Text choice in classroom and how it promotes agency
In the ever-evolving landscape of education, the role of a teacher extends beyond the dissemination of knowledge; it encompasses fostering critical thinking, advocacy, and agency among students. Katherine E. Batchelor's article, "Using Linked Text Sets to Promote Advocacy and Agency Through a Critical Lens," offers valuable insights into how educators can employ linked text sets as a powerful tool to achieve these goals.
Batchelor underscores the significance of employing a critical lens in education, enabling students to analyze, question, and engage with diverse perspectives. As future educators, it is imperative to recognize the potential of linked text sets in promoting critical thinking and nurturing students' capacity for advocacy.
Linked text sets provide a curated collection of resources interconnected by a common theme or topic. By leveraging these sets, educators can create dynamic learning experiences that encourage students to explore multifaceted issues from various angles. Through exposure to diverse perspectives, students develop empathy, critical thinking skills, and a deeper understanding of complex issues—a crucial aspect of becoming informed and engaged citizens.
As future teachers, it is our responsibility to cultivate an environment where students feel empowered to voice their opinions, challenge prevailing narratives, and advocate for causes they believe in. Batchelor's approach aligns with this objective by emphasizing the importance of agency in education. By guiding students through the process of exploring linked text sets, educators can empower them to identify issues that resonate with their values and take meaningful action.
Hi Eli,
ReplyDeleteI also chose to read the “Using Linked Texts Sets to Promote Advocacy and Agency Through a Critical Lens” article. Before I knew what the linked texts were, I was drawn to this article as I will be an art teacher. Social justice and the education around it, as well as social emotional learning, have been a major focus of many of my classes over the years. I agree with you that being aware of how as educators we have the power to select texts that can help foster critical thinking and highlight diverse perspectives is crucial for the classroom and our future students. One thing from the reading that really stood out to me was the “experiment” in which 3 individuals were asked to create linked texts set around a topic they found to be important. After creating their texts, they reflected back on how these texts were connected critically but also on the gaps left by their choice of texts. I found this part to be particularly interesting because it can help all of us future educators (or current) in culminating a list of linked texts. While at first glance we might think that we have a diverse set of texts, this exercise can help us bridge those gaps to create even better, critically engaging and active curriculum.
Ana
Hello Eli, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI found Batchelor's article to be insightful and reflective of the education that I received in High School. When I think back to my senior year English class, we often read full novels that were unrelatable towards our lives. For instance, we read I am legend to understand character conflicts of man vs. society and man vs. himself. Although the story was mildly engaging to me personally, it was hard to apply, identify, and synthesize these concepts in our everyday lives. That is not to say that science fiction horror is invaluable, I think it has it's place among enthusiastic readers. But I find it difficult to relate my personal life to a post-apocopic New York City where vampires threaten to end my existence on the daily. What about I am Legend allows students to analyze, investigate, and engage with diverse perspectives? Aside from recognizing literary themes, what are students suppose to take away from this story? Why should students even care? Is the content engaging or just entertaining?
Since it has been some time since I have been in a High School English class, and I doubt that I am Legend is taught in 2024, it makes me wonder, and frankly worry, about what some students are learning, or rather, what they are not learning.
Hi Eli,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this helpful synthesis of Batchelor’s article! I also read this piece. I was struck by Batchelor’s attention to the importance of reflection, on the part of the educator, after the initial text set was chosen, and by the various methods Batchelor discussed that we can use to construct linked text sets. Both are instructive and important to us as future educators. Even though it seems like linked-text-sets can be deployed to uncover students’ implicit bias, Batchelor’s attention to post-text-set-reflection (that’s a doozy!) demonstrates the ways in text-sets can reveal bias in educators too, through our choice of materials. To me, this means that it will be important to leave time after selecting text-sets to reflect, not unlike the practice of “putting the paper down” for a week or two to come back to it with fresh eyes. It may also be helpful and important for us to consult our colleagues or trusted friends after making selections, asking them what they think of our choices.
I was also inspired by the methods of text-set-selection that Batchelor offers. We can build on social justice issues, as Batchelor’s three pre-service teachers do, or we can build around essential questions in our syllabi, a central practice in history curriculum construction. Both of these methods can generate discussion of complex texts related to our discipline while engaging the issues these texts raise with contemporary issues relevant to our students’ lives. In this way, Batchelor shows that text-sets can generate advocacy. Batchelor also offers the idea of building a text set around a central, “anchor text.” All students read the anchor text, then students select additional texts themselves that explore connected themes, to accompany the primary text. This element affords students agency in the learning process for Batchelor, and offers opportunities for students to interject and deploy their topic knowledge into the discussion, a key element for Buehl in the development of reader identities.
I wholeheartedly agree with yalls reflections here. I was thinking about how building out your text-sets seems initially quite labor-intensive, but they will ultimately help later by building cohesive units that hit all the standards and your personal priorities. And I think Batchelor's emphasis on post-selection reflection really underscores the importance of continuous refinement as a means to better ensure inclusivity and relevance.
