In the last ten years, colleges of education have pledged written support to addressing issues of diversity. Mission statements and revised syllabi have been common elements in this movement for inclusiveness, and teacher candidates in English language arts are part of the transformation. Literature often has been considered a quick and easy way…

The coeditors of the special Summit issue of English Education provide the context for the "crucial moment" that prompted the Conference on English Education (CEE) to take up the task of rethinking issues related to the preparation and continuing professional development of English language arts teachers and teacher educators. The process of…

Elaborating three major dimensions of our profession, the authors argue the need for critically literate citizens and the urgent need for English teacher educators to prepare teachers who envision that as their key professional responsibility. The authors contextualize this task within the current political and social climate in which distortion…

This piece was guided by the framing question "How can CEE [Conference on English Education] help its constituencies, the broader public, and policymakers understand the relationship between research and teaching?" The authors consider the usefulness of a range of empirical traditions; explore how expert language arts teachers read, conduct, and…

In this article, the authors try to extend the complex and provocative conversations at the Conference on English Education Summit. They argue on several critical programmatic issues, including the need for greater program coherence, the continuing dilemma of the gulf between schools and universities, and both the promise and the problems of…

Attempting to address the following central question, How might literacy educators learn to recognize, promote, and capitalize upon the rich cultural resources of students in diverse classrooms in the United States?, the authors provide a list of belief statements to serve as the foundation for positive changes in the ways in which the literacy…

The authors contend that new technologies have developed new literacies and new ways of thinking that are reshaping our lives. In the rapidly changing world, they argue, these new literacies and their practices must become central to effective English education programs. To frame their argument, they introduce the notion of "technological"…

This article is a summary of our working group's continued discourse from the Conference on English Education (CEE) Summit, where our discussions focused on English teacher candidate competencies, program assessment, the Standards and Guidelines, and National Council of Teachers of English's (NCTE's) roles and responsibilities. For the purpose of…

The authors argue that if the Conference on English Education (CEE) is to nurture and grow its membership in the coming years, we will need a more focused purpose related to the central mission of the organization: "the effective education and development of students and professionals in English language arts education." To that end, the authors…

Conference on English Education (CEE) Chair Suzanne M. Miller provides an overview of the CEE Leadership and Policy Summit articles that focuses on next steps. She asks CEE members individually and collectively to take up the calls for action across the pieces--for research, pedagogical scholarship, program excellence, and activist participation…

This essay extends Robert Yagelski's discussion of "sustainability" in teacher education by examining how the processes of Cartesian-Newtonian thinking limit the ability of both standards reformers and English educators to think in genuinely new ways and to conceive of real change. The essay includes a discussion of how standards reform since the…

We argue that the student teaching seminar, a co-requisite to student teaching, may best be construed as a "first" introduction to a teacher learning community and to inquiry-oriented professional development. Using a qualitative case study design and discourse analysis, we examine 60 "Teaching Inquiries" (TIs) occurring in student teaching…

This interview study with 19 preservice teachers who were enrolled in a teacher apprenticeship program at a major southeastern U.S. university uses Dewey's (1938/1988) concept of an experience and Csikszentmihalyi's (1990) concept of flow to investigate how participants identify and describe aesthetic flow experiences both inside and outside…

By examining a class discussion between an eighth grade student and her teacher around the reading of a literary text, my intent in this paper is to further the discussion around one of the central issues in English education today--the inquiry around whether it is more productive to teach literature by first connecting students' cultural…

In this article we report a study of a teacher, Jimmy, making the transition from his university teacher education program to his first job. We explore what we characterize as tensions between traditions in his effort to develop a conception to inform his teaching of high school English. These tensions are rooted in conceptions of teaching that…