John Wesley White

University of North Florida | UNF · Teaching Learning & Curriculum

This study looks at the intersection of college and career readiness, culturally responsive pedagogy, and teacher preparation. We sought to uncover preservice teachers' perceptions of college and career readiness as they concluded their teacher preparation coursework. Findings demonstrate how future teachers wrestled with college readiness, and the...

Using autobiographical research and multi-modal presentations to engage reluctant writers.

To engage in critical readings of literary texts, in ways that are also ethical and compassionate, requires readers to enter emotionally and imaginatively into the complex, textual worlds of others as they are portrayed in stories. Such stories have the potential to create new worlds that make visible our collective being in ways that allow us to e...

It is critical to engage today's students in the realities of the world--and the realities depicted in quality literature--in our ELA classrooms. This includes explorations of sex, sexuality, and gender dynamics. To do this, however, teachers need to be adequately prepared so as to avoid inadvertently reproducing their own cultural norms and biases...

We are teacher educators trying to recalibrate to the world of Trump. As we search to find our new bearings, we recognize that the markers of meaning that we relied on (such as civility and truth) have been washed away, and we must now redefine how to create meaning in our work, and hope in our worlds. In this article, we combine examples of studen...

The purpose of this article is to discuss meritocracy as it impacts our undergraduate college teaching. As college educators, we have come to realize how little students have been challenged to critically examine the notion of meritocracy. Seeking to understand why this is so and what we can do to engender a more nuanced understanding of how social...

The gun lobby and the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council have been conducting a nationwide fight in state legislatures to enact pro-gun legislation that would allow concealed and even open-carrying of weapons on college and university campuses. Part and parcel of their efforts are hyperbolic claims about campus safety and campus shoot...

When used for character journaling, social networks can provide a culturally relevant, collaborative, and multi- genre forum through which students can make new meanings with texts.

Countering reactionary attempts to ban social media from schools is a strong research based rationale for bringing social media into the literacy classroom. When used as a medium to explore literature—or more specifically for interactive character journaling—this medium exemplifies how meaning is created by individuals' interactions with texts, by...

This paper examines the effects of directed, short-term field experiences on preservice secondary teachers' core beliefs (their teaching philosophies and epistemologies). We conducted a pre-field experience measure that students used to describe four to six of their major beliefs about being an effective content area teacher. We then placed student...

This paper focuses first on the role of language practices in minority student attrition and offers secondary practitioners suggestions on how to help their students understand and be able to code-switch into academic discourse. The case studies highlight how an initial lack of academic literacy affects minority students' ability to succeed in trad...

Too often, educators assume that Standard English is static, that it is prone to infection from out of school discursive practices, and subsequently take on the role of "language police" by banning nonstandard English from the classroom. This narrow view of 'what counts' as academic discourse ignores the organic nature of language, alienates increa...

This paper explores how English Language Arts (ELA) curricula has become even more tightly controlled, scripted, and limiting than it was twenty years ago when Michael Apple published his seminal text "The Politics of the Textbook." The past two decades have resulted in the dominance of large-scale and corporately produced ELA curricula that are cl...

The dominant PDS models described in research literature are all based upon the pairing of traditional, college-based teacher education programs with traditional public schools. Though these PDS models have proven very successful in such contexts, there is significant question as to whether they can be successful when comprised of nontraditional te...

This paper examines an often-overlooked contributing factor to minority student collegiate attrition: students' limited knowledge of-and sometimes resistance to-the kinds of academic discursive practices they need to become "full participants" (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in the university setting. Adopting a Vygotskian view of sociolinguistics, we also p...

When trying to utilize class discussions as an effective pedagogical tool, teachers need to be aware of the conflicts that may arise due to issues of personal and cultural representation, linguistic differences, and misunderstandings of the tacit “rules” for participation. Because of cultural and linguistic variances in student populations, not all...

Electronic portfolios have become increasingly popular. The value of a portfolio, though, depends on how, when, and why students create, submit, and have their portfolios evaluated. In the following paper, we describe how we redesigned a program's assessment and evaluation plan around the use of electronic portfolios and a system of gates focusing...

White describes classroom activities that help de-center students’ views of English as a static discursive norm and demonstrate the inherent power in different forms of “English.”

Educational reformers have revived the notion of managing schools like businesses. By borrowing the rhetoric of the industrialization era, the current reform agenda not only presupposes that learning and maximum financial efficiency are synonymous, but also equates students and consumers. In the following paper, we argue that history has shown that...

Asking English teachers to teach critical literacy is fraught with problems, among them a lack of understanding of what critical literacy actually is, an unwillingness to engage in critical inquiry themselves, and a fear of prompting students to question the very tenets behind classroom decision-making.

This paper was later titled: "The cyclical rhetoric of educational reform: Forgetting history's lessons" Then the final published version is titled: "The Cyclical Rhetoric of Educational Reform and the Rationalization of a Failed Zeitgeist" The rhetoric of conservative reformers and big business seems to have found favor with a public dissatisfie...

A significant body of research has examined the reasons behind high minority collegiate attrition. All of this work has contributed to our understanding of the unique challenges minority and first generation college students face in the difficult transition to the often new culture that is the college experience. One area that has gone virtually ig...

Noting the popularity of book clubs, major publishers of mass-market fiction have increasingly included book club discussion questions as a part of their products. Though these discussion prompts can serve useful means, they can also limit readers' interpretations of texts; the kinds of questions and the foci to which they relate can serve to narro...

Electronic portfolios have become increasingly popular. The value of a portfolio, though, depends on how, when, and why students create, submit, and have their portfolios evaluated. In the following paper, we describe how we redesigned a program's assessment/evaluation plan around the use of electronic portfolios focus-ing on the larger assessment/...

Academic discourse and the formation of an academic identity: Minority college students and the hidden curriculum. Review of Higher Education, 34(2).

Thesis (M.A. in English)--S.M.U. Includes bibliographical references.