Becoming and Being a Teacher—Confronting Traditional Norms to Create New Democratic Realities

This volume unmasks tensions among economic, political, and educational goals in the context of becoming and being a teacher. Chapters frame becoming and being a teacher within commitments to democracy and political literacy while confronting neoliberal assumptions about American society, universal public education, and education reform. A wide variety of teachers and scholars discuss teacher preparation and teaching through evidence-based examinations of complex problems and solutions facing teachers, education policymakers, the public, and students. Teaching is embraced as a political act, and critical subjectivity is endorsed as a rejection of objectivity and traditional paradigms of teaching designed to create a compliant teacher workforce. The book honors and celebrates voice and collective voice, both of which speak to and from the inexorable fact of becoming and being a teacher as one and the same.

P. L. Thomas (Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction, University of South Carolina) is Associate Professor of Education at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. He is a column editor for English Journal (National Council of Teachers of English), series editor for the Critical Literacy Teaching Series, and author of numerous books and journal articles. His most recent volume is Ignoring Poverty in the U.S.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Education.