2022 NCTE Berry Research Award
Dr. McNeill received funding from the National Council of Teachers of English to interview and observe English teachers to investigate how they make required English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum relevant to culturally and linguistically diverse students. She will explore how ELA teachers build on units and lessons by listening to their students and incorporating engaging and interesting ideas students have mentioned. Through this study, other English majors can imagine ways to integrate culturally responsive listening into their classrooms and public spaces. The idea for this project came from my struggles as a former English major and English language arts teacher to find materials that would engage the emergent bilinguals in my classroom in texts I was required to teach.
Additional Practitioner Inquiry Project
In her current role, Dr. McNeill works with preservice English teachers on language education issues, teaching literature and literacy, and classroom management. Using examples of her own research and sixteen years of teaching in diverse contexts, she stresses a culture of caring and pedagogy of accompaniment as preservice teachers work to understand learners and create culturally responsive and student-centered curricula.
In a course focused on Language Education issues and the relationship between language and social, cultural, and economic environments, Dr. McNeill is conducting practitioner inquiry with English education preservice teachers where they investigate the cultural identities, family histories, experiences, and traditions of themselves and their students. Together, they will determine how these experiences shape teacher identity. She argues the first step in becoming a culturally responsive educator is reflecting on and understanding teacher identity.
In the subsequent course, the preservice teachers create culturally relevant lesson plans for their peers based on interviews and interest surveys. This project is an exercise in tailoring the curriculum to students’ assets using a culturally relevant teaching model.
In the final course, preservice teachers interview students in their field placements and create a unit designed for the assets and interest of the students. Preservice teachers will teach at least one of their created lessons to students in their field experience classes and reflect on the importance of understanding student assets when designing a curriculum.
These three projects will help to inform activities in English education courses and answer the research questions:
To what extent can reflective writing connect the need for culturally responsive classrooms with understanding teacher identity?
To what extent will designing lessons based on peer/student interests and assets allow preservice teachers to foster the type of culturally responsive and caring environment conducive to building relationships with one another and their students?
Previous Research
Dr. McNeill's dissertation study investigated strategies for developing an asset-based English curriculum for emergent bilingual secondary students. This research involved practitioner inquiry carried out over three years in credit-bearing language arts courses within a school in which the traditionally White enrollment was shifting to include many emergent bilinguals. Her purpose for this practitioner inquiry study was to learn from students as they shared their life experiences, drawing resources from their stories to develop curriculum, school policies, and instruction in an emergent bilingual classroom. Data analysis focused on the immigration narratives two focal students created about their family’s journey and subsequent literacy projects based on tenets of funds of knowledge, students’ interviews, and their journal writings, in which they explained the struggles of migration. Dr. McNeill argues that when relationships are prioritized with diverse students using a pedagogy of acompañamiento, classrooms become spaces where students can share family stories, life experiences, and funds of knowledge.
She has found that projects focused on family and community in literacy curriculum reveal a need for what Arao and Clemens (2013) call “brave spaces,” where “courage” and understanding may be necessary when sharing sensitive information with new audiences” (p.141), as well as a recognition of how immigration shapes lives. I advocate for an asset-based curriculum for English learners, where the texts they produce are continually assessed to design culturally relevant pedagogies for literacy learning.
Dr. McNeill's dissertation study investigated strategies for developing an asset-based English curriculum for emergent bilingual secondary students. This research involved practitioner inquiry carried out over three years in credit-bearing language arts courses within a school in which the traditionally White enrollment was shifting to include many emergent bilinguals. Her purpose for this practitioner inquiry study was to learn from students as they shared their life experiences, drawing resources from their stories to develop curriculum, school policies, and instruction in an emergent bilingual classroom. Data analysis focused on the immigration narratives two focal students created about their family’s journey and subsequent literacy projects based on tenets of funds of knowledge, students’ interviews, and their journal writings, in which they explained the struggles of migration. Dr. McNeill argues that when relationships are prioritized with diverse students using a pedagogy of acompañamiento, classrooms become spaces where students can share family stories, life experiences, and funds of knowledge.
She has found that projects focused on family and community in literacy curriculum reveal a need for what Arao and Clemens (2013) call “brave spaces,” where “courage” and understanding may be necessary when sharing sensitive information with new audiences” (p.141), as well as a recognition of how immigration shapes lives. I advocate for an asset-based curriculum for English learners, where the texts they produce are continually assessed to design culturally relevant pedagogies for literacy learning.