the field of education and its various
subject areas. However straightforward they may seem on the surface,
standards-based reform projects in the English language arts involve complex
ideological work; they involve representations of disciplinary knowledge,
articulation with research and theory on teaching and Ieaming, choices regarding
methods of assessment, approaches to understanding technology and literacy,
paradigms for dealing with diversity and culture, and a host of other political and
rhetorical concerns that are frequently invisible in policy and curriculum debates.

According to Koziol (2004), the National Council of Teachers of English
(NCTE) must quickly face the basic issue of defining a role for itself in the

credentialing of teachers, a central issue in the accounting of teacher education

51

programs. This goal may be particularty important after NCTE’s failed struggle,
alongside the lntemational Reading Association, to play a leading role in the
development and implementation of national language arts content standards
during the 1990s (Diegmuller, 1994). It is also important as the National
Association for the Accreditation of Teacher Education has moved to de-
emphasize its relationships with subject matter specialty organizations like
NCTE. As Koziol writes, NCTE should either “take control of or at least primary
responsibility for identifying what English teachers should know and be able to
do...” (p. 1), and it seems logical for the nation’s largest professional teaching
organization to be involved in developing standards for the subject it represents.
The exclusion of English educators from the process of developing
content and teacher preparation standards for their own field is both irresponsible
and illegitimate. Yet today, standards for teaching and Ieaming English are
becoming increasingly oriented to a de facto model dictated from outside of
English language arts and literacy, resulting from a winner-take-all competition of
ideological values instead of more balanced critical deliberation (Wixon, Dutro, &
Athan, 2004). According to members of NCTE’s Standing Committee on
Teacher Preparation and Certification at their 2003 annual convention in San
Francisco, California, in the current competitive model teachers and researchers
are being shut out unless they consent to “speak the language of achievement”—
a language employed widely in current accountability movements that presently

dis-empower educators.

52

Given the extreme breadth and instability of English as a school subject
(Grossman & Shulman, 1994), constant cries for a return to an imagined golden
age when the language arts had “content,” and English’s dominant position in
administering two of the three “R’s” of “basic” education, it is important to
understand the ideological history of the subject. “English” was never a politically
neutral course of study, and a look at its history along with an examination of the
development of the National Council of Teachers of English offers several
insights into the present discourses of English that reflect these historical
ideological trends and contradictions that shape the ways we think about and

practice language arts education.

********

As moldy as it may seem to some 10th graders, English is not a
particulady mature school subject. It is even younger as an academic discipline,
and its construction out of a number of language-related subjects has made it far
less stable than it might have appeared in classrooms over the last century.
Historians have frequently noted the tendency of English to “come unglued”
throughout the 20th century (Nelms, 2000). In fact, "English” was not a
recognized subject at all in the United States until the 1890’s (and even later in
the United Kingdom), when a group of university administrators and education
leaders known as the Committee of Ten attempted to unify “English” along with a
number of other curriculum concerns under a rubric dominated by literary study.

At that time, students variously studied grammar, rhetoric, elocution, spelling,

53

reading, and philology, but these were treated as separate subjects; literary
studies were barely established as a legitimate scholarly pursuit, but in a move
whose aftershocks continue to this day, the Committee of Ten determined that

literature should function as the centerpiece of language education in America.

In spite of its controversial status at that time, it is impossible to
understand English education without accounting for the influence on curriculum
that literature has exerted from a high cultural position that it still maintains today.
To oversimplify, at least three powerful ideological forces around the turn of the
20th century involved utilizing literature as a key instrument, and therefore
contributed to its selection as the dominant feature of English studies. First,
many educators viewed literature as a potential tool for indoctrination in the
interests of Americanizing immigrants and the preserving “American” culture.
Second, many believed that literature could help to promote spirituality in the
face of industrialization. Third, as literature became a more powerful cultural tool
and a perceived repository for “quality" language, some educators and many
members of the public began to regard English literature teachers as guardians
of the English language and “the preachers of culture,” as they were dubbed by

Matthew Arnold (Mathieson, 1975).

These ideological movements around literary study are significant to the
history of English language arts curriculum. Protherough and Atkinson (1991)
point out that from its earliest stages, the teaching of “English” entailed a
missionary role to “confront the forces of industrialism and to counter the growing

influence of the media” (p. 9). With industrialization came the movement of

54

populations into urban centers, the introduction of electronic communications,
and a concurrent decline of agrarian society and social values. In addition,
industrialization brought fundamental changes in the organization and conception
of work, time, and subjectivity, including a perceived movement away from
religion and toward secularism (Mathieson, 1975). Fearing a total moral decline,
many viewed literature as a way to “feed, to purify, to unify, and to redeem”
America spiritually and fulfill religion’s functions (Protherough 8. Atkinson, 1991,
p. 9). The religious fervor that was tied to literature eariy in its history still echoes
in today’s policies, for example when NCTE claims that literature m be seen
as the core and “the humane center” of the English curriculum...adding delight
and wonder to [students’] daily lives” (1996a, p. 18, emphasis added).

A second ideological aspect of literary study involved the explicit desire of
many educators at the time to Americanize new immigrants. The idea of a
“standard” English is hardly new, dating back to England in the early 19th century
and the expression “speaking the King’s English.” Such a conception of
aristocratic English as “standard” reflected a classist society with a “tacitly
directing norm,” as Sapir deemed it (1949,p. 148)—that is, the biases inherent in
standard English were not necessarily explicit, but in practice these class and
race biases served to solidify a hierarchical social system by using language as
an ideological apparatus. In spite of vigorous attempts, for example by NCTE, to
impress a liberal tolerance toward language variation on the US populace, by
1970 it was reported that Americans were still “afflicted” with "a somewhat

unwholesome state of mind linguistically speaking” (Markwardt, 1971, p. 28, cited

55

in Bailey, 1991, p. 15). With waves of immigrants entering the United States in
the early 20th century, many “natives” believed that it was necessary and even
morally right to compel non-natives to learn and speak “proper” English.
Advertisements of the day read “Good English and Good Fortune Go Hand in
Hand,” a racist and classist mantra that is still repeated blithely today (Bailey,
1991) alongside bumper stickers that read, more coarsely, “Welcome to America.
Now Speak English!”

A third ideological position related to the idea of “standard” English (aided
by the dominance of literary study) was fonlvarded by PR. Leavis, who wrote in
1930 that it was the responsibility of English teachers to safeguard the language
and make sure it remained healthy for the preservation of the culture, “the growth
of moral values and...the whole quality of life itself’ (Protherough and Atkinson,
1991, p. 9). It is not clear how speaking standard English leads to moral
behavior, a higher quality of life, or the preservation of an “American” culture, but
the missionary position slotted for English teachers as a result of these religious,
nationalist, and moralist foundations was certainly pregnant with hegemonic
potential. Many people believed in the sanctity of “proper" English and “good”
literature then, and many still do today.

It was with the ideological forces described above swirling around in the
American imagination that English came into its own as a school subject, but it
was only when university administrators began using sanctioned reading lists as
a convenient assessment tool and requirement for admission to higher education

that literature began to receive widespread attention in schools as an object of

56

study. Since then, the history of English has reflected the challenges of
maintaining unity and stability, often characterized by an exclusive emphasis on
literary study and the marginalization of other language arts (Applebee, 1974). In
K-12 school curriculum, philology is defunct, rhetoric has gone into hiding,
literature has ascended to a supreme position, and grammar has left a bloody
trail of dead in the wake of battles fought over whether or not 15-year-olds ought
to be able to identify appositive phrases. Speech, drama, and linguistics huddle
under the umbrella as well and help to constitute what can be referred to as “the
language arts.” In university English departments, literature remains the primary
focus of scholarly work (although it is split into diverse theoretical factions),
rhetoric was absorbed into composition and relegated to the lower rungs of the
departmental hierarchy as “the sad woman in the basement” (Shumway &
Dionne, 2002; Miller, 1991, p.121 ), reading has been appropriated by schools of
education and psychology, and linguistics, speech, and drama have been
marginalized as separate pursuits (for excellent historical narratives on the
development of English, literature, and rhetoric in academia, see Berlin, 2003;
Scholes, 1998; Graff , 1987; and Ohmann, 1976). As Alan Luke argues, “the
dependency relationship between subject English in schools and university-
based English was broken long ago” (2004, p. 90).

Especially in the present context of standardization and accountability
reform, and given the Instability of school English from its inception, it is
interesting to note that the National Council of Teachers of English was founded

in 1911 as a result of the desire to achieve some level of consistency in the

57

curricula of the US school system. Many leaders in the teaching of English were
growing uncomfortable with the institutionalization of mandatory reading lists
which students were required to study in order to gain admission to universities.
Each university maintained its own list of literary works, and while there were
often texts in common across lists, a serious level of inconsistency made it
difficult for teachers and schools to arrange their curricula in ways that could
efficiently prepare all students. Many teachers argued that the university reading
lists were geographically biased, elitist, and arbitrary, putting students at a
disadvantage if they were not from the East coast urban centers, or if they did not
intend to pursue higher education. A group of interested English teachers and
NEA members attended the 1911 meeting of the National Education Association
with the intention of lodging a protest with the College Entrance Examination
Board, which had become a leading proponent of using reading lists for college
entrance. However, rather than lodge a protest, the group of concerned English
teachers established a committee to survey college entrance requirements. This
turn to bureaucracy led quickly to the founding of a national English organization

whose

supreme consideration is to unite the teachers of the country in support of
sound principles of secondary education, in order that boys and girls
passing through high school may receive the kind of training in English
best fitted to develop them and to prepare them for life. (Hook, 1979, 283)

This language is significant in a number of ways. First, it establishes
NCTE as an organization for secondary level English teachers, a focus still

maintained today in spite of journals dedicated to elementary, middle, secondary,

58

and post-secondary English, as well as composition studies and English
education. Second, the language of the proclamation makes it possible to
assume the existence of a kind of best practice suitable for the “training” of all
students. Third, it assumes the desirability of “uniting the teachers of the

country” and gaining a consensus about what it means to teach English as well
as how to teach it. These implications—a focus on high school, a valuing of
unity, and an assumed consensus—can all be found in the standards NCTE uses
today. Along with English’s emphasis on literature, they have not been without

consequences.

The focus on secondary English education within NCTE has arguably
exacerbated fault lines between school/university English and between language
arts specializations. Within 5 years of its founding, a group of NCTE members
specializing in public speaking split from the organization entirely. Barely twenty
years after “uniting” the language arts in school curricula, subject matter
specialists were already struggling to carve out independent territories. In the
interest of maintaining a place at academia’s table, speech teachers felt it was
necessary to have their own independent organization, free from the constraints
of a more cosmopolitan organization where they would be marginal.

Speech teachers were not the only potential members who chose to stay
away from NCTE. Although NCTE strongly desired the participation of members
from all levels of education, Nelms (2000) reports that university English faculty
members have generally shunned membership in NCTE in favor of aligning with

the Modern Language Association, which they perceived to be more prestigious

59

and more focused on both literary studies and their theoretical specializations. In
this way, the operative word in National Council of Teachers of English can be
argued to be teaching, rather than English.

Within NCTE, at least two significant groups have been formed in an
attempt to create spaces for specialization and address perceived needs of the
membership at the college level—the College Conference on Composition and
Communication (CCCC) established in 1949, and the Conference on English
Education (CEE) formed in 1963. Both organizations have maintained a
presence within NCTE proper, offering sessions at annual conferences and
publishing through the organization’s press. However, “the 4 C’s” operates a
separate conference addressing the specific concerns of college composition,
and CEE effectively runs an annual convention dedicated as the research
assembly of NCTE—neither conference is well-attended by NCTE’s main
constituency of public school teachers. As a result, the main body of NCTE has
become characterized as the “practical” forum for English teachers vs. the
“theoretical” orientations of CCCC and (to a lesser extent) CEE, and its
conventions are notable for their lack of focus on theory and research. NCTE is
ecumenical but fragmented.

NCTE's desire to develop “sound principles” of education has also had
significant effects on the teaching of English and the movement toward
accountability. Responding to the national concerns related to Russia's Sputnik
launch in 1957, NCTE followed suit with other subject organizations in math and

science by engaging in its own curriculum study. With the federal passage of the

60

National Defense Education Act in 1958 and the initial Elementary And
Secondary Education Act (now known in its present incarnation as “No Child Left
Behind”) in 1965, NCTE sought to establish the English language arts as an
equal to science and mathematics in terms of its role in national defense (Hook,
1979). Such a move was deemed necessary in order to maintain English’s
position in secondary school curriculum, and also because significant federal
funds were being tied to the concept of principled linear curricula geared for
national defense.

While NCTE's project, referred to as The National Interest and the
Teaching of English (1961), was in part an attempt to thwart federal de-emphasis
of English curriculum, its adoption of and response to federal education concerns
effectively required NCTE to define English as a positivist discipline with clear
boundaries and “scientific” methods. NCTE chose to articulate English as
“language, literature, and composition,” and to characterize the English
curriculum as a linear sequential project. Along with these moves came the
development of scientific projects designed to produce controlled experiments for
assessing the effectiveness of pedagogical techniques in ways that were
generalizable across classrooms, schools, and communities. The National
Interest report is notable for its argument that teachers and students must learn
to think critically about civic issues in order to participate in a Democratic society,
a call to engage popular media literacy in English studies, and perhaps most
significantly another explicit call for consensus on the unity of English and the

need for local, state, and federal cooperation in standardizing the curriculum.

61

The attempt to treat English as a measurable and unified content area continues
today in the discourse of accountability, an issue that this study will address.

Along with its report on the teaching of English, the National Interest
Committee produced a supplementary text called The Continuing Education of
Teachers of English (1964). Having established that English teachers at the time
were increasingly poorly prepared, and that the nation at large perceived a crisis
in literacy, NCTE argued that English teachers required more and better pre-
service training and education, more and better in-service training, and more and
better supervision. Some of the findings of the commission, led by James
Squire, were indeed alarming. For example, at the time, only 50% of all English
teachers majored in English during their college education, 66% of all secondary
English teachers felt unprepared to teach composition (due to heavy emphasis
on literary studies in university departments), and 90% felt unprepared to teach
reading (1964, p. 20). The National Interest reports recommended greater
access to continuing education opportunities, the development of coordinated
state and national training institutes along with local in-service programs, greater
access to texts about the teaching of English, and, not insignificantly, greater
participation and incentive for all English teachers to participate in English
teaching organizations like NCTE.

Two other landmarks in the history of English education are important to
consider—the Dartmouth Conference, described in John Dixon’s book Growth
Through English (1967), and the English Coalition Conference, described in

Lloyd-Jones and Lunsford’s Democracy Through Language (1987) and Peter

62

Elbow’s What Is English? (1991 ). Each of these conferences presents important
snapshots of English education that speak to the discourse of English education
today. In particular, the records of both conferences provide evidence that
demonstrates the continued dominance of literature over curriculum, the role of

tradition, and the problems of consensus and ideology in our field.

********

The Dartmouth Conference marked a major meeting between American,
British, and Canadian English teachers designed to open conversation and
cooperation around methods and content for the teaching of the language arts.
Important findings from the conference included a recognition that English was a
living language—“a quicksilver among metals”—that should not and could not be
treated as a static, rigid content to be developmentally packaged in neat
sequential bites for children to consume. Dartmouth also introduced American
English teachers to the use of drama as a mode of inquiry—a common and even
central component of language and literature instruction in Britain and Canada.
Further, the conference produced a picture of English that foregrounded practice
with language in authentic situations rather than instruction in isolated skills
development, a focus on individual engagement and development versus whole-
class emphasis, a developmental conception of language development (thus
“growth” through English), and a focus on leamer-centeredness that reflected a
Deweyan constructivist approach to language and literacy Ieaming. lmportantly,

the Dartmouth Conference brought classroom discussion about language and

63

usage to greater prominence, and called for a movement away from skills-based
instruction toward more integrated and holistic curricula. As Dixon wrote,
attendees sought to emphasize that, “language is learned in operation, not
dummy runs” (1967, p. 36).

Unfortunately, although many educators value more leamer-centered,
inquiry-oriented holistic approaches to English teaching, and although many also
support the conception of language Ieaming as contextual and developmental,
the Dartmouth Conference had an additive impact on actual teaching practices in
the US rather than a transfonnative effect. Discussion, drama, and individual
inquiry in a leamer-centered frame required a significant investment of time and
energy that schools were not structured to provide for either teachers or
students. The perceived need to compete nationally, internationally, and
economically led educators to admire but abstain from adopting the
recommendations made at Dartmouth in favor of maintaining a normative,
objective assessment system of large-scale standardized testing. This is not to
say that the conference was without influence. In particular, James Moffett’s
work in the late 19603, perhaps especially Teaching the Universe of Discourse
(1968), reflected Dartmouth’s conception of language Ieaming and English
curriculum. Certainly, Moffett’s work has resulted in a higher value for
discussion, drama, and inquiry in English classrooms via his designs for K—12
curricula. Further, the 1996 NCTE Guidelines include a heavy emphasis on the

fluid nature of English and an explicit value for student-centered instruction.

64

Twenty years after Dartmouth, English educators in the US convened
once more to deliberate on the nature of the English language arts and to
articulate guidelines for curriculum and instruction across elementary, secondary,
and college contexts. The English Coalition Conference, like Dartmouth, sought
to move beyond traditional conceptions of the subject and reflect new knowledge
and theory about the language arts. Participants at the conference adopted the
theme of “Democracy Through English,” a move that is significant in at least two
ways. First, the framing of English as a key to Democracy represented the
language arts as a central component of curriculum in US schools. Second, this
framing marked the political nature of language Ieaming and language teaching,
although it lacked important elaborations and articulation.

One aspect of Democratic participation that the coalition did emphasize
was the need to develop critical literacy skills—the ability of children to actively
produce and consume texts in order to participate in civic society. In addition,
the Coalition Conference marks one of the first moments in which English
teachers began to recognize and anticipate the role that computer and digital
technology would begin to play in literacy and cognitive development—a
remarkable insight given that, in 1987, the lntemet, hypermedia, and advanced
digital communications media did not yet exist to a significant degree.
Participants also called for an end to academic tracking, teacher design and
control of mass testing, systematic cooperation amongst school professionals in
designing and monitoring teacher education programs, and the use of a

“judicious” mix of theories associated with language, rhetoric, writing, literature,

65

and reading. They called for systematic observation of K-16 teaching for all
prospective teaching candidates, and frequent opportunities for teachers to read,
write, talk, and reflect about classroom practices and teaching processes.
lmportantly, the English Coalition Conference noted that,

Those designing teacher education programs in English language arts

must acknowledge the political constraints represented by state

departments of education, certifying agencies, and assessments. . ..

These political constraints must be dealt with in the establishment of new,

cooperative programs. . .because the ideals and goals of these programs

can be undermined by external forces. (44, emphasis added)

A number of other elements of the Coalition Conference are useful to
note. In his account of the proceedings, Elbow (1991) argues that the majority of
participants viewed students as autonomous subjects, and took a more or less
expressivist approach to thinking about English. From an expressivist
perspective, the purpose of language arts education is to engage students in
individual exploration of language and literacy toward personal growth and self-
understanding, a desire to provide students with choice and freedom of
expression, and to promulgate a belief that Literature and writing are keys to
personal fulfillment and critical awareness; in many respects, this re-states the
intentions of the Dartmouth conference and underscores Dartmouth’s limited
impact with the need to repeat these commitments. Elbow argued that children
are active writers, countering the arguments of participant Kathleen McCormick,
who argued that students are written themselves more than they write due to
ideological forces in schools and society. Elbow’s language in characterizing

discussion at the conference also suggests that, while a component of

conversations, poststructural and critical theory terminology such as the use of

66

the term “difference” was treated as a “jargon cliché” and thus was marginal.
Elbow argues that “of course, people did not fail to acknowledge that democracy
is an ideology—not built into the universe as natural or neutral” (p. 41); however,
Elbow treats “democracy" only in terms of classroom dynamics around the
relativity of teacher authority and student passivity. Discussions of ideology in
the context of language, literacy, teaching, or English curricula do not seem to
have played a substantial part in the Coalition’s conception of what it meant by

“Democracy,” whether or not some participants wished It to do so.

In addition to the dominance of cognitivist and expressivist approaches, as
well as the decision to focus on Democratic values in classroom contexts,
Elbow’s account of the English Coalition Conference emphasizes consensus,
unity, and the role of theory in developing curriculum policy. While Elbow at
times appears to treat theory and practice as distinct, and while he worries
considerably that postmodern relativism will contaminate discussions of theory, it
is clear that the conference participants thought about how differing
epistemological stances might affect approaches to curriculum. As I will make
clear later, this attention to theory is significant because it is largely absent or
invisible in official policy documents—a fact that has consequences. The focus
on theory at the Coalition Conference led people to take “an activist interest in
changing how we teach and how schools function,” (1991, p. 77), and that
interest has not translated into official language in policy texts.

With regard to the dominance of literature in the language arts, Elbow

(1991) claimed that participants at the conference saw the advantages of de-

67

centering literature in the curriculum. Doing so would demonstrate educators’
recognition of important theoretical shifts about the nature of literacy, Ieaming,
and language—especially shifts toward the social and ideological nature of
language and schooling. Unfortunately, in a reflection of a deeply held religious
faith in Literary power, Elbow reports with some satisfaction that everyone also
seemed to feel that literature was “special” and “precious” (p. 99). Because of
the dissonance they felt between their intellectual and emotional assessments of
literature’s place in the language arts, Elbow reports that the Coalition barely
addressed the study of literature at all. He writes, “By avoiding working out the
literature question, we were avoiding potential violence. . .. literature, in such a
short portion of our history, has gotten into the soul of the English profession” (p.
101).

The history of English education in the US, tied to the development of the
National Council of Teachers of English, shows that English is still uncertain even
after a century of institutionalization. Divorced from its roots in academia, school
English has become “the language arts”—a hodgepodge of subjects mixed
together for a variety of purposes and dominated by literary study. The links
between this literary study and larger ideological state apparatuses designed to
reproduce cultural capital, class- and race-based “moral” values, and the
reification of class- and race-based linguistic standards have made it difficult to
shift curriculum toward more contemporary understandings of language, Ieaming,
and literacy. In addition, moves to align English language arts education with

other subject areas like math and science in the interest of economic competition

68

via claims to Democracy and disciplinarity have led educators to frame language
arts curriculum as a linear and positivist project that does not adequately support
characterizations of English as fluid, diverse, and changing.

Having framed English language arts curriculum and education, I next
describe the development of policy in the field of English that brings a number of
discourses around school, Ieaming, and subject matter into conflict. These
conflicts have resulted in a number of contradictions in English language arts
policies that are the focus of this study, contradictions that have consequences

for equity and literacy in modern American culture.

Standards and Standardization in English and Education

According to Delandshere & Petrosky (2004), what little research exists on
accountability reform in the US focuses on how to develop standards-based
performance assessments that are consonant with the dictates of the reform
movement. The bulk of this literature treats the process as relatively
unproblematic. Delandshere and Petrosky write,

From the reformers’ perspective, standards-based reform in teacher

education appears logical and straightforward. Working backward, in

order to produce the expected student outcomes, teachers need to
develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions (language used in many
professional standards) that are known to be related to student
achievement. Ensuring a common vision for teacher education is
perceived as necessary in order for all teachers to develop the knowledge,
skills, and dispositions that are assumed to have a positive effect on the

achievement of all students—the ultimate goal of the reform. (2004, 4-5)
According to their analysis of both content and teacher preparation standards

and accountability models In the US, the accountability reform movement follows

69

from a historic assumption (referred to in the history section above) that
“knowledge is a commodity that can be objectified and measured in terms of
immediately visible outcomes,” that what teachers know and do is “the most
important” influence on student Ieaming, and that it is possible to reach
consensus about what should be taught in schools (pp. 5-6, 8).

Based on their study, Delandshere and Petrosky find that standardization
of teaching and subject matter content reduces attention to issues of equity and
ideology in education. Further, although many educators have characterized the
accountability movement as an opportunity for teacher professionalization
(National Council For Teaching and America’s Future, 1996), Delandshere &
Petrosky argue that accountability reform increases teachers’ responsibility and
accountability while actually reducing their power, participation in policy making,
and status, a finding shared by Smagorinsky in his study of language arts
teachers (1999). They note that a focus on teachers as the single most
important factor in determining student achievement represents a simplistic and
uni-dimensional attempt to resolve a complex, multi-dimensional problem. They
write,

...an organization of teacher education programs that prescribes

alignment, consensus, and consistency through bureaucratic and

authoritarian control is antithetical to Ieaming, inquiry, and true democratic

participation. (6)

Such prescriptions for teacher preparation and curriculum implementation
circumscribe the complexity of teaching, and impose “a fixed political will that

shapes [teachers] capacities, who they become as teachers, and positions them

primarily as implementers of content and pedagogy as defined by the standards”

70

(p. 7). Delandshere and Petrosky question whether it is desirable to define
criteria for teaching that ignore the plurality of meanings and purposes of
education and its place in society and in the construction of knowledge. They
question whether it is possible or desirable to reach consensus on such an issue,
and they question whether it is appropriate to subordinate teaching and Ieaming
to the perceived needs of any current social or economic order, which is likely to
be transient. They worry that accountability as it is presently conceived of
represents “a monopoly on thought” in the teaching profession, and argue that
standards tend to coerce educators into maintaining a negative status quo even
as they use progressive language and ideas. Given the concerns they outline,
Delandshere and Petrosky argue that “a critical analysis of the reforms seems
imperative, as [standards] represent ideological stances on teaching and Ieaming
that have major consequences for the work of teachers” (p. 2).

While there is little research or analysis of standards for teacher
preparation, a recent review of research and the development of English
language arts content standards also indicates that the issue of accountability is
fraught with ideological concerns (Wixon, Dutro, and Athan, 2004). Tracing the
development of content standards for the language arts in American schools,
Wixon et al. echo Delandshere and Petrosky by noting the complexity of school
subjects like English and commenting on the desire of some educators and many
education outsiders to impose a model of “rigor” on the language arts that would
result in a measurable, linear, easily assessable list of skills and competencies

as the basis for curriculum and instruction. Although the National Education

71

Goals Panel of 1991 expressed doubt about the possibility of reaching
consensus about content standards, Wixon et al. report that other organizations
like the National Council on Education Standards and Testing (delightfully
acronymed as “NCEST”) argued that content standards were "critical to the
nation” for promoting equity, preserving democracy, and improving economic
competitiveness. Wixon et al. write that, “Those who viewed standards as the
cure for the ills of public education expected standards to be precise statements
of the content to be mastered and measured” (p. 76).

The development of language arts content standards is intimately tied to
the politics of the “Reading Wars” of the 19903 that resulted in an extreme
narrowing of definitions for what counts as “reading” and also perhaps more
importantly a narrowing of definitions for “scientific” research by Reid Lyon and
the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development—both of which
resulted in increased restrictions for federal funding that have created de facto
standards that educators must follow in order to maintain federal support. During
this time, the National Council of Teachers of English, along with the lntemational
Reading Association and the National Education Association, all found
themselves excluded and/or marginalized in national conversations about
curriculum standards and teacher preparation because they were not in complete
accordance with Lyon. None were invited to testify at hearings on the Reading
Excellence Act legislation, even though they represented the most prominent
reading specialist organizations in the nation. According to Wixon et al., the

NICHD’s nan'ow definitions and the exclusions of teaching organizations that

72

resulted are still in effect today via the No Child Left Behind Act, which further
institutionalizes de facto national standards based on an ideological model of
literacy that trumps any space for critical deliberation or change. As the authors
note, “The emphasis on accountability through annual testing in NCLB virtually
dictates a view of content standards as measurable objectives... What began in
the standards movement as the promise of moving beyond behaviorist thinking in
teaching and Ieaming now threatens to bring us right back to where we started”
(p. 82).

Wixon et al. describe cases at both the national and state levels wherein
subject matter specialty organizations and university literacy researchers were
ultimately excluded from policy-making processes around standardization due to
ideological differences. At the national level, the Standards Project for English
Language Arts (SPELA) involving a joint commission of NCTE and the IRA
resulted in federal rejection of what became the NCTE/IRA Content Standards
for the English Language Arts (1996b). At the state level in both Texas and
Michigan, what began as cooperative endeavors between subject matter
specialists, business/economic interests, and state bureaucracies also resulted in
the exclusion of input from teachers and researchers who argued that standards
should reflect new knowledge and theory about complexity in literacy, the need
for flexibility, and an overtly political concern for equity issues around language
instruction. In each case, educators sought to produce flexible standards that
would function as guidelines rather than prescriptions. And, in each case, state

policy makers and business representatives rejected educators” proposals as

73

“soft" and “vague.” But rather than deliberate, educate, or compromise, policy
makers simply rejected educators’ proposals because they did not match the
perceived bureaucratic needs of standards-based accountability reform.

Wixon et al. report that newer standards reflect some incorporation of
advancing knowledge about literacy Ieaming and language, for example
including language about critical theory/cultural studies, the cognitive revolution,
constructivism, poststructural thought, feminism, and multiculturalism. However,
Petrosky and Delandshere found that while policies often contain some language
about progressive or contemporary theory and knowledge, such language often
masks a high level of reductionism and an anti-intellectual orientation that
discounts theory and expertise. Confirming this, Wixon et al. cite a study of
standards building efforts in Texas by Shepley (2002). In an interview with one
policy maker, Shepley captures their perception of educators who attempt to
influence curriculum policy:

We think that the schools belong to the people, not the teachers, not the

professors. So frankly, we’ve never been concerned about what

professors think. They fought us vigorously in the beginning on testing.

They fought us on all variety of things. And so we invited them out of the

meetings. We don’t even talk to them. (Shepley, 2002, 19, cited in Wixon,

Dutro, & Athan, 2004, 94)

Both Delandshere & Petrosky’s analysis and the review work by Wixon,
Dutro, and Athan demonstrate the ways in which ideological concerns around
economic competition, management discourses, and orientations to absolutist
models of knowledge influence the process of constructing education policies,

whether they are guidelines for teacher preparation or content standards.

Instead of involving critical deliberation about theory, knowledge, purpose, and

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outcomes for teaching and Ieaming, contemporary discussions around standards
tend to involve a competitive ideological model wherein a positivist approach to
teaching and Ieaming is masked by imposed consensus, legislated definitions of
content and research, and uncritical, unreflexive language about democracy,
critical literacy, constructivist Ieaming, and equity that fails to account for the real
structural, institutional, and cultural constraints of the American school system.

Delandshere and Petrosky write,

In the face of uncertainty, contradictions, and the unknown, reformers
have rallied around predefined standards, strict policies, and strategies, so
that we have the illusion of knowing where we are, where we are going,
and what and how we should teach. Evident here is a need to control the
unknown, to manage the unmanageable, and to create certainties in a
world where there are so few.... The reforms’ call for alignment and the
control mechanisms it uses (i.e., program accreditation and licensure and
certification assessment) require that teacher educators comply with a
certain way to organize their courses and to prepare their students’
presentation of competence... This level of compliance is not compatible
with the nature of teaching and Ieaming because it takes away the
intellectual autonomy necessary to engage in open and free inquiry.
(2004, 11)

Koziol’s (2004) discussion of the need for performance assessment
designs created and implemented by English educators helps offer some insight
into the kind of situation that Delandshere & Petrosky worry has developed in
current discourse. Recognizing the direction that the national conversation on
standards has taken, Koziol offers a number of reasonable goals, tasks, and
changes for English educators to engage in if they are to be involved and in
compliance with national and state accountability reforms. Koziol’s
recommendations include developing clear distinctions between beginning and

advanced professional performance criteria, a realistic scope for teaching

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standards, an articulation of the research base in order to allow for evidence-
based performance assessment, and NCTE-administered performance
assessments based on state-level certification criteria. In many ways, these
recommendations are consonant with other mainstream work on standards done
by the Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium, one of a
few educator-driven reform efforts that has received support outside of
education.

However reasonable these suggestions are in the context of standards-
based accountability reform, they assume that the current direction for such
reforms is either appropriate or inevitable, and they reflect a pragmatism that
silences the critical concerns that Delandshere and Petrosky raise by invoking a
skills-based approach to teaching that risks missing the ethical and political
aspects inherent in the field. If the profession institutes a set of performance
assessments based on compliance with national standards, what will prevent
those policies from “freezing” professional discourse and reifying a vision of
education that doesn’t account for the complexity of teaching, Ieaming, and
education as an ideological apparatus?

To make the issue even more complicated, it is important to point out that
Koziol’s observations about teaching standards—that they need to be realistic in
their scope, and that they must somehow account for the life-long nature of
teacher Ieaming in ways that involve consensus and measurable outcomes—are
in themselves not at all unreasonable. In a study of Australian teacher education

standards, Gore and Morrison (2001) find that standards too often promote a

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construct of the “super teacher" that is particularly unreasonable in the context of
the accountability movement, and Koziol’s recommendations are wisely designed
to avoid over-reaching. However, in addition, Gore and Morrison also warn that
standards for teaching are particularly inappropriate in that they are designed in
part to impose a professional model onto a field that has not yet achieved
professional status. The consequence, they argue, is an enormous increase in
responsibility and accountability for teachers without the presence of certain
requisite conditions and powers that come with professional status—like the
power to review, change, and approve of the policies that dictate their practice.
In addition, Gore and Morrison's analysis shows that, by representing such
policies as an advancement for the profession based on current knowledge and
“best” practices culled from a process of consensus, accountability measures are
often deeply flawed and based on faulty assumptions, even when they include
language that would suggest a recognition of complexity in the issues at hand.

In his analysis of Minnesota language arts content standards, Richard
Beach (2003) also notes that there are a number of dangers involved with
accountability reform, even when standards are based on constructivist models
and articulated knowledge about teaching and Ieaming. According to Beach, the
national context of standardization contains a number of problematic ideological
discourses that colonize accountability reform projects and marginalize
discussions of complexity, equity, diversity, and critical perspectives. Beach
demonstrates how discourses of crisis, consensus, economic competition,

business management, privatization, and absolutist knowledge all have entered

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the discourse of English education and made it difficult to develop equitable and
workable standards even when those standards employ additional discourses
about race, class, democracy, and the need for social change. In these cases,
language from the latter discourses tends to mask the former discourses while
actually serving to maintain an inequitable status quo. Beach argues that there is
a need for critical research on the discourse of accountability in order to better
understand how standards-based accountability reform is affecting discourse
within education, and also to understand how educators might play a more
powerful role in national conversations about the work they do.

A review of English language arts history, the historical development of
NCTE, and an overview of standards-based reform in teaching and the language
arts shows that ideological concerns are at the heart of the present discourse.
Both inside and outside of the field, a dubious consensus model has developed
and overshadowed the need for complex understandings of knowledge and
theory in any curriculum project. Due to pressures from outside, English
educators have been forced to either conform to national models of standards
and curriculum or risk exclusion.

One result of the exclusion risk of standards-based reform in English has
been a tendency to maintain the status quo. The demands of accountability
testing that led educators to frame English as an absolute and linear set of
content, the process of literature "getting into the souls” of English teachers, and
the desire to achieve/impose consensus on the profession for what counts in

English have resulted in a tension between conservation and reform in the

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language arts that puts the field behind the curve of literacy theory and research.
As noted earlier, since 1970 there have been major shifts in orientations to
literacy theory and research, proliferation In digital technology and
communications, and shifts in population and diversity that have implications for
the teaching of the English language arts. While most of these shifts and
changes have been recognized to some extent in discussions of accountability,
policy projects have done a poor job of accounting for the ways in which they
might change traditional practice and conceptions of language instruction. More
seriously, policy documents mask these issues and represent particular political
visions as universals, treating them as common sense and closing spaces for

dialogue and difference.

A Framework for Accountability

In “Conceptualizing Accountability for Education,” Kuchapski (2002)
reports that the obvious motivational assumption behind accountability reforms is
that they will improve education. However, opponents claim that accountability
reforms have the capacity to damage educational quality. In fact, citing a study
by Sykes and Elmore (1988), Kuchapski notes that opponents argue that
accountability reform can be “profoundly anti-educational (p. 91 )” (2002,
paragraph 2). She states that opposed groups rarely disagree about the abstract
value of accountability; rather, debates about reform are about “conflicting visions

of what public schools, and society, ought to look like” (paragraph 3). In other

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words, debates about accountability reform are ideological conflicts. She offers a
fundamental example of such a conflict:

...the debates over standardized testing are embedded in differences of

opinion over whether schools should give priority to a uniform education

(which is necessary if standardized tests are to be legitimate) or whether

they should give priority to flexible programs that can be adapted to meet

the unique needs of individuals. (paragraph 3)

As the analysis in Chapter 5 will demonstrate, ideological conflicts such as this
one are not necessarily clear cut in terms of their division across groups. Within
the NCTE Guidelines, for example, there are clear attempts to accommodate
both positions: uniformity and flexibility. It is the interplay between these two
apparently opposed positions that power relations across ideologies play
themselves out.

Kuchapski offers a set of “key components” (paragraph 5) from her
research, and particularly focuses on a set of variable “liberal” positions derived
from a historical analysis of accountability reform. Her intention is to “provide a
common point of reference for disparate accountability procedures” (paragraph
4). For the present study, Kuchapski’s analysis and models for accountability
provide a useful set of constructs for the analysis of accountability discourses
found in the 1996 NCTE Guidelines.

