Unanswered Questions

In this dissertation I trace my changing practices as a teacher and a learner. I look closely at three questions that have been centrally important to my development as a high school English teacher, and I consider what it might mean for English classes to induct newcomers into the conversations, identities, and dispositions at the heart of current discourse traditions so that students become autonomous, engaged, and fully participating learners in the 21st century. By continually reinventing my teaching practice, I recreate an apprenticeship for my students with myself as the central contributor—a kind of master or mentor—who learns to learn in public space and invites students into fuller roles in building and refining our collective knowledge. This is essentially the thinking that powers the culture of instruction in my classroom—what I’m calling an academic apprenticeship, an endless apprenticeship.