Background: For decades, scholars have argued that teaching and learning depend fundamentally on the quality of relationships between teachers and students, yet there is little research about how ...teachers develop relationships with students or how teacher education prepares teachers to do this work. Arguably, articulating the relational practices of teaching is critical for those aiming to prepare teachers to reach across differences, educate from a social justice perspective, and teach an increasingly diverse population of students. Noting the emphasis on relationships in community-based organizations (CBOs), the authors investigated preservice field placements in CBOs as potentially strategic contexts for learning about relational aspects of teaching. Objective: The authors engaged the questions: What do candidates learn in CBO field placements? What are sources of variation between candidates' learning outcomes? What are individual and contextual factors that shaped candidates' opportunities to learn in CBOs? Specifically, which factors influenced candidates' inclination and capacity to enact relational teaching practices (e.g., the methods and skills associated with learning about and connecting with students, families, and communities)? Research Design: This study was a 3-year longitudinal investigation. Authors followed two cohorts of candidates from their first quarter of preparation into their first year of teaching. Qualitative methods, such as interviews, observations, and document review were employed in this inquiry of 12 case study candidates. To examine questions of variation, authors also conducted an in-depth comparative case analysis of a subset of two candidates and their CBO placement contexts. Findings: CBO placements facilitated opportunities for candidates to "see students": candidates developed deeper understandings about children and more nuanced conceptions of diversity; experienced and examined school from an out-of-school perspective; and demonstrated greater attentiveness to the role of context in learning. The more detailed comparative analysis of two cases revealed variation in candidates' experiences and their enactment of practices involved in building relationships with children and families. This analysis identified individual and situational factors (in coursework and CBOs) that facilitated and impeded candidate learning in CBOs. Conclusions: Findings from this study highlight the types of learning outcomes that preservice community-based placements potentially afford, as well as factors that make some placements more educative than others. The authors offer a theoretical lens that attends to variation in learning, which could be leveraged in future empirical work. This research contributes to the field's developing efforts to identify key social justice teaching practices and to conceptualize pedagogies of enactment for such practices.
Background/Context: Responding to the challenges of the demographic imperative and calls for greater program coherence, social justice teacher education programs aim to integrate social justice in ...the professional preparation of teachers. Such programs intend to improve the preparation of teachers to teach students from diverse backgrounds, and in doing so they strive to keep the moral and ethical purposes of teaching and schooling at the center of teachers' preparation. Purpose/Object/Research Questions: This study examines two social justice teacher education programs to explore teacher educators' conceptions of social justice and the conditions that appear to support their joint enterprise. Research Design: Findings presented are based on a year-long qualitative case study. Data sources include interviews with teacher education faculty and a review of program and course documents. Findings: Grounded in communities of practice theory and a theory of social justice, I found that faculty conceptions of justice varied from an emphasis on meeting the needs of individuals to a concern with broader structural inequities. The mutual engagement of faculty appeared to be supported by external resources that provided structure and expertise, the selection of faculty with commitments to social justice and collaboration, and formal and informal opportunities to collaborate. Conclusions/Recommendations: This study has implications for both practice and research in teacher education. In terms of practice, this study suggests that social justice teacher education relies on more than the efforts of individual teacher educators. Teacher education programs aiming to integrate social justice may benefit from implementing structures that enable faculty to work together in both defining and enacting such a vision of teaching and learning. The dimensions of social justice articulated by Mills and SJSU faculty offer teacher educators with a way of conceptualizing justice that attends to a core concept in the field--the goal of attending to individual student's needs--and to a less common concept of justice as tied to alleviating oppression. In terms of research, the emerging area of social justice teacher education is in need of systematic studies designed to introduce changes such as those described in this article into extant programs aiming to address social justice in the professional preparation of prospective teachers. Such studies could explore the actual practices of teacher educators engaged in such efforts as well as the impact of such efforts on prospective teachers' knowledge and practices with students from diverse backgrounds.
