Bank Street College of Education: A Living Laboratory for Deeper Learning

• In Event: 25.031 - Preparing Future Educators to Teach for "Deeper Learning": Lessons From Seven Promising Preparation Programs

Abstract

Graduates of Bank Street are known for creating classrooms that provide engaging learning opportunities for students with a range of intellectual and developmental needs. Bank Street graduates’ classrooms tend to emphasize deep content knowledge, problem-solving, communication and collaboration skills, and learning mindsets that give students agency over their learning (Lit et al., 2015). Bank Street’s approach appears to be effective at developing well-prepared teachers, as documented by a recent study finding, among other things, that employers (approximately 90 percent surveyed) rated Bank Street graduates as very well or well prepared as teachers (Lit et al., 2015).

To better understand the structures that support Bank Street teacher candidates’ ability to teach for deeper learning we gathered data from an in-depth case study that included in-person interviews and focus groups, surveys and classroom observations with program participants, faculty, and key stakeholders in the Childhood General Education program, which prepares teachers for grades 1 through 6. We engaged in a multi-stage method to analyze our transcribed data. We first identified emphasized topics and emergent themes upon the completion of our data collection. Next, we continued to refine our analysis through an iterative process of comparing the interview, survey, and observation data to the themes that we first identified.
Based on our analysis, we conclude that Bank Street has created a “living laboratory” for deeper learning, where faculty adopt and experiment with deeper learning pedagogies for their students (the teacher candidates). Moreover, instructors and teacher candidates collaborate through an explorative and iterative learning processes that supports teacher candidates’ acquisition of deeper learning competencies and dispositions that help candidates develop deeper learning competencies in their students.

Bank Street’s laboratory consisting of coursework and fieldwork is shaped by a focus on child and adult development, experiential learning, and equity and social justice. By emphasizing inquiry and respectful, collaborative relationships amongst faculty and teacher candidates, candidates are supported to adopt deeper learning approaches. Moreover, Bank Street’s learning process helps teacher candidates make meaning of and grow from their coursework and student teaching. This process involves building on each individual’s experiences; using inquiry to observe and record about one’s experience; critically analyzing the experience using rich tools developed in a variety of disciplines; and finally reflecting on the individual’s experience to develop insights that the individual can apply in future, different contexts.

Teacher candidates apply the same experiential, developmentally appropriate, and equity oriented pedagogies in their classrooms, that they experience as students in Bank Street. Again, teacher candidates’ students develop deeper learning competencies through respectful, collaborative relationships, in classrooms that reward inquiry, and use Bank Street’s learning process to help students make meaning of their coursework and experiences. In this way, Bank Street’s living laboratory of deeper learning appears to ultimately contribute to deeper learning for students in classrooms taught by Bank Street graduates (see Figure 2).

This case study provides critical insight into the specific mechanisms that can support teacher candidates in learning to create environments for their students that develop deeper learning competencies.

Authors

• Anne Podolsky, Learning Policy Institute

• Linda Darling-Hammond, Learning Policy Institute