Volume 25 Issue 2 [2025]
Editorials
English/Language Arts Education
Teachers’ Orientations Toward Texts and Tools: Critical (Re)Consideration of a Remix and Restory Assignment as a Teacher Educator
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In a master’s course for secondary literacy teachers, productive tensions arose when the author asked the graduate student educators to engage in remix and restory of a canonical text through an assignment. Teachers primarily expressed concerns about access to digital tools and oriented toward the assignment in relation to modalities and interaction rather than critical analysis of canonicity or consideration of tools used. The subsequent case study centered analysis of one teacher, Katerina, and how she took up the remix and restory assignment and experienced tensions around creation, criticality, and access with texts and tools. The researcher/course instructor turned toward these tensions as a practitioner inquiry into the ways teacher educators can reframe problematic notions of classroom teachers “schoolifying” participatory practices, instead drawing on tensions as a means of surfacing orientations that shape assignment and course design. From analyzing and reflecting on this teacher’s restory project, the author argues for extended design-based engagement with canonicity with educators and facilitating a platform orientation toward tools.
Exploring the Ethics of Multimodal Composition With AI: Student and Educator Perspectives on Evaluating and Using Generative Models in the Classroom
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Generative artificial intelligence (AI) models are increasingly able to produce and combine sophisticated text, image, and audio. These advancements are challenging composers and teachers, as they work to reimagine and resist ways that composition and creative work are changing. This paper reports on one analysis in a larger study on multimodal composition with preservice teachers and other students interested in education. The authors explored ethical issues in multimodal composition, reporting on key themes across participant responses, composing sessions, and instructor/researcher reflections, including concerns and hopes for equitable access, bias and representation, cheating oneself and others, human creativity, and ideas for evaluating AI tools. The article attends to the concerns of future educators in designing recommendations for ways to incorporate (or resist) use of AI models in the classroom. Additionally, the authors propose a tool, the “Model Card for Education” template, and methods to guide evaluation of AI as part of the educational environment but also the broader systems of platform ecologies.
Mathematics Education
Technologies That Persist in Mathematics Education Instruction After Emergency Remote Teaching
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In this research study, the authors examined the responses of 63 mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) to see what digital technology tools they used during the COVID-19 pandemic that they continue to use in mathematics or mathematics education classes that support teacher preparation for undergraduate or graduate students. MTEs used mathematical action and conveyance technology, though not exclusively, to increase collaboration, assess their students, organize their course, engage students, record student work, among other purposes and were attracted to these technologies because of their ease of use. These changes have persisted because they positively influenced the teaching, cognitive, and social presence in the MTE’s course or courses.
General
Computational Literacy and Artificial Intelligence Education: Unveiling Perceptions and Professional Learning Experiences of Fulbright Teachers From Less-Resourced Countries
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This study examined the impact of a U.S. federal teacher professional learning (PL) Fulbright program on computational literacy and artificial intelligence (AI) education for K-12 teachers (n = 21) from resource-constrained countries. Occurring shortly after the rise of generative AI in November 2023, the program may have further accentuated AI’s potential in educational contexts. Its focus on equity and access fostered a positive shift in participants’ attitudes, encouraging greater openness to change and a stronger intent to integrate computational literacy with AI tools. This study underscored the pivotal role of equity-centered PL in enhancing teacher capacity for equitable, inclusive education. While participants initially voiced concerns about infrastructure, leadership support, and teacher buy-in, they consistently valued computational literacy. The findings highlighted the necessity of systemic change, driven by a shared vision of integrating computing and AI across diverse educational settings. Additionally, well-designed PL can equip leaders with the knowledge and skills to address challenges, promote equitable access, and adapt solutions to specific contexts. This study provides preliminary evidence of how PL can empower educators to integrate computational and AI literacies, expanding global access to emerging digital literacy opportunities.
Current Practice
Tensions and Opportunities: Early Career Elementary Teachers’ Perspectives on Supplementing Curriculum With Teachers Pay Teachers
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Supplemental teaching materials from online sources such as Teachers Pay Teachers proliferate the educational landscape. Understanding how teachers use these tools is key to improving teacher education. This paper reports on an exploratory qualitative study that captured the perspectives of six early career elementary teachers on the supplemental teaching materials available on Teachers Pay Teachers. Semistructured think-aloud interviews illuminate tensions related to teachers’ landscapes of practice, institutional mistrust, perceived authoritativeness of sellers, curriculum marketplaces as altruistic platforms, and managing finite resources. Findings suggest that professionals who work with preservice and in-service elementary teachers must reframe their discussion of curriculum marketplaces toward developing teachers’ critical curriculum cultivation practices. Such reframing has the potential to influence the ways educators at all levels make use of online curriculum marketplaces, what resources they download, and how those resources are employed.
Learning to Be Technoskeptical: Engaging Preservice Teachers in Critical Examinations of Educational Technologies
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While educational technologies are often considered a panacea for improving K-12 teaching and learning, they frequently produce unintended or problematic effects. Consequently, preservice teachers (PSTs) must be prepared to think critically, or “technoskeptically,” when making decisions about the technologies they use in their future classrooms. The study described in this article implemented a series of learning activities during educational technology courses at two institutions, in which PSTs (n = 65) critically examined common classroom technologies, including Class Dojo and Teachers Pay Teachers. The researchers supported PSTs’ inquiries using the “Technoskepticism Iceberg” as a conceptual scaffold, which directs PSTs to examine the technical, psychosocial, and political dimensions of technology. They analyzed PSTs’ written appraisals of the technologies using qualitative content analysis, focusing on the types of arguments they made about the technologies and the extent to which their responses reflected critical thinking. They found that PSTs presented more deeply critical analyses of Class Dojo than of Teachers Pay Teachers, and results suggest that certain types of technologies are easier for PSTs to critique than others. Ways are discussed that teacher educators might further foster technoskeptical ways of thinking when working with PSTs.