According to Kuchapski’s research, accountability reform can be traced
across a progressive series of liberal philosophical stances: political liberalism,
economic liberalism, ethical liberalism, and technological liberalism, “genres” that

emerged over time as education systems evolved in Great Britain, Canada, and

the United States. The earliest form, political liberalism, is based on a value for

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“basic, practical education” and developing both “patriotic virtue” and assimilation
into “the common culture of the nation” (paragraphs 20). This political liberalism
introduced a value for uniformity, and led to state produced prescriptive syllabi for
use in schools, accompanied by regular inspections of schools by the state in
order to ensure compliance. Although administration was initially a matter of
local control, advancing economic interests eventually led to more and more
state oversight of local trustees (paragraph 22)

By the beginning of the twentieth century, political liberalism shifted to a
more economic focus as “access to education became equated with access to
jobs. This economic liberalism led to greater emphasis on equal opportunity as
“equal access to different educations” (paragraph 25). In the movement toward
equal opportunity, an acknowledgement of different student needs emerged and
began to result in differentiated educational programs, for example the use of
academic and vocational tracks. According to Kuchapski, "The focus on meeting
the needs of students as prospective members of occupational classes helped to
prepare the way for a philosophy of liberalism directed at meeting the complex
needs of individual students” (paragraph 31). Kuchapski goes on to report the
development of an ethical liberalism in the 19303 that coincided with Progressive
reforms based on concepts of child-centeredness. Ethical liberalism concerned
itself with “developing the unique capacity of individual students,” “the importance
of the cultural community as the basis for individual development, access to
denominational and linguistic choice, and a value for the interests and beliefs of

individual students” (paragraph 33). In ethical liberalism a concern for equality

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became a concern for difference—that is, a concern for equity. As Kuchapski
states, “. . .the most important criterion of policy evaluation for ethical liberals
came to be defined in terms of diversity, not uniformitY’ (paragraph 33). Ethical
liberalism complemented and perhaps provided the basis for emerging
knowledge about constructivist Ieaming and social psychology at the time, and
affected education in significant ways. Student-centered pedagogies became
central to classroom instruction, and the role of the teacher shifted from that of a
director to that of a facilitator focused on supporting experiences rather than
transmitting factual knowledge in the abstract (paragraph 36). According to
Kuchapski, ethical liberalism reached its height during the 19603, and continues
to be influential today. As will be shown in Chapter 5, the NCTE Guidelines
reflect a strong ethical liberal stance. However, the philosophical positions
described here are not discrete either historically or ideologically. For example,
elements of economic liberalism, with a concern for how schools support state
economies, did not disappear with the emergence of ethical liberalism. Likewise,
when a technological liberalism began to emerge in the 19603, it did not supplant
ethical liberalism, but rather developed alongside it.

Kuchapski reports that technological liberalism gained prominence as
economic and technological changes began to accelerate, and a3 globalization
began to cause concern for nations as they found themselves in more vigorous
economic lntemational competition. As the perceived need to compete grew in
the minds of many citizens, technological liberals began to seek ways of holding

schools accountable “for providing students with an education that will serve

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them all equally in their future pursuit of employment” (paragraph 40). Kuchapski

states,

Consequently, public schools [were] increasingly being held accountable

for teaching a common body of requisite knowledge, and equal

opportunity became [as in political liberalism] defined as equal access to

the same education. (paragraph 40)
She notes that a technological liberal focus on measurement as the primary
engine of accountability led to a further emphasis on efficiency and the use of
standardized tests. While technological liberals “tolerate” diversity and choice,
they are concerned about social fragmentation, and frequently either ignore or
dismiss diversity; instead, technological liberals expect social diversity to “co-
exist with requirements which ensure that certain standards are met and that
certain curricular elements form a part of every child’s basic education (British
Columbia Royal Commission on Education, 1988, p. 9, cited in Kuchapski, 2002,
paragraph 41). In the technological liberal view, accountability means
commonality, with policy decisions and administrative control placed solidly in the
hands of the state, while day-to-day management is left to local communities.
Under technological liberalism, the job of teachers is to comply with state policies
and ensure that common goals are met. Rather than active participation in
decision-making, teaching becomes prescribed and merely technical work.

As Kuchapski recognizes in her own summary, as each genre of liberalism
emerged, the various stances included values for different educational purposes

and different understandings of how schools and teachers should be

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accountable. She further notes that an insistence that accountability reform is
fundamentally intended to improve education misses the fact that
notions of improvement and education are themselves dependent upon
visions of the public good. Increasing standardized testing improves
accountability as defined by technological liberals but falls far short of an
accountable education as envisioned by ethical liberals. For ethical
liberals, the trend toward uniformity and increased control makes
education less responsive to individual student needs, and less able to
involve the grassroots in important policy decisions. (paragraph 43)
Kuchapski’s framework for education accountability is extremely useful in
analyses of policy texts like the 1996 NCTE Guidelines text, which may be
viewed from a historical perspective and which, via intertextual relationships with
earlier versions of itself, is likely to include echoes and elements of the liberal
positions she describes. Figure 1 shows Kuchapski’s model in graphic form.
For the purposes of this study, I draw on Kuchapski’s model of educational
accountability in which ethical and technological liberal positions overlap and
compete in contemporary curriculum and reform texts. As the analysis in
Chapter 5 will demonstrate, the interaction between these two philosophical

positions has significant consequences for teacher preparation and curricular

content in the English language arts.

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Figure 1:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kuchapski’s Accountability Framework (2002)

 

 

 

Purpose: Disclosure Pumose:

Develop individual Transparency Meet requirements of
capacity Redress global competition
Justice: Justice:
Equity/accept Equality;

cultural diversity

Ethical
Liberalism

  
   

 

Technological
Liberalism

 

 

 

 

Promote uniformity

Legitimacy: Legitimacy:
Student-centered, Common outcome
experience-based based curriculum;
curriculum, Mastery learning;
constructivist Common Elements Hierarchical
pedagogy, _— relationships
participatory
relationships Planning Effectiveness/
Efficiency:
Effectiveness/ Maximize economic
Efficiency: Assessment efficiency;
Maximize Ieaming Focus on
within fiscal standardized
restraints; Focus on outcomes

process

State Organization:

State Organization: Centralized
Decentralized decision-making;
decision-making; Centralized

Policy policy/de-centralized
interdependence, management;

Local governance

 

 

********

 

Consumer choice

 

 

The elements of this review establish a clear need for the kind of research
presented here. Research from the New Literacy Studies indicates that there is
a growing body of knowledge about language and literacy currently unaccounted
for or misappropriated in literacy and language arts curriculum policy that cannot
be accounted for by a consideration of the historical context. Elements of the
developing New Literacy Studies have been playing out in the field for over thirty
years, and both research and theory about sociocultural perspectives on literacy

Ieaming particularly accelerated during the time in which the 1996 Guidelines

85

were being constructed. Historical texts in English education suggest a number
of ideological issues that are also largely unaccounted for or unarticulated in the
Guidelines. Finally, research on accountability measures suggests a need for
critical analyses of policy texts related to accountability reform in the US. In the
next section, I describe the method used to conduct this study. Chapter 3
describes the data sources and research instruments used for the analysis of the
Guidelines, and Chapter 4 involves a detailed methodological discussion of

critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) and the key terms and concepts

related to CDA theory and method.

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

Critical Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method in Literacy Research

(NOTE: Portions of this chapter are derived from the National Reading
Conference 2005 Yearbook chapter, “Critical Discourse Analysis in Literacy
Research,” written by Burns and Morrell. A version of this paper was delivered in
December, 2004 at the National Reading Conference annual convention in San

Antonio, Texas.)

Why Critical Discourse Analysis in Literacy Research ?

While students in America’s schools are acquiring literacy at
unprecedented rates and levels, we know that a divide grows between the
literacy skills of marginalized students and the increasing literacy demands of a
print and technology-rich society (Alvermann, 2001). Those who are unable to
acquire Iiteracies of power are significantly hindered in their ability to enjoy
engaged citizenship or professional membership. We also know from social
theory (Morrow and Torres, 1996) and educational sociology (Bowles and Gintis,
1976; Oakes, 1985) that the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” is largely
determined by race and class, and that schools often reproduce the very

inequality they might intend to eradicate (Kozol, 1992; MacLeod, 1987).

At the same time, we have witnessed the twentieth century’s “linguistic”
turn in philosophy and find ourselves drawing heavily upon theorists and social

scientists such as Vygotsky (1962), Bakhtin (1986), and Foucault (1972) who

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have argued that meanings are constructed through language. It then becomes
important for literacy researchers and educators to understand how classroom
discourses shape meaning In ways that promote the social reproduction of
inequality. Additionally, we need to understand how classroom discourses are
situated within larger meta-institutional discourses that shape, limit, or preserve
problematic representations of reality.

However, it is not merely enough to understand the role of discourse in
social reproduction. Literacy researchers are also called to intervene in,
challenge, and deconstruct oppressive discursive structures to facilitate more
empowering engagements with institutionalized discourses or the creation of
alternative ones. This language study and language praxis is associated with the
term critical discourse analysis.

This chapter explores the relationship between critical discourse analysis
(hereafter CDA), literacy research, and literacy education. It begins by theorizing
discourse, discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis. It then discusses

some of the various roles that CDA can play in literacy research.

Critical Discourse Analysis: An Introduction

CDA is one variant of a number of practices that fall under the rubric of
"discourse analysis.” These variations overtap in terms of method and
methodology. and are used across disciplinary boundaries. Given their

appearance in a number of contexts, along with the multiplicity of ways in which

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the term discourse can be used, it is useful to briefly review what is meant by
“critical” “discourse” analysis, beginning with the latter term.

Meanings for discourse are diverse and contested. In her exploration of
discourse as a concept in academic research, Mills (1997) reviews the ways in
which it has been defined across competing theories. She points out its broadest
definition as simply ‘verbal communication’. Additionally, discourse has been
defined as conversational talk, formal speech or writing on a particular subject, or
a linguistic unit greater than one sentence, reflecting the origins of the word as a
linguistic concept.

In its linguistic applications, Mills offers further evidence showing that
discourse can be used to describe transactions between a speaker and a
listener, or it can be used as a synonym for “text.” She mentions at least one
theorist who argues that discourse must be understood to include every
utterance, variety of oral discourse, piece of writing, and communicative act that
conceives of a speaker and an audience—a view which some would argue
makes discourse a meaningless term. During the 1960’s, however, particularly in
Europe, definitions of discourse began to diverge from general linguistic
meanings to take on an array of theoretical and philosophical inflections across
fields such as cultural theory, literary studies, and social psychology.

Given the range of fields in which discourse is relevant to research, the
term cannot be assigned a single meaning; rather, it is important to determine the
context in which discourse is being used (Mills, 1997). In CDA, the term

frequently takes on Foucaultian inflections and refers to the production and

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circulation of rule-govemed statements—a usage consonant with cultural theory.
Within this context, the ‘discourse’ of critical discourse analysis refers to “a
regulated practice that accounts for a number of statements” (Foucault, 1972, p.
80). It refers not only to language, but also to the social practices involved with
its production and consumption, the uses that language is put to in a social
group, and the effects (intentional or othenrvise) that the text has on social
interaction and meaning-making. As stated by Jaworski and Coupland (1999),
“Discourse is language use relative to social, political, and cultural formations—it
is language reflecting social order but also language shaping social order, and
shaping individuals” interactions with society" (p. 3). The movement from a solely
textual examination to the articulation of its socio-historical and socio-cultural
contexts allows analysts to move from the more descriptive frames of traditional
discourse analysis to a critical frame in which texts can be more clearly seen as
the products of ideological discursive practices.

The other term involved with CDA, critical, is contingent on the view of
discourse above as it relates to ideology. CDA construes discourses as
ideological because they are used to represent the systems of thought,
manifested in language, that groups and individuals use to identify themselves,
filter information, and interpret meaning. As ideological systems, discourses tend
to reproduce themselves along with the conditions necessary to sustain them.
However, rather than accepting the deterministic definitions of ideology found in
vulgar Marxism, CDA treats ideology as a complex structural concept. Drawing

on poststructural theories, CDA treats ideologies as historically situated, multiple,

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changing, overlapping, competing, and conflicting. Further, CDA does not treat
ideology as either “good” or “had”; rather, it recognizes that ideology is not
intended to be opposed to some concept of “the truth” that would otherwise
render the term biased. At the same time, CDA asserts that an ideology is
positive or negative depending on whether it helps to achieve some desirable
end in a desirable way. This is a matter of perspective that highlights a mostly
“inescapable Us/T hem dichotomy” in CDA and an underlying belief that, from a
critical perspective, some ideologies are “better" than others when the social
project involves an attempt to achieve equity (van Dijk, 2003). The key is to
maintain a stance wherein the researcher recognizes that ideologies and
discourses interact in unpredictable ways, and that even “positive” ideologies
may have negative or unanticipated effects.

In CDA, the term critical also distinguishes this method from others
because of its interest in change and intervention. While it is true that all forms of
discourse analysis pay attention to the social implications of the texts they study
(Jaworski & Coupland, 1999), not all forms of analysis are focused on affecting
practice. As such, it is significant that CDA places the term “critical” at the fore.
Whereas other types of discourse analysis are primarily designed to describe
discourse, critical discourse analysis seeks to understand and change discourse
processes in order achieve equitable social relations. Because of this, it is
aligned with the brand of “critical” associated with the Frankfurt School, which

emphasizes an emancipatory agenda.

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Before proceeding with a discussion of CDA as a research method, it is
also important to examine its use of ideology as a central concept for
understanding how discourses embody relations of power. In the next section,

ideology is examined in terms of its function as a social structure.

Ideology in Discourse

The use of a term like ideology is perhaps the central point of criticism for
all critical theories, and CDA is no exception to that rule. However, although
“ideology" is a term that has particular meanings in popular parlance (largely as a
pejorative term used to connote extreme and inflexible political positions), it has
other meanings that are still relevant for social science research.

Ideology was first described as simply the science of ideas (Felluga,
2003). In Marxism, the term came to refer to the systems of ideas that exist in a
culture—multiple religious ideologies, political ideologies, and aesthetic
ideologies used by social groups to make sense of their lives: what is real, true,
good, and moral (Marx & Engels, 1968). In the sense of early Marxism,
ideologies articulate what and how people think about everyday life. According
to early theory, “ideologies supply all the terms and assumptions and frameworks
that individuals use to understand their culture, and ideologies supply all the
things that people believe in, and then act on” (Klages, 2001).

Contention around the use of the term “ideology" emerged when Marx’s
colleague Friedrich Engels began to argue that ideologies were illusory—

fabricated filters for thought that masked the “true” nature of reality and misled

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those who held them. For Engels, and for Marx, the illusions created by ideology
created “false consciousness” in people so that they misperceived reality and
were deluded into thinking they were not exploited by the capitalist system when
in fact they were.

Eariy Marxist thought, then, suggested that ideology was a monolithic
system for governing the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of individuals in a society,
mainly as a mechanism by which the capitalist bourgeoisie persuaded the
proletariat to accept the conditions of their own oppression. Workers unwittingly
perpetuated their own oppression by adopting the very ideologies that facilitated
that oppression. It is especially this deterministic characterization of proletarian
ignorance and complicity that has driven most criticism of the use of ideology as
a term and concept in the social sciences.

If Marxist theories had failed to continue in their development, ideology
would not be a very useful or valid concept. However, numerous theorists
continued to work with the concept in order to develop a more refined and
practical understanding. Chief among these may be Althusser (cite), who
maintained ideology as a structural concept but also extended its usefulness.
His conception of “particular ideologies” is more useful than earlier Marxist
representations, and his is the one that corresponds to the concept of discourse
found in Foucault’s work as well as the work of critical linguists such as Gee
(1996) and Fairclough (1995).

In an Altusserian view of ideology, a given ideology or constellation of

ideologies offers individuals and groups the means to identify themselves and

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other members of a social group, and also to distinguish non-members; in many
ways this definition is related to what Gee has referred to as the “identity tool-kit”
used by members of a Discourse community (1996). As such, ideological
constellations are used to provide and gain access in a social group and are
therefore essential if one is to act within a group or be identified as a member.
Arguing that language mediates thought, belief, and action for all people,
Althusser (1971) believed that no one has a clear connection to “Truth” and/or
“Reality". People can only develop representations of the real and the true, and
they use socially constmcted ideologies to filter meaning and create codes,
patterns, vocabularies, and perspectives for discerning what is correct or
identifiable as “reality.” In other words, representations of reality can and do vary
according to perspectives in social systems.

For Althusser, ideologies do not result in “false consciousness”; rather,
ideologies can come to function as “common sense” for their adherents.
Adopting a set of ideologies, whether consciously or via implicit socialization,
requires individuals to subject themselves to certain rules, logics, and ways of
being that are largely unquestioned by members of the social group. This may
explain why ideology is frequently seen as pejorative—we tend to see our own
beliefs as “true” while labeling the beliefs of others as “ideological” and false,
when in fact there is no escape from ideology for anyone, including ourselves. In
this way, ideology is neither good nor bad, except in that some ideologies have
more equitable effects than others depending on one’s philosophical perspective.

When I use the term ideology, I mean the particular, historically situated

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systems for thinking and acting that supply individuals and social groups with the
frameworks needed to identify themselves as members, identify and recognize
other members, understand culture, interpret meaning, access resources, and
act to achieve goals. This is not the same as the original mechanistic ideology of
vulgar Marxism. Individuals and groups can adopt multiple ideologies at the
same time, and they can adopt and maintain conflicting ideologies at the same
time as well. Further, it is possible for members of a single discourse community
to hold different sets of ideologies while still recognizing each other as members
of the same general community. In that sense, a discourse community can be
composed of a number of sub-discourses (for example, proponents of whole-
language and phonics in the language arts can still recognize each other as
“English teachers”). Because of this condition, ideologies do not operate
mechanistically to determine thought and behavior, but instead work chemically
to produce a range of thought and behavior around some dominant center. It is
at this center that ideological struggles occur, as the majority or the powerful
attempt to maintain control while marginal members work to gain access and

power themselves.

CDA as Method

Having situated CDA through a discussion of its constituent terms, the
next section discusses CDA as a research method. As Fairclough describes it
(1992, 1995, 2003; Chouliaraki 8 Fairclough, 1999), CDA attempts to bridge the

divide between direct and indirect forms of discourse analysis. “Direct” forms of

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analysis refers to those forms that deal “directly” with close linguistic analysis,
while “indirect” analysis refers to those forms of discourse analysis that deal with
the contextual aspects of discourse. In CDA, the analyst is just as likely to use
the tools of linguistic analysis at the grammatical level as she is to use tools from
cultural theory to examine social implications and power relations involved with
textual processes. Norman Fairclough, whose version of CDA is applied in this
study, distinguishes CDA from other kinds of research and discourse analysis
and explicitly situates CDA as a kind of activist research methodology, stating,
“The objective of CDA is to uncover the ideological assumptions that are
hidden in the words of our written texts or oral speech in order to resist
and overcome various forms of “power over’ or to gain an appreciation that
we are exercising power over, unbeknownst to us.” (Fairclough, 1989)
The method of CDA involves a triad structure to guide research. It
assumes that discourse is both constrained and enabled by social structures and
by culture, and proceeds by examining relationships between 1) texts as speech
acts (texts as ideological recordings of communication events), 2) discursive
practices around a text (processes of producing, writing, speaking, reading, and
interacting), and 3) the sociocultural context in which these practices occur and
within which resulting texts circulate and regulate (contexts as coming with their

sets of rights and obligations that affect what is likely to be said [or not said])

(Fairclough, 1995). Fairclough’s triad can be represented as follows:

a Level 1: The Text—analyzing the linguistic constmctions, forms, and
meanings of the text itself.

. Level 2: Discursive Context—analyzing the production processes

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involved with the creation of the text in a social group. This
may involve an examination of generic constraints,
composition processes, distribution processes, and so forth.

a Level 3: Sociocultural Context—analyzing the use of the text in its
wider social, political, and cultural context. This level
includes analyzing the relations of the text in a social
network, analyzing the text in terms of its historical position,
and/or analyzing the text in terms of its effect on power
relations across social groups.

Below, Figure 2 illustrates Fairclough’s Triad graphically.

Figure 2: Fairclough's Analytic Triad for Critical Discourse Analysis

 

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CDA views texts as speech acts—that is, they affect how language gets
used and how meaning gets made. Texts are further viewed as both products of
discourse communities and as producers of discourse communities, operating
dialectically to aid in the identification and representation of the group. Texts get
used to talk desired realities into being, and in doing so they develop and set
forth the terms and norms for who gets to talk, what they may say, how they may
say it, what they should value, how they may think, and how they may behave.
Given the powerful effects that a text can have in shaping subjectivities, it
becomes important to understand how texts reify ideological discursive positions
and tools (Fairclough, 1989).

Much to the chagrin of some researchers and theorists, particularly
representatives of mainstream linguistics, CDA rarely proceeds along the lines of
a strict method. Rather, the analyst spends time immersed in the data, playing to
find categories, themes, articulations, and patterns, and gradually developing a
systematic set of relevant analytical strategies. These strategies may involve
analysis at the micro-level of words and sentences, or at the macro-level of the
structures and social contexts in which textual production takes place. Further, it
is not necessarily important that micro- and macro- analyses take place in a
hierarchical order. The analyst must be prepared to make decisions based on
the needs and context of the study, and as such the analyst must also be

prepared to explain those decisions and bracket his/her biases.

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The work of CDA proceeds from the identification of a text as part of a
social event or a chain of events that occur in a network of social practices. The
text is then articulated with other texts that may come before or after it in a
discursive chain in order to help establish the context of the analysis. After
identifying the genre or mix of genres that constitute the text, the analyst might
next characterize the text’s orientation to difference and also attempt to
determine the level of intertextuality in the text—that is, whether and how other
relevant texts and references are included or excluded by the text being studied.

Having described the context, genres, orientations to difference, and
levels of intertextuality, the analyst might identify the assumptions at play in a text
that have implications for the representation of reality, truth, and value—a focus
on the ideological orientations of a text. In addition to these moves, a critical
discourse analyst might describe the semantic, grammatical, and lexical relations
of a text—that is, how the actual construction of words, clauses, and sentences is
accomplished. These activities may be accompanied by efforts to determine the
grammatical mood, the kinds of statements a text makes, and the purposes of
those statements in the context of the social event. Next, the analyst might
identify the discourses a text draws on and discuss the features that characterize
those discourses and represent social events in particular ways. Finally, a critical
discourse analyst might identify and evaluate the styles involved with the
construction of a text, thth claims and their modalities, and values that a text
conveys.

To summarize, critical discourse analysis involves the study of written

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texts in the contexts of their use in order to understand how they function as
ideological instruments. It helps develop awareness about how texts shape
discourses, and it may be used to support efforts to deal with difference and
create spaces for equitable interaction and change among social groups. The
method is essentially a stmcturalist, neo-marxist approach to the analysis of
language. It assumes that social and institutional systems can affect social
groups and individuals in particular ways, shaping thoughts, values, and
behaviors. CDA focuses explicitly on issues of power. A key intention is to
promote positive social change, which in this study is defined as change that
increases equity and cooperation across different social groups to the benefit of
all.

In this study, power is conceived as dependent on social relations, aligned
with Foucault’s assertion that power is not a material possession. However, this
study proceeds under the structuralist assumption that people can and do exert
power in ways that dominate and marginalize others in the interest of controlling
a situation. And, while no group or individual is ever completely powerless or all-
powerful, this study is undertaken with the assumption that dominant discourses
can silence minority voices by controlling language and access to public
discourse.

It is important to repeat that the process described above is not intended
to totalize the practices of CDA, and the sequential organization of this overview
is artificial; CDA is not intended as a rigid procedure. Depending on the level of

analysis and point of entry into a text, a critical discourse analysis may or may

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not involve detailed linguistic analysis. Many discourse analysts focus on the use
of social theory to construct explanatory critiques of texts (Bhaskar, 1986, cited in
Chouliaraki 8 Fairclough, 1999) rather than linguistic descriptions of them. Both
types of analysis are useful, and any given analysis is likely to include a mixture
of the two, but in these latter cases, the focus of analysis will be on the
identification of ideological positions, discourses and styles, and the value
systems and power relations set up within a text and the social event it

accompanies.

CDA as a Policy Tool

In addition to potential functions as a tool for research and pedagogy
(Burns 8 Morell, 2005), CDA holds promise as a policy tool. A major implication
of the present work analyzing teacher preparation guidelines is that,
complementary to its function as a research tool, CDA has the potential to be
used in the process of text construction to address the complexities inherent in
the production of policy texts, which are intended to shape, direct, sustain, and
reproduce educational practice. In this context, CDA becomes a tool for aligning
textual components, addressing problems of intertextual representation, and
mitigating or resolving the problems and limitations of various policy genres, for
example. The reflexive role of CDA allows it to play a powerful role in the
pragmatics of educational policy and curriculum design.

One of Fairclough’s primary goals in the use of CDA is the creation of

spaces that allow for talk across difference (1989, 1995). Particularty in policy

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discussions, where consensus models frequently prevent the articulation of
differences, CDA can help to ensure that discourse proceeds along lines that
lead to more if not total critical discourse. As described by Habermas (1973), a
context of absolute critical discourse is one in which all parties and interests are
represented equally and free of hierarchical relations of power. According to
Habermas, this totally inclusive critical discourse is impossible to achieve;
however, a context of critical discourse is still a worthy goal, and an ideal worth
striving for. CDA provides a set of tools and dispositions that enable social
groups involved in conversations across difference to better and more completely
involve concerned parties and to place them on more equal footing toward the
achievement of equitable outcomes.

In addition to the potential for CDA to function as an inclusive device for
policy conversations, it also has the capacity to allow for the pragmatic design
and administration of curricula and policy. As Cherryholmes (1988, 1999) has
noted, all curricula are temporal, contingent, flawed, and historical; as such they
are limited in their sustainability—what was desirable fifty years ago (or twenty,
or ten, or even five) is unlikely to be desirable now. By using critical discourse
analysis as a means of periodically revisiting curricula and policy, it becomes
possible to make judgments about what needs changing from a given
perspective, how it might be changed, and what the consequences of change
might be. As Fairclough states, any change in policy that might result in social
transformation has winners and losers (2003). As educators making curricular

decisions that affect millions of people’s access to literacy and opportunity, CDA

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should be indispensable. Particularly when it is used in combination with
resources from the various social sciences, CDA can be a powerful instrument
for social equity from within the construction of education policies, not just a
powerful instrument for reaction to them.

In the next chapter, I discuss the method of CDA used for this analysis of
the 1996 NCTE Guidelines, including data collection, transcription, analysis

procedures, data codes, framing of the study, and positionality of the researcher.

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CHAPTER 4: METHOD

Data Selection, Coding, Procedures, and Framing

The purpose of this study is to engage in a close reading and analysis of
one attempt to create curriculum policy for teacher preparation within a discourse
of accountability. What are the consequences of blending, on the one hand, a
desire to accurately represent the knowledge and activities of “English language
arts” to professional classroom teachers and university teacher educators, and,
on the other hand, a desire to enable university English language arts teacher
education programs to negotiate national accountability processes in ways that
are recognized and valued by outsiders? How do NCTE’s own professional
guidelines represent the English language arts, literacy, and teacher education
for the organization? What are the consequences of these representations,
given what is known about the nature of language, literacy, education, and

standards-based accountability reform?

Centering this study on a textual analysis of NCTE’s 1996 Guidelines for
the Preparation of Teachers of the English Language Arts makes sense. NCTE’s
teacher preparation policy document is intended for use by university English
education programs to guide curriculum design according to “what teachers of
the English language arts should believe, know, and be able to do in classrooms”
( 1996a, p. 4). Prepared by NCTE’s Standing Committee on Teacher Preparation
and Certification, the 1996 Guidelines describe what the committee believes is

necessary to teach the English language arts via three clusters of guidelines and

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a set of undertying guiding principles. The authors assert that the guidelines are
voluntary, and that guidelines are necessary in order to create a shared vision for
English education that will lead to the production of “effective” English language
arts teachers; in addition, the authors state that the guidelines are written to help
English language arts teacher education programs obtain national accreditation
from governing bodies like the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher
Education. The Standing Committee states that it intends the guidelines to be
treated as integrated rather than hierarchical, and they are to be considered as
overiapping and contextual rather than prescriptive. The committee offers
underlying principles for diversity, content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge
and skill, opportunity, and dynamic literacy. Its forty-nine guidelines are grouped
into clusters around attitudes, content knowledge, and pedagogical
knowledge/skill.

It is interesting to note that very little has been written about the NCTE
Guidelines, and no one has engaged in a methodical inquiry or research project
related to the 1996 text. Shortly after its publication in 1996, the Conference on
English Education’s journal English Education dedicated a volume to
commentaries and responses to the Guidelines, including a reflection on the
process by Robert Small, the chair of the Standing Committee at that time
(1997). In addition to Small’s remarks, the volume also included a commentary
by Ruth Vinz (1997), and a conversation-style piece by Fairbanks et al. (1997), a
group of classroom teachers and teacher educators seeking to map the contents

of the Guidelines onto their own pedagogical practices and perspectives. For the

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most part, the papers included in the special issue offer positive characterizations
of the Guidelines; however, no research projects or methodical critiques were

included. The present study seeks to contribute these latter two “missing pieces”
in order to initiate a research-based critical dialogue about NCTE’s accountability

project.

Data Selection

The identification and selection of the 1996 Guidelines as an important
site of study for English education is important for many reasons. First, the
NCTE Guidelines represent the efforts of a major professional teaching
organization to establish a coherent curriculum policy for use in public
institutions. As such, the Guidelines also represent an attempt by a non-state
entity to influence the curricula of public institutions via participation in state and
national discussions about education accountability and the purposes of teacher
education. At a time when national accountability movements have moved
teaching organizations to try and establish themselves as more professional—
that is, warranted and capable of articulating and managing educational policy
and curriculum for their own govemance—the publication of a text like the 1996
Guidelines carries a high degree of significance.

The issues of accountability and professionalization in teacher education
are important contextualizing issues that help to frame any examination of the
NCTE Guidelines. Recently educators, economists, businesspeople, policy

makers, and other researchers have engaged in ongoing debates via public

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forums and professional journals about the nature of accountability and its
relation to professionalization in the field of education. To encapsulate this
partisan debate, I will refer to the recent publication of a series of articles by
Cochran-Smith and Fries and other commentators in the journal Educational
Researcher (2001, 2002). In these articles, Cochran-Smith and Fries make an
effort to represent two conflicting discourses about accountability, standards, and
professionalization in education.

On one hand, teachers and teacher educators are interested in increasing
the professional nature of education in order to increase the power of teachers to
control curriculum and policy, make autonomous pedagogical and assessment
decisions, and set political agendas for their own work. This group uses
research evidence to argue that classroom teachers at all educational levels
make a significant difference in improving educational quality, and that the key
ingredient to their success is participation in formal programs of university
teacher education (for a representative study, see Grossman’s 1990 study of
university- and altematively—certified English language arts teachers). As such,
this pro-teacher group is attempting to create a powerful and more consistent
role for classroom teachers, university teacher education program
representatives, and education researchers in national policy conversations.

On the other hand, Cochran-Smith and Fries describe a second group that
opposes university teacher education, a group arguing that entrance into the
profession must be broadened beyond the realm of universities to make it easier

and more desirable for “the best and the brightest” to become teachers. Also

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using research data (sometimes using the same evidence as its opposition) this
group argues that university teacher education has little impact on student
achievement, and that such programs are unnecessary hurdles to classroom
teaching. While they believe that teachers are important, this group stresses the
need for tightly controlled curriculum and assessment to govern teachers’
classroom activities, “academic rigor,” “standards for excellence,” and the need
to make teachers and schools “accountable” for what they’re students Ieam (or
don’t Ieam). This group believes that accountability standards and testing will
compel teachers and schools to improve; those that fail to improve will risk
sanctions and even privatization.

These two groups are significant. The group in favor of “accountability" for
compliance brings a particular set of ideologies to the project of education, and
consists mostly of education outsiders—often politicians, business leaders, and
economists who apply corporate models of efficiency and productivity to the
“business” of education. The group in favor of accountability toward
professionalized teaching consists mostly of education insiders—teachers,
education researchers, and teacher educators. Currently, the former group
appears to be controlling the national public discourse and implementing its
agenda to curb university teacher education, while the latter group works to gain
access to the national conversation. In doing so, those in favor of teacher
professionalization have tended to adopt the discourse practices of
standardization in order to accommodate what they perceive to be the political

inevitability of the accountability movement—teachers can “play ball,” or they can

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watch from the sidelines as others re-design the playing field and change the
rules of the game.

Given educators’ efforts to either initiate or enter national conversations
about accountability, the NCTE Guidelines for teacher preparation become
extremely relevant. The Guidelines are a curriculum policy text written by
teacher educators, educational researchers, and classroom language arts
teachers for use in the political context described above. In order to better
understand the discursive interactions between accountability and teacher
professionalization, it is useful to analyze the Guidelines in order to determine
whether and how various ideological strands contribute to its activity.

Further evidence of the Guidelines’ use in national education
accountability makes analysis of this text even more important. Through a
partnership with the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
(NCATE), the NCTE Guidelines are currently used as a pre-requisite for all
university teacher education programs that choose to undergo NCATE
accreditation review (NCATE, 2003). In this capacity, the “guidelines” function as
de facto standards used by NCATE and client universities to frame the
accreditation process and assess programs’ readiness for accreditation review.
In such a capacity, the Guidelines gain some force as a Iegitimizing discourse for
both the process of national accreditation and also for particular visions about the
nature of teaching and Ieaming in the English language arts. An analysis of the

Guidelines, then, offers an important point of entry into discussions about both

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standards-based reform and accountability, and also a crucial site for discussion
about what counts as “English language arts.”

It is important to acknowledge that NCTE will soon issue its 2006 revision
of its teacher preparation guidelines. While this fact might lead some to argue
that an analysis of the 1996 Guidelines is irrelevant, it is important to recognize
the intertextual nature of the Guidelines as a historical and political document.
According to the authors of the 1996 version, the Guidelines maintain many
strong links with previous versions, and represent a relatively stable and ongoing
discourse about English language arts teacher education. Furthermore, in
communications with members of the current Standing Committee for Teacher
Preparation and Certification, the 2006 Guidelines will change very little in
comparison to the 1996 version (personal communication, 2004).

In addition to the 1996 Guidelines’ links to historical documents, current
national accountability processes, and the upcoming revision in 2006, it is also
necessary to look beyond the temporal aspects of this discourse analysis. While
one goal of this study is certainly to describe a particular discourse about English
education during the period of the last ten years, other goals of this study include
developing a greater understanding of how discursive processes and textual
activity in policy and curriculum operate to enable and/or constrain activity in the
field of English education. While some details about particular kinds of work or
specific issues may change over time, the processes and contexts in place for
the production of those policies have remained relatively stable; therefore, a

study of the 1996 Guidelines can be informative for work and policy in the future.

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Additionally, a study beginning with the 1996 Guidelines initiates an ongoing
inquiry into English education curriculum and policy, and contributes to the
archive of historical texts and policy documents useful for the study of such
issues. In short, a critical discourse analysis of the 1996 NCTE Guidelines is
relevant to the field beyond its description of a single temporally bounded policy
text.

Fairclough (2000) has offered a series of reasons justifying the use of
textual analysis in social science research that solidify the case for the kind of
research represented by the present study. In “Linguistic and lntertextual
Analysis in Discourse Analysis,” Fairclough (2000) outlines five reasons why
textual analysis “ought to be more widely recognized, within a framework for
discourse analysis, as part of the methodological armoury of social science. .
(p. 203). First, Fairclough notes that the social structures that many social
scientists study are in “a dialectical relationship with social action (the concern of
‘micro’ social analysis), such that the former are both conditions and resources
for the Iatter....” (p. 204). Second, he notes that “language is widely
misperceived as transparent, so that the social and ideological ’work’ that
language does in producing, reproducing, or transforming social structures,
relations, and identities is routinely ‘overlooked’” (p. 204). Third, Fairclough
asserts that, “texts constitute a major source of evidence for grounding claims
about social structures, relations, and processes” (p. 204). Fourth, he claims
that, “texts are sensitive barometers of social processes, movement and

diversity, and textual analysis can provide particularly good indicators of social

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change” (p. 204). Finally, he connects social scientific research to critical

objectives, stating,

It is increasingly through texts. . .that social control and social domination
are exercised (and indeed negotiated and resisted). Textual analysis, as
a part of critical discourse analysis, can therefore be an important political
resource, for example in connection with efforts to establish critical
language awareness (Clark et al., 1990; Fairclough, 1992) as an
indispensable element in language education. (205, italics in original)

Data Analysis

Having identified and established the 1996 Guidelines as an important site

for study about discourse and accountability in English education, I read the text

several times and developed a high degree of familiarity with its contents. Table

3 below lists the twelve sections of the Guidelines as follows:

 

 

Table 3: 1996 NCTE Guidelines Chapter List

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Statement of Underlying Principles

Chapter 3: Attitudes of Effective Language Arts Teachers

Chapter 4: Content Knowledge for Effective English Language Arts Teachers

Chapter 5: Pedagogical Knowledge and Skills Demonstrated By Effective Language Arts
Teachers

Chapter 6: lnterrelations: Attitudes, Knowledge, and Pedagogy

Chapter 7: Relation of the Guidelines to Standards Projects

Chapter 8: Characteristics of Effective Teacher-Preparation Programs for English Language
Arts

Chapter 9: Effective Transition to Teaching

Chapter 10: lnservice Education: Ten Principles

Chapter 11: Continuing Issues in the Preparation of English Language Arts
Teachers

Chapter 12: Appendix: A Personal View from a Beginning Teacher

 

This study concentrates only on the portions of the text that directly

concern the curriculum policy guidelines—chapters 1-5, chapter 7, and chapter

11. It does not address the chapters on model programs, transition to teaching,

or inservice education. Chapters 8 and 9 on induction and inservice were not

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authored by the Standing Committee; rather they may be regarded as
supplemental chapters that were included by the Standing Committee in order to
offer a vision of English teacher education as a long-term, ongoing process that
extends beyond the confines of university teacher preparation.

