2025 Theses Doctoral

“Windows Turned Sideways Make Bridges”: Rooting a Pedagogy of Connectedness in the Secondary ELA Classroom

Liu, Diana Yang; Sealey-Ruiz, Yolanda

In this dissertation, I examined how three female secondary English Language Arts (ELA) teachers understand what it means to teach diverse literature and how they navigated particular challenges and tensions that arise in their New York City public high school. Through narrative inquiry, this study examined when select secondary ELA female teachers encountered ruptures in teaching diverse literature within their constructed curriculum. More specifically, the narratives of three female educators’ experience provided insights into the processes of how the teachers developed literacy practices for their students. As a result, qualitative data (including individual interview data, audio-transcribed meeting data, and student-generated work) were collected.

This study utilized a combination of conceptual and theoretical frameworks of silences and Spivak’s notions of marginality that are grounded, respectively, in power structures, cultural norms, and dominant ideologies to interpret the data. These frameworks provided critical lenses for understanding the pedagogical decisions and instructional strategies that teachers enacted in their secondary ELA classrooms. The concept of silences can take multiple forms including institutional silences (omitted narratives in the curriculum) and classroom silences (teachers hesitating to engage in discussions about race, gender, or oppression). This conceptual framework of silences helped examine what is left unsaid, who is permitted to speak, and how power dynamics shape discourse around diverse literature in the classroom. Applying Spivak’s theories, this study considered how teachers engage with marginalized voices in literature, how they amplify or silence those perspectives, and how they challenge or reinforce dominant ideologies in their pedagogy. This theoretical framework also interrogated whether teachers feel constrained by department and school policies when selecting and teaching diverse texts.

The data revealed that teachers’ interpretations of “diverse literature” and their pedagogical choices were shaped by multiple intersecting factors. Primarily, their personal lived experiences, school demographics during their early teaching years, and broader sociopolitical contexts throughout their professional careers played significant roles in influencing how they approached diverse literature in the classroom. These factors collectively shaped how teachers navigated tensions around diverse literature—whether in choosing texts, framing discussions, or responding to students during classroom discussions.

Understanding these influences helps illuminate the complexities of teaching diverse literature in secondary ELA classrooms, particularly how personal and professional contexts intersect with larger societal forces.
Implications of the study included:

• the importance of advocating a pedagogical and curricular design practice toward teaching diverse literature through intentional pedagogies that integrate intersectionality and fosters connections across multiple marginalized groups, rather than treating diversity as separate categories;

• promoting increased and continuous dialogue between secondary ELA teachers, students, and researchers to encourage further interrogation of what it means to teach diverse texts in a meaningful way that allows teachers and students to navigate through differences and such tensions in a more mindful manner; and

• investing in teacher education development programs and courses for preservice and current teachers on how to have crucial conversations that allow them to navigate with students on difficult topics like race and gender.

With these implications, we hope to push dialogue toward understanding each other and of ourselves more deeply while acknowledging the sociopolitical contexts in which we are all embedded in.