English Education, Vol. 43, No. 3, April 2011

Table of Contents

• Editorial: Opening the Conversation: A Reflection and Commentary with Past Editor Cathy Fleischer

  Leslie S. Rush and Lisa Scherff

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  Abstract: Past editor Fleischer reflects on questions central to the field of English education. The articles is this issue are then introduced.

• “Why Do You Think That?” A Supervisor’s Mediation of a Preservice English Teacher’s Understanding of Instructional Scaffolding

  George E. Newell and Sean P. Connors

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  Abstract: This article reports a study of a university supervisor and a preservice English language arts teacher as they worked collaboratively within two different field experience sites to develop a conceptual understanding of instructional scaffolding. An analysis of classroom observations and mentoring conversations was conducted to examine how the supervisor supported the preservice teacher’s transfer of tools for instruction from a university program to the high school classroom. Findings indicate the significant role of the teacher education program’s conceptual base in fostering this transfer.

• Teaching Grammar and Writing: A Beginning Teacher’s Dilemma

  Peter Smagorinsky, Amy Alexandra Wilson, and Cynthia Moore

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  Abstract: This longitudinal case study follows one high school English teacher’s path of concept development over a two-year period encompassing her student teaching and first year of full-time teaching, both at the same rural school in the southeastern United States. The authors use a sociocultural theoretical framework emerging from the work of Vygotsky to focus on the construction of activity settings and the ways in which settings help to shape concept development. In particular, the analysis finds the teacher drawing on apparently inconsistent pedagogical traditions and their associated mediational tools: one centered on a teacher’s authoritarian control of the curriculum and adherence to formal properties of texts and one centered on students’ interests and their agency in learning.

• Extending the Conversation: Using Theater to Engage Cultural Identity: Implications for Students and Teachers

  David Blazar

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  Abstract: David Blazar shares his experiences teaching a unit based on the Broadway musical In the Heights as a way of engaging the cultural identity of his students, mainly Dominican Americans. He learned much about his students as a result, enabling him to “connect with them as people but also to encourage their specific needs as students, thinkers, and writers.”

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