After reading and notating the text in several iterations, I conducted an
extensive review of the literature on English language arts history and curriculum,
the history of NCTE, and literacy theory. Some representative texts from this
review are Berlin (2003), Scholes (1992), Graff (1987), Ohmann (1976), Hook
(1979), Applebee (1974), Dixon (1966), Lloyd-Jones 8 Lunsford (1987),
Smagorinsky 8 Whiting (1995), and Street (1984). This review allowed me to
identify an archive of relevant artifacts for this study, and helped to characterize
the episteme of English language arts education. As defined by Foucault, the
archive and episteme are important discursive structures. The episteme consists
of “the sum total of the discursive structures which come about as a result of the
interaction of the range of discourses circulating and authorized at a particular
time” and which “include the range of methodologies which a culture draws on as
self-evident in order to be able to think about certain subjects,” and the archive
consists of rules which limit “the forms of expressibility,” “forms of conversation,”
“forms of memory" and “forms of reactivization” at “a given period and for a
definite society" (Foucault, 1978, cited in Mills, 1997, p. 57, 63). Once these
texts were reviewed and synthesized, creating a contextual and sociocultural

frame for the study, I returned to the text of the Guidelines and coded them

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systematically using critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992, 1995, 2003;
Chouliaraki 8 Fairclough, 1999).

In order to code the Guidelines, I designed a system aligned with
Fairclough’s (2003) method of CDA. Each chapter of the text was transcribed
and “chunked” according to sentence structure. Subjects, verbs, and modifying
phrases were separated in order to enable searches for verb patterns, diction
and tone, social actor patterns, assumptions, orientations to difference, genre
elements, and statements of ethical liberalism and technological liberalism as
described in Chapter 2.

In a series of passes, the text was coded for each auxiliary verb phrase,
diction and tone, the representation of social actors, the presence of value,
propositional, and existential assumptions, the use of nominalizations,
statements aligned with ethical and/or technological liberal philosophies (as
described in Chapter 2), orientations to difference, and genre markers in the text
such as the use of numbered lists, absolute statements, statements of
consensus, etc., which Fairclough notes as functioning,

to limit policy options by portraying the socioeconomic order as simply given,

an unquestionable and inevitable horizon which is itself untouchable by policy
and narrowly constrains options, essential rather than contingent, and without
time depth. Moreover, these texts often appear to be promotional rather than

analytical, concerned more to persuade people that these are indeed the only
practicable policies than to open up dialogue (2003, 95-96).

Table 4 in the Appendices shows how these codes were operationalized.

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Once the transcript had been fully coded and reviewed (See Appendix A
for samples of data transcription and coding), discourse segments were
extracted from the text and organized according to pattern and function.

1. Auxiliary verb phrases, functioning to establish a set of obligations for
teachers and students in the English language arts, were extracted and
used to characterize the roles and activities of these groups in the NCTE
accountability framework, and helped to establish the ways in which
guidelines were used to enable or constrain certain ways of being,
thinking, knowing, valuing, and acting in English language arts classrooms
and teacher education programs.

2. Similarly, items coded for diction and tone were extracted and categorized
to understand how particular constructions were used to reify assumptions
about teaching, Ieaming, and language, to project particular values as
universals in the teaching of English language arts, or to mark a particular
style or tone reflecting the authors’ attitude toward a given topic. For
example, repeated constructs such as “effective teaching,” “effective

instruction, appropriate language use,” “appropriate use of technology”,

“providing environments, creating environments,” etc., were extracted
from the text and grouped by patterns of use and topic focus (See
Appendix B for Samples of Diction and Tone Categories).

3. Statements concerning social actors in the text were counted and

categorized for use in representing the functions of various agents in the

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text of the Guidelines. These social agents were analyzed according to a
number of variables, including

Number of references in the text
Whether the social actor was realized in the text by a pronoun
Whether the social actor was present, absent, or backgrounded in
the text

0 Whether the social actor was represented personally or
impersonally
Whether the social actor was named or categorized
Whether the social actor was represented specifically or

generically.

4. Value assumptions, propositional assumptions, and existential
assumptions were highlighted and linked to elements of ethical and/or
technological liberal philosophical stances in the text in order to develop
patterns of inter-discursive activity that helped establish power-relations
between curriculum and accountability interests.

5. Finally, the text was analyzed for statements that revealed varying
orientations to difference with regard to teaching practices, subject matter
content, the nature of teaching, Ieaming, and language/literacy, and the
functions of the Guidelines as a policy document.

In Fairclough’s framework for critical discourse analysis (1995, 2003), the
text constitutes only the first level of analysis. In addition to close reading and
linguistic analysis, critical discourse analysts also attempt to study the layers of
discursive practice and sociocultural context in order to fully situate their
analyses and develop more robust evidence for claims and conclusions. This
study was initially designed to include both interviews with members of the 1996

and 2006 NCTE Standing Committees in order to better understand the

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processes involved with the writing and publication of the Guidelines, and also a
meta-analysis of survey data gathered by the Conference on English Education
about professionals’ understandings of “quality English teaching.” In each case,
these two additional levels of inquiry were intended to help triangulate findings
from the textual analysis. Unfortunately, in each case, the available data was
insufficient for use in this study. Across the 1996 and 2005 committees, less
than 15% of the members responded to invitations for interviews. Similarly, the
number of respondents to the CEE survey was too small to generate reliable
data.

In spite of these limitations, an analysis of the Guidelines at the level of
the text may still be valuable. The text includes numerous references to the
processes used by the committee to write the Guidelines, and the use of
research and scholarship involved with the archive described earlier provides a
significant amount of information about the sociocultural context in which the
Guidelines were produced. In short, while it would have been desirable to
incorporate the interview and survey data described here, its absence does not
preclude a rigorous analysis of the Guidelines text; neither does its absence
necessarily invalidate claims and findings from the perspective of textual activity.
Future studies may improve upon existing textual evidence to solidify and
complicate our understandings of how accountability and curriculum interact in
texts like the NCTE Guidelines. For this study, my analysis focuses both on the
content and meaning of the published text, attending to the discursive structures

(generic structures, framing, orientations to difference, etc.) that organize and

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drive it while also accounting for contextual issues and discursive processes

around the production of the Guidelines as much as possible.

Positionality and Advocacy in Critical Discourse Analysis

There are limitations to any research methodology; Critical Discourse
Analysis is no exception. Although my intention is to offer this study as “friendly
fire” for my profession, I am aware that a large-scale critique of discourse in
English education, conducted by an insider junior member of the profession and
a member of NCTE, requires close attention and care regarding audience and
rhetoric. Given the tendency of discourses to “nudge” insider dissenters back
into the mainstream, to ignore them, or to remove them entirely (Gee, 1992), the
first task of representing discourses in the NCTE Guidelines involves cultivating
balance, care, and respect for the community under study. The “missionary
work” that is explicit in Critical Discourse Analysis theory, and the inherently
critical orientation of rhetorical inquiry can be problematic. Like Segal et al.
(1998), I am uncomfortable with looking in “for a brief time on the tacit knowledge
that others have acquired over a lifetime and then [telling] them what it is” (p. 82-
83).

It is important to develop methods of rhetorical inquiry that are acceptable
for use in professional self-critique, and yet rigorous and critical enough to yield
useful findings and feasible plans of action from a position inside of the discourse
community, particularly because of the challenges involved with analyzing a

discourse from the inside. For example, although I am a member of NCTE, that

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identification must come with an acknowledgement that NCTE includes members
who hold a wide range of values and beliefs. Given that, it would be
disingenuous for me to claim that I am representative of the NCTE membership.
Rather, my research, as is any research, is founded on a standpoint. This study
is an attempt to analyze discourse in a manner that is methodologically sound
according to critical discourse analysis theory. But critical discourse analysis is
an advocacy methodology—it inherently involves the maintenance of a particular
position from which the analyst ‘reads’ the discourse with the intent of creating
spaces for dialogue across different positions and a movement toward equitable
social change. In the case of this study, my intention is first to describe the
discourse of the NCTE Guidelines. That intention is founded upon and followed
by an intention to engage in and alter that discourse in the interest of increasing
NCTE’s access to and control over state and national policy talks. It is also an
attempt to introduce new developing perspectives on literacy theory and practice
into NCTE’s policy and curriculum conversations so that members of the
organization can A) respond to changing literacy practices and cultural contexts
for English language arts teaching and Ieaming, and B) represent the range of
“English language arts” in a way that is both more inclusive and fluid than current
policy discourses and genres account for.

My position, then, is decidedly tied to perspective and epistemological
assumptions. Specifically, I take the perspective of the New Literacy Studies to
frame my analysis of the NCTE Guidelines, and assume the neo-marxist

structuralist and critical position of a critical discourse analysis. It is an advocacy

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position with a strong relativist component (Cameron et al., 2000), and it
assumes that, while social structures function to enable and constrain social
interaction, they do so in complex ways that can be characterized as ideological.
Terms like ideological and rhetorical that are commonly used in CDA are

highly charged and loaded in ways that can alienate the subjects to whom they
are applied. The question of ideology, in particular, is terribly important. Used
carelessly in an analysis like this one, it could nai'vely imply that the members of
the NCTE Standing Committee were involved in deliberate acts of exclusion
intended to maintain their power. I do not believe nor intend to imply that such
was the case, and yet it is essential to ask questions about how ideologies
positioned the authors of the Guidelines as both witting and unwitting agents; the
exercise of power always has unintended consequences. Still, these are difficult
matters to talk about in a professional discourse community, and they pose
difficult compositional challenges. According to Segal et al. (1998), without a
respectful and cautious approach to communicating findings from rhetorical
analysis to the community being studied,

...[l]t is possible that when we say ‘rhetoric,’ they will hear “your writing is all

manipulation.“ When we say ‘social constmction,’ they will hear, ‘you're all a

bunch of frauds.’ When we say ‘ideology,’ they will think ‘political correctness.

So, how do we go about challenging traditional mind-sets while still showing
respect for the people we study? (1998, 82).

This study will in part involve an exploration of the issues that Segal et al.
raise. By engaging in the discussion above, my intention is to help articulate and
bracket my own biases to the extent that such a thing is possible in any research

study. Although Creswell (1998) warns against studying “your own backyard,” l

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believe that attempts within a social group like NCTE to describe, understand,

and control the group’s discourses are important and desirable (p. 114).

Certainly, activities designed to control discourse in social groups go on all
the time; in this case, the difference is an attempt to be explicit about those
intentions, and to enact them in ways that avoid marginalizing other members or
sub-groups. Indeed, a central goal of this project is to open up a space where
diverse positions related to the English language arts can be recognized,
articulated, valued, and applied to the development of quality programs of
English language arts teacher education. As such, I would assert that I have

made a strong case for studying “my own backyard.”

Limitations

In a commentary discussing critiques of Critical Discourse Analysis, Haig
(2004) alludes to the criticism of mainstream linguist Henry Widdowson, who has
offered

“a sustained argument against critical approaches to discourse analysis,

particularly Faircloughian CDA. To summarize his main arguments, he

charges that:
1. CDA is not analysis in support of theory but (merely)
interpretation in support of belief.
2. The beliefs of analysts are ideologically biased, leading to

analysts reading meaning into, rather than out of texts.

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3. This bias is further compounded by the fact that the analyst
selects only those texts which will confirm his or her beliefs.
4. The distinction between the interpretation of the analyst and that

of the lay-reader is ignored” (p. 14).

I believe that these critiques are skewed but that they still have merit and
require the attention of CDA practitioners. In particular, there is a perception
among applied linguists that critical discourse analysis is not a valid form of
discourse analysis as it is understood in their field. Many linguists accuse CDA
of not being discourse analysis at all, and complain that published research in
CDA involves a kind of black box research in which the researcher does not
conduct rigorous linguistic analysis at the level of text that they believe is
required to produce rigorous, valid, scientific knowledge. As Antaki, Billig,
Edwards, and Potter (2003) have asserted, “discourse analysis means doing
analysis.” Among linguists, there is a suspicion that CDA’s use of cultural theory
for textual interpretation often obscures what they consider to be essential
objective analysis that is free of bias. More strongly, linguists like Widdowson
suspect that CDA practitioners use CDA theory to avoid doing “real” analysis at
all, instead using theory and “interpretation” to make a “rhetorical” argument that
is invalid.

While I disagree with the premises of these critiques, particularly the
implication that other research methodologies obtain objectivity and escape

author bias via an arbitrary definition of “rigor,” I recognize that their criticisms

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raise legitimate points for CDA practitioners to consider. It is my goal to develop
3 CDA study that offers a clearly articulated relationship between the linguistic
analyses, cultural theorizing, and rhetorical interpretation that I believe make
CDA a powerful method for literacy research. Achieving this goal will require that
I offer explicit evidence of my analysis (so that it does not occur “backstage,” as it
were) and that I also make an argument for the legitimacy of interpretation and
rhetoric as valid aspects of knowledge construction in my work. It is my
contention that these two tasks are incumbent on any researcher working in any
methodology. I believe that a significant source of the critiques discussed above
is the matter of academic territoriality and narrow disciplinary construal of

knowledge, method, rigor, and analysis.

Critical Discourse Analysis has faced criticisms from some quarters
charging that the method leads researchers to project their own biases onto data
and thereby fails to produce legitimate knowledge. Generally, these kinds of
critiques come from researchers with positivist, scientific, and objective
epistemological beliefs based on their disciplinary perspectives. The advocacy
component of a method like CDA leads many positivist and "scientific”
researchers to accuse CDA practitioners of a lack of objectivity. However,
accusations regarding a lack of objectivity are limited, given the fact that all
research methodologies carry limitations and biases due to the particular
traditions and perspectives they originate from—including those methodologies
that are deemed “scientific.” As Kuhn (1962) has demonstrated, even research

in the sciences involves a high degree of intuition, messiness, and fuzzy

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experimentation. It is useful for scientists and “objective” researchers to
remember, for example, that the discoveries of penicillin and X-rays were
accidental, hardly the results of completely systematic inquiry. Likewise, in other
social sciences like anthropology, participant-observation research was long
believed to be “objective” and “scientific” in spite of clear cultural and colonial
biases inherent in the assumed position of the researcher in the field as related
to the “other" of his subject population. In the case of this study, I do not claim
objectivity; rather, I assert that, through the use of a systematic method and a
cleariy defined methodology, my findings are valid according to the established
traditions of qualitative research; moreover, my inquiry is consistent with other
studies produced using CDA, and so contributes to an established (though still
developing) research community. By this attempt to identify and bracket my own
position, I seek to avoid unexamined biases that might corrupt the present

analysis.

In the next Chapter, I present a full analysis of the 1996 NCTE Guidelines.
First, I summarize the content of the Guidelines to begin describing the ways that
the Standing Committee’s guidelines represent the English language arts and
English teacher education. This summary is followed by the Guidelines’
representation of social actors in the guidelines, focusing on teachers, students,
and the NCTE Standing Committee for Teacher Preparation and Certification,
along with a number of other significant social actors. Following Chapter 5,
Chapter 6 discusses findings regarding patterns of discourse related to the use of

specific terms in the NCTE Guidelines, specifically focusing on the representation

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of the English language arts as a discipline, and exploring discourses of
integration and holism in language arts curriculum. The analysis also deals with
six other strands of discourse that run throughout the text: the nature of 1)
discourse and 2) literacy in the Guidelines, 3) the representation of critical
approaches, 4) the use of diversity, 5) the centrality of literature and the relation
of media and non-print texts, and 6) the consideration of equity and the discourse

of appropriateness.

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CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS, PART ONE

Social Actors in the NCTE Guidelines

Big Backyard

As I discussed briefly in Chapter 4, an analysis of one’s own discourse
community should be undertaken with some trepidation. James Gee (1996) has
argued that it is not possible to critique a Discourse from the inside, and Creswell
(1998) similany warns would-be researchers about the dangers of doing research
in one’s own backyard. While valid caution flags, though, they are dependent on
the extent to which one is willing to extend particular conceptions of discourse
that conceive of a particular Discourse community as well-defined, bounded,
governed by consensus, and capable of micro-determining the behavior and
perception of its members.

Since advancing the idea of capital “D” discourse communities that
provide “identity tool kits” for members, and which regulate group behavior such
that all members can be identified by each other, Gee has tempered his own
theories. Recognizing that members of any Discourse community are likely to
also be members of many other Discourse communities, Gee has described how
“affinity” with social groups can be affected in much broader tenns—an individual
can be considered “inside” the Discourse if one can be recognized by other
members of that community. In the case of English education and the English
language arts, the looser conception of discourse communities is more realistic

than the rigid deterministic concept of membership that initially emerged with

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Gee’s concept of Discourses. It highlights the ways in which Gee has
consistently emphasized how members of a Discourse community are always
also members of overlapping, competing, and even opposed social groups
whose values are not always compatible or complementary. If we think of the
field of English studies as one of Creswell’s “backyards,” then it could be said
that there is room in that yard for people to play a variety of different but related
games.

There is tremendous diversity across the groups and individuals who
identify themselves as members of the fields of “LiteracY’ and “English.” These
groups include cognitive psychologists, literary critics of all theoretical stripes,
cultural theorists, high school “English” teachers, elementary “language arts”
teachers, reading teachers, linguists, and more. Within these groups, distinctions
can be made based on epistemological stances and theoretical orientations, and
also based on the specific foci of their daily work and interests. As Grossman et
al. (2001) have suggested, broad fields like “English language arts” are
constituted by clusters of “pseudocommunities”—groups within the larger
discourse formed by individuals who have an affinity based on their interest and
interaction with like-minded colleagues. This is not to say that members of
pseudocommunities are unable to identify or even affiliate with members of
different pseudocommunities, recognizing each other as fellow “English
teachers,” for example. Still, Grossman et al.’s work suggests that a given

“Discourse” may not be as cohesive as initially theorized.

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Given Grossman’s concept of pseudocommunities, I suggest that it is
quite possible to position oneself within a larger Discourse community like
“English language arts” and construct a legitimate critique. In this case, although
I am a member of the wider Discourse called the field of “English language arts,”
and although I am a member of the National Council of Teachers of English, I
have only limited affinity with the communities bounded by NCTE's official
organizational structure at this time. I am a member of the Conference on
English Education, a founding member of CEE’s graduate student strand (which
has yet to fully develop), and an occasional participant in CEE’s commission on
English language arts methods. I have presented at national and state-level
NCTE conferences, and have studied with a number of NCTE national officers as
a graduate student. Beyond these points of contact, I have had no official
contact with the NCTE bureaucracy, and no prior contact with groups like the
Standing Committee on Teacher Preparation and Certification that determine
curriculum policy outside of the context of this study.

From this vantage point, CEE and the CEE Graduate Strand, for example,
constitute pseudocommunities of which I am a part; the members of the
Standing Committee, though I can recognize them as members of my larger
Discourse community, are a group that I am not affiliated with, even though
members of the Standing Committee may also be members of CEE. From this
perspective, it is possible to conduct an analysis of the Standing Committee’s
discourse as a pseudocommunity from what might be called a “native outsider’s"

point of view, understanding that any critique I might offer will be based on my

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situated perspective. In this case, I assume the perspective of a researcher and

English educator aligned with the New Literacy Studies and Critical Discourse

Analysis.

Friendly Fire

However legitimate my warrant for study and critique of my own
community, it is not my intention to simply criticize the Standing Committee from
my view in the peanut gallery. To the contrary, I agree with Gore & Morrison
(2001), who, in their critique of Australia’s Adey Report on teacher education,
quote Foucault as they note that, “A critique is not a matter of saying that things
are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of
assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of
thought the practices we accept rest” (1988, p. 154, quoted in Gore & Morrison,
2001, p. 568). In this chapter, I describe the contents of the 1996 NCTE
Guidelines in discursive terms—describing how they represent the content and
teaching of the English language arts, and describing the ways in which social
actors are portrayed in this accountability text.

I begin with a descriptive summary of the Guidelines. Following the
summary, I describe how the Guidelines depict social actors in the context of
English language arts and English language arts teacher education, focusing on
teachers, students, members of the Standing Committee, teacher educators,

literacy communities, ethnic groups, researchers, readers, and writers. Next, in

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Chapter 6, I lay out a number of discourses that may be identified in the text of
the Guidelines by identifying patterns of diction, including the following:

The English language arts as a "discipline"

Integration and holism in ELA curriculum

The nature of discourse and literacy

The representation of critical activity and the use of diversity

The centrality of literature

A discourse of appropriateness related to variations of the English
language

First, I describe the 1996 Guidelines’ representation of English language arts

teaching.

What do the Guidelines Say?

In Chapter 2 of the Guidelines, the Standing Committee outlines a series
of “underlying principles” they claim were used to guide their work. Following are
summaries of the Standing Committee’s Underlying Principles, and a summary of
the Guidelines based on a synthesis of statements the committee placed in
numbered and bold-face typed lists. By providing these summaries, my intention
is to represent the basic guidelines articulated by the Standing Committee “on
the surface.” Another intention is to help begin demonstrating the ways in which
such “basic” statements, founded on claims of consensus, mask important
contradictions and competing ideologies by projecting particular ways of thinking
and believing as universals.

The 1996 NCTE Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of the English

Language Arts may be summarized as follows.

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Underlying Principles For Teacher Preparation:

1. Diversity

Recognize and value student diversity, promote communication and
understanding across cultures, use diversity to enhance academic
achievement, enable students to construct meaning from multiple

sources, and encourage multiple ways of knowing.

2. Content Knowledge

Understand the role of literature in understanding human cultures,
understand that composing involves a wide range of
processes/functions, display a broad view of what constitutes a text
(both print and non-print media), know and use a wide range of critical
and interpretive approaches to literature, know that the uses of
language and literature vary among cultures, know that media and
technology are integral to teaching, understand the nature of English,

and value students’ native languages.

3. Pedagogical Knowledge and Skill

Understand and be skillful in planning and implementing leamer-
centered instruction, employing authentic assessments of student
Ieaming, and knowledge about the multiple positions and orientations

for teaching the English language arts in context.

4. Opportunity

Develop teaching/Ieaming processes with a wide range of media,

expand as a critically literate individual who participates in a

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democratic society, experience a wide range of literature, participate in
model classroom Ieaming communities, experience multiple means of
assessment, develop professional communities, and reflect on one’s
own and others instruction as a means for self-improvement.
5. Dynamic Literacy
. Write with proficiency and pleasure, read widely, participate in cultural
events, and write about experiences as a writer and a reader alongside

students

Guidelines for the Preparation of English Teachers

1. Attitudes
a. Teachers should recognize that all students can Ieam, desire to

promote human diversity through curriculum, promote respect for
individual languages and dialects, encourage growth through
appropriate use of language, believe in the need to match student
needs and teacher objectives, encourage students to respond
critically to different media and communications technology, commit
to continuing professional growth, take pride in teaching English, be
sensitive to school and community contexts, develop habits of
critical thinking, recognize the value of diverse opinions, desire to
promote the arts and humanities to students, and encourage
students to read and write about their literary understandings.

2. Content Knowledge

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a

O'

. Language Development
i. Teachers should view growth in language as a
developmental process related to home language, native
language, dialect, and second language acquisition.
Reading, writing, speaking, listening, observing, and thinking
should be treated as interrelated, and social, cultural, and
economic environments should be seen as integral to
language Ieaming.
. Language Analysis
i. Teachers should think of English as a dynamic language
rather than static, and they should understand that there are
many viable and valid versions of English.
Language Composition
i. Teachers should understand that oral, written, and visual
composition requires an understanding of multiple
processes, and that verbal and visual language influence
thought and action.
. Written Discourse
i. Teachers should treat writing as a form of inquiry, reflection,
and expression.
Reading and Literature
i. Teachers should treat reading as a constructivist and

transactional process. They should know that proficient

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readers are conscious of their own comprehension
processes. They should believe that effective teaching
requires knowledge of literature and literary genres
representing a worldview appropriate for the classroom, and
that literature is a source for exploring and interpreting
human experience.
f. Media
i. Teachers should believe that knowledge of the power of print
and non-print media is necessary to understand
contemporary culture.
9. Instructional Media
i. Teachers should believe that instructional media can aid and
add to the English language arts.
h. Assessment
i. Teachers should believe that student Ieaming ought to be
assessed in multiple ways; they should understand that
standardized testing alone does not adequately reflect
student Ieaming.
i. Research and Theory
i. Teachers should believe that knowledge of major trends in
research and theory from both education and English is
essential for effective teaching.

3. Pedagogical Knowledge and Skills

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a. Instructional Planning
i. Teachers should treat English instruction holistically,
involving both collaborative and independent student
Ieaming and using a variety of materials and media to work
on interdisciplinary instructional units.
b. Instructional Performance
i. Teachers should promote respect for and understanding of
academic, ethnic, racial, language, cultural, and gender
differences in the classroom, stimulate students in active
Ieaming processes, use students’ work as part of instruction,
and incorporate technology.
c. Instructional Assessment
i. Teachers should promote respect for challenging student
discourse, use feedback to teach students, develop ways to
communicate assessment results to diverse audiences, and
use assessment to improve instruction.
d. Instruction in Oral, Written, and Visual Languages
i. Teachers should enrich and expand language resources for
different social and cultural settings, engage learners in
discussion, interpretation, and evaluation of ideas, and
design instruction that reflects language as a human
creation.

e. Instruction in Reading, Literature, and Nonprint Media

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i. Teachers should build a reading, listening, and viewing
community where students respond, interpret, and think
critically. They should engage learners in literary

transactions, and promote media literacy

Who is in the Guidelines?

Before delving into an analysis of the NCTE curriculum, it is necessary to
establish who the players are in the script of the Guidelines. By demonstrating
the ways in which social actors are portrayed in the text, it is possible to draw
conclusions about who has the right to speak and act, and both when and where
they have the right to do so. These, in turn, can help to demonstrate the power
relations at play in the Guidelines’discourse. In this section, I sketch the roles
and presences of ten significant groups in the text. These groups were identified
and selected based on the frequency of their appearance in the text and the
identification of patterns that accompanied their representations. The ten groups

are listed below in Table 5 as follows.

Table 5: Groups Represented in the NCTE Guidelines

 

 

1. Teachers

2. Students

3. The Standing Committee

4. Teacher Educators and Teacher Education Programs

5. NCTE/Professional Organizations and The English Language Arts as “the profession”
6. Audiences, Parents/Families, and critics

7. Learning and Literacy Communities

8. Ethnic groups

9. Researchers and theorists

10. Readers and writers

 

Teachers in the Guidelines

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Not surprisingly, teachers are the focus group of the Guidelines.
Throughout the text, teachers are referred to generically and categorically—a
practical representation for the genre of accountability standards, which are
intended to apply to entire classes of people. Although teachers are very much
present in the text of the Guidelines, they are often represented as objects rather
than as active agents. For example, the text frequently represents teachers as
“produced” by teacher education programs, a representation that characterizes
teachers as de-personalized and even manufactured goods created in a factory
setting.

In spite of these periodic references to the production of teachers, this
class of social actors is described in a variety of ways. Across the Guidelines,
teachers are variously referred to as professionals, scholars, decision-makers,
agents of change, models, supervisors, mentors, colleagues, practitioners, and
reformers. Several of these appellations are important in that they represent
teachers as agents who act in powerful ways. Most significantly, perhaps, is the
representation of teachers as “professionals”—a label that implies high degrees
of specialized knowledge and autonomy. The label of “scholar” represents
teachers as knowledge makers, and labels such as “decision-maker,”

“supervisor, mentor,” and “practitioner” all suggest that teachers are important
actors who both initiate and govern activity in their social environments. The
labels of “mentor” and “colleague” imply that teachers function in a stable
community with well-developed mechanisms for induction and collaboration, and

labels like “reformer” and “agent of change” suggest that teachers play an

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important role in social activism and transformation toward equity in schools; in
this capacity, teachers are represented as political actors.

In addition to representations of who teachers are in the Guidelines, there
are, of course, numerous representations of what teachers do. These
representations allow us to describe how the Guidelines represent the activity of
English language arts teaching, and as such they are important discursive
markers for “what counts” in the field. Judging by the 294 references to them in
the chapters analyzed for this study, teachers are the central referent of the text.
The tendency is to represent them either as objects who are acted upon, or as
agents who are under obligation to act in certain ways; if the Guidelines are to be
taken at face value, then teachers are a highly governed social group. That is,
the majority of statements about teachers in the text of the Guidelines articulate
what the Standing Committee believes teachers “should know,” “must
understand,” or “need to be able to do” in order to be “effective.” They are rarely
represented as independent agents; instead, they are agents whose activities are
determined by the curricula of their university teacher education programs and
the curricula of the schools where they teach. The dominant structure of
statements concerning teachers can be represented by the following pattern,

which appears throughout the Guidelines:

SUBJECT [Teachers] + AUXILIARY VERB [should, must, need + infinitive]
+ MAIN VERB [e.g., understand, believe, value, etc.] + OBJECT [attitude

phrase, content phrase, pedagogical phrase, student phrase,

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epistemological phrase] + MODIFIER [often a prepositional phrase that

provides context].

In this structure of obligation, teachers do many things, and as such may
be characterized to some extent as active agents. They variously recognize,
value, enable, promote, draw upon, encourage, foster, know, understand,
respect, develop, expand, experience, participate, reflect, consider, write, read,
and share. Although these actions represent a range of specific activities, they
are presented within constructions stating what teachers will do or should do
when they are trained according to the NCTE Guidelines. They are represented
as objects who must be acted upon before they may act themselves. Further,
they are almost always “provided” with the skills, tools, and knowledge necessary
for action by English language arts education programs.

In the main body of the guidelines, teachers are represented as obligated
to do, know, or believe a range of things in value and propositional assumptions
about English language arts activity—assumptions that are based on particular
perspectives but projected in the Guidelines as universal. Teachers are variously
expected to understand particular concepts and issues related to educating
students in the language arts, realize student needs, respect students, and serve
them by providing access to information and opportunities while tailoring
instruction and helping them to engage content by fostering their interests in the
language arts and being sensitive to students’ cultural needs. They are expected

to believe in their students’ abilities to Ieam and succeed, and to nurture students

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toward success; this nurturing involves maintaining an awareness of and concern
for students’ individual needs, committing to the work of English language arts
teaching, respecting ELA subject matter, and drawing on a variety of resources
to build effective learning environments. Further, teachers are expected to help
their colleagues, acquire new knowledge by participating in professional learning
communities, and create instructional plans that integrate content, promote the
subject and values of the discipline, and address contextual issues of community,
teaching, and Ieaming.

With regard to content knowledge, the Standing Committee expects
teachers to exit ELA Education programs with a comprehensive understanding of
developmental theories and processes by which people acquire, understand, and
use language, and they should know the relationship of language development to
the fundamental principles and characteristics of human growth so that they are
able to set expectations for student achievement. They should know processes
of language acquisition and development so that they can strengthen their
students’ language abilities. In doing so, they need to understand how language
varies, and also know how to Ieam about their students’ home, community,
cultural, and environmental factors as they affect literacy, especially
understanding how language varies across cultures, understanding differences in
semiotic representation across cultures, and distinguishing between
“academic/formal” and “non-academicfinformal” English. They should use
integrated approaches to provide students with opportunities to practice with

language. They should understand semantics, linguistics, and grammar, know

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the history of change in English, and teach their students that English is a
dynamic language by providing productive ways of talking about how language
works. Further, the Standing Committee expects that teachers should
understand and value multiple definitions of “text, ” introduce a wide range of
processes for writing, and make literacy public while accounting for issues of
equity that affect students’ opportunities to acquire literacy skills. Teachers ought
to learn about how to write by participating in communities of writers themselves.
In teaching reading, teachers are expected to take an expressivist reader-
response approach that relies on literary study. In doing so, teachers should
have a broad understanding of textuality and genre by acquiring extensive
experience with and knowledge about a wide range of literature, a range of
diverse authors, especially in terms of gender and multiculturalism, and young
adult texts, which they should then use to provide access and learning
opportunities for students. While they need to know about the range of texts,
especially media, visual texts, and instructional technology, they are expected to
treat literature as the core of the ELA curriculum. They should use non-print
texts in support of literary study, and also as texts unto themselves. In delivering
instruction, teachers are expected to be able to create environments that support
critical responses by students. Finally, teachers are expected to know about, be
able to design, and use a range of assessments in addition to standardized tests
in order to assess students’ instructional needs. They should also work to be
familiar with current and seminal research and theory in the field of English

language arts.

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In the pedagogical guidelines, the Standing Committee asserts that
teachers should take a student-centered approach to the language arts, which
fundamentally affects the roles a teacher will play in the classroom; here, the
teacher is expected to be able to create a learning environment in which
students can be immersed in language Ieaming and language use. They are
expected to design classroom environments and seek opportunities for language
practice and communication, valuing both individual and collaborative activities.
To create such classrooms, teachers are expected to have a deep understanding
of planning, performance, assessment, and instruction in oral, written, and visual
languages, as well as knowledge about instructional techniques in reading,
literature, and nonprint media. They are expected to be able to understand and
articulate the ways in which these instructional domains are interconnected, and
also to demonstrate that interconnectedness as evidenced through planning and
instructional design. They are expected to utilize a variety of print and nonprint
texts, including texts by authors from diverse ethnic and racial groups.

In addition to utilizing a range of multicultural texts and genres, teachers
are expected to give students frequent opportunities to practice using a variety of
language forms, helping students to take pride in and respect language varieties
in the classroom and community, and draw on that language variety as an
instructional resource. They are expected to create opportunities for students to
practice using oral, written, and visual communication in real-world activities that
connect to students’ everyday experiences and result in real communication.

Teachers are expected to demonstrate how English is dynamic and changing,

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and to create environments where students can understand how uses of that
language vary across cultural contexts and situations.

With regard to specific subject matter, teachers are particularly expected
to know how to stimulate student transactions with and responses to literature,
prepare students to create nonprint media, and help students explore media as
an extension of literary understanding, and also as a subject unto itself. The
Standing Committee asserts strongly that teachers should help students to
understand the possibilities and limitations of non-print media.

The pedagogical guidelines also specify instructional modes that English
teachers are expected to know about and use. Teachers are expected to draw
on students’ interests for instructional planning, and they are supposed to
understand the connections between English and other disciplines and use those
other subject areas to teach the language arts. To enact collaborative teaching
situations, English teachers are expected to know how to teach in teams and
understand cooperative teaching roles. As they work with students in such
situations, they are expected to explore themes from multiple cultural and
intellectual perspectives, and construct an environment that supports frequent
collaboration and opportunities for independent student work. In order to teach
effectively in these environments and sustain them, teachers are expected to
know their students’ cultural and cognitive backgrounds, understand how group
Ieaming works, and create an environment where students can share ideas by
using their own texts as instructional materials in ways that are public and

explicitly valued through sharing with parents, community members, and others.

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In teaching students how to work collaboratively, teachers are expected to know
how to promote and assess student discourse, help students connect learning to
their personal experiences, and teach them how to function as a critical audience
that respects and challenges the views and ideas of others. Further, teachers
are expected to know enough about technology to assist their students in using
technology, they are expected to know how to evaluate the use of technology for
instruction, and to be able to judge the value of tech products. They are
expected to integrate assessment into everyday instruction and design
environments where students are participants in the assessment process. They
should be skilled at monitoring students at all stages of the Ieaming process, and
should know how to make and use appropriate forms of assessment for student
Ieaming. They should be able to articulate standards for learning to parents,
administrators, students, and others.

In discussions about continuing issues related to the teaching of English
language arts, teachers are represented as obligated to have a strong academic
background in the English language arts, and the performance of their students
is expected to be central to teaching and Ieaming in their classrooms; as such
teachers are obligated to understand the contexts in which learning takes place.
Teachers are obligated to translate a variety of conceptual frameworks into
coherent classroom practices, course plans, and programs, be knowledgeable
about the uses and abuses of technology as it replaces traditional teaching

approaches, follow developments in learning and brain research, and develop

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awareness and appreciation of their students’ backgrounds, language, and
needs.

Teachers are expected to ground their attitudes toward the profession in
scholarly practice, as reflected in their creation of rigorous and challenging
lessons, courses, units, and programs of study, design curricula and approaches
based on student interests that challenge students at “the highest levels” in
English, enable students to think and use language in order to develop as
individuals and interact successfully and respectfully in the wortd, and develop
open and responsive understanding of local communities, and strong working
relationships with patrons and parents.

This summary contains over 100 statements of obligation subsumed
under 41 ”guidelines.” In Chapter 7, I will discuss some of the patterns and
issues that can be identified across these representations. Next, however, it is
useful to describe the representations of students and other social actors in the

text.

