Moving Beyond Knowing: Partnering With Families to Support Struggling Readers

• In Event: Designing Hybrid Field-Based Experiences: Insights From Faculty in One Urban Teacher Education Program

Abstract

Objective
Working effectively with families is a critical yet often unexamined dimension of teaching. Research demonstrates the impact of effective family/school partnerships on student achievement. Yet teacher education courses and accompanying field experiences rarely provide authentic and guided experiences for preservice and novice teaches to develop abilities to work with families under the supervision of university faculty.
Zeichner (2011) argues that teacher education programs need provide explicit and authentic opportunities for teacher candidates to put into practice conceptual knowledge gained in coursework. In an effort to strengthen the “weak link” between knowing and doing, we, literacy educators, explored the development of fostering mutually-supportive relationships between literacy masters students and families of children they were tutoring in a year-long tutoring program. In this case study paper, we discuss the rationale and implementation of course-based activities that enable teacher candidates to establish and reflect upon mutually sustainable partnerships with family members of struggling readers.

Perspectives
We situate our research in the understanding that children come to school with a background of learning experiences and are part of a community of people who have a variety of expertise. Moll’s (1992) “funds of knowledge” inform our development of course materials and experiences so that we push teacher candidates to see themselves as partners in learning with their students and their families. Lareau (1989) differentiates stances towards to schools and teaching from a class perspective that often leads teachers to misunderstand the variety of relationships parents may have with schools.
Those kinds of misunderstandings often result in a deficit view of diverse families by teacher candidates and novice teachers. A goal of our work is to provide our students with an opportunity to develop a sustained relationship with a struggling reader and his/her family in order to disrupt and explore deficit or limiting views of family. The course activities we describe and analyze are grounded in a view of families as partners and sources of knowledge that will support students.

Modes of Inquiry/Data
For two semesters, graduate students work with a struggling young reader in an on-site tutoring program. In addition to their work with children all graduate students complete several activities that involve getting to know and working with family members of the child. These include informal interviews, weekly conversations, games night, and workshops. Through these specific activities we also support the development of partnering relationships between graduate student and family that are organically developed.

Course activity descriptions, work samples from the graduate students, observations of graduate students and family member interactions, and interviews with the graduate students during and upon completion of the course are data for this study.
Analysis is in progress.

Significance
Establishing mutually sustaining relationships with families is an important element in becoming an effective teacher. Providing pre-service and novice teachers with field-based opportunities to partner with families and more fully understanding the complexities of this role contributes to research on strengthening the link between knowledge and practice.

Authors

• Jenny Tuten, Hunter College - CUNY

• Deborah Ann Jensen, Hunter College - CUNY