What about the Teachers?: Exploring Secondary English Teachers' Literacies

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore secondary English teachers' experiences with 21st century literacies both inside and outside of their classrooms. The ultimate goals of this study are to explore the literacies secondary English teachers are using; how, where, and why they are using them; what this usage means to them; and how this usage can impact secondary English curricula. This exploration contributes to the literature on 21st century literacies, which currently focuses heavily on students' experiences. An increased understanding of teachers' experiences with and thoughts of 21st century literacies may result in secondary English curricula that are more authentically connected to students' goals and more aligned with the 21st century literacies that students need to develop in order to navigate their current environments. This study utilizes a qualitative ethnographic methodology with interview and participant observation methods in order to uncover teachers' experiences with and understandings of 21st century literacies. The resulting interview transcripts and fieldnotes, as well as other documents and artifacts, have been analyzed according to the methods of grounded theory. The main findings of this dissertation indicate that a quadrant framework exists with regard to teachers' 21st century literacy practices. Each quadrant has its own unique characteristics, as determined in part by the teachers' personal definitions of literacy as either autonomous or ideological, and in part by the teachers' qualities of connectedness to 21st century literacy practices as characterized by either produsage or consumption when connectedness is defined as a big `D' Discourse - a way of acting and being in the world. Another major finding presents possible reasons why teachers' 21st century literacy practices are as they are (or are not) and discusses the existence of constraints that teachers experience with regard to their 21st century literacy practices, specifically in their school settings. Through these findings, one of the main contributions of this dissertation is that it opens the discussion regarding where the teachers themselves are with their 21st century literacy practices, as separate individuals and entities from both their students and their schools.