From the Borderlands: Navigating Communities in the Induction Phase of Teaching

Not done with the paper. Not even with the outline. But, here's the abstract I just submitted for a conference in Spain. Ole!

Teachers in their induction phase often find themselves navigating from the borders of many different cultures in order to find success in teaching, yet lack a literacy for navigating these communities. Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) does not capture the complexity of communities converging on educators in their first year of teaching, as they imagine a singular notion of community. Pushing on LPP with Anzaldua’s borderland consciousnesses, this case study of two teachers in a structured induction program explores how they attempted to build teachers’ literacy in negotiating multiple communities in a bounded school site. The paper analyzes situations where the new teachers used literacy practices to read competing and conflicting communities at the school site: classroom, school, teaching, district and racial communities. These teachers negotiated entry not from a legitimate peripheral position of participation, but from the deeply vulnerable position of Anzaldua’s borderlands. Implications are drawn for constructing opportunities for new teachers to be mentored in gaining fluency in negotiating multiple communities at a school site.