Students in the Guidelines

Again as a matter of course, it makes sense that the Guidelines spend a
significant amount of time discussing the activities of students in English
language arts classrooms in conjunction with the obligations of English language
arts teachers. Similarly to teachers, students are represented according to their
obligations for Ieaming in the classroom—what they are expected to know and

do, and what they need from their teachers that contributes to the Standing

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Committee’s understanding of curricular requirements for English teacher
education. Across the Guidelines, students are represented in the following
ways.

Students, like teachers, are present in the text of the Guidelines, but
referred to impersonally, generically, and categorically according to the demands
of the accountability genre. They are referred to in relation to concepts,
dispositions, and other language arts content that they “need to,” “should,” or
“must” know, and often appear as the direct objects of teachers’ actions in
auxiliary constructions. They are referred to in relation to what is necessary for
effective teachers to teach effectively.

Students variously receive instruction and opportunities so that they are
led to explore, engage, and become familiar with ELA subject matter. Teachers
are expected to make sure that students learn, achieve, grow, and acquire
knowledge and a value for the language arts by experimenting, taking risks,
trying out ideas and processes, reading, writing, using their home Iiteracies,
thinking critically, drawing conclusions, expressing ideas, and demonstrating their
Ieaming for others. Students are referred to 235 times in the text of the
Guidelines in connection with 71 statements regarding their obligations to do,
think, believe, and value in the context of the English language arts curricula.

According to the Guidelines, students need help from teachers to develop
linguistic maturity through the use of language in multiple contexts, and should
Ieam how to closely monitor their own personal development in that language

use. They need the teacher to help them develop language skills and Ieam to

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both respect and appreciate variations in language use among others, including
the application of academic/formal and non-academic/informal forms of English.
They should work to develop an interest in the English language by bringing their
own languages to the classroom, use non-academic forms of English in class to
understand how languages function and study the relations between those
functions and the relations between different types of discourse such as reading,
writing, and speaking.

As teachers help students to develop their communications skills, students
should have opportunities to practice creating and evaluating visual texts,
participate in public discussions that involve the uses of literacy, and gain
experience acting effectively in their immediate environments through the uses of
literacy. Further, students need the teacher’s support as they Ieam to respond
personally to literature, deal with their personal responses to literature by
analyzing them, value multiple ways of responding to literature, and select
appropriate stances for response to literature. They should Ieam to read
critically, use their imaginations, and become independent and engaged readers
who use literature to develop an understanding of both human nature and
themselves. Ultimately, students need to Ieam how to read for information,
understanding, and pleasure.

In addition to reading literature, students need the teacher’s help in
Ieaming to understand and evaluate media so that they Ieam to not accept media

as unmediated reality. The Standing Committee asserts that students need to

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become aware of the range and power of media, and know how to construct
media texts without being controlled by media themselves.

In Chapter 5 of the Guidelines, students are represented in ways that
convey a particular perspective on the nature of teaching and Ieaming. They are
described in ways that communicate a constructivist orientation to pedagogy that
emphasizes both cognitive and social orientations to Ieaming, and particularly
emphasizes the social nature of meaning making, communications, and Ieaming
processes. In the text, students are described as already knowledgeable when
they enter the classroom; they are not empty vessels. Rather, students use their
prior experiences to make new meaning. As they Ieam, they should transform
knowledge through constant practice and active engagement to construct
personal and shared social meanings through both collaborative and
independent work.

Learning through their shared experiences in the classroom, students are
believed to Ieam best when they form Ieaming communities where they are able
to challenge their own ideas and the ideas of others in respectful ways, Ieaming
to function in that community to create products and texts that are praise worthy
not only as classroom work but in contexts outside of the school. They are
believed to need plenty of practice engaging in discussions about language so
that they can learn to step outside of themselves and both value and understand
multiple perspectives. As a result of working with literature, they should be able
to recognize and distinguish multiple genres and styles of literature, perceive

thematic patterns, and understand the importance of historical contexts for

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literature. Finally, the standing committee asserts that students should Ieam how
to construct meaning through the use of media.

When Chapter 6 discusses the relation of the Guidelines to other national
standards projects, students are represented in terms of what they do. Students
are expected to use their home Iiteracies as they participate in literacy
communities where they learn to use strategies for reading a variety of texts and
genres, conduct research, use technology, and adjust their understandings in
order to apply their learning in ways that lead to a respect for diversity and the
ability to use language for their own purposes.

In the Continuing Issues chapter that concludes the Guidelines, students
are believed to be best served by a broad consideration of “the psychological
process of how individuals represent themselves and are influenced by the social
contexts in which writing occurs” (p. 63). The Standing Committee also asserts
that students must be treated by teachers as “free agents” who have the ability to
think and act according to their own interests. They are represented as
vulnerable actors who subject themselves to the mercy and sensibilities of their
teachers when they respond to a wide range of texts and audiences through
composition and literary study. Above all, repeatedly, the Standing Committee
emphasizes that teachers are obligated to respond to the needs and interests of

their students.

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The Standing Committee in the Guidelines

As the authors of the Guidelines, the members of the Standing Committee
are very much present in the text, represented as active agents in terms of their
beliefs, decisions, and actions to shape the text and determine what English
teachers should know, believe, and be able to do. As authors, they also
determine and represent the roles of all other actors in the text, and are the only
significant social agents who are named, personalized, and specifically
referenced. Their activities are particularly apparent in Chapters 1, 6, and 7—the
introduction of the text, the discussion of the Guidelines’ inter-relation with other
standards projects, and the discussion of continuing issues for the Guidelines
that concludes the text. It can be said that, given the pattern of their appearance
in the Guidelines, references to the Standing Committee most frequently mark
passages that are intended to introduce, legitimize, and rationalize the use of the

Guidelines as an accountability framework.

In Chapter 1, the Standing Committee represents itself as responsible for
determining and producing guidelines for teacher preparation in response to a
number of contextual pressures. In particular, they frame the construction of the
Guidelines in response to “critics” from outside of education who accuse schools
(and by association, English teachers) of failing to educate children. They assert
a growing body of criticism about literacy and public education, and note a lack of
consensus about the purposes of school and the nature of literacy both between

education insiders and outsiders, and within the context of English language arts.

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In spite of serious disagreements, the Standing Committee claims a
responsibility for “finding the voice” of the profession, and for offering its “best
view” of what “might be said” about what teachers should know, believe, and be
able to do in order to be effective. In doing so, they differentiate between
curricula that are designed to prepare people who choose to be English majors
and curricula that are designed specifically to prepare people who will become
English teachers. They offer suggestions about how the Guidelines ought to be
used—specifically stating that the Guidelines are intended to be voluntary and
flexible. They also attempt to specify their intended audiences for the Guidelines:
teacher educators, classroom teachers, school administrators, school board
members, policy makers, parents, and concerned citizens.

In Chapter 6, where the Standing Committee discusses how the
Guidelines interrelate with other standards projects, the committee represents
itself in dialogue with a number of other professional organizations. The
committee aligns itself with these organizations, and represents its guidelines as
parallel with other standards frameworks; essentially, the Standing Committee
argues that each organization’s standards are in general agreement and that the
content, rationales, and functions of these accountability frameworks rest on
common ground. Doing so allows the Standing Committee to assert consensus
across a wide cross-section of organizations concerned with designing curricula
for what teachers should know and be able to do. The committee is explicit in
recognizing that other standards frameworks deal with teacher preparation

differently than the Guidelines. They state that they benefited from the

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opportunity to Ieam from these alternatives and expand their conception of the
skills necessary for effective teaching. They also claim that studying these other
frameworks allowed them to develop confidence in their own guidelines by
establishing common ground with other standards frameworks.

In Chapter 7 of the Guidelines, the committee makes a number of claims
about its beliefs and intentions with regards to curriculum policy in English
language arts teacher preparation. They state explicitly that they developed the
guidelines with the intent to balance between a cognitive and social context,
assert that pedagogy must be morally defensible, and claim that students must
be respected as competent free agents. They assert that they purposely avoided
associating specific terminology used in the Guidelines with specific movements
and schools of thought found in scholarly literature, and do not name, elaborate,
or recommend specific conceptual frameworks used to develop particular
guidelines or components. They claim that the lack of reference was intentional
in order to acknowledge the breadth and depth of the knowledge base for English
education and to avoid being over-prescriptive of the content in English teacher
education programs; instead, the committee claims to refer only generally to
structures that inform the accreditation process, because they preferred to leave
decisions to the discretion of individual programs situated in local contexts.

Throughout these discussions, the committee asserts a fundamental
intention to produce an inclusive document, forwarding a belief that “diverse
conceptual frameworks that inform English education share important common

ground in terms of both theory and practice.” The committee articulates its

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determination to draw attention to the importance of seeking commonalities
among “diverse, sometimes opposed theories and their attendant practices,”
asserting that programs seeking accreditation need an accountability framework
that takes a pluralistic, inclusionary approach in order to leave many areas open
to interpretation.

In addition, the authors claim that they made an “eamest attempt to seek
explicitly and openly a balance between conservation and reform that will
encourage teacher educators to develop a balance between rigor and student-
centeredness.” They encourage programs seeking accreditation to emphasize
connectedness and common ground across conceptual frameworks that “often
seem, on the surface, to be contradictory.” They state that connections are
important because of the “fact” that many teaching practices are central to
enacting several different conceptual frameworks in the classroom.

Finally, the committee claims that it articulated what it knew about
technology during the three year period of the revision process, Ieaming and
thinking as much as was possible during that time about including the use of the
lntemet, the increase of graphic interfaces for instructional delivery, expanded
technological resources, and interaction among diverse populations around
technology in English language arts contexts. They conclude the Guidelines by
acknowledging that one function of the Guidelines intended specifically by the
Standing Committee was to help initiate reform by educating teachers and then
placing them in schools as agents of change. They articulate a belief that

preservice teacher education effects school policies and teaching practices, and

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that fundamental student-centered principles represent the values of NCTE and

English educators in general.

Other Social Actors in the Guidelines

Teacher educators, teacher education programs, NC TE,
professional organizations, and the English language arts as “the
profession. ”

References to English teacher educators and English language arts
education programs appear throughout the text of the Guidelines in relation to
aligning curricula and programs. Although English education programs are
institutions, not people, they are represented in the texts as social agents, doing
things in the world such as providing teachers with access to resources believed
to be necessary for effective teaching. These groups are referred to categorically
and generically, although the Standing Committee repeatedly makes the point
that the Guidelines have been written for flexible applications across unique local
programs.

English teacher educators are variously referred to in the text as teacher
educators, professionals, and educators. Occasionally, especially when the
Standing Committee seeks to express solidarity within NCTE, teacher educators
are referred to along with classroom teachers, particularly through the use of
pronominals such as “we” and “our" (for example, “our profession”). “NCTE” and
“accreditation authorities” are also represented as social actors. This grouping is

generally represented as responsible for determining English education curricula,

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developing knowledge about English teaching, developing relationships with
stakeholders in schools, and delivering instruction to teachers. They engage in
discussions about policy and issues important to language arts professionals,
and are considered to be obligated to account for local and regional variations in
culture, language, and dialect related to English education. When considering
the role of the Guidelines as a conservative document, this group is believed to
gain an opportunity to focus on disciplinary history so that the profession can
maintain contact with long-held values, language, and terminology that define
central disciplinary concerns and practices; it is assumed that there is recognition
and agreement about this terminology across the Discourse community, and that
all English educators recognize and relate to this terminology in discussions of
specific issues and classroom practices.

Teacher educators are represented as those who, historically, have
determined which practices are acceptable for English language arts teachers,
working to balance “rigor” with “student-centeredness.” They are characterized
as serving broad and varied communities and existing in bureaucratic institutions
that are, by definition, slow and difficult to change. Finally, this group is
represented as responsible for anticipating the needs of preservice teachers in
the future, particularly with regard to developing technologies, and they are
assumed to be obligated to develop understandings and partnerships with

parents and patrons in local communities.

Learning groups and literacy communities.

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Social actors such as classes, learning groups, cooperative teams,
individual students, and learning communities are referred to frequently in the
Guidelines. They appear as generic actors in the context of discussions that
emphasize the value of Ieaming in collaborative social spaces where students
work together as well as independently in order to practice language use, literary
study, and communication skills. The descriptions suggest a Vygotskian (1978)
or Deweyan (1904/1965) orientation to Ieaming, wherein the individual student is
the focus for pedagogical practice while she operates in a supportive and
collaborative social context for Ieaming.

While cooperative Ieaming appears to be prominent in literacy
communities, it is mitigated by a constant reminder by the committee that some
students prefer to Ieam on their own. As such, there is a blend of cognitivist and
social constructivist perspectives at play in the authors’ description of literacy
Ieaming. References to Ieaming and literacy communities in the Guidelines
frequently mark passages concerned with a value for multiple audiences in
literacy activity, the need to represent diverse ethnic groups in subject matter,
and a value for public literacy Ieaming that involves parents and communities
outside of the classroom. Each of these values serves to emphasize a social
constructivist view of language arts Ieaming, assert that Ieaming and teaching
are social, and emphasize diversity and multiculturalism across all standards
frameworks referred to in the Guidelines text. Given this, it is possible to argue

that Standing Committee is accurate in claiming that there is common ground

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across standards frameworks, both in terms of how they represent what teachers

do and how they represent teaching and Ieaming.

Ethnic groups, people of color and “others.”

In relation to the Standing Committee’s assumed values for diversity and
multicultural curriculum in the English language arts, it is worth noting that they
often refer to social actors labeled as ethnic groups, people of color, and others
within the context of the Standing Committee's belief that language study must
include consideration of a range of diverse groups of people, particularly in terms
of ethnicity, race, and cultural or intellectual differences and perspectives related
to language use. The Standing Committee asserts that students need
experience studying and communicating in these diverse groups in order to Ieam

how to think critically about their own ideas and perspectives on language.

Critics.

One important group whom the Standing Committee claims motivates the
framing of accountability guidelines is a group they label “critics.” This group,
discussed in the Introduction, is represented primarily as outside of English
language arts education. Critics are presented categorically and generically as
“detractors,” “self-appointed experts,” “home schoolers,” “talk-show hosts,” and
“politicians.” The representation of critics as outsiders promotes an UslT hem
binary and helps establish a margin between those who have a right to speak

authoritatively about curriculum policy (Education professionals, especially the

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Standing Committee, teacher educators, and English teachers) and those who

do not (Education outsiders).

Peers, parents, families, and community.

Students’ peers, parents, families, and community members constitute a
second group worth mentioning here. In each case, these sub-groups are
represented impersonally, categorically, and generically; however, their inclusion
is important, since it represents an acknowledgement by the Standing Committee
that students’ family Iiteracies are important for teaching and Ieaming, and
implies the need to understand students’ funds of knowledge (Moll & Gonzales,
2001). In addition, these groups comprise audiences for students to interact with
while demonstrating their achievements, and as people who may collaborate with
the teacher in order to support student Ieaming. The Standing Committee’s
inclusion of these social actors emphasizes the social constructivist framework
used to create the Guidelines, particularly in relation to the committee’s belief in
the social nature of Ieaming. Parents, community members, and others are all
expected to engage in the work of the students in order to provide them with
authentic literacy contexts and a sense that their Ieaming and work are relevant
outside of academic environments. Further, parents, patrons, and other
community constituents are represented in the text as those groups to which

teachers are most responsible, in addition to students.

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Researchers and theorists.

Although the Standing Committee claims that it intentionally avoided
specific reference to research and theory, Chapter 7 in particular includes a
number of specific research citations that belie those claims and reveal a number
of the committee’s specific situated perspectives via the representation of social
actors. Researchers are first represented negatively as “competing with
practitioners and other “knowledge maker’ groups (presumably theorists), as
characterized by Stephen North. These references are made in the context of
the committee’s notes about the fact that many groups contribute to the
knowledge base of English language arts teaching and Ieaming. A second
researcher is referred to for her comments that cognitive and social interactive
approaches to the teaching of writing should be balanced and attend to social
context, and the Standing Committee explicitly states its agreement with a third
specific researcher that pedagogy must be morally defensible and that teachers
must respect students as free agents who have the ability to think for
themselves, especially since classroom systems and teacher responses can
“crush” the personal investment and motivation of students if they are not

thoughtful and carefully designed.

In addition to these and other references to the work of specifically named
researchers, the Standing Committee emphasizes certain theoretical groups in
ways that contradict its claims to balance and neutral representation. The
Standing Committee specifically aligns itself with an expressivist orientation in its

composition guidelines, and cites Rosenblatt’s transactional theory of literature to

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emphasize a value for “more general reader-response approaches to literary
study.” The committee refers to Smagorinsky and Whitings’ (1995) study of
teacher education methods courses to warn against the risk of inclusionary or
additive curricula that might lead to “superficial” survey courses in teacher
education, and uses Applebee’s (1974) historical analysis of English literature in
American high schools to characterize a “pendulum” effect in curriculum reform
for the language arts, taking the stance that reform efforts can be detrimental.
They also cite specific education historians to argue that reform has traditionally
achieved only “mixed” success (p. 67).

While the committee explicitly aligns itself with some specific researchers
and theoretical perspectives in Chapter 7, it also aligns itself against certain
specific groups, though it does so obliquely. Using references to social
constructionists, literary scholars, ed theorists, rhetoricians, and other
“knowledge makers,” the committee refers to groups that are related to but
distinct from the formally cited researchers and explicit theoretical alignments
referred to in Chapter 7. The committee refers to these groups of social actors in
order to further articulate rationales for particular decisions about content and
rhetoric in the guidelines more broadly than references to specific research could
accomplish. Where formally cited researchers are treated as essentially neutral
in the text (represented as neutral), other categorized groups of theorists and
specialists are characterized as highly contentious and represented in
undesirable conflict with the mainstream. Still, in the text, the Standing

Committee recognizes that each of these groups contributes to the knowledge

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base that supports the Guidelines, even though “fundamental differences” often
can be identified between them. The committee asserts that even though there
may be differences, these different groups jointly use a common set of teaching
practices. The authors claim that since various conceptual frameworks can lead
to common practices, these competing groups therefore share common grounds
and interests, and should not operate in conflict.

The Standing Committee states explicitly that it takes a stand on
cognitivism and process pedagogy within these groupings of research and
theoretical communities, because those particular stances establish a “strong
link” with previous revisions of the Guidelines. While they make this stand, the
authors also claim that they do not overlook the work of literary scholars,
educational theorists, and rhetoricians who “see themselves” as representatives
of “more explicitly postmodern” points of view such as social constructionism that
posit a “Iiberatory” role and “vigorous” social activism for teachers of “literacy.”
These groups are characterized as operating on the bases of a broader “anti-
foundationalist” agenda against what “they" understand to be the “foundational"
tenets of cognitivism and process pedagogy (p. 66). The committee places these
other groups in rhetorical opposition to its own implicitly “foundational” values and
perspectives. Still, the committee argues that although its disagreements with
these groups are “very real” with respect to pedagogy and content, the
committee “strongly encourages programs seeking accreditation to emphasize
connectedness and common ground across conceptual frameworks that often

seem, on the surface, to be contradictory” (p. 67).

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Readers and writers.

Two other groups of social actors are represented in the text and worth
mentioning: readers and writers. These groups are particularly relevant to
discussions about how literacy is represented in the Guidelines, and will be
referred to in later discussions on that topic.

Readers are represented as a generic category of people who interpret
and respond to texts in constructivist processes, use textual structures, use
personal experiences, and activate prior knowledge to understand texts and
construct their own meanings through transactions with those texts. In addition,
readers monitor their own comprehension of what they read.

Writers and authors appear in the text as generic categories as well; they
are mentioned as the Standing Committee emphasizes the need for teachers
and students to work with a wide range of authors in terms of gender, social
position, cultural background, and so forth. The intent of reading such a range of
authors is based on the assumption that reading a broad array of literary texts
leads to a greater understanding of human beings, people from different
historical periods and cultural backgrounds, and developing an appreciation and
respect for “others”who may be different from student readers in a given
language arts classroom. In addition, teachers are encouraged in the guidelines
to affiliate with groups of writers to Ieam about and practice different composition
processes. The text does not specify the sorts of compositions that “writers”

create—print or non-print.

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Summary

The summary of the Guidelines in this chapter helps to demonstrate the
tremendous scope of the educational project we refer to as the English language
arts. The summary also helps to demonstrate how the Standing Committee
accomplished what must have been an especially daunting task—making a
coherent and cohesive curriculum document that addressed what it viewed as

the major concerns and themes of the field.

The 1996 Guidelines communicate a vision of the English language arts
that is founded on theories from social constructivism. Teachers operate mostly
as “more experienced others” (Vygotsky, 1978); they are facilitators, coaches,
guides, monitors, and adult experts, rather than “teachers” in the traditional mode
of the school-marm leading recitations and relying solely on lectures and drills.
They create environments and provide opportunities so that students can
experience, explore, grow, and Ieam in a culturally diverse literacy community
where they read, write, talk, listen, and view together in order to gain the ability to
use language for their own purposes. They teach about language, composition,
literature, speech, and media, working to integrate those topics in the context of
language use as the production and consumption of texts in social activity. In the
English language arts of the Guidelines, "text” refers both to literary and non-
Iiterary books, young adult novels, poetry, music, film, video, television media,
and digital hypermedia. Students read both fiction and non-fiction, their texts are
selected to represent cultural, racial, and gender equality, and they are helped by

their teachers to use their primary languages and home dialects in their studies

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of English as a wider mode of communication. Teachers value, recognize,
respect, and encourage student differences, emphasize the diversity and
dynamics of the English language, and try to both teach and assess students in
multiple ways in order to meet the needs of both individuals and groups.
Teachers work with each other to improve student instmction, they seek out the
latest research and theory to revise their practices, they engage in professional
development and Ieaming throughout their career lives, and they work with
school administrators, parents, community members, and teacher educators in
order to make sure that they are meeting the needs of the communities they
serve while maintaining the integrity of their profession.

Encapsulating these activities in a single policy text is an accomplishment
that should be applauded with all due respect. The 1996 Guidelines represent
an enormous amount of work and negotiation. Furthermore, the Standing
Committee’s repeated desires to maintain the Guidelines as a flexible document
open to interpretation for programs seeking to obtain national accreditation
indicates that the committee was aware of how policy texts can normalize
discourse and legitimize particular ideological positions in ways that contribute to
cultural hegemony. That is, once such a curriculum policy is published and in
print, it has the capacity to be represented as authoritative in play, to be used as
a governing tool, and ultimately to become viewed as communicating common
sense. The Standing Committee’s attempts to maintain the Guidelines as

voluntary are evidence of their concern to avoid such hegemonic consequences.

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Despite the committee’s concerns and efforts, and despite the many
admirable qualities of the 1996 Guidelines as a curriculum policy text, an
examination of that text involving close reading and systematic critical discourse
analysis reveals a number of internal contradictions, inconsistencies, and
especially ideological cross-currents that affect the ability of the Guidelines to
function as an inclusive document that promotes equity in English language arts
teaching and teacher education.

In Chapter 6, I examine a number of discursive patterns found in the
Guidelines that help to demonstrate some of the text’s ideological activity. First, I
examine the Guidelines’definition of the English language arts as a “discipline.”
Second, I explore discourses of holism and interconnection in ELA curriculum,
and demonstrate how the guidelines project particular definitions of “literacy" and
“discourse”—terms that are central to conflicts about the nature of English as a
school subject. Third, I demonstrate the Guidelines’ particular use of the terms
“critical” and “diversity,” leading toward a discussion of literary study as the core
of English language arts curriculum. Finally, I demonstrate a discourse of
“appropriateness” in the Guidelines that is crucial for understanding how
progressive and ethical ideologies interact with more traditional and technological

conceptions of curriculum and language use.

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CHAPTER 6: FINDINGS, PART TWO

Words, Words, Words, and Things

So far in this analysis, I have presented data that represent the essential
narrative that the 1996 Guidelines constructs for telling the story of English
language arts teacher education. In the following sections, I will offer several
examples from an analysis of the diction of the Guidelines that underpin that
narrative and act as ideological markers in the discourse. The first pattern to
explore is the portrayal in the Guidelines of English language arts as a

disciplinary field.

The English Language Arts as a ”Discipline "

According to Shumway and Dionne (2002), a discipline may be defined as
a “historically specific for[m] of knowledge production, having certain
organizational characteristics, making use of certain practices, and existing in a
particular institutional environment” (p. 2). Using such a definition, Shumway &
Dionne refer to English, without intending to either praise or criticize its claims to
disciplinary status. In the 1996 Guidelines, the term discipline is used in ways
consistent with Shumway 8. Dionne’s definition to represent English language
arts as a historically stable activity, a site of knowledge production with well-
defined traditions of inquiry, and existing in an institutionalized context that

includes professional and educational systems. For example, the Standing

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Committee states that teachers “must develop a commitment to lifelong learning
of the content and methodology of their discipline” (p. 12). They also refer to the
“content" and “content and pedagogy” of “the discipline” (p. 21), as well as to the
“meaning” of disciplines (p. 24), and the “traditions and underpinnings” of the
discipline (p. 66).

In addition to these references to the English language arts as an
institutional discipline with a traditional set of boundaries, underpinnings, content,
particular pedagogy, methodology, and meaning, the Guidelines also make
reference to ways in which a discipline may be acted upon or within. For
example, teachers are obligated to commit themselves to Ieaming within the
discipline of English (p. 12). The Guidelines further state that it is possible to
create curriculum out of the discipline (p. 21), and to use policy texts like the
Guidelines to “define and redefine” the discipline (p. 65). Finally, members are
considered to be capable of operating within the discipline to orient it (p. 65), and
even to risk “dislodging” it (p. 66). Appendix 8 lists the discursive segments from
which these examples are drawn.

The representation of the English language arts as a discipline is
significant. First, representing English as a discipline in the NCTE teacher
preparation guidelines is a move to legitimize the NCTE curriculum. While, as
Shumway and Dionne note, professional organizations typically do not hold
significant power (or at least do not exert power directly), affiliation with the field
of English as an academic discipline does assume a certain high level of status

and legitimacy for the Standing Committee’s curricular framework. This affiliation

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with disciplinary knowledge and structures implies that the contents of the
Guidelines are fully derived from well-established, rigorous, stable traditions of
content and methodology, and that they are the result of knowledge-making
inquiry in institutional settings. Viewed in this light, claiming disciplinarity for the
1996 Guidelines is important in order for them to be viewed as valid.

Affiliation with English as a discipline provides the Standing Committee
with a warrant for offering teacher preparation guidelines, and helps represent
the English language arts as an unmediated extension of institutional English into
the K-12 school system—using a well-defined set of disciplinary structures to
introduce a sanctioned body of knowledge to novice Ieamers for the purpose of
transmitting basic skills and building student capacities for future apprenticeship.
The representation of ELA as a discipline also serves to lend the school subject
an air of institutional authority. In these ways, the use of the term discipline in the
Guidelines operates simultaneously to mark the English language arts as part of
a larger discourse and also to conserve that discourse.

Although it may be valid to call university English a discipline based on
Shumway and Dionne’s general definition, it is important to remark that the
extension of disciplinary status to the “English language arts” is another matter
entirely. By claiming the classification of discipline, the NCTE Guidelines require
readers to accept the assumption that K-12 English language arts are in fact
equivalent to the academic discipline of English located in higher education

institutions. On such grounds, the claim of disciplinarity becomes less certain.

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A number of scholars and researchers have noted that, of all the
academic disciplines, English is perhaps the most fragmented and unstable of
them all (Berlin, 2003; Scholes, 1992; Graff, 1987; Ohmann, 1976; Applebee,
1974; Nelms, 2000). It is also one of the youngest, only having emerged as a
subject for study in the late 19th century. Initially, “English” was fairly bounded
and well-defined as literary study; while it also absorbed rhetoric into the teaching
of composition, rhetoric was not considered to be a part of the English project. In
spite of this initially narrow definition, the discipline of English expanded in a
relatively short period of time to include a number of activities: philology,
criticism, rhetoric, creative writing, grammar, linguisticsspeech, and cultural
studies. English departments in academic institutions have tended to maintain a
powerful and central component of literary studies, but they now accommodate
any number of individuals whose work and interests have little to do with
traditional literary history and criticism. Even among literary historians and critics
(who do not always see eye to eye themselves), a number of theoretical and
methodological divisions exist that prevent the discipline of English from being
classified as a uniform pursuit. Given its fragmentation within and across
departments in academic institutions (recognizing that speech, linguistics,
theater, and other subject areas are usually not housed in English departments),
English is a discipline in name only. Accepting this, It is difficult to claim
disciplinary status for K-12 English language arts.

In his research on the “alchemy of school subjects,” Popkewitz (1996,

2000) argues that K-12 school subjects have little or nothing to do with their

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institutional academic namesakes. For example, in the English language arts,
children may read literary works, practice composition, and study the structures
of language and literature. But these are only a few among many English
language arts activities, and children do not engage in such activities for
purposes of knowledge production, or even for the purpose of gaining
membership as apprentices in the discipline. Rather, Popkewitz has theorized
that school subjects like English language arts much more commonly function to
govern children, shaping their subjectivities and controlling their behaviors
through the presentation of dominant ideological perspectives and values.
Literature is not used so much to teach children how literature works as it is used
to communicate standards of morality, inculcate mainstream cultural values, and
teach children to monitor their own behaviors and beliefs. Similarly, composition
is not taught so that children can Ieam to use language as a tool for their own
ends so much as it is taught to socialize children in ways that lead them to
consume and produce information in particular socially sanctioned and valued
ways. Likewise, grammar is not taught merely to help students understand how
language works; such instruction also serves to control students through closely
monitored seatwork, and has traditionally been taught in ways that legitimize the
language practices of the dominant mainstream as “standard.” Furthermore,
activities such as engagement in speech, drama, group Ieaming, and reading
comprehension examinations have little to do with engaging the disciplinary

content of English but much to do with socializing children to use language and

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behave in certain institutionally sanctioned ways that are frequently biased in
terms of race, class, gender, and culture.

Given these conditions: the fragmentation of academic English and the
loose connection between that discipline and K-12 English language arts, the
1996 Guidelines appropriation of the term discipline can be seen to serve the
ideological purposes of normalizing a certain approach to the study of the English
language that is neither natural nor neutral. Rather, it is political and socially
constructed. Whether the Standing Committee intended this play of meaning
seems unlikely; but there is evidence to show that these effects play out in the
text.

It is not my intention to argue that calling the English language arts a
discipline is wrong, misguided, or some sort of nefarious lie. Rather, my point is
that terms such as discipline are not neutral. They have powerful effects, and
operate ideologically. Without clear articulation of their meaning in context, the
application of such terms can reinforce hegemonic conditions in ways that may
be inequitable. In the case of the 1996 Guidelines, the use of the term discipline
without elaboration projects a particular vision of English language arts as
universal, and therefore by definition brackets important differences in favor of
fabricating uniformity. If anything can be said about English as a discipline, it is
that English is no longer (and probably never was) a uniform or stable field.
When we teach children to accept a uniform representation of the subject, we are
doing ideological work that not only masks difference, but that also represents

difference as undesirable.

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In order to demonstrate how the 1996 Guidelines represent English as a
uniform discipline, I turn next to a demonstration of how discourses of holism,

integration, and interconnection operate in the text.

Integration and Holism in ELA Curriculum

Repeatedly across the Guidelines, the Standing Committee makes
reference to the holistic, integrated, and interconnected nature of the English
language arts (for full examples, see Appendix B). This perspective is
established early in the document when the committee draws from the 1986
version of the Guidelines to state that English “programs, but especially
[programs] for teachers, should produce individuals whose experiences have
been such that they know that ‘all language processes are integrated and, hence,
that language study should be approached holistically’” (p. 3). The Standing
Committee claims that language is “a process that is holistic (itself a controversial
term)” (p. 3), that it “integrates the traditional language arts” (p. 3), and that
“Teachers of the English language arts must seek ways to integrate elements of
the arts and the humanities” (p. 13). The first guideline for content knowledge in
the Guidelines obligates teachers to “structure English language arts holistically“
and demands that “the interconnectedness of [content, skills, and processes]
must be reflected when teachers select, design, and organize objectives,
strategies, and materials” (p. 23).

Although the committee claims in the Guidelines to avoid privileging

particular theoretical or pedagogical perspectives, they state that “Teachers must

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keep in mind that some instructional practices— such as whole language
approaches to literacy, integrating the curriculum, and thematic teaching— are
more process-oriented and require forms of assessment different from those
used for more traditional ways of teaching” (p. 25-26), and that “the
interconnectedness among attitudes, knowledge, and pedagogy—like the holistic
structure of language itself—must be acknowledged and understood by the
teacher of English language arts” (p. 30). Such statements belie the committee’s
claim that local programs are free to interpret the Guidelines in ways that suit
their needs. Unequivocal statements that all English language arts teachers
must accept a process approach to language study imply that the matter is not
open to interpretation.

It is informative to note the ways in which this discourse of holism and
interconnection intersects with the issue of consensus in policy texts. The
Standing Committee makes a specific comment about the controversial nature of
the term “holistic” in its introduction to the Guidelines. In spite of this recognition,
a significant portion of the text is founded on truth claims about the “holistic”
nature of language, a move that implicitly brackets controversy and marginalizes
members of the community who might disagree. Moreover, absolute statements
about the holistic nature of language close particular avenues of inquiry and
serve to stabilize a conception of English as a unified project.

Two other consequences of this “holistic” discourse are worth mentioning.
First, the assumption of English as holistic and interconnected extends to a

representation of English language arts pedagogy as also holistic and

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interconnected. Teachers are not only obligated to “use integrated approaches
in teaching,” (p. 15) but such holistic teaching is connected in the text to claims
that language arts Ieaming is a “constructive process” (p. 28). This integrated
constructivist orientation extends to issues of assessment, where teachers are
obligated to “integrate various forms of assessment into the everyday Ieaming
experiences of students” (p. 25). The assumption of holism involves an
underlying assumption of social constructivism in which students are believed to
benefit from participation in the processes of their own evaluation. It also leads
to an assumption of the need for less formal “integrated” assessments and the
relative inadequacy of abstract and artificial “objective” tests, which, while not
excluded by the Guidelines, become significantly de-emphasized and suspect as
valid assessments for individual student Ieaming.

The Guidelines’ uses of disciplinarity and holism to represent the English
language arts are not the only ways in which it works to project a particular vision
as universal. In the next section, I demonstrate how the authors’ use the terms
literacy and discourse in ways that further contribute to a narrowing of “what

counts.”

The Nature of Discourse and Literacy

It may well be that no two words are more central to a discussion of
language use than discourse and literacy. It may also well be that there are no
two other terms in any discipline that are more fluid and versatile in their

meaning. Finally, it may well be that there are no two other terms related to the

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English language arts that require more careful application and framing.
According to Mills (1997), “discourse” can mean simply ‘verbal communication’
(p. 2), or it can be defined as conversational talk, formal speech or writing on a
particular subject, or a linguistic unit greater than one sentence, reflecting the
origins of the word as a linguistic concept. Discourse is a term that is also used
beyond the context of linguistics, especially in social and cultural theory. For
example, in Critical Discourse Analysis, which attempts to blend linguistic and
cultural theories of language, Fairclough (19923) has defined discourse as “the
social.” He continues,
Three dimensions of the social are distinguished—knowledge, social
relations, and social identity—and these correspond respectively
to...major functions of language. . .shaped by relations of power and
invested with ideologies. (8)
Similarly, as noted in Chapter 2, Street (1984) has described major differences
between “autonomous” models of literacy and “ideological” models of literacy.
Autonomous models of literacy characterize literate practice as a matter of
applying universal, politically neutral, merely technical skills, and lead to forms of
language instruction that elide, mask, or marginalize differences in linguistic
practices that result from differences in culture, race, class, and dialect.
Alternatively, more socio-culturally oriented research has led to the
definition of literacy as always already ideological—that is, language use is
always socially situated and marked by contextual relations of power based on

culture, race, class, gender, sexuality, and so on. Given such radically opposed

conceptions of the same term, it is impossible to apply the word literacy in a way

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that is value-free; even the claim that literacy is a neutral technology has political
consequences.

In the Guidelines, the term “literacy” first appears in the context of
“computer literacy,” and is used to refer to the functional, technical skills involved
with operating computer technology (p. 2). However, in Chapter 2 of the
Guidelines, the committee presents “Dynamic Literacy” as one of the underlying
principles for the entire text. Based on this principle, literacy involves writing,
reading, participating in cultural events, and sharing experiences as a reader and
writer with others (p. 9). Elsewhere, literacy is characterized as public written
and oral discussion involving the active search for and location of information (p.
16-17). Literacy is also used to refer to preparing and understanding non-print
media texts (p. 27). While one reference to multiple Iiteracies (p. 32) suggests
some awareness of the layered nature of literacy, the use of literacy in the
Guidelines suggests an orientation to language that essentially adopts an
autonomous model: literacy in the Guidelines refers to the technical skills
involved with reading, writing, and speaking, whether the texts involved are print
or non-print.

One reference to literacy in particular demonstrates the Standing
Committee’s autonomous model of literacy. In Chapter 7, the committee makes
reference to groups of theorists who take “more explicitly postmodern points of
view that posit a ‘liberatory’ role as well as vigorous social activism for teachers
of ‘literacy.’” (p. 66-67). These comments will be addressed elsewhere, but in the

context of a discussion about literacy they demonstrate the committee’s implicit

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skepticism about such “points of view.” First, the use of a label such as
postmodern in this context implies that a liberatory role for English teachers is
inappropriate, projects that belief to imply that social activism is outside the
bounds of English language arts teaching, and suggests that “literacy" teaching is
different from teaching the English language arts. The terms liberatory and
literacy are marked by scare quotes, and as such are distinguished as concepts
used in ways that are outside of the discourse of English language arts, or at
least used in ways that are not valued by the Standing Committee.

