| This study explores the educative nature of conversation and the evocative quality of autobiographical literature and its potential as a focal point for beginning and experienced teachers' discussions regarding their beliefs and practices about the role of literacy and culture in the education of diverse students. Pre-service teaching interns and their cooperating teachers in an urban elementary multilingual school participated in a six-session, monthly autobiography discussion group in which they read, wrote about, and discussed excerpts of autobiographies about the language, literacy, and cultural experiences of immigrants and refugees and their teachers. The “book club” model was adapted from a technique developed for teaching literature with children (Florio-Ruane & deTar, 1995; Raphael & McMahon, 1994).;Utilizing methods drawn from sociolinguistics and ethnography, analysis focused on the discourse dynamics of the group and the participants' perspectives and learning. Data examined included video and audio tapes, field notes, participants' writing, the researcher's teaching journal, and interviews with the participants. As participants narrated experiences from their own lives and listened to those of others, they appear to have grown in their understandings of how language, culture and literacy experiences help to shape identities and school experiences of both students and teachers. In addition, these conversations created opportunities for teachers to examine their own relationships as teachers at different points in their careers and to challenge traditions of hierarchy.;The ADG had at its core engaging and artful content—autobiographical literature. ADG participants vigorously responded to this literature, constructing a conversational “third space” (Gutierrez et al., 1995), a place where the scripts of beginning and experienced teachers intersected with the voices represented in the literature and created a new set of language practices. The talk that ensued was exploratory, inquisitive, uncertain, awkward, personal, and surprising. Thus, the mediational device of telling of stories of self, offered beginning and practiced teachers new avenues for constructing a dynamic culture of teaching (Eisenhart, 1995).;This study offers insights into the use of autobiographical literature as a pedagogical tool in field-based teacher education and the role of conversation between beginning and experienced teachers in promoting reflection on teaching in multicultural and multilingual settings. |
