The Community Teachers Program for Social Responsibility

• In Event: 35.045 - Toward Clinical Participatory Teacher Education: One College, Four Models

Abstract

Model: STs of CTP are graduates of youth-movements who live in communes and hold a solid social-educational ideology. Their vision is to become "community teachers" whose aim is to transform teaching into education for social responsibility and community building. The CTP curriculum is radical in contents and modes of learning. Senior STs in the program participate in the clinical experience of their younger peers as assistants to the College pedagogical instructors (API) for the purpose of integrating formal and informal education based on the ideas of social responsibility. This shared mentoring in school practice is a unique example of both the clinical and the participatory dimensions. A steering committee composed of STs, APIs, graduates of the program and college faculty administer the 10-year old program.
Framework: The CTP is embedded in Buber's (1950, 1970) dialogical philosophy that reflects the 19th century idea of "community teachers" (Allchin, 1998). The implications for the CTP is a strong emphasis on the development of reasoning skills and dialogical discourse required for planning, implementing, reflecting, evaluating, and meeting various students' needs (McLean et al., 2013). This approach cuts across the theoretical studies and the clinical practice.
Method: Our qualitative methodology used data collection of semi-structured questionnaires of 80 STs, 4 APIs and 30 graduates, open interviews with representatives of the STs, and various documents. A Content analysis of the qualitative data was conducted.
Results: The participatory components are pillars of the theoretical and clinical parts of CTP. A team of STs and college faculty create together the units of study in terms of contents, sequence and mode of instruction and learning. This on-going challenging process requires demanding negotiations about the curriculum. The APIs support the College instructors during field experience in the clinical sites which are selected together by the team if they seek to integrate formal and informal education or if they embrace the "community teachers" idea. The requirement to ensure a fit between the program and the schools excludes more traditional schools from the STs opportunities for field experience. This is problematic because it prepares the STs for one specific genre of schools. The innovative API's role seems to have an important impact in mediating the avant-guard pedagogy but redefines the College instructor's positioning. Instead of the traditional triad there is a quartet (STs, mentor teacher, college instructor, API) that transforms the Clinical-Participatory experience continuously. Therefore, another pitfall is that not many instructors are capable to teach in CTP.
Contribution: This complex model is an extreme example of an ideological, democratic and collaborative design and execution of CPTE. Its totality approach helps strengthen the link between theory and clinical practice and leads to intensive involvement of STs in their program, including the API's role. Nevertheless, it breaks down many academic norms and challenges the boundaries of authority, management and coherence. The API role and the ongoing dialogue between the College faculty and administration and the STs are powerful elements that could be applied in other contexts seeking to develop a CPTE.

Authors

• Aviva Klieger, Beit Berl College

• Alon Pauker, Beit Berl College