Similarly, the use of the term discourse in the Guidelines further
establishes the autonomous and neutral conception of language held by the
Standing Committee as they formulated the text. The text frequently refers to
“categories of discourse” (p. 8): “written discourse” (p. 14), “oral, visual, and
written discourse” (p. 16), “oral and written discourse” (p. 16), “visual discourse”
(p. 16), and “academic discourse” (p. 16). Given this usage, it is evident that the
Standing Committee employs “discourse” to mean a particular mode of
communication. Their use of the term conveys no sense of social, cultural, or
ideological overtones; rather, the term is presented as neutral.

In the process of describing the advantages of reading the Guidelines as a
conserving document, the committee claims that

One way of looking at the [Guidelines] as it has developed over the years

is to see it as a cumulative, evolving text with its own characteristics,

priorities, and language. In such a view, this is a conserving document
that gives English educators the opportunity to focus their attention on

disciplinary history and to maintain contact with long-held values. Such a

view also encourages English educators to maintain contact with language

and terminology that have helped define central disciplinary concerns and
practices. For example, successive revisions of the Guidelines have used

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words like “process,” “content”, “media”, and “discourse” that all English

educators are able to recognize and relate to specific issues and

classroom practices. (65)

This passage offers considerable evidence that the Standing Committee views
the Guidelines as a conserving document that operates particularly through its
use of supposedly universal terminology. The absence of any discussion about
the contested nature of terms like process, content, media, and discourse implies
that the discipline is free of conflict.

In fact, none of the terms listed by the committee is currently uncontested.
Readers have only a few options. They may accept the claims of the Guidelines
text as it is written, they may assume that the Standing Committee was unaware
of conflicts around words that they say “all English educators are able to
recognize and relate,” or they may assume that the Standing Committee
intentionally represented particular meanings as universal in order to accomplish
certain goals, such as fabricating consensus about the nature of the English
language arts.

In the next section, I demonstrate how the use of two more terms—
“critical” and “diversity"—are represented neutrally in the Guidelines in spite of

their contested nature.

The Representation of “Critical” Activity and the Use of “Diversity”

As discussed in Chapter 3, when using a term like critical, it is important to
distinguish the intended meaning of that word in the context of its use. In recent

years, critical has become a “buzzword” in the English language arts, and

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appears as “critical thinking,” “critical reading and writing skills,” “critical
discussion,” “critical theory,” and “critical pedagogy,” among other forms. Its
flexibility has resulted in its application as a blanket term for a whole range of
structuralist critical theories based on the work of Marx, diverse postmodern
theories, and poststmctural theories that explicitly critique and deconstruct
Marxism. Critical is also a popular term used in describing higher cognitive
functions according to Bloom’s Taxonomy: the range of “higher order” thinking
that includes application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of information. As
such, critical thinking refers to systematic, rational analysis and judgment. This
definition is quite different from the use of critical in critical theory, where it is
used to mark a value for understanding power relations in order to alter them in
favor of social equity, often across boundaries of race, class, gender, and
sexuality. Depending on the context of its use, the meanings of the term critical
have significantly different implications.

In the Guidelines, the term critical shows up often, first in the context of
teachers’ obligation to “Know and be able to use and teach a wide range of
critical and interpretive approaches to literature” (p. 8). English teacher
education programs are expected to provide opportunities for teachers to
“expand themselves as literate individuals who use their critical, intellectual, and
aesthetic abilities to participate in a democratic society" (p. 8-9). Students are
expected to Ieam how to “receive respectful and critical response from teachers
and peers,” and “Ieam to accept responses and criticism that help them improve

their language abilities” (p. 11). Teachers are obligated to maintain a “willingness

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to encourage students to respond critically to different media and
communications technology“ (Attitude Guideline Six, p. 12), and “an enthusiasm
for developing lifelong habits of mind to facilitate clear thinking and critical
judgment” that leads them to “foster and nurture the cognitive and metacognitive
processes required for clear thinking and critical judgment” in students (Attitude
Guideline Ten, p. 12). Students are characterized as developing “critical
insights” from reading literature (p. 17), and responding, interpreting, and thinking
“critically" with others in a “reading, listening, and viewing communitY' (p. 27).
The committee states that,

NCTE’s Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of the English

Language Arts Emphasize cultural diversity, second language usage, and

the reflective teacher’s critical reasoning skills, all of which are prominently

featured in various other standards frameworks. (32)

What does the Standing Committee mean when it calls activity “critical”?

Given the range of usage and the absence of a clear theoretical
framework to ground understanding of the text, the meaning of critical across
these segments is unclear. A “wide range of critical and interpretive approaches
to literature,” using “critical, intellectual, and aesthetic abilities to participate in a
democratic society,” and responding “critically to different media and
communications technology" could employ the word “critical” to reflect a concern
for power relations in texts and social interaction. However, Ieaming to “receive”
and “accept” critical responses and criticism imply more pedestrian definitions of
“critical” as potentially finding fault or merely judging carefully. The Guidelines’

calls for teachers to “foster and nurture the cognitive and metacognitive

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processes required for clear thinking and critical judgment” and the need for
teachers to possess “critical reasoning skills” frame critical as a term that refers
to logical, systematic thought in line with higher order thinking skills.

None of this is to argue that one definition of critical is more important,
central, or valid than another. Critical thinking as higher order cognitive activity is
important in the English language arts, as is a concern for critical approaches to
literature that focus explicitly on how literary works communicate particular
ideologies and power relations in ways that can affect a reader's subjectivity.
The variation of critical across the text of the Guidelines is not the point. The
point is that, without clear definitions and clarifications of how the term is applied
in context, the Guidelines cannot communicate a clear meaning that will be
understood in the same ways across different groups of constituents. In this
view, the failure to define critical in the Guidelines complicates the problems
resulting from the Standing Committee’s assumption that the Guidelines keep
teachers and teacher educators in contact with shared traditions and vocabulary
that help to unify the discipline. The lack of definition allows readers to interpret
“critical” in ways that make sense to them from a particular perspective.

While some might argue that space for interpretation is desirable in this
case, there are significant differences between interpreting critical thinking as a
matter of cognition versus interpreting it as a matter of concern for power
relations. These interpretations lead in radically different directions both in terms
of subject matter content and pedagogical approach. To avoid defining the term

risks, on the one hand, missing important access to social critique and activism in

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literacy classrooms, and, on the other hand, neglecting the need for systematic
development of higher order thinking skills.

Another term that underpins many of the guidelines is diversity. As
Menand (1995) notes, diversity is in itself not an especially political term on its
surface, referring simply to difference and variety. Its meaning begins to
disperse and play depending on whether difference and variation are viewed as a
problem or an asset. In the English language arts, it is frequently used in the
context of references to diverse cultures, diverse students, diverse groups,
diverse audiences, and diverse texts, and in doing so it can mean simply “a
variety of different" cultures, students, groups, audiences, or texts. However,
particularly in relation to critical perspectives in literacy and the English language
arts, use of the term diversity takes on political overtones because it is connected
to power relations between social groups and the belief amongst critical theorists
and critical pedagogues that teachers and curricula ought to account for and
represent diverse cultures, texts, social groups, individuals, and
theoretical/epistemological approaches in ways that do not characterize one kind
as inferior to another. Their assumption is that diversity has been historically
treated as a problem to be eradicated in schools and classrooms, particularly via
language instruction that promotes uniformity and conformity to a dominant
“standard” of the mainstream that, by definition, characterizes ethnic-,
geographic-, class-, and culture-based variations in language use as inferior and

“incorrect.”

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From this perspective, talk about teaching that is concerned with diversity
involves a consideration of equitable representation that goes beyond a mere
desire for inclusion to entail a value for the empowerment of minority groups
and/or marginal perspectives that might otherwise be excluded and therefore
invisible or oppressed in classroom environments. Because significant groups
within the field of the English language arts hold such critical views of literacy and
language, it is important to examine the ways in which the term diversity is
employed in the NCTE Guideines.

The Guidelines make reference to the importance of providing a “diversity
of situations” in which students can practice language use, as they “move into a
world that is becoming more and more heterogeneous” (p. 3). In fact, the
Standing Committee places heavy emphasis on accounting for cultural and
textual diversity by stating several explicit “principles of diversity" (p. 7), including
the need to account for student diversity, cultural diversity, multiple information
sources, and multiple ways of knowing. Attitude Guideline 11 obligates teachers
to recognize “the value of diversity of opinion” (p. 13), and the Standing
Committee notes how the Guidelines “emphasize cultural diversitY’ in ways that
are similar to representations of diversity in other standards frameworks (p. 32).
In Chapter 7, the committee asserts that it is unnecessary to specify the
professional or political points of view associated with the use of terms like
diversity because it is more important to “acknowledge the breadth of the
knowledge base for English education and to avoid being over-prescriptive of the

content in English teacher education programs” (p. 64).

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This last reference to diversity is significant. The statement is evidence
that the Standing Committee was aware of how terms like diversity vary in
meaning, and “deliberately" chose to “avoid associating such terms with specific
movements and schools or thought” or “name, elaborate, or recommend specific
conceptual frameworks” (p. 64). As in the case of the term critical, their decision
leaves the contextual meanings of diversity open to a level of interpretation that
is extremely relative. Instead, teachers are obligated to recognize, value,
promote, draw upon, enable, encourage, emphasize, and understand diversity as
a central consideration in the teaching of the English language arts (pp. 7, 32,
34).

Without definitions or elaborations of diversity in context, it is impossible
for teachers and teacher educators to know how they might do any of these
things. What does it mean to “recognize diversity,” to “value diversity,” to “enable
diversity,” or to “draw upon diversity,” let alone “understand diversity" without
knowing how the authors of the Guidelines associated the term? Readers may
simply draw on their own pre-existing and independent understandings of the
word, or they can interpret diversity at its most basic level as “difference and
variety,” particularly in terms of obvious differences such as race and language.
Furthermore, without a sense of whether diversity is meant to be associated with
power relations in the Guidelines’ vision of English language arts instruction, it
becomes unclear what it might mean for a teacher to respect, value, encourage,
or draw upon diversity to improve language instruction. Given that the Standing

Committee claims that “English language arts teachers are as diverse as the

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students and the language they teach” (p. 28), the lack of elaborations of the
term diversity is troubling. The lack of diversity in the teaching profession, and
the accompanying mismatch between teachers’ and students’ cultural
understandings of language, has been a primary concern of researchers
interested in equity for at least thirty years, dating back at least to the Conference
on College Composition and Communications’ (1974) statement “Students’ Right
To Their Own Language,” which noted many of the ways in which mismatches
between teachers’ and students’ perspectives related to social and cultural
diversity led to inequitable forms of language instruction and assessment.

So far, I have concentrated on how particular terms and diction used in the
Guidelines reveal fault-lines in what the Standing Committee represents as a
consensus view of what counts in the preparation of English language arts
teaching and the teaching of the English language arts. Across these examples,
a pattern emerges in which the Standing Committee fails to define or elaborate
on a term in order to provide space for interpretation in local programs of teacher
education, with the consequence that significantly contested political terms are
represented as neutral and thereby lose significance in shaping curriculum
outcomes and influencing the overall goals and purposes of English language
arts instruction. In the next section, I demonstrate how another assumption in
the text—a belief in the centrality of literary studies—functions similarty to

marginalize alternative ways of thinking about English language arts curriculum.

The Centrality of Literature in the Guidelines

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It is, of course, no surprise that literary study plays an important role in the
NCTE Guidelines. Literature, after all, was the original focus of English as a
discipline and a school subject when it was institutionalized in the late 19th
century. However, as discussed in Chapter 2, changes in literacy and
technology during the 20th century are affecting the ways people read and the
forms that text can take. In turn, these developments, along with increased

cultural diversity, have increased the number of forms that narratives and non-

Ann-A. dun-n.

fiction texts can take, and many have questioned the centrality of literature in
language arts curricula for years (Elbow, 1991). Given that the Standing
Committee defines the language arts as reading, writing, speaking, listening, and
viewing, it makes sense to explore the effects of the Standing Committee’s
insistence on a print-based literary center.

At first glance, literature appears in the guidelines as one subject among
many. The Guidelines outline ELA curriculum as the study of language,
composition, literature, and the study of both print and non-print texts, oral,
written and visual texts, and both fiction and non-fiction written by authors who
represent both genders and a wide range of cultures and races. As such,
“literature” appears to be an inclusive construct founded on principles of
multicultural pedagogy. However, in the support passage for Content Knowledge
Guideline 10, one statement leads to a privileged position for literature as “first
among equals” (Burns and Francis, 2005) in English language arts curriculum.
The Standing Committee states, “Teachers of the English language arts must

see literature as the core, the humane center, of the English curriculum. They

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must be aware of the unique opportunities literature provides for understanding
human experience” (p. 18). Obligating teachers to treat literary study as the
center of ELA curricula severely constrains the ability of teacher educators and
classroom teachers to interpret the Guidelines for local contexts, and affects the
ways in which language arts study can be structured.

This is not to say that the study of literature is no longer important to
English language arts as a school subject, or that the Standing Committee’s
representation of literary study is necessarily negative. There is no implication in
the Guidelines that literary instruction should revolve around a Great Books
model of traditional canonical texts written by dead white men, and in fact there
are many references to the need for literary study to include a range of different
genres and a value for the study of cultural variation that underscore the
Standing Committee’s value for multiculturalism. But although this is the case,
the committee’s multicultural stance, along with its insistence on a literary core to
the curriculum, does have consequences that constrain what counts in the
English language arts.

Under the Guidelines’ rubric for literary study, students “respond
personally" to works of literature, and study “how these personal responses
create their interpretations” (p. 17). Although the support passage for Content
Knowledge Guideline 7 states that teachers are obligated to know “how a text
operates, how it shapes thought, and how it manipulates emotion” (p. 18), it is
not clear that students should be taught these things; rather, the teacher is

obligated to use such knowledge as a vehicle for asking questions that

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“encourage students to analyze their responses and the causes of those
responses” (p. 18). This single statement acknowledging how texts operate to
shape thought can be contrasted by overwhelming statements about the positive
power of literature. Across the Content Knowledge Guidelines, the Standing
Committee claims, “Literature that captures the imagination of children and
adolescents is as diverse as youth” (p. 18), and Content Knowledge Guideline 10
proclaims that “Literature is a source for exploring and interpreting the
experiences of human beings—their achievements, frustrations, foibles, values,
and conflicts” (p. 18). In this conception of literary study, teachers are obligated
to believe that literature provides “unique opportunities,” aids in “understanding

human experience, broadenls] insight,” and allows students to “experience
vicariously places, people, and events othenlvise unavailable to them, adding
delight and wonder to their daily lives” (p. 18). Furthermore, literature is believed
to “affirm our common humanity,” “illuminate our differences,” and “document
how different people at different times have perceived and approached an infinite
variety of human problems and aspirations” (p. 19). Literature consistently
“celebrates humanity” (p. 19). It is represented as a very powerful technology in
the Guidelines, and one that is almost entirely positive and beneficial for students
to engage.

The treatment of literature as the core of English language arts curriculum,
and its portrayal as a benign object of study for the understanding of “humanitY’

is cause for many groups within the community of English language arts to be

concerned. The first layer of concern has to do with the connection between

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literary study and understandings of diversity and difference, noted earlier in this
chapter.

In the previous section I demonstrated how the Guidelines’ use of the term
diversity generally falls to account for uses of the term related to power relations
and critical theory. The Standing Committee’s representation of literature from a
multicultural perspective further entrenches a view of diversity as valuable but
generally unproblematic. The text conveys a discourse of “cultural
understanding” (McCarthy, 1994).

In McCarthy’s (1994) analysis of discourses of multiculturalism, he defines
the discourse of cultural understanding as one that places

a premium on ‘improving communications’ among different ethnic groups.

The fundamental stance of this approach to ethnic differences is that of

cultural relativism. Within this framework, all social groups are presumed

to have a formal parity with each other. The matter of ethnic identity is
understood in terms of individual choice and preference—the language of

the shopping mall. (84)

According to McCarthy, the discourse of cultural understanding leads to “a
discourse of reciprocity and consensus: We are all different but we are all the
same” (p. 84)——a discourse that fails to account for real differences and social
inequities that mark divisions between racial and gender groups, and social
classes.

When such a discourse of equality, equivalence, and relativity is combined
with an emphasis on the effects of literature as always positive and natural, it
becomes difficult for teachers to talk about the ways in which literary texts can

also be used to suppress ideas, reproduce ideological systems, and otherwise

govern individuals’ morality, value systems, epistemologies, and perceptions of

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how society works. In the NCTE Guidelines, the core of literary study functions
as a device that brackets difference and re-casts diversity as a concern for
equivalence and consensus. While a value for such a function is a matter of
perspective, the fact remains that when such a position is operative but
unarticulated in a policy text like the Guidelines, it becomes difficult for teachers
and teacher educators to operate based on alternative discourses. For example,
the Guidelines’ conception of literary study constrains teachers’ ability to operate
from a multicultural discourse that McCarthy has labeled “critical multiculturalism”
which,

emphasizes antiracist and antisexist changes in understanding and in social

reorganization and draws from the points of view and experiences of

oppressed minorities and working-class women and men as the primary
bases for a transforrnative curriculum (96)

that he says constitutes “a fundamental step in the direction of preparing
students for democratic participation in a complex and differentiated world” (p.
96), rather than simply a movement to “paste over the central contradictions
associated with race and the curriculum” with a “professional discourse of
content addition” that leads to the inclusion of literature from minority sources
and viewpoints (p. 94).

The placement of literature at the core of English language arts curriculum
also has consequences for how the committee represents the study of other
kinds of text in language arts classrooms, particularly the study of media texts
and digital technology. While media study is recommended as a subject in its
own right (p. 20), media is more strongly represented as an object of study

subordinate to the study of literature, a source of extending literary study for

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enrichment. Furthermore, where literature is almost always characterized as a
powerful positive force, media texts are almost always characterized as only
potentially positive, limited in particular ways where literature is not.

To demonstrate this contrast between media and literature
representations, l tum to an examination of the content and pedagogical
guidelines concerned with media and non-print texts. The Standing Committee
stresses that students must be taught to view non-print media texts as sources
for interpretation, rather than as “transmitted reality" (p. 19). Judgment of media
texts is characterized not as a way to “celebrate humanity,” as it is for literary
texts, but rather to “separate fact from opinion, logic from fallacy” (p. 19). There
is an implication that where literature reveals truth, media twists it. Various
media, including print and electronic news, television, advertisements, music,
video, and digital games, are characterized as having both “negative and positive
influences” (19), and media is marked by “possibilities and limitations” (p. 20)
where literary study has only possibilities.

From the perspective of New Literacy Studies outlined in chapter 2, the
implicit subordinate relation of media studies to literary studies in the language
arts, and its accompanying suspicion and skepticism about the educative
capacity of media (or the accompanying inflation of literature’s educative
capacity, if you will), is cause for concern. If today’s students are operating in a
different attention economy and processing textual information differently than
their parents and teachers do, then the placement of literature at the core of

English language arts Is potentially inappropriate and even alienating for

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students, who do not then find their own literacy practices and understandings of
language represented in the English language arts classroom. In that case,
English language arts study loses relevance for students, and the imposition of
print-oriented literary texts as the dominant textual structure for academic study
alienates students from classroom and academic participation, turning reading
from a positive and pleasurable experience into a negative.

It is worth repeating here that I am not arguing for the elimination of
literary study from the English language arts. As an English teacher and an
individual, I value literary reading highly. Rather, my intention here is to point out
how a particular traditional view of the English language arts results in a severe
narrowing of “what counts” in the curriculum and contributes to the alienation of
young people from literary study by imposing it on them as a moral good in
contrast to the media forms that they are immersed in during their own literate
lives. Moreover, it is important to acknowledge that both literature and non-print
media texts, as social linguistic constructions, always have the capacity to have
both positive and negative effects; therefore, it is important to represent them
both as objects for critical analyses in both senses of that tenn—analysis as
systematic evaluation of components employing higher cognitive functions, and
analysis as systematic evaluation of components involving a concern for power
and ideological activity.

The case of contrasts between literature and media studies in the
guidelines raises an issue of appropriateness in the 1996 Guidelines. In the final

section of this chapter, I demonstrate appropriateness as a fundamental

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discourse in the Guidelines that exerts tremendous influence on how readers can
conceive of the language arts, and which contributes to an overall conservative

ideology for teacher preparation and language arts instruction.

The Discourse of Appropriateness in the Guidelines

The 1996 Guidelines, based on principles of diversity and “dynamic
literacy,” repeatedly state that English is a diverse language that takes many
forms, can be used in many ways, and includes numerous dialects that are each
linguistically valid and viable. The Guidelines further stress the need for teachers
to give students multiple opportunities in many social situations and contexts to
experience this diversity of the English language so that they come to value and
respect English in all its forms, and by extension to respect individuals from
different cultural groups who use language differently. The authors’ statements
about the dynamic nature of English imply that there is no “correct" English for
teachers to teach. Rather, the teacher’s job is to help students use their
language skills to operate across social groups and contexts to achieve their
goals. Using language in this way involves adapting language use across groups
and contexts in order to obtain recognition and communicate in various contexts.
In the Guidelines, this adaptability is represented as a matter of appropriateness.

In fact, appropriateness operates as a strand of discourse throughout the
Guidelines, extended from appropriate language use to appropriate teaching,
knowledge, worldviews, reading, and assessment. Its pervasiveness is further

related to the construction of a set of binary representations of language use

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associated with the concept of appropriate and inappropriate language use:
standard/non-standard, academic/non-academic, and formal/informal. Although
the language of appropriateness deployed by the Standing Committee may have
been intended to underscore the situated nature of literacy practices, like other
assumed meanings it results in potential unintended consequences.

Across the Guidelines, the committee makes statements concerning

appropriate language many times (See Appendix B). Teachers are obligated to F‘

”—EA‘ '—..-

recognize that “every dialect has an appropriate use” (p. 10), to believe that
language arts teachers “help students grow by encouraging creative and
appropriate uses of language” (Attitude Guidelines Four, p. 10), to believe that
teachers should “help students recognize and use language appropriate to
different occasions” (p. 15), and to believe that teachers are obligated to help
students understand ‘When to use formal structures and when informal structures
are appropriate” (p. 16). There is a statement that teachers should select
literature “representing a worldview appropriate for the classroom” (p. 18), and
that there are such things as “appropriate choices,” (p. 18), “appropriate
literature” (p. 18), and “appropriate texts” (p. 28). Statements about
appropriateness also extend to appropriate instructional methods and
assessments (pp. 20, 25).

Discussions in the Guidelines about appropriate language characterize
language use in ways that privilege certain uses without engaging in discussions
of “correctness.” For example, teachers provide students “access to standard

oral and written forms of English,” which implies the existence and inferiority of

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some “non-standard” forms of English that are not taught (p. 10). Similarly,
teachers are obligated “to provide opportunities for students to practice language
beyond the academic environment of the classroom,” implying the existence of
“non-academic” language that is less valued in the classroom (p. 16). This view
of academic and non-academic language use is solidified by the committee’s
statement that teachers are obligated “to provide opportunities for students to
use nonacademic as well as academic English. In doing so, they can help
students understanding when to use formal structures and when informal
structures are appropriate” (p. 16). Further references to “informal,” “formal”, and
“standard” English (p. 16) interrelate to create an extensive underlying discourse
of appropriate/inappropriate language use.

There are some dangerous potential consequences to the discourse of
appropriateness. Even when the Standing Committee explicitly attempts to
frame non-standard, non—academic, informal language as something to be
respected and even used and valued in classroom situations, the notion of
appropriate use-in-context renders the second half of each binary—non-
standard, informal, and non-academic—into a subordinate form of language,
legitimate as a dialect of language but inadequate, or “inappropriate,” in
situations where power relations are characterized by the discourse practices of
the dominant race, class, gender, and so on. These situations are frequently
located in academic and economic contexts that privilege the language codes

and customs of the white middle and upper class, whose representation of their

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own dialects as “standard” English determines what constitutes
“appropriateness.”

Some may argue that it is a simple fact that minority speakers, especially,
must Ieam how to shift registers and codes in order to negotiate communication
and power in different social contexts. However, arguments along those lines
assume that the status quo in which such skills are required is natural, inevitable,
and ahistorical. Such arguments assume that “appropriate” language use is a
matter of common sense, and in this way it can be demonstrated that such
arguments serve to reproduce a negative ideological status quo in which a
dominant group’s language takes on hegemonic force and cultural capital to the
exclusion and disenfranchisement of minority language groups, who then must
adopt the language and customs of the dominant group and operate from an
inferior social position as they compete for access to goods, services, and power.
It is possible and even desirable for minorities to do so in that context, but hardly
equitable.

Although the Standing Committee’s adoption of appropriate language use
as a primary discourse in its guidelines may be intended to mitigate debates
about the existence of “correct” or “standar ” English, the use of an
appropriateness stance may have negative consequences that constrain the
ability of teachers and students to achieve equity in their communities, and
prevent them from conceiving of social reform. (For an extended critique of the

appropriateness stance, see Fairclough, 1995).

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Summary

In this chapter, I have demonstrated how the 1996 NCTE Guidelines
deploy terms such as discipline, holism, interconnection, literacy, discourse,
critical, diversity, and appropriateness. Although the authors claim that the
Guidelines are flexible and constructed for easy interpretation across a range of
contexts, the use of these terms along with a privileging of literary studies as the
center of the curriculum reveals that the text projects a particular view of the
English language arts rooted in theories of process language, social
constructivism, and a discourse of cultural understanding as a universal and
neutral representation of linguistic and cultural diversity for the profession.

What is remarkable is that none of these terms or positions in itself gives
the text a conservative inflection; rather, it is their collective interaction that does
so. Claims of English language arts as a disciplinary pursuit involve particular
claims to authority that are contested among members of the profession, while
the foundation of social constructivism functions to exclude alternative ways of
thinking about and inquiring into language and language teaching/Ieaming. The
conscious decision to leave out definitions and elaboration of key terms in favor
of the assertion that English language arts involves a stable and universally
recognized tradition including a shared vocabulary helps to fabricate a
consensus about the nature of English language arts and teaching. This is
ideological work that normalizes a uniform vision of the field. Finally, an attempt
to mitigate arguments in the field about language correctness by turning to

“appropriateness” results in the reification of existing power relations between the

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dominant language of the white mainstream in American society and minority
language speakers, who, under this rubric, must adopt the language of the
dominant group in order to gain access to power and opportunity while
bracketing their own languages for use only in non-academic and informal
contexts in non-standard ways.

How could these things be true? Accepting the assumption that the
members of the Standing Committee approached the construction of the
Guidelines with the intention of producing a curriculum for the equitable
education of all children toward the betterment of society, how did their document
come to function as a conserving document that uses progressive language and
ideals to mask reproduction of an inequitable status quo?

In the next chapter, I attempt to address these questions by examining the
ways in which the Guidelines represent the interaction of ethical liberalism from
the field of English language arts and technological liberalism from a discourse of
accountability that has been appropriated by the English language arts from the
outside. This interaction, I argue, results in a trumped progressivism in the
English language arts that serves the conservative interests of the accountability
movement in the United States, characterized by the construct of the “effective

teacher”

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CHAPTER 7: FINDINGS, PART THREE
Ideological Relations:
The Effective Teacher, Accommodating Accountability, and the Technological

Trumps of the NCTE Guidelines

In Chapter 6, l demonstrated how the deployment of terms in the NCTE
Guidelines functions to project a particular set of meanings as universals for the
preparation and practice of teachers of the English language arts. In each case,
the deployment of particulars as universals contributes to an ongoing
normalization of particular ideological positions related to accountability and the
language arts that are masked by progressive ideals and inclusive language that
extends from a social constructivist orientation to Ieaming and literacy. While it is
important to refrain from arguing that these positions are “wrong” for the
profession, it is necessary to bring them into the open by describing them so that
English educators can determine how they influence curriculum, knowledge,
thought, behavior, and activity in the English language arts. In doing so, it
becomes possible to develop a more critical and inclusive policy conversations
around both the issues of whether and how to modify discourses and curricula by
articulating policy differently or more fully.

In this chapter, I argue that the analysis of diction from the Guidelines in
Chapter 6 helps describe an orientation to the English language arts in which
progressive ideals related to ethical liberalism interact with aspects of

technological liberalism associated with the genre of accountability in ways that

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make those progressive ideals difficult to operationalize and achieve, regardless
of the intentions motivating policy construction. The result of interactions
between ethical and technological liberalism is a set of policies that limit the
interpretation of curricular content, constrain the range of pedagogical choices
that teachers and teacher educators can make, and marginalize a host of
theoretical orientations that might otherwise provide useful alternatives in the
national discourse about English language arts education. The limits placed on
what and who counts in English education lead to a kind of default conservatism
in NCTE’s guidelines for teacher preparation, at times in spite of the authors’
explicit contrary intentions to produce a document that supports reform.

In some ways, it makes sense that a document like the NCTE Guidelines
functions as a conservative document. It is, after all, a text that is intended to
guide curriculum design across contexts, and it is also a document associated
with the accountability movement, which inherently involves the development of
common standards for all. Even when common standards include space for
flexible interpretation, they are based on assumptions that there is agreement
and stability about the nature and purposes of English language arts teaching
and Ieaming, and that it is desirable to reproduce those qualities and purposes in
diverse institutional programs. In reality, the field is too complex and unsettled to
formulate and successfully implement the kinds of standards used in the 1996
Guidelines and other standards documents that were produced concurrently.

The difficulty in creating uniform standards for English language arts

teacher preparation can be illustrated by considering some of the ways in which

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the language arts can be represented. First, at a minimum, ELA can be
understood based on autonomous or ideological models of literacy. Second,
ELA can be understood as a neutral academic project or as a site for particular
kinds of socialization and govemmentality. Third, English as a language can be
described as having a stable and “standard” center from which some social
groups deviate, or it can be described as an open and dynamic system that

changes across time and space depending on the needs of individuals and social

 

groups in particular contexts. These factors each offer a range of possible
avenues for curriculum designers.

Depending on how these avenues are perceived, English language arts
can be used to promote the development of uniformity or support for diversity.
Curriculum for teacher preparation can be characterized by a focus on reform
and critical pedagogy, or it can be characterized by a focus on transmitting
traditional knowledge and reproducing cultural capital. And, of course, in the real
contexts of social interaction and discourse, these positions can co-exist, blend,
compete, and conflict. This is especially true when desires for consensus,
flexibility, and inclusion in the context of accountability lead to a bracketing of
difference, the representation of accountability texts as neutral, and a desire for
predictability in curricular outcomes.

Given the Standing Committee’s emphasis on the voluntary and flexible
nature of the Guidelines, as well as their claims to a balance between
conservation and change, it seems counterintuitive to argue that the ultimate

function of the NCTE Guidelines is the generation of predictable outcomes. The

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key to uncovering this function’s conservative ideological effects is what I refer to
as the transcendental signifier of the NCTE Guidelines: the construct of the
“effective teacher.”

In this chapter, I will demonstrate how the NCTE Guidelines communicate
a vision of the “effective teacher” in the English language arts that runs counter to
NCTE’s assertions within the Guidelines that English language arts teaching is
highly dependent on heterogeneity, a dynamic conception of language, and a
dependence on local context and student-centered pedagogical principles to
determine practice. In addition to illustrating how the effective teacher operates
as a conservative ideal, I will also demonstrate five moves in the Guidelines that
solidify its underlying conservative ideology, regardless of authorial intent. These
moves include 1) excising research and theory, 2) privileging the mainstream, 3)
excising activism, 4) taking an additive approach to reform, and 5) fabricating
common ground to project consensus.

To begin, I examine the Guidelines’ use of the term “effective" as a

framing device for the purposes of English language arts teaching and learning.

The Concept of the "Effective” Teacher

The text of the Guidelines begins with the following statement:

At ten-year intervals for most of its eighty-five years, the National Council
of Teachers of English has presented the profession with a statement of
what effective teachers of the English language arts need to know and be
able to do; these regularly updated statements also discuss the attitudes
that effective teachers should possess. (1)

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As the text continues, the phrase “effective teacher” is used repeatedly to
communicate the desired outcome of teacher education programs that use the

guidelines to create curriculum. What does it mean to be “effective”?

Effective is primarily defined as “Having an intended or expected effect”

(American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition), and therefore connotes predictability.

 

An “effective teacher,” then, is a teacher whose actions have predictable

results—that is, desired effects that can be reproduced across time and space.

 

In the NCTE Guidelines, this construct is referred to in terms of “the potential [for
individual practitioners] to become models of effective teaching” (p. 4), a set of
“attitudes of effective language arts teachers” (p. 10), a bounded field of “content
knowledge of effective language arts teachers (p. 14), a common set of
“pedagogical knowledge and skills demonstrated by effective English language
arts teachers” (p. 23), and the “knowledge base of effective language arts
teachers” (p. 14). Desirable teachers are characterized as those who provide
opportunities, design activities, create environments, use knowledge,
demonstrate attitudes, and use instructional techniques “effectively“ (pp. 10, 15,
19, 27, 34, 67; for details, see Appendix B). Similarly, desirable teacher
education programs are those that are “effective” in producing certain kinds of
English language arts teachers (pp. 7, 63).

In each case, the use of the term “effective” leads to a stable and
reproductive representation of teaching and teacher education. Based on this
language, it is desirable for English language arts teachers to know, do, and

believe in uniform ways that are reproduced across space and time. Given the

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need for documents produced in the accountability genre to produce equivalence
and allow for assessment via comparison to standards, the discourse of
effectiveness in the NCTE Guidelines makes sense. But what are the
consequences?

It is reasonable to argue that it is desirable to produce effective teachers in
the sense described here. It is also reasonable to argue that the use of the term
“effective” in the guidelines is primarily intended to refer to a desire for teacher
education curricula to result in the production of teachers who in fact succeed in
helping students Ieam how to use the English language arts. In this sense,
however, effective functions as a proxy for “successful,” a word that means
something different from “predictability” in the context of English language arts
teaching, and which is not operative in denotations of the word effective.

One factor that allows the construct of the effective teacher to operate as
a conservative and constraining force in the Guidelines is the lack of a definition
in the text for what it means to be “effective.” The Standing Committee assumes
that the meaning of the word is clear and obvious, and so does not elaborate.
Left undefined, the meaning of effective teaching is open to play. In the context
of accountability, its play tends toward connotations of uniformity. While the
popular perception of “effective” as “successful” may be present in the text, it also
potentially masks conservative effects.

The representation of teachers as “effective” also contributes to a faulty
assumption in the Guidelines that teachers are sufficiently positioned to control

the context of their work. This is particularly apparent in references to the

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effective teacher as one who creates environments and provides opportunities—
two common activities represented in the text.

Classroom environments are decidedly complex domains (Spiro et al.,
1988). Such environments are not easily bounded, and change from moment to
moment and day to day depending on who enters them, how they participate,
what resources are available, what time interaction occurs, and so forth. These
immediate environmental factors are further complicated by a host of variables
ranging from the personal beliefs and prior experiences of the individual
participants in a classroom activity to the efficiency of the climate control system
in the classroom’s building. That is to say, although a teacher may plan
activities, group students, arrange the physical space, and use a range of textual
resources (assuming they are available), no combination of teacher behaviors

and activities can result in complete control over the classroom environment.

In addition to the impossibility of any teacher creating the entire warp and
weave of a classroom environment, it can be said that it is also frequently difficult
or even impossible for teachers to provide an adequate range of opportunities for
students to practice the range of activities and skills involved with the language
arts as represented in the NCTE Guidelines. Any teachers” ability to do so is
constrained by the quality and accessibility of school and community resources,
which are highly variable across school contexts. The language of creation and
provision in the Guidelines involves an assumption that all schools and
classrooms are equally equipped in order to help teachers create environments

and provide opportunities. Such equivalence does not exist. To institute policies

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‘8;
. .' ' I -o—K

in which teachers are obligated to control the creation of environments and
provision of opportunities for Ieaming disregards this fact.

This is not to say that teachers have no control over environment and
opportunity. Teachers can act in a number of ways to capitalize on available
environmental resources and Ieaming opportunities to maximize students’
literacy Ieaming. But the language of the Guidelines does not make a distinction
between teachers’ ability to modify or influence environments and opportunities
and teachers’ ability to control them. By obligating teachers to create and
provide such things, the NCTE guidelines place teachers in an untenable position
and assign them more agency than they actually have.

The play of meanings in the construct of the effective teacher that leads to
an implicit value for uniformity reflects the central discursive issue in the NCTE
Guidelines, what I have referred to as the interaction between ethical and
technological liberal philosophies. In the next section I discuss how differing
interpretations of effective teaching in the guidelines relate to this philosophical
interaction. I go on to argue that this interaction reinforces the conservative
activity of the NCTE Guidelines and undermines its own representation of the
English language and the language arts as dynamic subjects characterized by

diversity and attention to context.

