| This study investigates the discursive practices of elementary teachers engaged in collaborative inquiry as part of a school-wide, teacher-led professional development program. It focuses on the ways in which these teachers constructed knowledge about school literacy and how the collaborative inquiry group served as a context for teachers to co-construct knowledge about school literacy. Key constructs from social constructionist theory, as well as understandings from social and cultural perspectives on literacy frame this study. Ethnographic perspectives and microethnographic discourse analysis are used to generate grounded theoretical constructs about teachers' discursive practices and their conceptualizations of school literacy.;Findings reveal three conceptualizations of school literacy, each reflecting a theoretical and pedagogical stance from which teachers' discourses both shape and are shaped by the local context of the school and larger discursive communities. The analysis of data finds that teachers co-construct knowledge about school literacy around three broad conceptualizations. The first conception, "Literacy as Academic Performance," is teacher driven, framed by grade specific, state-adopted academic standards and student performance on standardized reading assessments. From this theoretical stance, there is a presumed direct relationship between reading and writing instruction and students' performance on assessments. The second conception, "Literacy as Academic & Everyday Literacies," frames literacy knowledge within teacher and student driven reading and writing practices. While school literacy is informed by academic content standards (with an emphasis on individual proficiency), greater emphasis is placed on guiding students toward developing broader competence as readers and writers, helping them to form positive dispositions toward literacy, and providing a foundation for lifelong reading and writing. The third conception, "Literacy as Social Issues and Action," embeds school literacy within social issues, advocacy, and service. Students' literacy knowledge is used to build an understanding of various social issues and to initiate advocacy and action. Theoretical constructs generated from the analysis of teachers' conceptualizations indicate that these conceptualizations are not fixed. Teachers are able to hold multiple, often conflicting, theoretical and pedagogical stances at once. Additionally, conceptualizations of school literacy frame teachers' characterizations of students and influence the types of literacy experiences made available to students. Finally, teachers' representations of their classroom instruction, provided through narrative accounts, served as resources for building shared pedagogies and interrogating instructional practices. |
