Cultural Tool Use and Professional Identity Construction in Immigrant and Refugee Early Childhood Teacher Education Students

• In Event: 16.057 - Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: 16.057-23 - Challenging Professional Identities in Early Childhood

Abstract

North American early childhood teacher education ECTE) programs are primarily structured by an authoritative discourse (Bakhtin, 1981) which foregrounds western theories and practices at the expense of cultural ways of knowing. This one year ethnographic study enquires into the coursework and field placement experiences of twenty immigrant/refugee women enrolled in an ECTE program. Framed by sociocultural-historical theory, this presentation focuses on how instructors aided these students in bridging between existing and new cultural uses for pedagogical tools. The discontinuity between instructors' and field placement supervisors' expectations led students to predominantly use tools in accordance with the authoritative discourse while on placement to be constructed as full, legitimate members of the professional community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

Author

• Christine Massing, University of Alberta