Interactions Between Ethical Liberalism and Technological Liberalism
Recalling the discussion in Chapter 2 about Kuchapski’s (2002) framework
for accountability, ethical liberalism is a philosophical stance toward educational

policy characterized as a belief that the purpose of educational accountability is

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to develop individual capacity. Ethical liberalism is marked by a high value for
equity and cultural diversity, legitimated by student-centered, experience-based
curricula, constructivist pedagogy, and participatory relationships. It emphasizes
the efficient maximization of Ieaming, a focus on process, and an interdependent
orientation to policy that relies on local governance. Technological liberalism is
characterized by a belief that the purposes of educational accountability are to
meet the requirements of globalization, promote equality and uniformity rather
than equity, and emphasize common curriculum and universal outcomes for
Ieaming. It is characterized by an emphasis on hierarchical relationships,
effectiveness, and a reliance on centralized policy, along with the
decentralization of management and a value for consumer choice.

Throughout the Guidelines, it is possible to identify statements that reflect
both ethical and technological liberal philosophies. In doing so, a pattern
emerges in which discussions about the nature of language and Ieaming are
especially marked by an ethical liberal position. However, these segments are
framed by an overarching context of accountability represented by language that
reflects a value for technological liberalism. In many cases, this technological
frame trumps the ethical philosophy that underties the Standing Committee's
representation of the English language arts. In other cases, language reflecting
ethical liberalism actually masks an underlying set of technological liberal values.
These interactions provide evidence of the ways in which the ethical philosophy

of the Standing Committee is constrained and even subverted by the demands of

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creating the Guidelines using the genre of accountability currently popular in the
national discourse of standards-based accountability reform.

By “a genre of accountability,” I mean that the Standing Committee’s
assigned task is first to create a policy text that is identifiable in the genre of
education standards currently used at the state and national levels of education
bureaucracy. This purpose is apparent in Chapter 6 of the Guidelines, where the
Standing Committee compares its guidelines with the standards frameworks of
several other national standards projects and expresses a value for the ways in
which those documents share language and content. That is, the Guidelines use
the structures and language common to standards documents, which are
typically constructed for ease of reference, brevity, and concreteness. They are
also written to convey a uniform (standard) set of expectations, and are explicitly
intended for use for regulating activity in a socio-political context. They usually
consist of a list of concrete and directive statements that obligate certain ways of
being, thinking, knowing, and doing, and they offer little or no space for
elaboration. Further, they are usually presented as neutral documents based on
principles of “best practice” and consensus. They are documents intended to
emphasize uniformity, efficiency, equality, centralization, and universality; that is,
they are very much the products of technological liberalism.

Although this is the primary task of the Standing Committee—production
of an accountability text—they also have a responsibility to represent the subject
matter content, pedagogy, and contextual factors involved with teaching and

Ieaming the English language arts. This second project, as indicated by the

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committee’s discourse, involves representing these subjects as concerned with
individual students’ needs, a value for social and cultural diversity, attention to
issues of local contexts, constructivist Ieaming and pedagogy, social equity, and
individual experience; that is, the subjects the Standing Committee writes about
are inherently based on ethical liberalism. What happens when a subject based
on ethical liberalism is treated in a genre spawned by technological liberalism?

It is not unreasonable to assert that the majority of the Standing
Committee’s discourse about the English language arts is founded on ethical
liberal philosophy. Using social constructivism as its foundation, the Standing
Committee is extremely consistent in its representations of Ieaming, language,
and pedagogy. Examples of this consistency are plentiful. In the remainder of
this section, I will provide only enough examples to make the point. An
exhaustive accounting of every ethical liberal statement would be both tedious
and unnecessary.

Beginning in the introduction to the guidelines in Chapter 1, the committee
makes a number of statements that mark its ethical liberal philosophy. They
write, “We were careful to keep in mind that the distinction [between programs for
English majors and programs for English teachers] was not one of the programs’
worth but one of differing purposes” (p. 3). They continue by stating, ‘We agreed
that both programs, but especially the one for teachers, should produce
individuals whose experiences have been such that they know that ‘all language
processes are integrated and, hence, that language study should be approached

holistically (p. 3). These statements include explicit values for holism,

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integration, experiential Ieaming, a concern for individual learners, and a value
for diverse purposes in language study—each marking aspects of ethical liberal
education philosophy.

Still, even though the statements above reflect a value for ethical
liberalism, their context causes these values to blend with certain technological
liberal concerns. For example, in this context, the committee is suggesting that it
is important to produce a set of uniform graduates who Ieam certain content in
order to teach effectively, even as the committee argues that there are multiple
ways to Ieam English. From this perspective, the very activity of teacher
education is a technological liberal endeavor geared for efficiency and uniformity.
On the other hand, the committee seeks to produce this uniform group in order to
promote an integrated, holistic curriculum for language, which is an ethical liberal
position valuing difference, constructivism, and process.

Elsewhere in the introduction, the committee writes that, “Teaching
English and language arts as process and activity, then, requires the building of
student-centered, interactive classroom environments. . (p. 3). They go on to
state that.

We do concur that teachers at all grade levels need to understand what

language is, how it is acquired and developed, and how to provide

students with experiences and opportunities to use their language in order
to develop expertise in communication. And we agree with the earlier
committees that diversity of situations is important, especially as students

move into a world that is becoming more and more heterogeneous. (3)

The committee continues in these introductory passages to emphasize student-

centeredness, experiential learning, a value for cultural and pedagogical

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diversity, and other ethical liberal values. At the same time, it is possible to
identify a concern in their comments for the development of globalization, for
example in their reference to “a world that is becoming more and more
heterogeneous.” Such comments involve tying a technological liberal view drawn
from the wider discourse of accountability to an ethical liberal value for
experiential curriculum in diverse situations for English language arts students.
A pattern emerges in which the English language arts requires an ethical liberal
perspective, but teacher education requires a more technological liberal
approach in order to maintain uniform instruction that legitimizes standards and
enables institutionalized accountability.
Similarly blended ethical and technological liberal positions can be found
throughout the Guidelines. Later in the introduction, the committee states,
The preservice teacher education program should initiate and develop
certain knowledge, pedagogical abilities, and attitudes which will be the
foundation for the teacher’s subsequent professional career—for the
English language arts teacher as scholar, decision-maker, and agent of
curriculum change. Consequently, the present document advances
recommendations for the essential elements of a preservice education
program. Our guidelines, then, state what English language arts teachers
should believe, know, and be able to do as teachers. (3-4)
This passage restates the technological liberal goal of uniformity for teacher
education that grounds the Guidelines as an accountability document—there are
certain attitudes, abilities, and knowledge that every single teacher in every
classroom must possess in order to be effective. Interestingly, this uniform
knowledge of what English language arts teaching consists of includes an explicit

value for teachers as change-agents, a value reflecting ethical liberalism. A

curious interaction can be seen to develop. The Guidelines appear to be

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intended to function as a governing document for accountability and the
development of a flexible but uniform curriculum for English teacher preparation.
At the same time, the teachers prepared in such programs are expected to
operate in ways that will challenge established knowledge and practice, in effect
de—stabilizing the very idea of uniform preparation and instead suggesting a value
for diverse approaches and teachers as professional decision-makers who are
expected to operate in ways that could undermine the tenets of standards-based
reform.

It is important to note the ways in which the Standing Committee worked
in the Guidelines to resist the technological liberal tendency toward uniformity.
They explicitly state that,

The guidelines do not try to set levels of attainment for each attitude, each
type of knowledge, each set of skills. They assume that teacher education
programs, and the professionals who act in them, will be able to set
reasonable levels of achievement for the beginners and help classroom
practitioners to set reasonable goals for themselves. (4-5)

They continue, stating,

As has been true in earlier versions of the Guidelines, the committee has
not attempted to establish an English language arts teacher-education
program with a predetermined set of courses or other experiences.
Rather, the committee has identified the outcomes that any program
designed to prepare English language arts teachers should produce,
recognizing that there are many alternative ways for programs to reach
those outcomes. At the same time, the committee looked at several
model programs and attempted to determine what they have in common.

(5)
These passages reflect the competing ethical liberal stance that each teacher
education program will and ought to be different according to the needs of the

local context; it also reflects the status of graduates and classroom practitioners

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as self-directing agents. Further, the committee argues that the guidelines are
not intended to prescribe experience and curriculum. They identify uniform
outcomes for teacher education, but allow individual programs to determine
curriculum alternatives; at the same time, though, the committee states that it did
attempt to establish uniform “common” elements of such programs, which re-
emphasizes a technological liberal position. Again, the pattern of ethical
liberalism embedded in a technological Iiberalist framework is apparent.

Rather than continue to detail each instance of ethical or technological
liberal markers, it is useful to examine the Standing Committee’s Statement of
Underlying Principles (Guidelines Chapter 2). In this section, the committee
assumes that principles exist which undertay particular decisions about
curriculum design. They assert that these principles underlay three basic
organizing areas: attitudes, knowledge, and pedagogy, which govern the beliefs,
understandings, and skills that all teachers must have if they emerge from
“effective” teacher education programs. This kind of assertion reflects the
technological liberalism of accountability and curriculum projects, which seek to
create hierarchies and uniformity. The committee expresses its value for such
projects here. However, as the description of principles continues, the committee
expresses a value for diversity in students, cultures, and understanding. These
are ethical liberal values, expressed with regard to the activities of English
language arts classrooms, but not, interestingly, for teacher education. The
committee’s Principles of Content Knowledge emphasize diversity, individual

growth, and constructivist Ieaming (p. 8). The committee further asserts that

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“text” is a term to be broadly defined as including print and non-print, visual,
electronic, digital, and oral communication. It emphasizes a value for multiple
perspectives rather than uniformity, and introduces the concept of “critical”
approaches to reading and writing. Content principle 5 emphasizes and values
cultural variation, and principle 7 expresses a value for linguistic variation in the
classroom (p. 8). Once again, these principles reflect a generally ethical liberal
stance toward the content and functions of the English language arts, but not
teacher education.

This pattern continues in Chapter 2. The pedagogical principles
articulated by the committee emphasize value for a focus on student interests
and abilities, the concept of “authentic” assessment (which implies devaluing
“inauthentic” standardized assessments in favor of assessments that focus on
individual growth in context), and an emphasis for the value of accepting multiple
ways to teach English. The Opportunity Principles emphasize an experiential
orientation to teacher education, and a value for individual development and
personal growth for teachers and students alike. However, they also refer to
“model” classrooms, and principle 7 emphasizes a value for professional growth
and the existence of a uniform category that identifies individuals as members of
a group labeled “English teachers” (pp. 8-9) who are presumed to share a
common set of values and beliefs. There are attempts here to blend ethical and
technological standpoints, with the ethical position dominant. The Principles of
Dynamic Literacy the committee maintains are representative of an ethical liberal

stance that emphasizes a value for personal growth, local contexts, and

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experience. These are all ethical liberallst positions, and run counter to the over-
arching discourse of uniform curriculum that governs the Guidelines as a

document related to standards-based reform.

It is interesting to view the Standing Committee’s Underlying Principles in
this light. Although these principles are ovenlvhelmingly oriented toward ethical
liberal educational philosophy, they are introduced by the authors using the

following statement,

As members of the Standing Committee on Teacher Preparation and
Certification developed these guidelines, we identified a set of principles
which underlay the more detailed and specific items of the three
organizing areas of attitudes, knowledge, and pedagogy. These general
principles govern the detailed beliefs, understandings, and skills that we
believe must mark the teacher who emerges from an effective English
language arts teacher-preparation program. (7)

By asserting a fundamental set of principles for curriculum design, the committee

defaults to a technological liberal frame for its guidelines that potentially

undermines the ethical liberal values those guidelines express.

It is necessary to remark that any attempt to develop generic curriculum
for use across contexts at the level of state and national institutions will involve
some type of technological liberal stance. Standards-based accountability is by
definition an attempt to develop a uniform program that can be reproduced. In
this light, it becomes easier to see that maintaining a technological liberal stance
is not a bad thing in itself. Still, what these interactions within the NCTE

Guidelines highlight is the way that the technological liberalism of standards-

based accountability can over-ride the ethical liberal orientations of subjects like

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the English language arts, affecting the ability of educators to maintain the

integrity of their own values.

So, while NCTE and the Standing Committee for Teacher Preparation and
Certification represent the English language and the language arts as dynamic,
flexible, social, constructivist, student-centered, and valuing cultural, social, and
textual diversity toward individual growth and Ieaming through experience, they
represent teacher education as a project for developing uniformity, efficiency,
commonality, and effectiveness. To make this even clearer, it is worth looking at
additional statements by the Standing Committee in their introduction to the

guidelines.
The authors state,

Through recent and ongoing efforts to create standards for what students
acquire through language arts education, the profession itself has become
conscious of many areas of contention among teacher educators.
However, as stated in the 1986 Guidelines, ‘[l]t is important for NCTE to
affirm what it believes to be significant in the preparation of teachers of
English language arts; at the same time, NCTE is obliged to suggest
guidelines for others to follow in developing programs that prepare
teachers of English language arts at all instructional levels.’ (2)

As will be made clear later in this chapter, the committee’s explicit awareness of
contention within the field of English, and its subsequent decision to “affirm what
it believes to be significant” independently of these contentions, allows them to
“suggest guidelines for others to follow in developing programs” without having to
account for difference. The fabrication of uniformity is key to the operation of the

Guidelines as an accountability text. This is technological Iiberalist language that

216

 

emphasizes a value for creating standards, which, although it has allowed the
profession to become aware of disagreements, has also enabled the Standing
Committee to engage in work designed to reach agreement. That is, it allows the
committee to fabricate consensus. Thus, the committee becomes able to assert
and emphasize NCTE’s “obligation” to suggest guidelines that enable a common
curriculum for accountability. Although the document includes language

designed to mitigate and even build in space for resisting uniformity, the

ml

Guidelines’ normalizing properties as an ideological instrument become clearer. ‘1

Five Moves: The Fabrication of Consensus for Accountability in the Guidelines
In addition to the blending of ethical and technological liberal philosophies
described above that results from the intersection of discourses from English
language arts and discourses from standards-based accountability reform, there
are five additional moves that are useful to elaborate in the Guidelines text.
These moves include excising research and theory from the Guidelines,
privileging the mainstream, excising activism, taking an additive approach to
reform, and, ultimately, fabricating “common ground” in the field of English
language arts in order to project consensus and legitimize the project of
standards-based reform. In the following sections, l trace each of these moves
and demonstrate how they affect the discourse of English education presented in

the Guidelines.

Move 1: Excising research and theory from the Guidelines.

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Chapter 7 of the Guidelines, titled “Continuing Issues,” offers a number of
instances in which the committee discusses topics that it did not resolve in
formulating its guidelines for teacher preparation. The authors describe seven
areas that they believe should be addressed in ongoing discussions of curriculum
and policy in the English language arts and NOTE: 1) the “breadth of reference”
in the Guidelines, 2) “Common ground for the knowledge guidelines,” 3) “Balance
between conservation and reform,” 4) “Conceptual frameworks,” 5) “New
technologies,” 6) “Educational reform,” and 7) “Sensitivity to students’ needs” (pp.
64—69). In particular, the first four of these “continuing issues” offer significant
insights into the discursive processes engaged in by the committee around its
use of research and theory in the construction of the Guidelines.

As has already been noted, the Standing Committee deliberately refrains
from citing research or elaborating the theoretical bases for its guidelines. In
Chapter 7, the committee offers its rationales for this deliberate action (or non-
action). They write, “[W]e avoid associating. . .terrns with specific movements and
schools of thought, and do not name, elaborate, or recommend specific
conceptual frameworks,” and also state, ‘We did this deliberately to...avoid being
over-prescriptive of the content in English teacher education programs” (p. 64).
They go on to claim that, “[TJhe guidelines refer only generally to the structures
that inform the accreditation process, because we prefer to leave Interpretive
decisions to the discretion of individual programs...” (p. 64, italics added).

According to the authors, content from particular research studies,

theories, and conceptual frameworks did, in fact, influence the construction of the

218

 

 

guidelines. However, the committee states that it deliberately excised these
references from the guidelines in order to “avoid being overly prescriptive” for
programs that were seeking accreditation. By doing so, the Standing Committee
enabled such programs to interpret guidelines in ways that were at least
superficially aligned with whatever curricula the programs had in place. Where
they do identify particular concepts or findings from research and theory, they
claim to do so in order to “inform the accreditation process”—an explicit
accommodation of standards-based accountability reform.

This finding is complicated by inconsistencies found between the authors’
statements and their actual practices. While they claim that they only articulate
theoretical positions in the interest of supporting accreditation, it is clear that
some theoretical positions were privileged over others. In particular, the authors
specifically note their own use and emphasis of cognitive theories in formulating
the guidelines, as well as their use of process reading and writing theories that
came under heavy fire from critical theorists and socioculturalists in the past
fifteen years, a span that subsumes the time frame in which the committee did its
work. For example, in its discussion of conceptual frameworks, although the
committee acknowledges the text’s use of “language and terminology from a
wide range of professional and political points of view; for example, ‘expressive,’
‘construction,’ ‘transactional,’ and ‘diversity’ (p. 64), it later admits that the
guidelines rely on a cognitivist orientation as their foundation (p. 66).

The text’s professed neutral treatment of particular research and theories

is complicated by this explicit value for cognitivist orientations, and it is unclear

219

 

why the Standing Committee proves inconsistent in this matter. On the one

hand, they claim to eschew referring to specific theory, research, and

pedagogical orientations in the text in order to leave matters of “interpretation” up

to individual programs, while on the other hand they deliberately claim to base

their standards on an intentionally unarticulated set of theoretical and research

orientations that have particular implications for both content and pedagogy in I
English language arts and teacher education. Their motive for doing so includes r“
taking “a stand" that, “constitutes a strong link with previous revisions of the
Guidelines while not overlooking the work of literary scholars, theorists, and
rhetoricians who see themselves as representatives of more explicitly
postmodern points of view. . (p. 66).

It is possible to conclude that the Standing Committee, aware of at least
some of the ideological implications of their document, chose to include this
section to highlight those implications. However, the placement of this
discussion near the end of the document, rather than in a privileged or
highlighted space near the beginning of the document where the issue could be
more easily reviewed and accounted for by users, renders the Standing

Committee’s cognitive biases a footnote in its ideological project.

While the Guidelines do draw on “language and terminology from a wide
range of professional and political points of view,” they do so in a way that
privileges a reductive vision of theory and research in the interest of facilitating
standardization and accountability, rather than representing the range of English

teaching and literacy practices in schools and children’s lives, and also rather

220

than accurately accounting for the diversity of research traditions and theoretical
approaches in the various fields that comprise English studies at the
university/disciplinary level. What is remarkable here is not the Standing
Committee’s use of specific terms from research and theory, or even its bias for a
particular theoretical orientation; it is the absence of any association in the
guidelines between these terms and the respective movements, theories, or the
schools of thought they represent. Even more important to note is the way in
which the committee’s characterization of non-cognitivist groups marginalizes
those who do not adhere to the values of cognitive theory and/or process
pedagogy.

In the Guidelines text, the term “Postmodern” is used as a blanket label for
professionals who subscribe to social constructionism, postmodern theory,
critical pedagogy, rhetorical theories, and literary theories of all kinds. In this
way, while they emphasize the centrality of a cognitivist framework, the authors
make a powerful discursive move that de-legitimizes a whole range of theoretical
approaches otherwise conceived to complicate cognitive theories of teaching,
Ieaming, and language.

Postmodernism is not a single uniform theory, but rather a loose
conglomeration of theories that involve critiques of modernism. Similarly, critical
theory is a vague term that refers to a host of Marxist and neo-marxist theories
based on a concern for social activism, change, and issues of power in the
oppression of minorities (or any marginalized group; the poor, for instance, are

rarely a minority in the numerical sense of the term) in society. Literary theory is

221

 

also actually literary theories, a classification that includes multiple competing
orientations to the understanding of texts, from New Criticism to feminism,
colonialism, postcolonialism, queer theory, poststructural theories, and so on.
Each of these perspectives is significant, well-developed, and distinctive. To
refer to them collectively as ‘postmodern’ suggests a disregard for them, and
practically renders the term ‘postmodem’ into a dirty word or, at least, a
bracketing category for theoretical and research orientations that complicate
curriculum development rather than enable it. In this way, even as the Standing
Committee claims to include such groups, their values are made marginal in the
text.

To further demonstrate how the Standing Committee marginalizes these
groups, a closer look at the language used to describe them is helpful. The non-
cognitivist groups mentioned by the committee are subtly characterized as
dissenters who “see themselves” as “anti-foundationalist.” “ They’ understand
such anti-foundationalism to be essentially “anti-cognitivist,” and see themselves
taking a “liberatory role” involved in the teaching of “literacy" (not English
language arts). In so many words, the Standing Committee represents these
groups as “others,” groups viewed by the tacit “we” of the Standing Committee
members, who do not view such dissent from these others as significant enough
to affect curriculum policy decisions.

The move to excise references to research and theory while emphasizing
cognitivism over other perspectives privileges the mainstream and dominant

discourses of education, and leads to a reproduction of the status quo. This

222

 

reproduction is not accomplished by a direct assault on “other" theories, and may
be an unintended effect of the committee’s work. However, by referring to an ill-
defined group of ‘postmodern’ theorists as “they” in comparison to a tacitly
cognitivist “we,” the authors represent critical theorists, social constructionists,
and others as insignificant, marginal, and of little relevance. Having
characterized these groups as outsiders, the authors are able to state that, while
they recognize “very real areas of disagreement,” such disagreements should be
ignored in order to help programs seeking external accreditation to succeed. As
in the interactions between ethical and technological liberalism, the desire to
accommodate accountability processes like accreditation leads to a narrowing of
not only what counts, but also who counts.

Their characterization as a single mass of like-minded dissenters
communicates a dismissal of other groups’ “very real” areas of disagreement, as
well as a disregard for the arguments of diverse constituents of NCTE. The
language impresses the reader with the belief that critical, socio-cultural, and
postmodern theories are essentially all the same—a misleading and even
aggressive marginalization of others. The tacit “we” who do not see the
dissenters or their arguments as significant is able to argue that important
differences only “seem” to be contradictory “on the surface,” and is thereby able
to neutralize differences by seeming to assimilate them. Most significantly, the
text states that neutralization of these “very real areas of disagreement” is done
in the interest of helping programs that seek external accreditation to succeed in

the framework of standards-based accountability reform.

223

Move 2: Privileging the mainstream.

In addition to privileging a cognitivist, expressivist, and process pedagogy
orientation to the English language arts that was dominant during their
construction, and which continues to be dominant today in the context of
accountability, there is further evidence in the Guidelines that the text functions
as a conservative document reproducing the ideologies of the mainstream via
ties to previous “traditional” positions in NCTE. By tradition, here, I mean to refer
to the maintenance of historically valued practices in English language arts and
teacher education drawn from earlier iterations of the NCTE Guidelines,
particulany the use of orientations prominently featured in the 1986 version of the
Guidelines.

This evidence contradicts the Standing Committee’s claim in Chapter 7 of
its text that they “made an earnest attempt through this revision of the Guidelines
to seek explicitly and openly a balance between conservation and refonn....” (p.
66). Although the committee engages in a discussion of conservation and reform
that articulates potential risks and benefits for both orientations, analysis reveals
that, in practice, the committee privileges conservation even at the expense of its
own value for reform. The committee openly admits a “strong link with previous
revisions of the Guidelines” (p. 67), and notes that its work is “firmly rooted in the
process pedagogy of the 19808” (p. 66). Over thirteen passages in the
guidelines sections (Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of the Guidelines—or a range of

seventeen pages) demonstrate the Standing Committee’s reliance on previous

224

versions of the Guidelines, particularly the 1986 text. Given indications that little

will change in the Guidelines from the 1996 version to the 2006 revision, a

pattern of intertextual relations becomes apparent that results in a conservative

tendency for the Guidelines, masked by claims that the authors account for new

research and knowledge based on the inclusion of diverse groups’ conceptual

frameworks. '
The Standing Committee's reliance on past versions of the NCTE

Guidelines militates against change, even if it makes sense that “revision” of

such a policy text necessarily involves the use of the previous document during

construction of the “new.” In spite of intentions to the contrary, tradition trumps

reform at nearly every turn in these cases. This effect suggests that the

articulation of English language arts teacher education curricula based on the

discourse of standards-based accountability reform can cause a conservative

ideology to coalesce in curriculum policy in such a way that those policies are

predisposed to resist change. Such resistance should be cause for concern if

NCTE seeks to base its understandings of English on ethical liberal philosophies,

constructivist theories of Ieaming, and the inclusion of diverse members with

variable orientations.

Move 3: “Reform ” b y curriculum addition.

In this section, I will demonstrate the ways in which the resistance to
change described above has already manifested. Although the Standing

Committee works in the text to acknowledge the importance of new

225

developments such as hypermedia technology, multimedia texts, and increased
cultural diversity, it does so in a way that is additive rather than integrative. The
content and structure of the language arts and teaching remain the same
regardless of these additions, in spite of calls to teach the subject holistically.
Recalling Lankshear and Knobel’s (2003) questions, referred to in Chapter 2,
what happens when the new is faced through the lenses of the old? As

Lankshear and Knobel suggest, one result is often the mere absorption of the

al....iL‘fiW
I

new into the framework of the old, as outsiders spearheading curriculum reform
fail to fully reconceptualize their work as a result of their encounters with
elements indicating the emergence of new Iiteracies.

This element of the present critique is particularly difficult to express,
because it comes closest to personalizing the causes of contradiction and
conservatism In the Guidelines by implying that the members of the Standing
Committee are “outsiders” in the paradigm of new Iiteracies and contemporary
English language arts. Because of this, it is necessary to re-emphasize that the
authors of the Guidelines do a remarkably good job in their attempts to account
for new developments in the field. They make a highly prescient connection
between the language arts and technological developments that were in their
infancy when the committee began its work. In the early 1990s when the
committee first began to meet, the lntemet barely existed, and hypermedia
technology was very new. Digital technologies were still unwieldy, expensive,
and rarely available in public school settings. Globalization was a concern, but

not as ubiquitous an idea as it is today, and the committee’s anticipation of

226

issues of diversity is commendable. But in spite of their recognition of these
emerging issues and others, the authors of the Guidelines approach the subjects
as outsiders, using their prior conceptions of technology, media, and diversity in
ways that simply add those concerns to existing curricula for teacher education.
As outsiders, they do not account for the ways In which such developments might
fundamentally transform the project of English language arts teaching.

For example, while cultural diversity has led to an enormous range of
linguistic variations and literacy practices among our students outside of school,
and while technology appears to be changing the ways that our students interact
with texts, there remains in the NCTE guidelines a strong commitment to the role
of literature instruction In our classrooms. According to the Guidelines,
“Teachers of the English language arts must see literature as the core, the
humane center, of the English curriculum” (p. 18). The presence of a literary
center as an ultimatum in the Guidelines offers important clues about how to read
the guidelines about technology, media, diversity, which might othenrvise radically
change ELA curriculum and teaching.

While the Guidelines mention technology, media, and diversity
continuously, they do so in ways that are unlikely to challenge the primacy of
NCTE’s literary center. When they are addressed, media and technology are
referred to most often as either supplementary fool for the language arts, or as
teaching aids. When they are discussed as subjects unto themselves, they are
represented as “limited” or more passive activities in comparison to the

universally good, liberating, active, and enriching capacities of literary study,

227

 

which are never referred to as limited, in spite of the fact that literary texts are
also socially constructed and function ideologically (McCormick, 1994).

Similariy, while the guidelines could be said to emphasize diversity, they
do so in a way that does not challenge traditional conceptions of literary
instruction, composition studies, or, more importantly, the hegemonic functions of
teaching Formal Standard English as the language of wider communication to
students whose only recourse for using their home Iiteracies Is to do so in the
service of acquiring FSE or maintaining their languages in Informal, non-
academic contexts in non-standard and therefore inferior ways. Teachers are
expected to respect diversity, to celebrate it, to be aware of it, to be enthusiastic
about it, and to use it in their teaching. However, diversity Is never noted as a
particularly political concept that has implications for how English teachers might
talk about literature differently, or how they should approach the teaching of
‘Formal Standard English’ differently. Each of these topics would require
significant restructuring if the concept of diversity were fully integrated into the
curricular design of the NCTE Guidelines. By using positive but unelaborated
signifiers such as ‘respect’ and ‘value’ alongside diversity, the Guidelines
neutralize the political and social implications of the changing field of English
studies in the interest of maintaining an accountable curriculum that
accommodates the present system of standards. In these ways, the construction
of the Guidelines makes the text resistant to change, since new developments
are more likely to be assimilated into the existing framework than they are to be

used for more thorough “re-vision” of the curriculum.

228

‘m’

Move 4: Excising activism from the Guidelines.

The excision of activism in the NCTE Guidelines constitutes a fourth
conservative move that contributes to the ideological functioning of the text. In
some ways, this move may be the most startling of them all, because of its
seemingly accidental nature. It’s presence In the Guidelines offers evidence
about how the discursive processes involved with publishing a policy text—in this
case, the process of editing—can result in radical shifts in meaning from the
intention of the authors.

As I have noted elsewhere, the authors of the Guidelines were conscious
of the political nature of their work and the work of English teachers in general.
They explicitly state a value for teachers who act as agents of curriculum change
in their Introduction to the text, and in Chapter 7 they discuss the Guidelines as a
reform document at length. Considering the findings involving a conservative
ideology In the Guidelines throughout this study, it Is significant and surprising to
find that the authors state,

The pedagogy guidelines focus attention on the many disparities among

the Guidelines, teacher education programs, and language arts programs

in secondary schools. . .. By drawing attention to these disparities, the

Standing Committee acknowledges that one function of the Guidelines is

to help initiate reform by educating teachers and then placing them in

schools as agents of change. (67)

This Is an extremely important statement and identification by the

Standing Committee about how It believes the Guidelines should be used as a

tool for reform; It also offers evidence of the Standing Committee’s awareness of

229

 

 

 

political and sociological issues related to schools and literacy Ieaming.
However, a review of the pedagogy guidelines chapter referred to in the passage
above reveals that no such discussion of disparities, political activism, or the role
of teachers as agents of change in schools actually appears in the text.
Apparently, although the committee Intended this language to be included in the
main chapters of the guidelines themselves, it was deleted from the text prior to
publication, and the later reference to it in Chapter 7 was missed and left intact.
Whether this deletion of what the committee saw as an essential discussion was
the result of efforts to achieve “readability" is not clear, but its absence in the
published document demonstrates how discourse practices can anonymously
affect meaning in dramatic ways.

In the Acknowledgements published in the front of the Guidelines text, the
chair of the Standing Committee refers to an editing team who “eliminated jargon,
redundancies, and ponderous sentences" so that, in the eyes of the chair, “the
Guidelines Improved in readability and style under their figurative red pens” (p.
viii). While it is impossible without further data to draw conclusions about how an
articulation of teachers as reformers and political activists disappeared from the
text, it makes some sense to suspect that the red pens of the editing team were
something more than “figurative,” particularly when viewed in light of other
findings about the marginalization of orientations that involve “liberatory"
approaches to the teaching of “literacy.”

The absence of this activist strand In the preparation of English teachers is

important. Whether intentional or otherwise, Its absence strengthens the

230

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conservative effects of the Guidelines by removing discussions about the politics
of literacy education from teacher training programs, even when the authors of
the guidelines believe such training to be important. It strengthens the
impression that English is a settled and fixed school subject, that consensus

exists, and that the current situation is equitable.

Move 5: Fabricating consensus in the NCTE Guidelines.

The previous four moves described in this section can all be said to
contribute to an overarching fifth move, a move closely associated with the
discourse of standards-based accountability reform. As Delandshere and
Petrosky (2003) report, and as Apple (1990) has found, standards-based
accountability reform and curricula are almost always based on a representation
of consensus. Consensus—“An opinion or position reached by a group as a
whole” (American Heritage Dictionary)—is central to the goals of standards-
based accountability reforms to achieve uniformity across contexts and allow for
comparison and assessment as conceived in that discourse. However, as Apple
has argued, such consensus is rarely actual. Rather, I would argue that in the
case of the Guidelines, the Standing Committee fabricates consensus in order to
accommodate the demands of accountability discourses.

According to statements in the Guidelines, the authors express their
awareness of the fact that there are, “many areas of contention among teacher
educators” about their field (p. 2). Further, the committee states its awareness

that language arts teachers disagree widely about what constitutes the subject,

231

 

 

 

 

and about what it means to teach English and literacy (p. 3). However, in spite of
their explicit awareness as stated verbatim In the Guidelines, the authors go on
to assert that agreement about the nature of teaching and the nature of the
English language arts is “essential” to creating effective curricula (p. 3). This
immediately places the authors in a quandary. How Is it possible to develop
standards when there is no agreement about what counts? Having asserted that
agreement is a must for the project, the authors recount how one member of the
committee noted that they were “shooting at a moving target”, and the rest of the
committee agreed (p. 3).

In spite of their clear recognition that consensus was non-existent In the
field and in NCTE, the authors of the Guidelines state that, “It is important for
NCTE to affirm what it believes to be significant” (p. 2) for English language arts
teacher preparation. Still, the question remains: How can NCTE affirm a single
set of beliefs as significant at the expense of other belief sets? Such a move is
by definition exclusive.

As a result of the perceived need to convey consensus, the Standing
Committee asserts that the profession must emphasize the notion of “common
ground.” Even where they explicitly employ multiple and conflicting theoretical
frameworks for the guidelines, as admitted by the authors in Chapter 7, the
committee continuously fabricates consensus by arguing that different
frameworks often manifest In similar classroom practices, therefore sharing
“important common ground” when they would othenrvise be viewed as conflicting

(p. 64). In fact, the notion of “common ground” becomes a key refrain in the

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committee’s rationales for the guidelines. In an explicit attempt to accommodate
the demands of program accreditation based on standards, the committee states

repeatedly that diverse programs “share common ground,” “take an inclusionary

nu I!“

approach, rest on common ground, seek commonalities,” and “emphasize
connectedness and common ground” even when their approaches and practices
appear to be radically different or even opposed within a single guideline (pp. 64-
67). The Standing Committee’s arguments regarding common ground for
consensus in the field of English language arts rest In part on their assertions
that, for example, “Even though, for example, fundamental differences do
separate social constructionists and expressivists, both groups jointly support a

variety of teaching practices... (p. 64).

While these commonalities may exist, the authors’ failure to discuss them
at length or to refer to them directly in the body of the guidelines raises concerns,
and may be tied directly to their efforts to make the guidelines flexible and open
to interpretation in the interest of facilitating accountability processes.
Comparative study of social constructionism and expressivism alone (regardless
of other theoretical positions) reveals significant differences. McCormick’s (1994)
analysis of these two along with cognitivism in the teaching of reading
demonstrates that although they may share certain types of activity In common,
such activities operate under fundamentally different philosophical and
theoretical premises about how language, teaching, and Ieaming work. Both
their assumptions about the purposes of reading and writing as well as the nature

of knowledge and activities used during reading and writing Instruction are

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different in ways that teachers must understand If they are to use them
productively. The Guidelines’ representation of these competing theories as
more similar than different reflects an exclusion of knowledge and a bracketing of
difference.

The Guidelines’ neutralization of knowledge, theory, and research In favor

of fabricating common ground and consensus might reflect several issues of

 

discourse in English education. It is possible to argue that NCTE's guidelines are

 

created In response to political pressures having little to do with knowledge in
English but a great deal to do with the need to create a knowledge framework
similar to other professions like law or medicine, based on the assumption that

such equivalent professional activity Is possible and appropriate (Lagemann,

 

2004). In addition to these forces, NCTE’s decisions as represented in the
Guidelines may reflect a perceived need to produce stable frameworks to match
those being produced in supposedly more uniform, rigorous, and concrete
subject areas deemed amenable to the current practices of widespread and high
stakes standardized testing in schools, like mathematics and science.
Organizations like NCTE face enormous pressure to conform to and comply with
external standards and assessment models due to state control and funding of
the public schools where English language arts instruction and assessment take
place.

It seems unlikely that the Guidelines’ neutralization of difference reflects a
concerted effort to formalize the beliefs of mainstream practitioners as a part of

the parallel activity of accrediting institutions of teacher education, or a conscious

234

attempt to exclude the competing political agendas of marginal members who
hold postmodern, critical, or reform-oriented views. Less factionally, readers
might Interpret these moves in light of Popkewitz’s (1994) analysis of the
American movement to professionalize teaching. According to Popkewitz,
professionalization Is not a neutral activity, but rather one fraught with issues of
power. As with historical movements to professionalize law and medicine,

Popkewitz finds that moves to professionalize teaching are never as altruistic or

 

neutral as practitioners would have themselves and others believe, and they
frequently result In unintended consequences. By agreeing to the terms of I
externally imposed demands and frameworks for accountability, NCTE may have

submitted itself to anonymous Ideological forces; the Guidelines, even as they

attempt to deflect some of the pressures of standards-based accountability

reform and offer space for teacher educators to subvert standards to their own

needs In the local contexts of everyday life (DeCerteau, 1988), may reflect

normalizing forces In the broader educational discourse that run counter to

 

knowledge and belief in English education.