DeleteHi Eli:
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog post. You did a great job discussing the importance of linked text sets and how they can promote critical thinking, advocacy, and agency within the classroom. Like you, I also read the article. I appreciated the examples Batchelor provided to help us think about how text sets can be utilized in the classroom to educate students about complex themes and issues. One of the examples that resonated with me was the teacher who used different text sets to discuss mental health with her students. The teacher provided both text and visual sources to highlight how mental illness and bullying impact teenagers. However, she noticed that most of the sources portrayed only female characters and did not highlight sexual orientation, which was concerning to her.
Seeing how this teacher thought made me think about how I might incorporate other voices and experiences when teaching history. During one of my classes this week, we discussed the history of immigration in the United States. As a future history teacher, I was thinking about how to approach immigration in a way that highlights more than just the experiences of European immigrants. From this lesson and reading the assigned text, I learned about other immigrant experiences. For example, we had an in-depth discussion about the Bracero Program. This program, which involved Mexican migrants, had a significant impact on U.S. immigration during the mid-20th century. Learning about this program provided me with an idea of how I could use a documentary about the Braceros to highlight the impact this program had on U.S. immigration. I also thought about discussing the Chinese Exclusion Act and having students think about how it affected more groups than just the Chinese. No matter what, during my first years of teaching, I know I will fail to include some perspectives and experiences in my text sets. However, like the teacher referenced in this article, I will learn from my mistakes and adapt my lessons to include text sets that provide more agency to different groups.
Hi Eli, thanks for sharing your insight on linked text sets. This might be one of the first occasions where I have come across this terminology. LTS is definitely something that would allow teachers to modify their teaching styles so that it best suits the students and most importantly so that teachers are able to do the job they are supposed to be doing, teaching and making sure that students are learning. I have shared this earlier as well, but I think it is important for teachers to ensure that all students are actively learning in their classroom. Elish-Piper et al. explained exactly how teachers can implement LTS by making reference to Mr. Johnson's English classroom. To be honest, in order to prepare like Mr. Johnsons' we as educators have to make sure that we prepare and practice this mode of teaching until it is perfected.
ReplyDeleteAnother component of LTS is connected to how adolescents approach most readings in schools. Based on my experience, the gap between an adolescent reader and the author is huge which negatively impacts student comprehension. To bridge this gap, utilizing the engagement phase, exploration phase, and expansion phase of LTS is an effective strategy. However, as a science educator I would love to read more about how I can incorporate LTS in my teaching.
Hi Eli,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the emphasis you place on the role of the teacher. I think this is something that is constantly being questioned and challenged. What topics are appropriate for a teacher to teach in their classroom? How is “appropriate” defined in this scenario? Is it the teacher’s responsibility to teach certain topics but not others? I am currently reading bell hook’s Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom where she describes teaching as a “performative act”. This is not to say that teaching is a performance or a spectacle, but rather that teachers are performers constantly engaging their audience (students) and remaining adaptable to meet their needs. Similarly, you mentioned that the role of the teacher is not simply to deposit information into the minds of students, but rather to facilitate the learning process and engage students in this work. In relation to linked text sets, teachers can help students break down complex topics through this careful selection of texts. By doing this, educators can encourage students to take an active role in their own learning and reading comprehension.
Hey Eli,
ReplyDeleteThank you for incorporating advocacy and agency within your post. I'm curious about overlapping themes that incorporate standards and linked text sets. Ana mentioned this, but in art education, we've been focusing heavily on how were are looking at social justice and critical pedagogy in lesson planning. While our readings cover different topics they touch on similar themes. Through these linked texts we can fill in the gaps and make connections to things like school segregation and standardized testing. I particularly enjoyed your quote, "Through exposure to diverse perspectives, students develop empathy, critical thinking skills, and a deeper understanding of complex issues—a crucial aspect of becoming informed and engaged citizens." I'm personally thinking of how we can create common threads while incorporating diverse perspectives. Delving into a multitude of perspectives naturally opens up space for developing empathy. One of the ways that Art educators can cultivate a space for empowerment is through identity exploration. What does an example of text sets that draw on identity look like in your field?
Maxwell ^
DeleteEli - Thanks for this explanation of what linked texts are, how they work, and what educational possibilities they present for both teachers and students. The idea of "linked texts" is a variation of what happens in a college-level syllabus in interdisciplinary programs, where different kinds of knowledge are brought into conversation with each other, building towards a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. In the high school context, "linked texts" offer students a fuller sense of how you can approach a singular topic - multiple kinds of sources, different methods and formats - and reminds them that various kinds of texts can be educational and have relevance for classroom education. I read the same article and was glad that it discussed some of the potential downsides in using the linked text approach to bringing social issues into the classroom. That is, even as the intention of the instructor is to help students become more aware of the experiences of marginalized groups in the society, the text set can end up reinforcing mainstream narratives if the teacher does not have a broad view of which and whose stories are often being told (or not), regardless of type of platform. I am thinking especially of the student who realized, after the fact, that all the information that she selected for inclusion in the linked text set on rape centered the experiences of white, heterosexual cis-women. For the purposes of introducing a range of topics in the classroom, constructing a complete set might be the goal. However, the reading is a reminder that each text also needs to be examined for how it contributes to a critical literacy practice.
ReplyDelete