Amy Vetter

Dr. Amy Vetter is a professor in English education in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina Greensboro where she teaches undergraduate courses in teaching practices and curriculum of English, and graduate courses in youth literacies, teacher research, and qualitative research design. Her areas of research are literacy and identity, critical conversations, and the writing lives of teens.

There are 35 included publications by Amy Vetter :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Advocacy-Based Research 2018 2116 In this chapter, readers learn about advocacy-based research, a form of participatory action research and community-engaged research. Inclusion, reciprocity, asset-based approaches to research and practice are discussed as foundation concepts. When a...
Asking Teens about Their Writing Lives: The Writing Identity Work of Youth 2021 600 Framed by theories of youth, culture, identity studies, and literacy identity formation, this article examines how youth articulate themselves as writers. Using interview transcripts, analysis explored writing identity from the perspective of teens i...
“'Cause I'm a G”: Identity Work of a Lesbian Teen in Language Arts 2010 931 Framed around the perspective that identities matter in relation to literacy learning, this case study examined the identity work of June (pseudonym), a lesbian youth in an 11th-grade high school language arts classroom. Informal interviews with June...
Community Voices: Resettled Youth Use Their Writing to Reposition Themselves 2022 69 Resettled youth often face many challenges while enrolled in schools, such as expectations to quickly assimilate and acquire English language and literacy skills or being positioned in deficit-oriented ways. In this article, we use qualitative method...
Confronting unsuccessful practices: repositioning teacher identities in English education 2016 1099 Teacher education programs attempt to prepare preservice teachers for the various challenges faced in the classroom. One particular challenge new teachers face is how to handle unsuccessful practices. This paper argues that confronting ineffective pr...
Crafting Communities of Writers: Advice from Teens 2019 640 Ava, a middle schooler in Texas, says she doesn’t “think [teachers] . . . see . . . the full potential of what students could really be as writers.” Camden, a high school student in North Carolina, calls for writing in schools that welcomes students ...
“Crazyghettosmart”: A case study in Latina identities 2010 963 Drawing from recent scholarship that examines schooling and the shifting terrain of youth identities, this study examines the identity constructions of Jessica, a Latina high school student. Our portrait of Jessica is part of a larger longitudinal st...
Critical conversations in English education: discursive strategies for examining how teacher and student identities shape classroom discourse 2018 1460 This research examined how preservice teachers in a university classroom used discourse analysis of video-recorded lessons to explore how identity markers such as race shaped classroom interactions. Findings from the study indicated that preservice t...
Critical talk moves in critical conversations: examining power and privilege in an English Language Arts classroom 2020 1564 Critical conversations take on heightened importance with current tensions about issues involving race, income inequality, sexual orientation, and gender identity, both locally and globally. These tensions demonstrate a dire need for classroom discus...
Data management and use through research practice partnerships: A literature review 2020 1029 Through research-practice partnerships (RPPs) researchers and practitioners engage in long-term problem-solving collaborations aimed, in part, at increasing the capacity of personnel in local schools and districts to manage and use educational data f...
The daybook defense: how re?ection fosters the identity work of readers and writers 2017 203 Classrooms play a large part in shaping youths’ identities as readers and writers. Due to the pressures of high-stakes exams, for example, reading and writing identities are often defined by a set of academic skills that students can or cannot perfor...
A discourse analytic approach to video analysis of teaching. Aligning desired identities with practice 2015 274 The authors present findings from a qualitative study of an experience that supports teacher candidates to use discourse analysis and positioning theory to analyze videos of their practice during student teaching. The research relies on the theoretic...
Equity and social justice in research practice partnerships in the United States 2022 2053 Research–practice partnerships (RPPs) have grown rapidly in the last decade in the United States to challenge traditional notions of education research by emphasizing the importance of researchers and practitioners working together in a spirit of mut...
Examining silences in an English teacher inquiry group focused on critical conversations: A facilitator's reflexive analysis 2021 539 Facilitating critical conversations includes helping students unpack dominant ideologies, interrupting stereotypes, creating a context for marginalized voices, and strategizing ways for taking action. Oftentimes, that means that teachers must recogni...
Identity and positionality: a framework for video analysis of teaching 2015 513 This chapter describes the importance of providing structured opportunities for preservice teachers to engage in identity work through video analysis. Without data of classroom interactions through modes including video, preservice teachers rely on m...
Lessons from a preservice teacher: Examining missed opportunities for multicultural education in an English education program 2012 930 “I had to get to know them [his students]. Because I am disconnected from Black culture a lot, honestly. You get people who assume I’m Black or I’m not. Before I even started teaching the very first question that I got asked was what color are you? A...
“Let Your Voice Lead You”: Critical Community-Building to Support the Writing of Recently Resettled Youth 2021 138 This study examines the use of critical community-building—using dialogue as a collective to support, listen to, ask questions, and assist each other in thinking in critical ways—to support resettled youths’ writing during a summer writing camp. Thro...