In this article, the authors examine two distinct but closely related fields, research on teaching and research on teacher education. Despite its roots in research on teaching, research in teacher ...education has developed in isolation both from mainstream research on teaching and from research on higher education and professional education. A stronger connection to research on teaching could inform the content of teacher education, while a stronger relationship to research on organizations andpolicy implementation couldfocus attention on the organizational contexts in which the work takes shape. The authors argue that for research in teacher education to move forward, it must reconnect with these fields to address the complexity of both teaching as a practice and the preparation of teachers.
This article examines the integration of social justice in teacher education and defines dimensions of teachers’ opportunities to learn. Findings come from a comparative case study of two elementary ...teacher education programs: the Teachers for Tomorrow’s Schools Program at Mills College and the Teacher Education Intern Program at San José State University. Combining concepts from sociocultural theory and a theory of justice for the conceptual framework, this study illustrates how these programs addressed social justice in university courses and how teachers’ opportunities to learn varied across specific dimensions. Specifically, this article highlights teachers’ opportunities to develop conceptual and practical tools related to social justice as emphasizing the needs of students identified by their membership in educational categories and the needs of students identified by their status in oppressed groups. In addition, it addresses how variation in teachers’ opportunities informed their conceptions of students and their preparation.
Background: Research shows that students who are overrepresented when it comes to failure are underrepresented when it comes to being taught by highly qualified teachers who are well prepared to ...teach students from diverse backgrounds. Teacher education, as one aspect of the educational system, plays a critical role in preparing teachers with the necessary principles and practices for improving the academic, social, and intellectual opportunities available to students of color, low-income students, and English language learners. Acknowledging this responsibility, teacher education programs continue to search for structural, curricular, and pedagogical approaches to prepare teachers to teach in increasingly diverse contexts. One response has been to connect preservice teachers with community experiences, an uncommon strategy that has been asserted at various times over the past century. This study examines one teacher education program's innovation of placing preservice teachers in community-based organizations (CBOs) to better prepare candidates to teach children whose backgrounds are different from their own--and particularly children who attend high-needs schools. Purpose of Study: This study addresses questions of both implementation and impact, specifically examining the participation of preservice teachers in CBOs and the outcomes of this innovation on their opportunities to learn. Through this research, the authors aim to advance the field of teacher education's understanding of community experiences, and in particular to highlight the ways in which partnerships with community organizations advance the preparation of teachers. Setting: The University of Washington's Elementary Teacher Education Program (ELTEP), a five-quarter postbaccalaureate master's in teaching program. Participants: Participants in this study include case study preservice teachers from two cohorts: faculty who teach in the teacher education program, and staff who work in the community-based organizations in which the preservice teachers are placed. Intervention: During the first quarter in the program, preservice teachers spend 60 hours each in CBOs that serve diverse youth. The intention behind the community-based placements is to (1) build connections between prospective teachers, community organizations, and local schools, (2) give prospective teachers opportunities to develop a holistic and assets-based view of children and youth, (3) acknowledge education and learning as a process that occurs in multiple contexts, and (4) place students, families, neighborhoods, and communities at the center of teaching and education. Research Design: We designed a 3-year longitudinal study in which we follow two cohorts of preservice teachers from their teacher preparation through their first year of teaching. We employ qualitative methods of interviews, focus groups, observations, document review, and survey methods. Data analysis occurred as an iterative process. For this article, we systematically coded individual and focus group interviews for concepts that reflected participants' participation and outcomes in regard to the program innovation. Findings: Findings highlight specific dimensions of teachers' participation in CBOs and indicate ways in which the community experiences added to the resources for learning provided by the teacher education program. The authors also classify outcomes of this innovation and explicate the kinds of opportunities such experiences provide preservice teachers. Specifically, the authors identify instances of how placements in CBOs afforded preservice teachers new ways of seeing and understanding children beyond school and across difference. These findings are preliminary and are based on data and analysis from the first year of our 3-year study. Conclusions: Through the in-depth case study of the University of Washington Elementary Teacher Education Program's community-based partnership innovation, we contribute to an overall understanding of such efforts in teacher education. By building on a strong conceptual foundation based in sociocultural and activity theories, this study provides preliminary evidence that field placements in community-based organizations are a promising approach to supporting preservice teachers' opportunities to learn to work with children from diverse backgrounds. In particular, partnerships with community organizations may move teacher education efforts closer to the overall goal of preparing teachers with knowledge of children that allows them to incorporate the complexity of children's lives into the classroom in ways that ultimately improve children's opportunities to learn.
