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The study situates positionality work within broader education debates on diversity, equity, cultural mismatch, and critical literacy, and reports that memoir-based dialogue can strengthen teacher positionality in teaching and learning.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & 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positionality work?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"Through reflections on activist memoirs, teacher candidates socially position themselves by connecting their personal experiences to the memoirists’ lived realities within sociopolitical contexts.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"Why do the authors emphasize social justice and critical literacy in teacher education?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"They argue that demographic and cultural mismatches between teachers and increasingly diverse students can negatively affect how educators perceive and act in school contexts, making identity and positionality essential for equitable teaching.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"What kinds of themes emerged from analyzing book club data?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"The analysis identified four themes: living in particular places, practicing Catholic religion, being a particular age, and being mothers, each linked to discussions of 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Missouri State University  \nAbstract  \nThe work of positioning oneself socially and institutionally is important work for teacher candidates whose profession situates them in the complex, sociopolitical lives of children and families. Through book club meetings in which seven undergraduate and graduate teacher candidates read social justice advocates’ memoirs, the research participants used reflections on the memoirs to socially position themselves. This research contributes to the fields of social justice education, critical literacy, and teacher positionality. Findings from this research contribute to the types of curricular engagements that support teacher positionality work.  \nKeywords: teacher positionality, activist memoirs, teacher book clubs, critical literacy  \nMany research articles focused on the importance of social justice work in teacher education begin with the demographic argument: the demographics of teachers, while diversifying, is incongruent with the demographics of increasingly racially and linguistically diverse students, and this cultural mismatch has a deleterious impact. During the 2017-2018 school year, 21% of public school teachers were of color compared to 53% of public school students who were of color (NCES, 2021a; NCES, 2021b). In 2019, the national poverty rate for children 18 or younger in the U.S. was 16%, with a range in state averages from 7% to 28%(NCES, 2021c) . Racialized and low-income students are likely to have teachers with cultural backgrounds different from their own. The concern is that teachers are largely seeing, hearing, and moving in ways that are not aligned with the social identities of students whose social context is different. Social identities matter. \"What you know\" is connected to \"who you are\" and \"where you stand\" (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017, p. 30). Teachers' identities influence how they understand the context of communities and schools.  \nProfessional guidance for positionality work is well established in multiple disciplines. According to the National Council of Teachers of English (2021), education preparation programs are expected to prepare candidates who “reflect on their own identities and experiences and how they frame their practices and impact their teaching”(p. 4) . The National Council for the Social Studies shares the same commitment: teacher candidates are expected to “... explore, interrogate, and reflect on their own cultural frames to attend to issues of equity, diversity, access, power, human rights, and social justice within their schools and/or communities,”(Cuenca et al., 2018, p. 27). The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2020) and the National Science Teaching Association (2020) require students to be prepared to deliver equitable and culturally responsive content in both disciplines. All four professional organizations emphasize that teacher candidates  \nshould be prepared to either explicitly address social justice issues in education, or teach in ways that are understood to be more educationally just such as culturally responsive teaching. Furthermore, these statements reinforce that the identity and positionality of teachers matter for teaching and learning in the classroom.  \nWe, the authors, continually meet new teacher candidates taking initial steps to socially locate themselves. To support that personal work, we have been asking teacher candidates to write positionality papers for the past seven years in our teacher education classes. In positionality assignments, the goal is for teacher candidates to identify their social identity positions and, in turn, think critically about how who they are impacts what they know (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017) . Yet, accomplishing the pedagogical task of supporting teachers in genuine cultural autobiographical work (Kyles & Olafson, 2008; Sleeter, 2001) is difficult.  \nAssignments ","cbCaisa1VUfCeicc","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaisa1VUfCeicc","pdf",283223,21,"English","# Abstract\n# Background: Social justice and teacher education\n## Demographic mismatch and impact\n# Professional guidance for positionality work\n# Teacher candidates and positionality assignments\n# Positionality statement prompts and challenges\n# Sociopolitical memoir book club description\n## Four identified themes","[{\"question\":\"How do book club memoir readings support teacher positionality work?\",\"answer\":\"Through reflections on activist memoirs, teacher candidates socially position themselves by connecting their personal experiences to the memoirists’ lived realities within sociopolitical contexts.\"},{\"question\":\"Why do the authors emphasize social justice and critical literacy in teacher education?\",\"answer\":\"They argue that demographic and cultural mismatches between teachers and increasingly diverse students can negatively affect how educators perceive and act in school contexts, making identity and positionality essential for equitable teaching.\"},{\"question\":\"What kinds of themes emerged from analyzing book club data?\",\"answer\":\"The analysis identified four themes: living in particular places, practicing Catholic religion, being a particular age, and being mothers, each linked to discussions of power.\"}]","Teacher Positionalities - Responses to Reading Activist Memoirs | PDF",1792090772,53]