Locating the Links Between Preservice Teachers’ Commonsensical Ideas About Adolescence and Their Thinking About Teaching

• In Event: Supporting K-12 Preservice English and Literacy Teachers’ Navigations Between Self and Student

Abstract

Drawing on a youth studies framework, this presentation explores how secondary English pre-service teachers reason about their future students and the consequences these systems of reasoning have for their thinking about pedagogy. Specifically, we found that these pre-service teachers a) predominately conceived of their prospective students from a deficit orientation; b) understood a central purpose of teaching as mediating their students’ navigation through adolescence; and c) drew upon particular systems of reasoning in order to distance themselves from their prospective students. These findings help denaturalize normalized discourses about adolescence that position youth in problematic ways. In doing so, we offer concrete possibilities for how teacher educators might assist pre-service teachers to rethink their conceptions of adolescence.

Authors

• Robert Petrone, Montana State University

• Mark A. Lewis, Loyola University Maryland