I study teacher learning through social interactions by prioritizing teachers’ experiences as they traverse varied learning cultures and contexts, work within political systems, and seek to meet the needs of diverse learners. How their varied learning pathways differ based on a complex web of interconnected social, cultural, and political influences remains under-researched and is central to my scholarship. Through interactional ethnographic and qualitative research where I have lived alongside teachers and students in classrooms and in conversation for hundreds of hours, my scholarship identifies factors within fraught contexts that can positively influence teachers’ abilities to act on their learning, especially in their efforts to teach for justice.
My ongoing work in high school classrooms and schools affirms that we live in a time when secondary English and literacy teachers’ professional expertise and autonomy are increasingly threatened by systemic inequities and external mandates. Through my scholarly contributions, I offer concrete methods for scholars, English educators, teachers, and professional development facilitators to push back and offer new possibilities for more equitable, inclusive teaching and learning.
To date, this work has contributed to the fields of English education and literacy professional development in the following ways:
A Framework for Negotiating the Challenges of ELA Teaching
In my latest book (2022), I explore the challenges that arise when teachers seek to enact socially just instruction while navigating social, classroom, and school dynamics. This research-based, field-tested text offers an accessible process for successfully negotiating these dynamics to identify consequential inroads for making positive educational change. With a focus on ELA instruction, but applicable to other content areas, this clear framework offers a language for naming, and practical tools for navigating, those spaces where different frameworks for teaching and learning challenge teachers’ ability to act on their commitments to teach for justice.
Throughout the book, readers meet teachers who show how they reframed challenges and identified opportunities to work with others within inequitable systems to enact more just and equitable teaching. These case studies in teachers’ own words allow readers to analyze how context and classroom culture influence teachers’ negotiation processes. Serving as more than thought-provoking exemplars of what to do, the case studies and spotlighted “application moments” also invite readers to reflect on their own negotiations in the fieldwork, classrooms, and professional learning communities where they teach and learn. Comprehensive and illuminating, this book is a vital resource for pre-service teachers, teacher educators, and novice teachers.
Sticking Points, Sites for Generative Learning
My scholarship has advanced conceptual and empirical understandings of the application challenges teachers face as they seek to act on their learning. I define sticking points as framework conflicts that arise when teachers seek to act on their learning and encounter two or more divergent rationales for action. I illustrate the normalcy of sticking points in teachers’ learning, teaching, and professional interactions, although these conflicts often remain invisible and, therefore, unaddressed. Left unaddressed, I show how sticking points can challenge teachers’ ability to act on their learning. When this happens, teachers miss critical opportunities to improve their instruction and reach desired professional goals. When viewed as generative sites for learning, sticking points negotiation can support teachers’ abilities to make decisions about whether, when, and how to apply and adapt literacy learning to their classroom instruction.
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To read more about how acknowledging and teaching pre-service teachers to negotiate sticking points can aid in their ability to enact socially just instruction as they navigate a complex web of influences (e.g., mentors, curricula, policies, assessments, mandates), check out
- Lillge, D., & Knowles, A. (2020). Sticking points: Sites for developing capacity to enact socially just instruction. Teaching and Teacher Education, 94, Article 103098. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2020.103098
Framework Negotiation, Key to the Relational Work of Ongoing Professional Learning
My scholarship highlights the centrality and complexity of teachers’ relationships in professional learning contexts as well as a focus on the ways in which power and everyday politics are implicated in these relationships. By focusing on teachers’ social interactions in professional learning contexts, I offer needed ways of making visible and then helping teachers and facilitators negotiate framework conflicts that shape English teachers’ learning experiences and application efforts within systems of power and inequity.
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To learn more about teacher-facilitator relationships and the discursive moves that support framework conflict negotiation, check out
- Lillge, D. (2021). Facilitation literacy: Circulating power in professional learning conversations with teacher colleagues. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 64(4), 399-407. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1106
- Lillge, D. (2019). Improving professional development relationships that support teacher learning. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 18(3), 365-381. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-12-2018-0121
- Lillge, D. (2019). Uncovering conflict: Why teachers struggle to apply professional development learning about the teaching of writing. Research in the Teaching of English, 53(4), 340-362.
Other Scholarship with Teacher Leaders & Researchers
In my efforts to draw stronger relationships between university and secondary classrooms, I collaborate with researchers and teacher leaders to co-author scholarship that describes specific conflicts which emerge everyday through teaching interactions. Our scholarship offers concrete ways of addressing the timely challenges and possibilities for literacy learning and teaching.
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- Lillge, D., & Crane, A. U. (2019). Embracing uncertainty: When inquiry drives the reading conference. Voices from the Middle, 26(3), 31-34.
- Lillge, D., & Dominguez, D. (2017). Launching lessons: Framing our approach to multicultural, multivoiced YA literature. English Journal, 107(1), 33-40.
- McBee Orzulak, M., Lillge, D., Engel, S., & Haviland, V. (2014). Contemplating trust in times of uncertainty: Uniting practice and interactional awareness to address ethical dilemmas in English teacher education. English Education, 47(1), 80-102.
- Wessling, S. B., Lillge, D., & VanKooten, C. (2011). Supporting students in a time of Core Standards: English language arts, grades 9-12. National Council of Teachers of English.