Using Faculty Learning Communities to Improve Teacher Preparation for Linguistic and Cultural Diversity: Tensions and Responses

• In Event: 49.088 - Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 49.088-11 - Preparing Classroom Teachers to Succeed With Second Language Learners: Research From a Faculty Learning Community

Abstract

At this point in our symposium, all faculty participants will sit as a panel to engage in dialogue with the audience and allow dialogue among the audience regarding improving teacher preparation for linguistic diversity. The final conference paper will first be delivered as two prepared statements that might frame discussion while harnessing several voices from our panel. The first statement describes several challenges of infusing new materials, objectives, assignments, and experiences into teacher education courses which are already packed with materials, finely-balanced, and well-developed. The challenges and responses developed in the paper emerged from analysis of course syllabi of revised courses and faculty memoing regarding the changes they were making and challenges they encountered. The statement describes approaches to reworking courses such as infusing new questions into existing courses, using conceptual framing to insure that new material is woven meaningfully into existing courses, setting personal goals for coherent course revision over time, and revising assignments.
The second prepared statement—and the second half of the paper identifying tensions and responses of using faculty learning communities to improve teacher preparation for linguistic diversity--names several key tensions of running faculty learning communities from the point of view of three faculty members who have led such efforts at two different universities; again, we briefly note strategies for handling each tension. The paper uses interview quotes from facilitators and participating faculty to illuminate and address key tensions:

• allowing enough input from participants regarding content and process while providing enough direction
• allowing flexibility to accommodate competing participants’ commitments while creating firm enough expectations;
• meeting the needs of teacher educators with limited understandings of teaching emergent bilinguals and those with more developed knowledge and experience.
These prepared statements position audience members to share their questions, own experiences, and suggestions for moving the larger field of teacher education forward; if time allows, during 11 minutes of discussion after these statements or time remaining after the discussants remarks, we will think with audience about how to promote research and practices that will improve teacher preparation for linguistic and cultural diversity.

This paper will contribute insights, clarify challenges, and develop wisdom of practice (Shulman, 1986) in order to help other teacher educators and programs engage in effective faculty development, individual course revision, and programmatic efforts to improve teacher preparation for linguistic and cultural diversity.

Authors

• Douglas K. Kaufman, University of Connecticut

• Angela Maria Lopez-Velasquez, Southern Connecticut State University