Tinkering toward teacher learning: a case for critical playful literacies in teacher education
English Teaching: Practice & Critique
ISSN: 1175-8708
Article publication date: 11 May 2023
Issue publication date: 8 June 2023
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to re-center playfulness as a humanizing approach in teacher education. As teachers navigate the current moment of heightened control, surveillance, and systemic inequity, these proposed moves in teacher education can be transgressive. Rather than play as relegated to childhood or infancy, what does it look like to continue to be “playful” in teaching and teacher education?
Design/methodology/approach
To examine how teacher educators may design for teachers’ critical playful literacies, the authors offer three “worked examples” (Gee, 2009) of preservice teachers’ playful practices in an English literacies teacher education course.
Findings
The authors highlight instructional design elements pertinent to co-designing for teachers’ play and playful literacies in teacher education: generative constraints to practice everyday ingenuity, figuring it out to foster teacher agency and debriefs to interrupt the teaching’s perpetual performance.
Originality/value
The term “playful,” as a descriptor of practice and qualifier of activity appears frequently in educational literature across domains. The relationship of play to critical literacies – and, more specifically, educators’ literacies and learning – is less frequently explored.
Keywords
Citation
McBride, C., Smith, A. and Kalir, J.H. (2023), "Tinkering toward teacher learning: a case for critical playful literacies in teacher education", English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 221-233. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-08-2022-0114
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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