Teacher Candidates Learning to Challenge Inequity: Obstacles to Making the Invisible Visible

• In Event: 29.050 - Teacher Education for Equity: National and International Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives/Theoretical Perspectives/Significance
This paper examines an equity-centered teacher preparation programme in New Zealand, which has been designated a high achievement-low equity country (OECD, 2011) because of the large gap between high and low achieving students. This paper reports on a study investigating what teacher candidates learned about challenging inequity in a program explicitly conceptualized and designed as equity-centered.

The study is part of a two-country research project assuming that: (1) teachers and teacher education can and should play a role in challenging inequity (Author, 2016); (2) teaching, learning, and learning to teach are complex phenomena (Davis & Sumara, 2006; Byrne, 1998); and, (3) “process-product” kinds of logic (Opfer & Pedder, 2011) cannot solve the problem of teacher education for equity. The team developed a framework of “patterns of practice for equity,” featuring six key principles of practice that enhance learning and other outcomes for students traditionally not well-served. This framework, synthesized from an analysis of international empirical research about teaching practices that improve learner outcomes (Author, in press), provided the basis for the study.

Strategic Research Site
The [Program Name], which serves as the strategic research site for this study, is an intensive one-year elementary teacher education program. It was developed explicitly to prepare teachers for schools in poor communities and to improve academic, social, and democratic outcomes for marginalized learners. The program, which begins with a cultural immersion experience, weaves content and experience in ways that honour the complexity of teaching and the values of local communities. Courses cut across subject boundaries, with all content integrated around “patterns of practice for equity.”

Research methods/Data sources/Results
The research question for this study was: What understandings and ideas about challenging inequity in mathematics and literacy teaching emerge in a program designed to develop teaching for equity? Participants were two cohorts of teacher candidates (n=50). Data were drawn from three key assignments (one from each semester of the program) that focused on literacy and mathematics, including structured reflections on practice and inquiry proposals (300 pieces of work total). Each assignment was analysed using content analysis to determine how teacher candidates conceptualized and acted on the idea of challenging inequity (for example, the choices they made about materials and approaches to working with marginalized learners), using a coding rubric specifically designed to assess depth of understanding. Ability grouping practices emerged as one of the central ideas teacher candidates linked to challenging inequity. However, the analysis also revealed that despite explicit attention in their courses to the idea that ability grouping perpetuates inequities, few teacher candidates questioned grouping practices themselves. They focused on sharing power, discourse patterns, and appropriate materials and contexts, but they did so within an ability-grouped classroom structure. We found that teacher candidates struggled to recognize the arrangements that helped to reproduce inequity if/when these were ‘taken for granted’ classroom structures, despite considerable attention to these ideas in the program. We concluded that making the ‘taken for granted’ structures visible would require additional experiences, which the team is now developing.

Authors

• Fiona Ruth Ell, University of Auckland

• Lexie Barbara Grudnoff, The University of Auckland

• Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College

• Mavis Haigh, The University of Auckland

• Mary F. Hill, University of Auckland

• Larry H. Ludlow, Boston College