Abstract Summary
How have literacy studies changed in reponse to technological innovation and changes in the world order? This paper documents a shift from the study of texts/events/practices in relatively settled contexts to focus on displaced literacies across borders. Notions of assemblage and bricolage may better characterize these contemporary displaced, transcontextual literacies.
Abstract :
This presentation reveals findings of an ethnographic case study (Yin, 2003) carried with four English instructors in a public university of a main city in Colombia. The idea of the study came from the gap Norton (2008) identified between teachers’ identities and their assessment practices. Also, from teachers’ assessment literacy needs identified in Colombia (Arias & Maturana, 2005; López & Bernal, 2009) and the need to build more on teachers’ practices (Cruz Arcila, 2018) as a counter-argument for the deficit perspectives of teachers in the country (Usma Wilches, 2015).
The data collected included 240 hours of participant-observations (Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 2011), in-depth interviews (Seidman, 2006), a background questionnaire and artifacts. The data were analyzed following a thematic approach (Charmaz, 2006; Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 2011). The research question that guided the analysis of the data was: How teachers’ identities shaped or get shaped by their classroom assessment practices. The study draws on sociocultural theories of identity formation: Gee’s (2001) definition of identity, Norton’s (1995, 1997, 2000, 2008, 2013) concept of investment, Wenger’s (1998) communities of practice; and Holland et al.’s (1998) construction of identity as a social practice.
Findings of the study revealed that teachers whose practices were more effective had characteristics of formative assessment (Black & Wiliam, 1998, 2009). They implemented continuous evaluation of what students did in class and the summative assessment events were scaffolded through teaching moments. In addition to this, what they did was clearly influenced by their previous experiences as language learners, their agency, their participation in communities of practice, their investment in teacher learning, the professional development support they may have received, and the structure of the curriculum at their workplaces. These findings have implications for teacher educators, curriculum designers and professional development programs.