Summary

Over the course of the last three chapters, l have demonstrated the ways

in which the 1996 NCTE Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of the

 

English Language Arts function to represent curricular content for both English
language arts teacher education and the English language arts. In doing so, the

Guidelines deploy a number of unelaborated terms, including critical, diversity,

235

discourse, literacy, discipline, holism, integration, and appropriateness in
particular ways, projecting them as universals to create a literature-centered
curriculum based on principles of ethical liberal philosophy, cognitivist and social
constructivist Ieaming theories, and an autonomous model of literacy as a neutral
technology. Although the Guidelines predominantly express a value for ethical
liberal educational values, their construction using a genre and framework for
standards-based accountability reform places that content and its accompanying
values in a technological Iiberalist frame, which trumps ethical liberal values and
leads to a conservative Ideology that dominates the Guidelines and constrains
what is possible to do, think, know, and believe in NCTE’s officially sanctioned
representation of the English language arts as professional activity.

The conservative, additive nature of the NCTE guidelines, constructed
based on a fabricated consensus about what constitutes the field of English
language arts and English teacher education, is Inherently Inequitable to those
whose language, literacy practices, or beliefs about English, teaching, and
Ieaming fall outside of the mainstream. In spite of a thorough concern for
diversity and equity, the Guidelines privilege tradition at the expense of new
knowledge, and make it less likely that new knowledge or alternative approaches
will traverse the boundaries between English as an academic discipline and
English language arts as a subject taught In public schools.

In the final chapter, I will further discuss the implications of these findings

and conclude with a series of arguments regarding the discourse of English

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language arts and literacy education from the perspective of the New Literacy

Studies.

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III

CHAPTER 8: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
Moving Targets, Making Space, and Attending to Discourse

in Literacy Teacher Education, Curriculum, and Policy

As noted earlier, it is possible that the criticisms about NCTE’s teacher
preparation guidelines that result from this critical discourse analysis might seem
over1y harsh, especially to any groups or Individuals who have engaged with the
challenge of constructing equitable standards-based accountability texts. Such
people are usually well aware of the conservative nature of those texts, and are
mindful of the risks involved with standardizing a complex subject like English.
But faced with the task of designing curricula within such frameworks, as many
English educators have been obligated to do, those with experience in
accountability reform might argue that my analysis here is naive given what they
view as their inevitable obligation as educators—to work within the official system
to create curricula that will allow teachers and their students access to quality
educational opportunities.

Others might call this analysis na'ive for reasons beyond the issue of
accountability. A major assertion of this study is that NCTE’s current foundation
on a literary studies curriculum and its focus on print literacy has led to a general
failure on the part of NCTE and English language arts in general to account for
new literacy practices, or worse, has led to an inadequate and Inaccurate
additive approach to accounting for new Iiteracies, technologies, and student

diversity. While I disagree with Peter Elbow’s (1991) value for literature “In the

238

 

 

souls” of English teachers, I am certainly aware of the high value that many
English language arts teachers place on literature as a vital component of the
curriculum, due to their own enjoyment of and perceived enrichment by those
texts. While I believe our fields’ value for literature Is over-blown, I am sensitive
to the fact that such value is deeply ingrained in our discourse.

Finally, some individuals may criticize this analysis for Its representation of
appropriateness In language as an inequitable stance. The view of Standard
English as the language of wider communication has led to the development of
various multicultural pedagogies that concentrate on using students’ home
languages and Iiteracies to acquire fluency with that language of wider
communication, while simultaneously teaching minority speakers how to switch
linguistic codes and thereby maintain and honor the richness and power of their
dialects as they gain access to power in the mainstream of society. Many who
hold this view value it highly for its attention to the maintenance of minority
identities, and although they are critical of the white mainstream for its exclusion
of non-whites or non-standard speakers, they implicitly view that mainstream as
inevitable, and therefore see an unavoidable responsibility to teach students how
to negotiate their positions in relation to that dominant discourse.

I recognize each of these criticisms and understand them. However, I
disagree with each of them, essentially finding them to be valid from their own
perspectives, but insufficient in the larger frame of educational discourse related

to literacy. Let me deal with these potential criticisms in reverse order.

239

 

 

 

First, multicultural pedagogies that emphasize Delpit’s (1988) position that
students need to Ieam the codes of power of the white and dominant mainstream
of society are important and useful. It is necessary for students to study
language in terms of power relations In discourse as a way to achieve greater
equity, as Delpit suggests. However, many educators who adopt this position
neglect Delpit’s elaborated perspective. She has argued that, while it Is
important for teachers to help students gain access to and fluency with the codes
of the mainstream, the purpose of doing so is that, in gaining access, awareness,
and fluency, students and their teachers will then work to change the discourse
of the mainstream and open It up to the linguistic codes and discourses of
marginalized groups.

The idea that a Black student might use her knowledge of Formal
Standard English to change that discourse and introduce “non-standard” African
American Vernacular constructions Into mainstream linguistic practice In formal
contexts makes some people uncomfortable. A colleague might (and has)
asked, “What if an African American attorney were to ask a witness in court
something like, ‘Ms. Smith, I’d like to aks you to tell the court who be wIt’ you on
the night of June 29, 2005.’ How do we deal with that?” Or, ‘What happens
when a young person from a rural Appalachian background speaks during a
business meeting and says something like, ‘Hey, y’all, I was thinkin’ we might
could set up a committee to talk ‘bout raisin’ our output’ instead of using the more
formal, ‘I would like to propose that we establish a committee in order to discuss

prod uctivity.’?”

240

 

 

 

At first blush, this issue might give many English language arts teachers
pause, causing them to shudder a bit as they do when they see the word “quick”
spelled with a “Kw,” or when their students write “cuz” instead of “because.” Our
common sense and aesthetic sensibilities tell us that these linguistic moves are
inappropriate; but, it is important to recall that our “common sense” is only
common sense because It has achieved a hegemonic state and functions
ideologically to maintain a particular social status quo via the operation of
language in positioning individuals in a network of power. It may be common
sense, but it is neither natural nor neutral, and It is furthermore not necessarily
equitable or appropriate to accommodate a system that uses a language
hierarchy as a gatekeeping mechanism for access to social capital.

Moreover, In each example listed above, however contrived, I would
assert that neither the meaning nor the structure of the utterances was difficult to
understand. In each case, the individual speaks clearly and would elicit a
response regardless of context. The only reason either construction would be
questioned would be due to the perception that the utterance did not match the
discourse of the socially dominant group in our society. If we actually choose to
believe and accept the well-documented linguistic concept that English dialects
each have their own valid and Internally consistent grammars, vocabularies,
syntaxes, and so forth, and if we further acknowledge based on these findings
that there really Is no such thing as “standard English” outside of our current
ideological construction of such a thing, then any argument that the above

constructions are unacceptable is not valid. The argument that some dialects or

241

 

 

 

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that

styles are more appropriate than others depending on context is only acceptable
Insofar as it enables teachers and students to explore the strategic use of
language. As soon as such a precept is used to constrain the use of certain
linguistic variations in formal or official contexts, as it is in the 1996 Guidelines,
then we have undermined our belief in the diversity and dynamism of English.

Additionally, it seems unlikely that language users would necessarily

 

resort to the kind of extreme juxtaposition of linguistic codes and social contexts

Illustrated in my examples above. In professional contexts, most individuals will

 

experience a degree of socialization that will lead them to conform to the basic
linguistic codes of the discourses they participate in. In doing so, they may still
use their home languages and Iiteracies strategically and powerfully. Anyone

who has listened to Dr. Martin Luther King’s or Malcolm X’s speeches, for

 

example, has experienced the power that can be projected from a skillful
blending of mainstream and “non-standard” linguistic patterns and literacy
practices. Anyone who has ever listened to the musical group Public Enemy rap
its scathing political critiques of race and society in America knows how powerful
code-switching and linguistic juxtaposition can be. Anyone who has ever
deemed a politician to be more credible due to his “down-home” way of talking
has experienced the powerful effect of an individual’s strategic use of home
Iiteracies. At issue is the need to study and practice such code switching and
intentional integration of linguistic practices in formal and official contexts. The

matter of whether such integration is valid or desirable should not be in question

242

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if English Is conceived of as a dynamic language, and if literacy education is
understood in the context of educational and social equity.

Second, I have attempted to state repeatedly that this analysis, and even
an acceptance of literacy as represented in the New Literacy Studies, does not
mean a rejection of print literacy, knowledge gained from studies of cognition,
and a value for literary studies as vital components of English as a school
subject. Literary study can have great benefits, and can enrich students’ lives.
And it is certainly necessary to teach students phonics, grammar, and reading
and writing skills In a text-rich environment that focuses on meaning-making
activity (rather than skills in Isolation). An acceptance of the findings from this
study does not preclude these kinds of activity at all. Rather, these findings Imply
that a literary center can decrease the relevance of language arts study for
students, who practice literacy differently than their teachers do, and value
different kinds of texts.

Further, the treatment of literature in the current curriculum fails to account
for literature as an ideological mode of communication that needs to be critiqued
and examined with as much skepticism and care as any other medium or textual
genre. Treating literature as a natural and universal good as it Is in the NCTE
Guidelines glosses its potential functions as an ideological apparatus of cultural
reproduction. If we accept that literacy is always an ideological technology, then
it is necessary to account for literary study within that view; it cannot be exempt.
Furthermore, the themes, narrative structures, figurative language, and other

elements frequently taught In relation to literature can also be taught using other

243

media ranging from film to video, hypermedia, television, music, graphic arts, and
so on. While literature can play a useful role In that mix, it need not be
maintained as the center in a textual hierarchy, as it is now. It is only one kind of
readable text among many.

Finally, I would agree with educators who have worked on accountability
texts and who argue that it is necessary to work within the officially sanctioned
textual practices of the state. And in that context, it is likely that educators will
continue to be constrained In their ability to communicate the complexity and
richness of content in accountability documents without significant problems of
the kind revealed in this study. I agree that educators should continue to engage
in these processes, If only to continue attempting to mitigate their negative
effects on professional teaching and students’ opportunities to Ieam English well.
However, it does not make sense to argue that these processes and projects are
inevitable or monolithic. Further, in the present situation, educators working
through professional organizations like the National Council of Teachers of
English already have only limited access and power in state-level curriculum
projects. I argue that, given its current status, It Is useful for a professional group
like NCTE to think strategically (that is, for the long term) rather than tactically
(that is, responding to the requirements of the moment).

In the remainder of this chapter, I will more fully address the issue of
strategic activity in curriculum design for the English language arts and the
National Council of Teachers of English. I begin by discussing the ideological

nature of curriculum design, focusing on the 1996 NCTE Guidelines and arguing

244

 

 

 

 

from a New Literacy Studies perspective. I will describe the need for re-vision of
curriculum and professional activity In the field of English language arts, and
conclude by discussing the implications from this study of opportunities to work
beyond and to alter the present discourse of standards-based accountability
reform in ways that could potentially Increase the agency of individuals and

groups like NCTE in relation to access and control of policy discussions within

 

the field and at the level of the state. I will discuss these opportunities as long

 

term strategic processes that can function as a scaffold for more systematic
professional activity within organizations like NCTE for the advancement of

literacy and the English language arts.

 

Curriculum and the National Council’s Guidelines

As I have tried to highlight in this study, all curriculum is Ideological. The
issue is whether the ideology in operation Is viable, equitable, and open to
change and critical discourse. As Chenyholmes (1988, 1999) argues in his
discussions of curriculum design and critical pragmatism, curriculum studies
should involve the ongoing attempt among educators and policy makers to
understand how power relations influence their ability to achieve desired goals
and maintain effective social systems. Cherryholmes recognizes four Important
points about how educators might engage curriculum.

First, Cherryholmes points out that curriculum design must involve an
accounting for constant changes In what is deemed good, true, and desirable by

a group of people in a particular place at a particular time. Second, he argues

245

that all curriculum designs ultimately deconstruct due to changes in social
relations and contexts. In this pragmatic view, all curricula are temporal,
historical, contingent, and flawed (1988, 1999). lnstitutionalizing any set of
curricular standards entails either a repressive or hegemonic set of power
relations. Third, in order to avoid reproducing a negative or Inequitable status
quo, it is necessary for members of a social group to engage in attempts to
achieve critical discourse, as characterized by Habermas (1973). That is, It is
important to continuously attempt and promote dialogue within and across
groups that may or may not agree with each other. In doing so, it is important to
attempt a bracketing of unequal power relations In order to give all parties equal
access and voice in the conversation. Fourth, while Cherryholmes readily
acknowledges the impossibility of achieving complete critical discourse free of
unequal power relations, he asserts that it Is necessary to try in order to account
for as diverse a range of ideological positions as possible, and thereby to achieve

better balance in discourse about curriculum.

In examining contemporary education standards, Cherryholmes’ critical
pragmatism offers a useful lens for understanding conflict and power in our
discourses, and for thinking strategically about how to move foundational
thought, engage in teleological practices, and both revise and expand existing
social spaces in ways that are complementary to the kinds of discursive work
toward equitable change advocated in Faircloughian critical discourse analysis.

It is worth remarking that although curricula are always ideological, and

that they also always implicates particular and temporal hegemonic conditions,

246

 

 

that does not mean that ideology and hegemony are negative by definition or not
worth describing. It Is important to think about Ideology beyond its popular
pejorative connotations, and to consider hegemony as something subtler than
the proletariat’s assent to its own oppression. Gramsci (1971, 1985), in
developing his theories of culture and social activity, characterizes hegemony as
a state in which social ideologies and their accompanying practices achieve the
level of common sense and seem natural to citizens In such a way that they
accept those conditions as a matter of reality instead of as socially constructed
and negotiated. However, in his view, not all hegemonies are equal; some
ideologies are ‘better' than others in that they do not result in oppressive or
Inequitable social conditions, or they remain visible enough to be altered in
response to social conditions when they have negative effects. Gramsci
frequently talks about developing counter-hegemonies via the alignment of
disparate groups who capitalize on common interests to confederate and
increase their agency through collective activity toward more equitable social
conditions. With regard to the situation related to NCTE’s teacher preparation
guidelines and the context of standards-based accountability reform in the
English language arts, it is worth thinking about what counter-hegemonic activity
toward more equitable social conditions might look like, and what other groups
might form a confederation with NCTE toward those ends.

One approach to thinking about developing such counter-hegemony is to
approach the NCTE guidelines from the perspective of the New LiteracyStudies,

as I have tried to do in this study.

247

 

 

New Literacies and the NCTE Guidelines

From the perspective of the New Literacy Studies, the existing NCTE
guidelines framework for teacher preparation is insufficient and Inadequate.
First, although they account for some aspects of “new" literacy, such as new
technologies and increasing student diversity, they do so from the perspective of
newcomers and outsiders. Second, due to their outsider perspective, the
guidelines’ representations of “new" Iiteracies are constructed by adding aspects
to the existing “old” curriculum, rather than considering how these Iiteracies
function for insiders and working to fully integrate and revise the existing
framework so that it accounts for “neW’ literacy content and activity in ways that
are relevant to the needs of contemporary students. Third, as a result of Its
partial outsider representation of new Iiteracies, the Guidelines fail to account for
the ideological nature of literacy or attend adequately to issues of equity in
language arts instruction.

Maintaining a literary studies core for the curriculum, the Guidelines
function to exclude many ways of thinking about and teaching language and
literacy; in particular, the Guidelines institutionalize an autonomous model of
literacy as the basis for curricula. Although the authors claim that their document
is inclusive, evidence from the Guidelines demonstrates how some groups are
excluded or marginalized by the text’s representations.

The autonomous model of literacy that underlies the literary center of the

Guidelines is significant because such a model fails to represent literacy as

248

 

m1

Ideological, and therefore frequently misses opportunities for teachers and
students to study, understand, and practice language use as a political exercise
central to the practices of their everyday lives. Evidence of the Guidelines’
autonomous model of literacy can be demonstrated in the text’s deployment of
and stand on cognitive theories of literacy Ieaming as the dominant orientation to
teaching and Ieaming literacy, and in its deployment of a discourse of
appropriateness in language use. As with criticisms of the Guidelines’ literary
center, my criticism of Its cognitivist bases does not include the implication that
cognitivism should be rejected in considerations of curriculum design. Rather,
the Implications of this study are that cogntivist perspectives are privileged in the
Guidelines to the exclusion of other valid altemative orientations to Ieaming that
English language arts teachers could benefit from knowing about and accounting
for in their work.

Again, this does not mean that cognitive theories have nothing to
contribute, or that they are tyrannically “foundational” positions that deliberately
result in the marginalization of some groups. Rather, my intention Is to argue
that, based on the evidence from this study and further based on the perspective
of New Literacy Studies, it is important for English language arts teachers to
make space for sociocultural orientations that focus on social Issues related to
language and literacy that cognitive theories do not address as well.

Sociocultural theories do not deny the basic precepts of cognitive theory
related to language and literacy. Literacy does involve cognitive processes that

teachers need to understand in order to teach certain skills and develop useful

249

pedagogical approaches. At the same time, the cognitivist bases and the
autonomous literacy model evident in the 1996 Guidelines, deployed with an
outsider’s perspective on New Literacies, do an Insufficient job of integrating the
social and ideological aspects of literacy into the existing curricular frame. For
example, based on Its cognitive, autonomous, outsider orientation, the Standing
Committee treats crucial terms and concepts like literacy, discourse, critical,
Standard English, appropriate language use, diversity, and the reading of media
texts as straightfonrvard matters of common sense. This orientation treats key
terms as given and uncontested, when in fact close attention to their situated and
socially negotiated meanings in use is highly significant to successful
implementation of the curriculum.

Would a shift from cognitivism to socioculturalism as the basis for
curriculum policy solve anything? It is possible to argue that replacing one theory
with another simply changes the name of the game, but not the rules—a sort of
“meet the new boss: same as the old boss” action that would equally constrain
the discourse of literacy and ELA curriculum (Townshend, 1971 ). That is,
admittedly, a possible result, but one that seems less likely given sociocultural
and neo—Marxist theories’ explicit attention to the ways in which discourses
function in power relations. In this respect, socially oriented theories such as
critical discourse analysis could provide powerful tools for English educators to
assess, evaluate, and monitor curriculum and policy so that groups like NCTE
can operate pragmatically to develop critical discourse amongst affinity groups

related to literacy education.

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The use of “appropriate” language use as a core focus of the NCTE
Guidelines is more troubling, not because it reveals some sinister intent based on
racist or classist values, but because it may function to create racist and classist
conditions in literacy classrooms after the fact. When considered alongside the
text’s deployment of the term and concept of “diversity”—which reflects a
discourse of multicultural understanding—the appropriateness stance helps
support the projection of a false parity between social groups that may exist in
the spirit but not in the letter of the Guidelines. Combined with its privilege of a
literary center and a tendency toward conservative leanings, this text may
unintentionally leave minority and lower class children behind. And unintentional
or othenrvise, such a risk (which is often the reality of schools today) is
unacceptable.

From the perspective of the New Literacy Studies, the Implication of
literacy as an ideological component of the state apparatus Is that minorities
“under-classes” really do experience educational opportunities at a disadvantage,
because their Iiteracies—in the global sense of that word—are not engaged
adequately in school contexts (which are based in the literate codes and power
relations of the white middle+ classes). Further, the treatment of academic
literacy and its resulting inequities as unrelated to ideology—as just a matter of
neutral "skills”—leads to literally fewer opportunities for marginal groups to Ieam.
Even in schools where this consequence is not actual, the potential for fewer
Ieaming opportunities still exists depending on teacher and curricular

orientations. As such, that means that if what English language arts Is talking

251

 

 

about—which I suggest Is, at its center, literacy—Is really our primary interest as
literacy educators, then literacy educators need to teach students to understand
it in terms of its connections with race, social class, gender, sexuality,
colonialism, and so on. Critique should be a part of the curriculum, not to tear
down the present curricular structure, but to make it better and stronger and
more powerful in its effect on students' understandings about language and
society.

In addition, from the New Literacy Studies perspective, teachers really do
need to Ieam how to bring students' home Iiteracies into the classroom, and to
draw on their funds of knowledge as we teach them the language of wider
communication (Moll & Gonzales, 2001). It remains that variation in dialect and
idiom by race and class should have little bearing on the worth or correctness of
communication in any context (if we really believe in equality and value diversity),
but pragmatically, it is unlikely that the present dominance and institutionalization
of Formal Standard English will go away. Students don't need to use their home
Iiteracies In the classroom so that we can rebuild the Tower of Babel (although
we should teach students how to use their dialects in larger contexts); and, they
don't need to Ieam merely how to read in ways that will help them access and
navigate video games and media (although they need these skills). Rather,
teachers need to understand and use these kinds of things—these funds of
knowledge—so that they are able to teach in more relevant ways the codes of
power and the patterns of FSE successfully. And teachers need to do so in ways

that make those race and class markers explicit, so that students can understand

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how language is used on them and by them to do things In the world that Include
discriminating against others and making the social systems used In such
discrimination seem natural or Inevitable. This is perhaps especially true for
white students, who are most likely to lack perception of racial or class tensions
in their lives, or who see those tensions as natural, or who have a transparent but
vested interest in maintaining the current system by way of willful “ignorance.”
Teaching language Ideologically most certainly Includes teaching print literacy
and the basics, at its heart. It also includes Ieaming to see how those basics are
used to situate social spaces and human bodies, in terms of privilege,
Inheritance, rhetoric, access, opportunity, economics, and the perpetuation of the
status quo.

The treatment of minority groups in the Guidelines—the gloss of the term
“diversity,” the absence of critical focus, the marginalization of critical theories
focused on power relations, the discourse of multicultural understanding, the
discourse of appropriateness, and the technological bias resulting from the
framing of English in the larger discourse of accountability—results in a
curriculum that potentially fails students who are not from the mainstream. The
strongest of these marginal students may be able to “catch up” or “keep up”
(thereby supporting the myth that school as purely meritocratic and a matter of
hard work), but most will lack access and opportunity due to a lack of relevance
between their literate understandings and the pedagogical barriers of the
classroom literacy practices they encounter in schools that conceive of English

as it is conceived in the NCTE Guidelines.

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Attention to issues of race and class—of diversity—requires an attention
to the language of curriculum and policy that is symptomatic of English language
arts educators' concern for how such texts position social actors in schools to act.
It is not enough to assume that undefined terms and the freedom to interpret
guidelines will turn out okay in the end, especially when those assumptions are
made not on the basis of our knowledge about language and schooling, but
based on our desire to accommodate the needs of state-administered
accountability measures that do not account for the scope of our subject matter
or the nature of the education system. If we are serious about critical citizenship
and democratic participation in the sense of teaching students how to work for a
better, more equitable, more equal, more inclusive, more tolerant, more just, freer
society, then it Is important to position ourselves and our students in ways that
are more likely to lead to our success.

And this doesn't mean the loss of freedom to differ, either across K-12
classrooms or across English language arts teacher education programs. The
position I advocate here is not dichotomous. It is not about print or no print,
appropriate or inappropriate, cognitive or social, phonics or whole language. It is
about literacy—reading the word and the world (Freire & Macedo, 1987). There
are many ways to Ieam about it and talk about it, but we need to be explicit about
what those ways are, and if a standards document like the 1996 NCTE
Guidelines cannot function adequately to communicate what we are talking
about, then we should not use that standards document, but instead create some

other kind of text that helps us meet our goals and practice in ways that are

254

9!-

 

pedagogically principled, caring and careful, and focused on creating educational
equity for all students. A standards text written for convenience and brevity can
summarize this larger text, but it should not be used to determine curriculum.
Might such a shift result In a “less efficient” assessment of schools due to
bureaucratic constraints and fiscal policy in the wider governmental context?

Might it require the investment of more time and energy for the appropriate and

V

accurate assessment of university programs of English teacher education and [T
the practice of individual teachers? Probably. But that is the larger point about E
equity in education, Isn't it? From the perspective of the New Literacy Studies, ‘ 1
the analyses involved in this study suggest that we have both the opportunity and

the obligation to fix the real problems by teaching literacy differently and finding

new ways to construct our professional policies so that our practice and

 

knowledge are less constrained by purely bureaucratic considerations of
efficiency, expedience, and convenience.

The use of CDA as a policy tool could enable the creation of spaces for
change and revision specifically intended to maintain an ideology that is
concerned with the provision of equity across difference and the inclusion of
diverse groups for the benefit of all. Granted, such Inclusion and critical
discourse Is likely to be complex, complicated, and messy. It is possible and
even likely that groups will continue to experience marginalization even in a
policy paradigm concerned with sociocultural theory and educational equity, but I
would argue that in such a paradigm, at least there would be fewer and less

extreme marginalizing tendencies, and those that developed could be more

255

easily addressed. As has been noted, some ideologies and hegemonies are

better than others, and “difficult” is something quite different from “impossible.”

Implications for English Language Arts Teacher Education

Another implication of this study is the increasingly Important need for new
teachers to Ieam about English and literacy teaching while they Ieam how to
teach It. It is one thing to Ieam how to create lesson plans, teach the elements of
literature, lead discussions, and give explanations about concepts in the
language arts. These are skills that are important and will continue to be
essential for the preparation of quality teachers in our field. However, without an
understanding of why these skills are relevant, how and why our subject came to
take the shape it takes today, and how new teachers can operate In different
curricular frameworks, our field is likely to produce new teachers who are largely
unable to appreciate the ideological nature of their work. As a result, they will be
more likely to reproduce an inequitable status quo like the one described In this
analysis.

This research Implies the need to Include systematic study and use of
curriculum and policy texts in English education for new teachers and
professional development for experienced teachers, including use of the NCTE
Guidelines, in order to illustrate for English teachers the political and ideological
construction of their field. In addition to teaching the “methods” of teaching
English and literacy, this study suggests the importance of teaching teachers

disciplinary and school subject history, foundations, principles, and curriculum

256

 

 

theory on a scale not usually seen at the undergraduate level in colleges of
education and English departments, and certainly not seen in the context of
professional development programs in public schools. Doing so could provide
literacy teachers with the metadiscourses they need to make sense of their
everyday experiences in literacy classrooms and curriculum implementation.
Forewamed is forearrned. And again, while I certainly agree with the New
London Group (2000) and recognize that teachers already have enormous
demands placed on their time and energy, I would re-emphasize that “difficult”
does not mean “impossible.” There are spaces in our work with the potential to
be used for supporting teachers expanded study of literacy and education.
One possibility is for university programs to revise their curricula so that
attention is given to establishing new literacy teachers’ understanding of
discourse theory, the linguistic construction of meaning and culture, and the
connections between language, culture, and subject matter specialties. That is,
methods of discourse analysis could provide an Important set of pedagogical
tools for English and literacy teacher education. In doing so, it is important for
teacher educators to avoid an additive approach (“More Classes = Better
Learning”), but rather to consider how opportunities to Ieam discourse theories
and methods can be Integrated with authentic social interaction toward
conceptual understanding through use. There are at least three areas that
teacher education curricula could address in revising opportunities to Ieam

toward these ends.

 

First, preservice teachers would benefit from scholarship about
organizational systems, culture, disciplinary knowledge, social institutions,
history, philosophy, power, and ideology. In integrating this study, preservice
learners should practice analyzing curricular materials, textbooks, lesson plans,
classroom discourse, student artifacts, and interactions with children (both
individuals and groups) in school settings in order to equip themselves with
concrete cases to use for comparison and scaffolding while they practice.

I do not wish to argue that teachers should be experts in discourse,
linguistics, or critical theory. The purpose of Ieaming to teach is to teach, not to
theorize (although teachers need to theorize their teaching and subject matter as
a part of their professional work). It Is important for teachers to understand
theories of discourse and ideology if they are to operate critically within education
systems and do more than implement curricula as technicians. Learning about
cultural theories, and studying social critiques as they relate to the concrete
practices of learning to teach and teaching, would increase the ability of
preservice learners to view their teacher-identities as situated In a complex
network that is not neutral, universal, natural, inevitable, or merely personal.
Realizing this would increase the capacity for preservice teachers to make sense
of teacher education curriculum, as well as their personal knowledge and
experience of schools up to and Including teacher education—a key component
of early development in the continuum for Ieaming to teach (Feiman-Nemser,

2001)

258

 

 

 

The second area to be addressed is research and scholarship about
schools, teaching, and Ieaming to teach. Knowledge of these subjects is often
occluded from preservice Ieamers and even many of the teacher educators who
work with them. Some scholars have argued that education as a field lacks the
knowledge it requires to be classified as a true profession. In spite of these
claims, educational studies as a field has developed a large body of quality
research, but not all of this research is accessible to preservice Ieamers. It is
possible to argue that one reason teachers do not behave like other
professionals is the fact that they are rarely presented with the knowledge they
would need in order to view themselves through professional lenses and then act
accordingly. But that Is not because the knowledge does not exist.

Teacher education curricula should include opportunities for students to
Ieam about the sociology of teaching, schooling, and Ieaming and to relate the
Ieaming directly to their field experiences. Some representative works include
Jackson (1969/1990), McNeil (1986), and Popkewitz (2000, 2001 , 2002) on
regimes of control and govemmentality in schools, Labaree (1996, 1997, 2000)
on orientations to school and Ieaming to teach, Britzman (1991) and Feiman-
Nemser 8 Remillard (1996) on the tensions and tasks of preservice teaching,
and others. Preservice teachers should be exposed to literature on the sociology
of teaching such as Lortie’s (1975) classic study and Zeichner & Gore’s (1990)
synthesis of teacher socialization research. They should know about the culture

of teaching in schools as characterized by Cusick (1992), and they should be

259

 

 

 

aware of how teachers have historically responded to reform and change
(Cuban, 1993; Tyack & Cuban, 1995; Cohen, 1988).

I can think of no more important goal than equipping new English teachers
with the knowledge they need to make sense of their work as It extends beyond
their classroom walls, the bounds of state standardized tests, and the curriculum
pacing guides that are more and more instituted in order to meet the
requirements of standardization and to de-skill the work of teaching in the name
of uniform efficiency. Doing so can help them recognize, use, and/or resist
curricular issues that affect their abilities to teach children literacy. That
knowledge and support can mean the difference between a teacher who leaves
the profession after 3-5 years, and a teacher who leads the profession for a

lifetime.

Implications for Political Activity in NCTE, ELA, and Literacy

One of the motivating factors behind this study is the fact that professional
organizations related to literacy education have been excluded from top tier
policy discussions that govern teachers’ professional discourses. As reviewed in
Chapter 2, groups like the National Council of Teachers of English have found
themselves systematically excluded from policy talks at the state and national
level. Their expertise and experience are not valued in the larger public and
political discourse on literacy education. NCTE Is being required to “speak the
language of achievement” in order to participate at all in such talks. In addition,
these talks occur at the committee level in NCTE at the highest levels of its

bureaucracy, and as such are largely divorced and isolated from the main body

260

 

 

 

of the NCTE membership, who remain generally uninformed about particular
issues and interactions. It seems unlikely that the dynamics of this situation are
likely to change, and that NCTE will remain in a phase of impasse in terms of
national discussions of standards-based accountability reform.

If this is the case, and NCTE Is unlikely to achieve its goals at the national
and organizational level, it is also true that the organization cannot afford to
simply abandon those talks and abstain from participating. Negotiation between
NCTE representatives, policy makers, and education constituents should
continue. At the same time, it is important for NCTE and literacy educators in
general to recognize that while the current impasse is decidedly negative, it is not
without opportunities.

The impasse literacy educators are experiencing at the national level need
not be the only point of access for NCTE and literacy educators to enter
conversations about the work they do. While the conservative positions vis a vis
literacy education among policy makers at the national level appear to be firmly
entrenched, that is only the case in terms of interaction between diametrically
opposed political factions in that context—for example, NCTE representatives
and the policy makers who have “Invited them out of the conversation” in state
bureaucracies. While it may be necessary to continue negotiating at this level,
the entrenched character of that negotiation requires NCTE and literacy
educators to engage in the public discourse about their activity in other ways.
One important way is to engage In more grassroots conversations and political

activity related to the goal of more equitable and high quality literacy instruction.

261

Political activity at the grassroots level in public discourse does not
necessarily mean mass demonstrations, picketing, and sloganeering in the
traditional mode of protest. Rather, such activity requires that professional
organizations like NCTE engage in broad strategic thinking and exert Influence
by treating their political action as pedagogical activity.

In the introduction of this study, I asserted that no one knows more about

 

can:
i

literacy, rhetoric, and the language arts than literacy teachers (defined as the

A.— - - Luv;

collective group of reading teachers, language arts teachers, English teachers,
literacy teachers, composition teachers, and so on). Accepting this as true, it
makes sense that literacy educators could work, with the support of national
organizations like NCTE, to educate both the public and policy makers about the
ideological nature of literacy in ways that cannot be accomplished in top-tier,
committee-style negotiations at the level of the state. One function of
organizations like NCTE is the dissemination of Information and knowledge.
Another function is the promotion of professional development. A third is the
development of coherent agendas for inquiry and professional activity.
Capitalizing on all three of these functions, it is possible to envision a grassroots
movement initiated at the organizational level of NCTE but executed in local
contexts by individuals and small groups of NCTE members who represent the
interests of their local school contexts, rather than the interests of a political body
like NCTE.

From the perspective of New Literacy Studies, it would be useful to

engage the organizational capacities of groups like the National Council of

262

Teachers of English to 1) initiate, support, and promote critical discourse across
the NCTE membership and begin a long-term project for representing the range
and complexity of English language arts and literacy teaching, 2) disseminate
information and knowledge about literacy as an ideological technology and
English as a dynamic language in an effort to educate the membership, within a

context of critical discourse, and 3) use NCTE’s capacity for professional

 

development to educate teachers in strategies for multiliteracies pedagogy (New

London Group, 2000; Lankshear and Knobel, 2003; Street, 2005) and political

 

activity, especially for engaging local policy makers such as administrators, I
superintendents, school board members, and city, state, and national political

representatives. In order to avoid historical tensions between these groups and

professional teaching organizations like NCTE, it would be useful for teachers to

engage these groups and Individuals not as NCTE members, but as local

teachers concerned with educational quality and social equity for the students

they teach every day. In doing so, small groups of teachers trained within NCTE

could Ieam to function in local contexts to shift the public discourse in ways that

 

will trickle upwards and potentially Influence the national discourse toward ending
the ongoing Impasse at that macro-level.

It should be obvious that this recommendation is not a matter of simple or
quick fixes. Such activity Is likely to be difficult, messy, and long-terrn. It involves
strategic responses to the current discursive context of literacy curriculum and
policy, not tactical reaction. It requires serious shifts within the National Council

of Teachers of English to 1) develop critical discourse about its own activity, 2)

263

promote a New Literacy perspective that leads to more balanced representation
of literacy as social, cognitive, and ideological within the organization, 3)
professional development of NCTE members leading to the engagement of
classroom teachers with curriculum policy, 4) a grassroots national campaigns in
which NCTE members operate in their local communities to educate the public
and policy makers about the nature of literacy, and 5) ongoing negotiation of
policy at the national organizational level between NCTE and the state.

Some who will read this may well be laughing, out loud and derisively.
What I am describing here is assuredly daunting. It is likely that many in the field
will respond with claims that such a project Is grandiose to the point of
impossibility. But, as l have stated twice already, claims that large scale political
and/or curricular change is impossible most often translate to mean that such
change and work are “difficult.” I certainly agree. The activity I describe here
would be extremely difficult, but also Important.

Given that groups like NCTE are insiders on the outside looking in on the
activities that govern their own work, It is possible that literacy educators are freer
to act than they currently believe. Freed from the need to worry about gaining
immediate and total access In top-tier policy discussions (which they are already
excluded from), literacy educators have the opportunity to work outside of
mainstream accountability discourses and produce intemal organizational
documents that will contribute to the development of counter-hegemonies within
the profession that can then be used to initiate political work in local public

contexts toward the transformation of national discourses. Within the dominant

264

discourse of standards-based accountability reform, NCTE may need its
Standing Committee for Teacher Preparation and Certification to continue
“shooting at a moving target” In order to maintain a voice at the national level.
But it is also possible for NCTE to simultaneously work outside of that dominant
discourse to move the target purposefully, emphasizing that education and
accountability need not be primarily concerned with uniformity, consensus,
simplicity, and efficiency. It is possible for NCTE to work in ways that both
accommodate and subvert accountability reform policies and advance the

interests of literacy education.

NCTE and “Literacy”

Many readers may have noted the way this study has tended to represent
language teaching as “English language arts and literacy.” This pairing Is of
course not incidental, but reflects the perspective of the New Literacy Studies
that language study and literacy requires avoiding the characterization of
“English” as a national language, and also to avoid making a distinction between
the “English language arts” as a distinct disciplinary activity and “literacy” as a
general set of technical skills. Recalling my review of Alan Luke’s (2003) essay
“The Trouble With English,” the expansion of literacy practices over the last thirty
years has made It desirable for educators to re-conceptualize language arts
instruction under a new rubric,” whether that rubric Is labeled “English Studies,”
“Literacies,” “Literacy Studies,” “Multiliteracies,” or something else. Regardless

of its title, the field must open up the traditional institutional discourse of English

265

language arts to account for the contributions of linguistics, rhetoric, composition
studies, media studies, cultural studies, women’s and ethnic studies, literary
studies, geography, sociology, anthropology, and other diverse subjects.

When Gramsci conceived of the potential for counter-hegemony, he
recognized that the development of such a discourse requires the cultivation of

relationships between disparate social groups that nevertheless share common

 

interests, and so have the potential to develop affinities for one another. Using r—
Gramsci’s work, It is possible to envision a project initiated by NCTE to begin the E
cultivation of such relationships among the groups identified by Luke as related I

to or Invested in aspects of literacy research and education. Developing affinities
across these groups could allow professionals to increase their agency
dramatically and gain significant momentum and Influence toward shifting
national discourses in ways that literacy educators find desirable—that Is, in
ways that lead to high quality equitable literacy education and Ieaming for all
students, and greater professional autonomy and agency for teachers and
researchers alike.

