Cultivating Dialogue, Language, and Literacy for Social Justice in Teacher Education

Within sociocultural traditions, language, dialogue, and social literacies play an institutional role in learning and human development. Discourse practices, however, go far beyond the traditional focus of using speaking and listening to support the learning of content knowledge. Teacher discourse practices ought to promote critical literacies and linguistic practices, and promote anti-racism and social and environmental justice. Classroom discourse, however, is missing from teacher education programs on a large scale in these significant ways. Teacher educators need to understand the social and political policies, pedagogical role, and multitude of practices for helping pre-service teachers and teacher practitioners learn to acquire and facilitate quality discursive practices in K-12 schools and understand related pedagogy.

This book, 'Cultivating Dialogue, Language, and Literacy for Social Justice in Teacher Education', offers a variety of models for integrating discourse practices and pedagogies into the field of teacher education, including pre-service teaching, professional development, and even critiques on policy and subsequent affordances and consequences that inhibit or promote the quality of teacher discourse and the purposes for which teachers utilize classroom discourse.

I would recommend this book for teacher education programs as well as professional developers who work with pre- and in-service teachers. Additionally, I recommend this book for researchers committed not only to classroom discourse analysis, but to promote speaking and listening among teachers and students in ways that enhance learning and development.

Adam Devitt, Ph.D. is currently an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at California State University, Stanislaus where he is a coordinator of the Early Childhood Education Credential Program, co-principal investigator on a Robert Noyce Scholarship program which recruits, prepares, and mentors future and current STEM teachers, and director of the LGBTQ Mentorship Program, and Director of Maker Pedagogy and K-12 Outreach in the Warrior Fab Lab. In the teaching field, he is a certified elementary and special education teacher.He taught at multiple grade levels for 5 years. He earned his doctorate in Teaching and Learning with a focus on science education from New York University in 2018.