Currently, the field of teacher education is undergoing a major shift—a turn away from a predominant focus on specifying the necessary knowledge for teaching toward specifying teaching practices that ...entail knowledge and doing. In this article, the authors suggest that current work on K-12 core teaching practices has the potential to shift teacher education toward the practice of teaching. However, the authors argue that to realize this vision we must reimagine not only the curriculum for learning to teach but also the pedagogy of teacher education. We present one example of what we mean by reimagined teacher education pedagogy by offering a framework through which to conceptualize the preparation of teachers organized around core practices. From our perspectives, this framework could be the backbone of a larger research and development agenda aimed at engaging teachers and teacher educators in systematic knowledge generation regarding ambitious teaching and teacher education pedagogy. We conclude with an invitation to the field to join with us in imagining approaches to generating and aggregating knowledge about teaching and the pedagogy of teacher education that will move not only our individual practice but also our collective practice forward.
Background/Context: Contemporary state and national policy rhetoric reflects increased press for "evidence-based" decision making within programs of teacher education, including admonitions that ...programs develop a "culture of evidence" in making decisions regarding policy and practice. Recent case study reports suggest that evidence-based decision making in teacher education involves far more than access to data--including a complex interplay of motivational, technical, and organizational factors. Purpose: In this paper we use a framework derived from Cultural Historical Activity Theory to describe changes in organizational practice within two teacher education programs as they began to use new sources of outcome data to make decisions about program design, curriculum and instruction. Research Design: We use a retrospective case study approach, drawing on interviews, observations and documents collected in two university programs undergoing evidence-based renewal. Conclusions: We argue for the value of a CHAT perspective as a tool for clarifying linkages between the highly abstract and rhetorically charged concept of a "culture of evidence" and concrete organizational practices in teacher education. We conclude that the meaning of a "culture of evidence" depends in large measure on the motivations underlying its development.
In this article, the authors provide an argument for future directions for teacher education, based on a re-conceptualization of teaching. The authors argue that teacher educators need to attend to ...the clinical aspects of practice and experiment with how best to help novices develop skilled practice. Taking clinical practice seriously will require teacher educators to add pedagogies of enactment to an existing repertoire of pedagogies of reflection and investigation. In order to make this shift, the authors contend that teacher educators will need to undo a number of historical divisions that underlie the education of teachers. These include the curricular divide between foundations and methods courses, as well as the separation between the university and schools. Finally, the authors propose that teacher education be organized around a core set of practices in which knowledge, skill, and professional identity are developed in the process of learning to practice during professional education.
This article examines the pedagogy of assignments in social justice teacher education programs. Employing a programmatic view, this study aims to understand the collective representation of social ...justice provided by assignments across multiple courses. Findings come from a qualitative case study of two social justice programs. Drawing on concepts from sociocultural theory and a theory of justice, this study reveals that the conceptions of justice assignments that were emphasized varied from a focus on the individual needs of students to an emphasis on the sociopolitical conditions of schooling. When assignments drew on teachers' field placement experiences, they overwhelmingly stressed an individualistic notion of justice. The diversity among students in teachers' placements substantially shaped teachers' opportunities to engage this notion. When assignments emphasized the sociopolitical conditions of schooling, they focused on general principles for teaching and were disconnected from teachers' field placement experiences. Implications for practice and research in social justice teacher education are considered.
In this article, we argue that teaching is and should be a central element to learning to teach, particularly as teacher education once again turns toward practice. From this perspective, we must ...elaborate how such a shift addresses the need to bridge the gap between knowledge for teaching and knowledge from teaching, between theory and practice, and among university courses and fieldwork. If the intent of such a shift is to fundamentally change the preparation of teachers, we argue that it requires teacher education programs to do more than increase the amount of time candidates spend in clinical field placements. It requires, we argue, that teacher educators engage in simultaneous innovation in three related, but distinct aspects of program design and implementation: organizational structures and policies, content and curriculum, and teacher education pedagogy. Without such dynamic engagement, the practice-turn will go the way of many past reforms in teacher education-it will be symbolic but not significant or meaningful.
