Karla Smart

Date of Award

1-1-1985

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Teaching & Learning

Abstract

This study is a description of teachers and teaching. The lived-in experience, including memory, beliefs and values, and teaching practice, of three high school teachers of Teaching & Learning is its concern. Literacy is the study's entry point, the concept that drew me to seek conversation and classroom observation with Teaching & Learning teachers. Observation, in-depth interview, conversation, and my own journal writing as researcher are its processes of information gathering.The meanings individual Teaching & Learning teachers ascribe to literacy in their own lives and in their teaching practices are described in this study. Teachers' personal recollections clustered around the concept of literacy and statements of beliefs and values concerning literacy are presented. Everyday teaching experience in high schools is described. Woven into the narrative are explication and interpretation of unfolding meanings and events. The voices of the teachers and my voice as researcher entwine, each participating in description, explication, and interpretation of the nature and meaning of literacy in human lives.My work is an undertaking of looking, listening, questioning, and patterning toward understanding and describing qualities and essences of meaning in particular lives. It is an experiencing, rendering, and interpreting of what emerges through conversation and classroom visitation with teachers.The questions undergirding my study are philosophical: What is literacy? What does literacy mean in human lives? Direct, personal, collegial relationships with Tessie, Perry, and Hester carried me into the midst of high school classrooms and offices, and into the lives of teachers and students. The portraits I present reveal unique lives and meanings. Particular themes, internal to the structure of each portrait, emerge and lead to wider, external themes and issues helpful in giving shape to the idea and meanings of literacy.I present a view of literacy as an ongoing, enabling human way of being and thinking in the world, as a process for meaning making. I raise educational issues including the climate for literacy, the language of knowing teachers and students use in speaking of literacy, and teachers' and students' views of practicalness and aesthetics in literacy. Praxis comes as suggestion for further dialogue toward continued exploration of the meanings of literacy and the naming of issues in literacy education.

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