Once again, a project like this one Is likely to be extremely difficult, time
consuming, and contentious, since professionals interested in the field of literacy
come from so many different disciplinary backgrounds, theoretical paradigms,
and so on. Still, engaging in this work Is important in order to think as a set of

affinity groups about how to best meet the needs of the students who come to

 

our classrooms everyday to Ieam about how language and literacy work for and

on them.

266

Conclusions

In effect, the 1996 NCTE Guidelines’ accommodation of
accountability in English education curriculum and policy may prevent programs
that use the Guidelines from accurately representing English, literacy, teaching,
and Ieaming to the point that professional educators are unable to adequately
address the needs of students in both university teacher education classrooms
and K-12 language arts classrooms. The findings from this study suggest that
NCTE must become more strategic about its policy production and curricular
designs. Before NCTE can satisfactorily deal with the challenges of
accountability in public national contexts, it must first ground English clearly in
English studies and Iiteracies, not in a context focused on accommodating the
demands of accountability.

Grounding English in English Studies and Iiteracies requires difficult work
across social groups to represent the range of discourse groups concerned with
language and literacy. Representing the range of English within the field offers
the opportunity for professional English and literacy teachers and teacher
educators to come together and develop critical discourse about their work on a
scale that has not occurred before. As Luke (2004) argues, we face the
challenge of coming together and working across our differences within the field
to accurately represent the range of English studies, purposes for studying
English and literacy, and offering collaborative visions of curricula.

Luke’s challenge means that those responsible for developing policy in

267

English and literacy must develop an understanding and respect for discourse
and rhetoric in the field. Representing the Ideological positions of various groups
potentially involved with the teaching of English is extremely sensitive work
fraught with the risk of authoritarianism. It is Important to continuously attempt to
achieve an ongoing dialogue within the profession that includes all interested
parties toward cooperation in representing a range of perspectives.

My intention In this study has been to describe the present discourse of
English language arts education and analyze it using Critical Discourse Analysis
and a perspective based in the New Literacy Studies. Although I make
assertions and claims based on this perspective, I recognize that it Is one
perspective among many, and that others may make important counter claims
and contributions to the discourse about curriculum and accountability in literacy
and the English language arts. If this study provokes or encourages further
Inquiry, discussion, or debate, I welcome it. To conclude this study, I outline
some of the work that might be engaged in toward developing our understanding

and contributing to that conversation.

Further research.

First, It is important to recognize that the present study is useful but not
sufficient for understanding the operation of the NCTE Guidelines. Based on
Fairclough’s triad for critical discourse analysis, it is important to study the
discursive context in which texts are produced, in addition to analyzing the text
and Its sociocultural context. While I have been able to accomplish the latter two

analyses to some degree, the need to study the discursive context in detail

268

remains. One way to approach this work is via ethnographic study of the
Standing Committee for Teacher Preparation and Certification while it engages in
ongoing work to develop guidelines. Without a more detailed understanding of
how this group interacts to produce its text, it is impossible to fully understand,
describe, or explain the discourse that results. While analyses of the text and
certain aspects of the sociocultural environment have allowed me to make some
claims here, I do not pretend that this study is definitive or complete. Access to
the work of the Standing Committee in process is essential to this research, and
systematic studies of similar groups involved with curriculum and policy design
will be extremely important.

Additional research on the history of NCTE, standards-based
accountability reform, and literacy theory are also Important to this line of work In
order to further expand and enrich the existing archive of texts for understanding
the discourses of literacy and English education. While there are existing
histories of NCTE, for example J. N. Hook’s narrative of NCTE’s development in
its first sixty years, it would be useful for other researchers to engage in more
historical inquiry from a range of positions. Likewise, while scholars like Berlin,
Scholes, Graff, and Ohmann have written historical texts about the development
of English and rhetoric at the university level, there remains a need for historical
studies of the development of English and literacy as public school subjects,
particularly from critical and poststructural perspectives that concentrate on the
ideological construction, genealogy, and deconstruction of these subjects rather

than descriptions of K-12 language arts curricula.

269

 

A third strand of research indicated by this study is the need for critical
discourse analyses of other standards documents and curriculum texts, both
those related to literacy, and those using a national educational scope or
originating in other subject areas like math, science, and social sciences. CDA’s
of other texts also contribute to the archive for study of standards-based
accountability and curriculum in our field. They promote comparison across
those texts and the fields they represent, allowing the description of even larger
discursive patterns and hopefully leading to a greater capacity for educators,
researchers, and policy makers to understand, anticipate, and influence the

effects of their activity on educational quality and equity.

Moving targets.

If one thing can be said of curriculum and policy In English language arts
and literacy education, it is that the target will never stop moving. Both literacy
as a technology set and English as a linguistic system are dynamic, as are the
societies and cultures that we participate in as teachers, researchers, and
citizens. The fact that our targets move, however, does not mean that we should
give up trying to hit them. To the contrary, it is important to remember that we
can move targets ourselves in order to achieve goals we deem to be desirable
based on negotiation and open critical discourse.

Given the present rush to accountability and standardization in our field,
now Is the time to come together and develop a vision for the field that looks
beyond the present discourse and pressure to standardize. There Is an

opportunity here to develop praxis—that is, to make this broad profession a

270

space where theory, research, teaching, practice, and professional activity
intersect and inform each other for the betterment of our work.

This opportunity for praxis includes an opportunity to teach people and
organize curricula in ways that bring current accountability measures into
question. Teacher educators have a responsibility to teach new teachers how to
read standards and policy more effectively as Ideological instruments, to make
sense of their own classroom contexts, and to find new ways of Integrating new
knowledge and topics with existing knowledge so that institutionalized literacy
education remains relevant for the diverse students who are coming to public
school classrooms every day.

As we notice that our targets are always moving in the field of literacy
education, that realization should also lead to the recognition that our targets are
anything but monolithic and inevitable. They are socially constructed, and that
means that they are subject to change via social interaction. Certainly, given the
tendency for systems of power and ideology to reproduce themselves, change is
never easy, and there is always the risk of slippage and abuse In social systems.
Still, the goal of achieving counter-hegemony for literacy education In which the
dominant ideology involves an explicit attention to language, a value for critical
discourse, and an ongoing intentional effort to address shifting values, power
relations, and issues of equity, seems like a worthwhile goal. The key appears to
be not simply tracking our target, but moving targets purposefully.

An effort toward full praxis and moving targets in English education and

literacy should be engaged in the interest of one over-arching goal: the effective

271

 

 

 

and successful education of children. That means teaching them how to read
and write. It means helping them Ieam how to use and appreciate literacy in
ways that will enable them to continue Ieaming, adapt to change, and to both
resist and change practices and situations that are inequitable or oppressive, not
only for themselves but also for those who share their communities. That Is our
responsibility as literacy educators, and if now is not the time for this sort of
action, then when? And if those of us who teach and study literacy do not take
action, then who? I can think of no more important work then the work that we

do, together.

272

 

 

 

APPENDICES
Appendix A

List of Data Codes

Table 4: Data categories, codes, and definitions

 

 

 

Discourse Structure Data Code Explanation

 

 

Auxiliary verb constructions are used
to construct evaluative statements
about necessity or obligation, using
verbs such as “should,” “must,” or
“need + Infinitive verb phrase.”

Auxiliary verbs provide a useful
marker for analyzing particularized
value statements, assumptions, and
evaluations that are projected as
Auxiliary verbs Auxiliary obligation universals in a text. According to
Fairclough (2003), “[A]chieving
hegemony entails achieving a
measure of success In projecting
certain particulars as universals.”
Analyzing patterns of auxiliary
construction helps reveal Ideological
perspectives, patterns, and/or
contradictions in a text.

Auxiliary verbs function as deontic
modalities— constructions that imply
the desirability of acting according to
particular (ideological) values.

 

 

Diction = connotation or denotation of
terms; also abstraction/concreteness.

Tone = the style and register used to
imply purpose, audience,
assumptions of perspective, use of
neologisms, jargon, euphemism, etc.
Diction and tone DT-(+ word or phrase)
Diction and Tone frequently mark
constructions that imply the authors’
orientation to difference at a given
point in the text. This orientation may
be shifting, overlapping, and/or
contradictory. As such, analysis of
diction and tone can lead to insights
about power relations and ideological
perspectives in a text.

 

 

 

273

 

Table 4 (cont’d)

 

Representation of Social Actors

SA-( + noun)

Coding for the representation of social
actors helps develop patterns of
social activity and power relations in a
text (for example: Who is present in
the text? Who is represented as able
to act? What do actors do? Who is
acted upon? Who is considered to be
important?

Analysis of the representation of
social actors In a text can Include
answering the following questions:
Is the actor in the text, present,
absent, or backgrounded?

Is the social actor realized as a
pronoun?

Is the social actor represented as
active or passive in the text?

Is the social actor personalized or
impersonal?

-ls the social actor named (i.e.

, “Mrs. Smith”) or categorized (i.e.,
“Teachers”)?

Is the social actor represented as
specific or generic?

 

Value Assumptions

VA

Value assumptions are statements or
other constructions that imply beliefs
about what is good or desirable.

Value assumptions are often marked
by auxiliary constructions like
“should,” “must,” or “need.”

 

Propositional Assumptions

PA

Propositional assumptions are
statements or other constructions
about what is believed to be true or
possible. Propositional Assumptions
frequently overlap with value
assumptions, but may occur
independently as statements about
what is true.

 

 

Existential Assumptions

 

EA

 

Existential assumptions are
statements about what exists. They
are most often declarative statements;
however, existential assumptions may
be implied within other constructions.

 

274

 

Table 4 (cont’d)

 

Nominalization

Nom

A nominalization is a verb that has
been transformed into a noun.
Transforming verbs/actions into nouns
eliminates apparent agency, abstracts
a text, and can serve to make a
particular ideological position appear
to be neutral when it is not.

 

Ethical Liberalism

EL

Statements aligned with ethical
liberalism mark a value for equity,
diversity, difference, Individualized
instruction, moral and ethical
development, community, etc.

 

Technological Liberalism

TL

Statements aligned with technological
liberalism mark a value for equality,
the maintenance of economic interest,
the establishment of uniformity,
efficient mass assessment, and
academic excellence.

 

 

Orientation to Difference

 

OD[1-5]

 

Many statements or words reflect
particular orientations to difference.
Orientation to difference in a text can
imply various Ideological positions,
ranging from a complete denial of
difference to an explicit acceptance
and value for difference. These
orientations are useful for
understanding whether and how a
text allows for variation and change
from the status quo, and thus reflect
power relations and hegemonic
conditions. Ratings for orientation to
difference (Fairclough, 2003), are as
follows: 1 = consensus, a
normalisation and acceptance of
differences of power which brackets
or suppresses differences of meaning
and over norms; 2 = a bracketing of
difference, a focus on commonality,
solidarity; 3 = an attempt to resolve or
overcome difference; 4 = an
accentuation of difference, conflict,
polemic, a struggle over meaning,
norms, power; 5 = an openness to,
acceptance of, recognition of
difference; an exploration of
difference, as in ‘dialogue' in the
richest sense of the term.

 

275

 

 

Table 4 (cont’d)

 

 

Genre

 

 

Fairclough: “Many [policy] texts can
be seen to limit policy options by
portraying the socioeconomic order as
simply given, an unquestionable and
inevitable horizon which is Itself
untouchable by policy and narrowly
constrains options, essential rather
than contingent, and without time
depth. Moreover, these texts often
appear to be promotional rather than
analytical, concerned more to
persuade people that these are
indeed the only practicable policies
than to open up dialogue. This form
of report Is what we might call
‘hortatory report’: descriptions with a
covert prescriptive intent, aimed at
getting people to act in certain ways
on the basis of representation of what
is" (p. 95-96).

 

276

 

Appendix B

Diction Tables

Each table below represents the collected discourse segments concerning key
terms in the 1996 NCTE Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of the
English Language Arts, used to demonstrate patterns of language use.

Table 6: English Language Arts as an Academic Discipline

 

Page
10

 

Statements of English as a Discipline

Teachers must build classroom environments characterized by both
freedom and discipline.

 

12

Teachers must acquire a sense of belonging to their professional
community. They must both contribute to It and be nurtured by It;
therefore, they must be active participants in local, state, and national
organizations that promote professional development. In addition, they
must develop a commitment to lifelong Ieaming of the content and
methodology of their discipline.

 

21

Content Guideline 18: Knowledge of major research findings and theory
in the content of the discipline and in Issues and trends that affect
curriculum is essential for creating a productive teaching and Ieaming
environment.

 

21

English language arts teachers must know the major sources—for
example, books, periodicals, reports, and proceedings—of research,
theory, and the issues and trends that influence the content and
pedagogy of their discipline.

 

24

 

 

Instruction that calls for subject matter across subject lines Is increasingly
seen by the profession as important, both because the Integrated
curriculum will increase richness and because it will give greater meaning
to each of the disciplines.

 

277

 

 

 

Table 6 icont’d)

 

34

The standards from the Interstate New Teachers Assessment and
Support Consortium (quoted and paraphrased from Model standards for
Beginning Teacher Licensing and Development, 1992 draft, pp. 10-30)
state that a beginning teacher:

Standard 1: Understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and
structures of the discipline.

 

65

Another way of looking at the Guidelines is as a document that defines
and redefines the discipline at regular ten-year intervals, and that
responds to the professional, social, and political trends that are most
significant during the time In which each revision is being composed. In
such a view, Guidelines for the Preparation of teachers of English
Language Arts is an activist document which seeks change and attempts
periodic reorientation of the discipline and the language used to represent
it.

 

65

[Referring to calls for conservation (as “tradition”) and reform] Both of
these views lead to important insights, though neither view is sufficient in
itself. Looking at the Guidelines in terms of Its continuity with the past can
lead to stagnation, reduction, and reification of language and practice.
Looking at the Guidelines in the context of current trends and movements,
on the other hand, leads to short-sightedness, excess, and distortion.
Also, both of these views operating independently and unmindfully of
each other in the discipline contribute to the so-called “swinging
pendulum” effect.

 

 

65

 

...oscillations in the orientations of the discipline from one extreme
position to another.

 

 

278

ink

 

 

Table 6 (cont’d)

 

The long-term result of this well-meaning, highly student-centered
orientation [Progressivism] was a de-emphasis of academic study and an
embarrassingly weak curriculum that was discarded in favor of an
“academic model” in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time, the academic
66 model was interpreted as a reestablishment of traditional academic
values that had been wrongly abandoned during the preceding period of
reform. This model, in turn, led to a discipline-centered curriculum that
ultimately also fell victim to its own excesses by failing to respond to the
needs and interests of students. That academic model was swept aside
in the turbulent political climate of the late 19605 and earIy 19703
(Applebee, 1974).

 

It would be just as Impossible to argue that any good would be served by
any revision of the Guidelines which would dislodge the discipline from its
traditions and underpinnings. Such balance Is particularly important since
66 Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of the English Language Arts
Is used as a working document in the accreditation of English teacher
education programs, which serve broad and varied communities and exist
in bureaucratic institutions which, by their very nature, are often difficult
and slow to change.

 

 

 

Table 7A: Holistic, Integrated, andlor Interconnected ELA Content
Page Statements of holismI integrationI and/or interconnection ,

 

We agreed that both programs, but especially the one for teachers,
should produce individuals whose experiences have been such that they
3 know that “all language processes are integrated and, hence, that

language study should be approached holistically” (1986 Guidelines, p.
3).

 

Although “process” has become a negative word In many people’s
lexicon, these guidelines reflect a perspective that recognizes that

3 language use is a process: a process that begins with the use of oral
language in very young children, and continues throughout life; a process
that is holistic (itself a controversial term) and integrates the traditional
“language arts” of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

 

 

 

 

279

 

Table 7A (cont’d)

 

13

Teachers of the English language arts must seek ways to integrate
elements of the arts and the humanities in their daily instruction in order
to create a balanced academic experience for their students. By
incorporating traditional and current music, art, philosophy, etc., in the
students’ academic lives, teachers support an understanding that such
aspects of human culture are important for the individual student and for
the health of the community.

 

23

Content Guideline 1: Structure English language arts holistically.

Because the English language arts curriculum is multidimensional and
involves substance (literature, language, rhetoric), skills (reading, writing,
viewing, listening, speaking), and processes (affective, cognitive,
creative), the interconnectedness of these dimensions must be reflected
when teachers select, design, and organize objectives, strategies, and
materials. Organizational patterns such as themes, topics, and life
experiences, as well as genres and similar types of approaches, will
promote holistic structure.

 

24

Instruction that calls for subject matter across subject lines is Increasingly
seen by the profession as important, both because the integrated
curriculum will increase richness and because it will give greater meaning
to each of the disciplines.

 

25-26

They must be able to articulate to students, parents, administrators, and
other community members the standards of achievement established for
the class, how achievement is measured, and the progress being made
by individual students. Teachers must keep in mind that some
Instructional practices— such as whole language approaches to literacy,
integrating the curriculum, and thematic teaching— are more process-
oriented and require forms of assessment different from those used for
more traditional ways of teaching.

 

 

31

 

The interconnectedness among attitudes, knowledge, and pedagogy—
Iike the holistic structure of language itself—must be acknowledged and
understood by the teacher of English language arts.

 

280

 

Table 7B: Holistic, Integrated, and/or Interconnected Assessment

 

25

To effectively evaluate student performance, teachers must be able to
integrate various forms of assessment into the everyday Ieaming
experiences of students.

 

20

 

 

Teachers, therefore, must be familiar with authentic assessment
techniques and procedures, such as reflective writing, student- and
teacher-developed guidelines or checklists, Ieaming records, portfolio
presentations, and exhibitions. They need to know several ways of
assessing student writing performance, such as holistic, primary trait, and
analytic scoring of writing. They should be familiar with a range of
systems, such as Ieaming records, that describe student progress in all
language processes.

 

Table 7C: Holistic, Integrated, and/or Interconnected Teaching

 

 

 

 

28 The teaching of English language arts is a holistic, dynamic, and
constructive process.
Teachers at all levels not only to use integrated approaches in teaching
15 the language arts but also to provide instruction that focuses on each

aspect of language.

 

Table 8: A Discourse About Literacy:

 

Page

 

 

Statements about Literacy

Clearly “computer literacy” is now an essential tool for success In most
schools, and increasing numbers of colleges and universities require
students to come equipped not just with computer skills but with their own
computer hardware; and once students are on campus, they may find
their residence hall rooms equipped with access to electronic mail and
online services.

 

281

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 8 (cont’d)

 

Principles of Dynamic Literacy
English language arts teacher preparation programs should recruit,
nurture, and graduate new teachers who:

0 Write with proficiency and pleasure, read widely for enlightenment
and growth, and participate in cultural events in their school and In
the wider community.

0 Write about and share their experiences as writers and as readers
with their students.

 

16-17

Teachers need to provide environments where “public literacy" practice
may take place: where students Ieam how to take part in public
discussions whether written or oral, where they participate in deciding
issues and know how to find information which enables them to take part.

 

26

Teachers must keep in mind that some instructional practices— such as
whole language approaches to literacy, integrating the curriculum, and
thematic teaching— are more process-oriented and require forms of
assessment different from those used for more traditional ways of
teaching.

 

 

27

 

Content Guideline 18: Promote media literacy.

Teachers must be able to guide students in preparing nonprint materials,
such as storyboards or sound recordings, and in preparing and creating
multimedia presentations. Students need to construct meaning through
different media, analyze their transactions with media texts, and create
their own media texts and performances. Teachers must help students to
explore contemporary media as extensions of literature and as entities in
and of themselves. They need to understand and to be skillful in
teaching the possibilities and limitations of media texts, such as film,
video, and television.

 

282

 

Table 8 (cont’d)

 

32

As we worked on these Guidelines, we also examined various standards
reports, some in final form and some as drafts. While we found that the
NCTE guidelines included all of the areas and issues addressed in the
emerging standards documents, some parts of our Guidelines—
particularly where reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and
thinking are discussed—have benefited from the language and Ideas
found in various standards documents

For example, the range of skills we define as necessary for a new
teacher to have in order to teach content, to develop students’ verbal
abilities, to develop multiple Iiteracies, and to develop curricula Is
consistent with the NCTE/IRA standards.

 

34

NCTE/IRA Standard 11: Students participate as knowledgeable,
reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy
communities.

 

66-67

 

 

The stand on cognitivism and process pedagogy constitutes a strong link
with previous revisions of the Guidelines, while not overlooking the work
of literary scholars, educational theorists, and rhetoricians who see
themselves as representatives of more explicitly postmodern points of
view such as social constnlctionism. This latter orientation posits a
“liberatory’ role as well as vigorous social activism for teachers of
“literacy.” Social constructionists also often operate on the basis of a
broader “anti-foundationalist” agenda against what they understand to be
the “foundational” tenets of cognitivism and process pedagogy. Despite
these very real areas of disagreement, with respect to both the pedagogy
guidelines and the knowledge guidelines, the Standing Committee
strongly encourages programs seeking accreditation to emphasize
connectedness and common ground across conceptual frameworks that
often seem, on the surface, to be contradictory.

 

Table 9: A Discourse About “Discourse”

 

Page

 

 

Statements about Discourse

 

 

Principles of Content knowledge

English language arts education programs should provide teachers

with content knowledge so that they will:

0 Understand the role that literature plays in the development and
understanding of human cultures.

0 Understand that composing is a practice that covers a wide range
of processes, functions, purposes, rhetorical situations, and
categories of discourse.

 

283

 

Table 9 (cont’d)

 

14

The knowledge base of effective English language arts teachers can be
divided into nine general areas: language development, language
analysis, language composition, written discourse, reading and literature,
media, instructional media, assessment, and research and theory.

 

16

There are processes and elements in the act of composing that are
crucial to oral, visual, and written discourse.

 

16

Rich oral language experiences are closely related to writing
performance. Although both speaking and writing usually take place in a
social context, oral text is sometimes thought of as informal and as often
preceding written discourse. In truth, both oral and written discourse
contain like elements and follow processes that teachers need to
understand in order to help students develop and extend communication
skills.

 

16

Technology has enlarged these processes to include visual discourse
through the use of digital media as well as through such traditional media
as film, video, photographs, and pictures. Visual discourse, then, is
closely linked with oral and written discourse.

 

16

Furthermore, all teachers must know that much practice with expressive
language Is necessary for the development of voice or style in all forms of
discourse.

 

16

Teachers must also be aware of equity issues in language, such as the
extension of language codes and registers beyond the limits of standard
or formal English; the nature and use of academic discourse and other
forms of writing and speaking to expand rather than inhibit student
expression; and the use and, therefore, validation of global forms of
glglish in classroom conversation.

 

17

[Teachers] also need to be aware of the usefulness of techniques to
improve oral and written discourse, such as self- and peer assessment,
as well as teacher assessment.

 

 

23

 

Knowledge created in discourse requires individuals to construct meaning
and to engage in thinking with others.

 

284

 

Table 9 (cont’d)

 

25

Guideline 9: Promote classroom discourse in which student thinking is
respected and challenged by the teacher and other students.

Although the teacher plays a central role In promoting and assessing
classroom discourse, each student’s reflections can create new
understandings. Clarification, justification of Ideas, and framing of
questions that provoke students’ thinking all promote classroom discourse
and serve as evaluations of it. To facilitate discourse, the teacher must
be skillful in helping students make connections among aspects of
content and the Ieamers’ experiences, reading, Ideas, and problems. The
teacher also needs to be adept at helping students serve as the audience
for one another’s discourse.

 

64-
65

Additionally, the guidelines on composing language and written discourse
are primarily expressivist in orientation, while the guideline on reading and
literature refers to Louise Rosenblatt’s “transactional” theory of literature
as well as to a more general reader-response approach to literary texts.

 

65

 

 

One way of looking at the [Guidelines] as It has developed over the years
is to see it as a cumulative, evolving text with Its own characteristics,
priorities, and language. In such a view, this is a conserving document
that gives English educators the opportunity to focus their attention on
disciplinary history and to maintain contact with long-held values. Such a
view also encourages English educators to maintain contact with
language and terminology that have helped define central disciplinary
concerns and practices. For example, successive revisions of the
Guidelines have used words like “process,” “content”, “media”, and
“discourse” that all English educators are able to recognize and relate to
specific issues and classroom practices.

 

Table 10: A “Critical” Discourse

 

Page
8

 

 

“Critical” Statements

 

 

Know and be able to use and teach a wide range of critical and
interpretive approaches to literature.

 

285

 

Table 10 (cont’d)

 

English language arts education programs should provide teachers with
opportunities to:
0 Develop teaching/Ieaming processes through experiences with a
wide range of verbal, visual, technological, and creative media.
0 Expand themselves as literate individuals who use their critical,
intellectual, and aesthetic abilities to participate in a democratic
society.

 

11

Growth in language facility occurs when students experiment with
language and receive respectful and critical response from teachers and
peers. Teachers must build classroom environments characterized by
both freedom and discipline. In such classrooms, students take risks by
shaping complex ideas through language (both oral and written), and
they Ieam to accept responses and criticism that help them improve their
language abilities.

 

12

Attitude Guideline 6: A willingness to encourage students to respond
critically to different media and communications technology.

 

12

Guideline 10: An enthusiasm for developing lifelong habits of mind to
facilitate clear thinking and critical judgment.

Teachers of the English language arts should employ instruction
techniques that foster and nurture the cognitive and metacognitive
processes required for clear thinking and critical judgment. The
educational experiences that teachers provide should enable students to
view their environments and the world in general from a problem-solving
perspective and to draw conclusions from a wide variety of sources.

 

13

Respect for the points of views and opinions of others Is critical to mental,
emotional, and intellectual growth.

 

 

17

 

Teachers must also provide an environment that allows students to
develop critical insights and that supports them in identifying their favorite
pieces of literature.

 

286

 

Table 10 (cont’d)

 

27

Build a reading, listening, and viewing community where students
respond, interpret, think critically, and contrast ideas with others.

 

32

For example, the range of skills we define as necessary for a new
teacher to have in order to teach content, to develop students’ verbal
abilities, to develop multiple Iiteracies, and to develop curricula is
consistent with the NCTE/IRA standards. Similarly, NCTE’s Guidelines
for the Preparation of Teachers of the English Language Arts Emphasize
cultural diversity, second language usage, and the reflective teacher’s
critical reasoning skills, all of which are prominently featured in various
other standards frameworks.

 

34

 

 

NCTE/IRA Standard 11: Students participate as knowledgeable,
reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy
communities.

 

Table 11: A Discourse About Diversity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page Statements About “DiversitY”
And we agree with the earlier committees that diversity of situations is
3 important, especially as students move into a world that is becoming
more and more heterogeneous.
Principles of Diversity:
English language arts education programs should provide teachers
with the attitudes, content, and pedagogical knowledge and skills so
that they will:
7

Recognize and value the diversity of students.
Promote communication among cultures to foster mutual
understanding.

0 Draw upon the diversity of students to enrich and enhance their
academic achievement.
Enable students to construct meaning from multiple sources.

Encourage the development of students’ multiple ways of knowing
and understanding.

 

287

 

Table 11 (cont’d)

 

13

Guideline 11: A recognition of the value of diversity of opinion.

 

32

For example, the range of skills we define as necessary for a new
teacher to have in order to teach content, to develop students’ verbal
abilities, to develop multiple Iiteracies, and to develop curricula Is
consistent with the NCTE/IRA standards. Similarly, NCTE’s Guidelines
for the Preparation of Teachers of the English Language Arts emphasize
cultural diversity, second language usage, and the reflective teacher’s
critical reasoning skills, all of which are prominently featured in various
other standards frameworks.

 

34

NCTE/IRA Standard 9: Students develop an understanding of and
respect for diversity In language use, patterns, and dialects across
cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.

 

64

 

 

The 1996 Guidelines contains language and terminology from a wide
range of professional and political points of view; for example,
“expressive,” “constructiion,” “transactional,” and “diversity.” However,
we avoid associating such terms with specific movements and schools of
thought, and do not name, elaborate, or recommend specific conceptual
frameworks. We did this deliberately to acknowledge the breadth of the
knowledge base for English education and to avoid being over-
prescriptive of the content in English teacher education programs.

 

Table 12A: A Discourse of “Appropriateness”

 

Page

“Aggrogriate” Statement

 

Teachers must treat respectfully the language and dialect that each

 

10 student brings into the classroom, recognizing that every dialect has an
appropriate use.
10 Attitude Guideline 4: A conviction that teachers help students grow by

 

 

encouraging creative and appropriate uses of language.

 

288

 

 

 

Table 12A (cont’d)

 

15

Students Ieam language through use, their need to know, and their
environments; in turn, they need to Ieam to respond to, respect, and
understand the communication of others. Teachers need to understand
language variation so they can help students recognize and use
language appropriate to different occasions.

 

16

 

 

Teachers need to provide opportunities for students to use nonacademic
as well as academic English. In doing so, they can help students
understand when to use formal structures and when informal structures
are appropriate.

 

Table 128: Appropriate Teaching and Instruction

 

Page

14-15

“Aggrogriate” Statement

Teachers need to know the relationship of language development to the
fundamental principles and characteristics of human growth so that they
set their expectations of a student’s language use and development
according to student readiness and achievement levels. By providing
developmentally appropriate experiences, teachers can reduce Ieaming
anxiety and help students become linguistically mature.

 

Teachers also need to be able to evaluate and determine appropriate
uses of Instructional technology and its products. They should be able to

 

 

 

25 judge the quality and worth of materials such as computer software,
videos, and commercial transparencies.
36 ETS Standards A4: Creates and selects appropriate methods, activities,

and materials for instruction.

 

Table 12C: Appropriate Knowledge

 

Page

14

 

 

“Aggrogriate” Statement

In English language arts teacher-preparation programs, the curricula
must include not only that knowledge of literature, language, and the
process of composing suitable for majors in English, but also the
specialized knowledge appropriate for teachers of the subject.

 

289

 

 

 

Table 120: Appropriate Worldview

 

Page

“Aggrogriate” Statement

 

18

 

 

There is an extensive body of literature and literary genres in English and
in translation—Including the well-known and the little known, the
commonly used in the curriculum and the rarely used, the traditional and
the unusual— representing a worldview appropriate for the classroom.

 

Table 12E: Appropriate Reading

 

, Page

“Aggrogriate” Statement

 

18

Teachers need to be able to guide students to become independent
readers by providing them with appropriate choices and by encouraging
self-monitoring of reading habits and processes; they must be familiar
with a rich and varied store of literature that will engage their students.

 

[Teachers] need to use contemporary children’s and young adult
literature, and other appropriate literature written specifically for the age
and interest levels of their students.

 

28

 

 

It is not enough for teachers of the English language arts to love
literature, to value it as an art form and as a way of understanding the
human experience; teachers also need sufficient knowledge of literature
which will enable them to introduce students to appropriate traditional
and nontraditional texts, and they need the pedagogical knowledge and
skills to engage learners in meaningful transactions with literature and to
assess students' responses to it.

 

Table 12F: Appropriate Assessment

 

Page

20

 

 

“Aggrogriate” Statement

Given the complex and personal nature of language, no single test or
other measure can give a comprehensive and accurate picture of what a
student has Ieamed. Teachers must understand the strengths and
limitations of specific assessment Instruments and techniques. They
need to construct and provide models by practicing these assessment
techniques with their own Ieaming and be able to select the appropriate
assessment vehicles for a particular classroom level or curriculum
objective.

 

290

 

 

 

Table 12F (cont’d)

 

20

They also need to understand that qualitative measures such as
observation and interview are as appropriate as quantitative measures
such as tests.

 

20

Teachers, therefore, need to be able to determine the appropriate formal
and informal ways to evaluate student growth In the English language
arts.

 

25

Pedagogical Guideline 11: develop ways to communicate assessment
methods and results to different audiences. Teachers must be able to
select, create, and use testing methods appropriate to their instructional
practices and their students; establish valid grading systems; and
communicate a realistic picture of student progress.

 

36

 

 

ETS Standards A5: Creates or selects appropriate evaluation strategies.

 

Table 13: Equivalents of Appropriateness/lnappropriateness
Binary Discourses: ACADEMIC/NON-ACADEMIC, FORMAUINFORMAL, STANDARD/NON-

 

 

 

 

 

 

STANDARD
Page Binag Statement/”Aggrogriate” Eguivalents
Teachers must treat respectfully the language and dialect that each
student brings Into the classroom, recognizing that every dialect has an
10 appropriate use. While providing students' access to standard oral and
written forms of English, teachers should establish an environment that
encourages respect, enthusiasm, and appreciation for all forms of
language.
...[TJeachers need to know how to acquire knowledge and understanding
15 of the social and cultural environments of the communities from which

 

 

their students come. In addition, to be effective, teachers must be able to
provide opportunities for students to practice language beyond the
academic environment of the classroom.

 

291

 

Table 13 (cont’d)

 

16

Teachers need to provide opportunities for students to use nonacademic
as well as academic English. In doing so, they can help students
understanding when to use formal structures and when informal
structures are appropriate.

 

16

Rich oral language experiences are closely related to writing
performance. Although both speaking and writing usually take place in a
social context, oral text is sometimes thought of as informal and as often
preceding written discourse. In tnlth, both oral and written discourse
contain like elements and follow processes that teachers need to
understand in order to help students develop and extend communication
skills.

 

16

Furthermore, all teachers must know that much practice with expressive
language is necessary for the development of voice or style in all forms of
discourse. Such practice requires speaking and writing for various
purposes In a wide variety of forms for many different audiences.
Teachers must also be aware of equity issues in language, such as the
extension of language codes and registers beyond the limits of standard
or formal English; the nature and use of academic discourse and other
forms of writing and speaking to expand rather than inhibit student
expression; and the use and, therefore, validation of global forms of
English in classroom conversation.

 

 

19

 

To help students understand how literature celebrates humanity,
teachers must develop effective ways to allow students to talk and write
about varied forms of literature. They need to model good reading habits
for students, showing that reading can be done for pleasure as well as for
academic purposes.

 

292

 

Table 14A: A Discourse of “Effectiveness”
Effective Teachirfi

 

Page

Effective” Statement

 

At ten-year intervals for most of its eighty-five years, the National Council
of Teachers of English has presented the profession with a statement of
what effective teachers of the English language arts need to know and be
able to do; these regularly updated statements also discuss the attitudes
that effective teachers should possess.”

 

l4}-

Teacher education programs should ensure that their graduates are
knowledgeable, thoughtful, and skillful at the beginning of their careers,
and that they have the potential to become models of effective teaching.

 

Attitudes of Effective English Language Arts Teachers (section heading)

 

Content knowledge for Effective English Language Arts teachers (section
heading)

 

The knowledge base of effective English language arts teachers can be
divided into nine general areas: language development, language
analysis, language composition, written discourse, reading and literature,
media, instructional media, assessment, and research and theory.

 

In addition, to be effective, teachers must be able to provide opportunities
for students to practice language beyond the academic environment of
the classroom.

 

Pedagogical Knowledge and Skills Demonstrated by Effective English
Language Arts teachers (subject heading)

 

 

 

They must also be effective in designing activities that challenge students
to step outside themselves and view situations from the perspectives of
others.

 

293

 

Table 14A (cont’d)

 

The standards from the National Association of State Directors of
Teacher Education and Certification (paraphrased from the booklet
Teacher Performance Assessment: A Comparative View, published by
the Educational Testing Service In 1995) maintain that an effective
teacher demonstrates:

 

Finally, the Educational Testing Service, In Its “Teacher Performance
Assessments,” uses domains and indicators to describe the effective
teacher as one with significant skills In. . ..

 

 

 

Educators are benefiting from that knowledge, but the misuse of
[knowledge about Instructional technology] could cause effective teaching
and Ieaming to be called obsolete before there Is sufficient information to
make that judgment.

 

Table 14B: Effective Language

 

Page

[.3

 

 

“Effective” Statement

 

They also take into account research findings and theoretical positions
about the nature of language; its use in reading, writing, and oral
communication; and the factors that support or inhibit effective language
use.

 

 

 

 

3 Teachers must develop effective ways to allow students to talk and write
about varied forms of literature.
Uses knowledge of effective verbal, nonverbal, and media

34 communication techniques to foster Ieaming. (a statement from the

INTASC Framework)

 

294

 

Table 14C: Effective Teacher Education Programs

 

Page

“Effective” Statement

These general principles govern the detailed beliefs, understandings, and
skills that we believe must mark the teacher who emerges from an

 

 

 

7 effective English language arts teacher-preparation program.
Thus, the Guidelines refer only generally to the structures that inform the
accreditation process, because we prefer to leave interpretive decisions
63 to the discretion of individual programs, believing that such decisions

must be situated in a local context (see, for example, the earlier chapter,
“Characteristics of Effective Teacher Preparation Programs for English
Language Arts”).

 

Table 140: Effective Professions

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page “Effective” Statement
10 In any profession, there are certain sets of attitudes to the effective

conduct of that profession.

 

Table 14E: Effective Instruction and Methods

 

Page

14

 

 

“Effective” Statement

 

 

The preparation of teachers must include knowledge of and practice in
the use of those instructional methods that research and best practice
show as effective in promoting Ieaming.

 

295

 

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