Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Instruction & Curriculum Leadership

Committee Chair

Laurie MacGillivray

Committee Member

Susan Nordstrom

Committee Member

J. Helen Perkins

Committee Member

William Duffy

Abstract

Literacy coaching holds great potential to support professional growth over time, however, within the research literature, there has been a consistent call for a more expansive and interconnected exploration of the many aspects (social, linguistic, material, affective, etc.) that work together to produce knowledge in a literacy coaching context. This posthuman post-qualitative study explored how a K-2 school environment created certain iterations of literacy coaching through specific school policies, practices, spaces, non-human materials, and humans (e.g. interactions with teachers, administrators, etc.). Participants included one school-based literacy coach, school principal, two teachers, and the district literacy supervisor working at Magnolia Springs Elementary (pseudonym) in the MidSouthern region of the United States. Using Thinking with Theory as an analysis framework, the researcher put to work four key concepts from posthumanism (entanglement, intra-action, agency, subjectivity) to theorize data assemblages from object-interviews, walks, photos, journal entries, and artifact collection. Findings demonstrate how certain linear assumptions about teaching and learning were made visible by theorizing the various data assemblages through the posthuman concepts. The data assemblages also made possible new ways to think about and understand the entangled and intra-active enactments of literacy coaching. These findings support and extend research on literacy coaching that has linked the political and historical origins of literacy coaching to the complex social and relational nature of the work, explored how coaching intersects with multiple environmental and relational factors, and made visible ways in which coaches roles are entangled in the political and historical contexts.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest

Notes

Open Access

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