Level[ing] the field: Negotiating positions of power as a pre-service teacher 2013 1015 Set in an undergraduate Secondary English Education Program, this qualitative study draws on theories of power, positioning, and identity to explore how positions of power affect teacher identity construction. Drawn from a larger study, the authors e...
Making room for collaboration and teacher research in professional learning communities 2018 164 Over five months, six middle school teachers gathered together every other week to participate in a “teacher research” professional learning community (TR PLC). As the facilitators of the TR PLC, we witnessed how this group of teachers, over time, be...
Negotiating ideologies about teaching writing in a high school English classroom 2014 1020 More research needs to examine how novice teachers successfully negotiate multiple ideologies with others in ways that allow them to construct preferred teaching identities. This qualitative study addressed that need by investigating how one high sch...
Political tensions: English teaching, standards, and postsecondary readiness 2017 1011 Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to highlight ways two novice secondary English teachers negotiated the politics of college and career readiness along with the literacy needs of students, in the age of accountability. Design/methodology/approac...
Positioning and the discourses of urban education: A Latino student’s university experience 2012 942 Based on data collected from a year-and-a-half-long qualitative research project, this case study examines the early college experiences and identity negotiations of one urban-schooled Latino participant as he navigated a predominately White state un...
Positioning students as readers and writers through talk in a high school English classroom 2010 912 This 5-month qualitative study investigates how one high school English teacher situated students as readers and writers within daily, spontaneous classroom interactions. Specifically, the author draws on positioning theory (van Langenhove & Harré, 1...
Reframing literacy practices for culturally and linguistically diverse students in U.S. schools 2014 665 The growing numbers of culturally and linguistically diverse students, including English learners, in US K–12 settings, pose unique challenges and opportunities for English educators. While there have been evolving efforts in policy, research, and cl...
Reframing resistance in the English classroom 2012 473 During an observation of a novice teacher in a high school English classroom, the author was reminded that all students are capable of resistance. After attempting to engage students in what she considered to be a thought-provoking anticipation guide...
Reimagining instructional practices: exploring the identity work of teachers of writing 2016 223 This article provides a cross-case analysis of three teachers who participated in a two-week professional development (PD) on the teaching of writing that addressed their own identities as writers. This is an area that is commonly overlooked and how ...
Shifting language ideologies and pedagogies to be anti-racist: a reconstructive discourse analysis of one ELA teacher inquiry group 2022 227 Purpose This paper aims to present findings from a three-year qualitative study that used a model of teacher learning referred to as teaching as inquiry (Manfra, 2019). Teaching as inquiry centers the teacher as a learner in a prolonged and “systemat...
The Significance of Reflective Conversations for Young Writers 2018 1126 Purpose: For writing instruction, reflection has been an essential tool. Typically, educators ask students to reflect in a structured written, individual format. Less explored is the role that small and whole group reflective conversations have in fo...
Silence(ing) across learning spaces: New considerations for educational research aims and rationale 2021 430 This special issue represents the collaborative work from a group of nine literacy scholars across the U.S. focused on the complexities of silence (i.e., absences of or hidden communicative assertions, histories, and cultural values) in discourse and...
“Taking a cross-country journey with a world map”: Examining the construction of practitioner researcher identities through one case study 2011 886 Research about how teachers construct practitioner researcher identities is central to teacher education and professional development because it provides insight into how teachers continue to learn about and implement practices that meet the needs of...
“We gotta change first”: Racial literacy in a high school English classroom 2014 242 Students need more opportunities to learn how to respond to and counter forms of everyday racism. This qualitative study addresses that need by investigating how one peer-led group engaged in dialogue about issues of race in regards to an eleventh-gr...
What We Choose to Remember: Imagined Shared Narratives of Education During COVID-19 2021 264 The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on educational policies and practices are unprecedented. With the majority of educational institutions forced to limit face-to-face interactions, teaching and learning have rapidly taken on vastly new meanings. Ev...
A writing assignment extended: An occasion for young people to construct writer identities 2011 931 Becoming a successful writer is an important skill for the young because it predicts academic success, supports and extends learning, provides opportunities to participate in civic and community life and fulfils expectations of the workforce to creat...
“You need some laugh bones!”: Leveraging AAL in a high school English classroom 2013 219 The purpose of this study was to examine how a White teacher (Gina) responded to African American Language (AAL) in ways that situated students as valuable members of a high school English classroom. This 5-month qualitative study in a 10th grade cla...
Youth disrupting traditional notions of gender identity and sexual orientation through writing 2017 200 The purpose of this study is to examine how three young writers (grades 9-12) used writing to disrupt traditional notions of gender and sexual orientation both in and out of school. Findings from the qualitative study suggest that the three case stud...