Intersections of Race, Class, and Culture: Examining a Unique Model of Chicago Teacher Preparation

• In Event: Context-Specific Teaching Practice: Collaborating With Children's Families, Communities, and Community-Based Organizations to Support Equitable Teaching

Abstract

Participants will learn about an innovative, 12-year-old, Chicago-based university-community-school partnership whose mission is grounded in social justice and works to cultivate and sustain innovative, resilient, and effective educators for urban schools and their communities. The goal of the presentation is to deepen, and extend conversation about community-engaged PK-12 teacher preparation and teaching for social justice toward community transformation.

Although absent in most urban pre-service teacher education programs (Waddell, 2011), community-immersion is critical for teacher candidates (Zeichner, 2011). Through immersive programming, teacher candidates can develop an extensive knowledge of urban cultures that, in many cases, is different from their own. These “transformative” opportunities are a way to become not only acquainted with the cultural histories of their future students, but also invested in and appreciative of both the challenges and contextual knowledge that their students possess. Such learning opens up personal insights for the teacher candidates so that they can more authentically understand and honor alternative cultural worlds. In this way they can better serve their students by tailoring their instruction to the social and academic needs of their students. It is only through real-life experiences that teacher candidates, as participant-observers, can develop the ability to reflect on how other cultures function and how the histories of those cultures can have a deep impact on students’ views of learning and attitudes towards their futures (Amatea, Cholewam, & Mixon, 2012). By empowering candidates at the pre-service level, this immersive programming has the ability to translate into positive in-service impacts on urban teaching performance, commitment, and ultimately, retention (BLIND REVIEW, 2013).

This session will use data from the university’s STEP-UP (Summer Teacher Education Partnership for Urban Preparation) program, to discuss how this university-community-school partnership intensively prepares teachers for social justice curricula, clinical experiences, service learning, and community contextual cultural immersion. STEP-UP is a 4-week teaching and community internship and summer residency for pre-service teachers. Participants co-teach with experienced mentors in the partner district to learn best practices in urban teaching and participate in professional development and reflective seminars. Simultaneously, these students live in Chicago in traditional home stays with partner community residents, serve as interns at local community-based organizations, and participate in other civically engaged activities in the community.

A longitudinal research design employing self-report surveys was used to investigate impacts on participants. Survey instruments included urban teaching intentions, multicultural teaching knowledge, and attitudes towards community of residence. Analyses revealed significant increases in Urban Teaching Intentions, t(36) = -3.61, p = .00; Multicultural Teaching Knowledge, t(36) = -9.69, p = .00; Community Commitment, t(36) = -7.63, p = .00; and Community Safety, t(36) = -4.27, p = .00. These results suggest that through this program, participants develop asset-based paradigms for assessing communities, cultivate an active, bidirectional relationship with their school and community, identify opportunities for authentic involvement, and become familiar with successful models for community engagement in schools.

Authors

• Robert E. Lee, Illinois State University

• Brent Showalter, Illinois State University