Discourses of the Rural Rust Belt:

This article addresses the ways in which elementary teachers in the rural rust belt both reproduce and contest dominant discourses of schooling, rurality, and poverty in their particular local context. Situated within a 4-year postcritical ethnographic study, this analysis of teacher discourse took part during an embedded, 4-month-long teacher study group. Within this context, the authors examine how the group’s discourse on poverty claimed that inequity was the fault of those experiencing it, as well as that a neoliberal discourse of education emphasized a flattened accountability and growth-only perspective within teacher’s professional interactions. However, through the addition of a spatial lens, they also situate these discourses within a particular rural and rust-belt context. This article teases apart the discursive threads within two teacher study groups, revealing the construction by teachers of their own rural, high-poverty communities as deficient, as well as exploring the complexities of the intersections of these discourses for teachers working in such settings. Their analysis contributes to a more robust understanding of the particular intersecting discourses currently circulating and producing a White-majority, high-poverty rural rust belt where children go to school and are taught by educators with their own complex orientations to schooling, rurality, and poverty.

Analysis of English Teachers’ Roles as Facilitators and Leading Strategies in a Professional Book Discussion Group

<p><em>This study analyzes five elementary school English teachers’ roles as facilitators and their leading strategies in an English teachers’ learning community in a suburban elementary school in northwest Taiwan. Based on the thematic data analysis of interview, document and observation fieldnotes, this study has the following major findings. These participants aspired to be facilitators, but their lack of linguistic competence and leading strategies in the design and delivery of content made them more like sharers. Luckily, other participating teachers’ support and engagement helped them to be more like facilitators. Suggestions for effectively leading a teacher study group are provided.</em></p>

Indonesian EFL Teachers Professional Knowledge Development during Their Participation in TSG: A Case Study

<p>The study examines three new EFL teachers professional knowledge development through discussion in a <em>Teacher Study Group (TSG)</em> in Indonesian (Asian) context. These three participants have less than five year-teaching experience and teach junior high schools in Bandarlampung in the time of the study. The data were collected through audio-visual recorded observation of TSG sessions teaching practice. They were converted into written trasncription. The analysis signifies that group discussion recalls participants’ case knowledge from distant experience while group reflection explores participants’ practical knowledge from their own immediate practice. Some of the knowledge is still fragmented and some has been integrated into pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Both TSG group theme-based discussion and collaborative reflection manage to explore participants’ professional knowledge.</p>