Using Third Space to Develop a Clinically Based Teacher Preparation Model

• In Event: Third Space Theory as a Lens for Teacher Education Research

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes
In response to calls for improvements in clinically-based teacher preparation (AACTE, 2010; CCSSO, 2012; NCATE, 2010), faculty members from one university-based teacher preparation program reconceptualized their secondary education program in partnership with a local school district. This paper examines the successes and barriers faced in doing so.
Perspective(s) or Theoretical Framework
Third space theory (Bhabha, 1994; Soja, 1996) enabled the researchers to create ways of teaching and learning more complex than the sum of their parts. Third space theory demonstrated how clinically-based teacher preparation can disrupt false binaries between universities and public schools while also defying binaries between theory and practice.
Methods, Techniques, or Modes of Inquiry
Grounded theory was both the method and product of the inquiry (Charmaz, 2005).  Using a recursive process, researchers engaged in “simultaneous data collection and analysis, with each informing and focusing the other throughout the research process” (Charmaz, 2005, p. 508).  An ongoing dialogue about the program and the need for adjustments was maintained.  
Data Sources, Evidence, Objects, or Materials
Sources of data were divided into those collected from students (journals, blogs, papers, surveys, observation reflections) and those from the research team (surveys, journals, field notes, emails).  All student-generated artifacts responded to course assignments; each member of the research team contributed data.
Results and/or Substantiated Conclusions
Three overarching themes were identified: the critical role of context in the learning opportunities and shifting personal ideologies of teacher candidates, the indispensability of disequilibrium, and the centrality of relationships.  
Context mattered in at least two ways:  First, the clinical context provided manifold learning opportunities absent in a traditional college setting. Second, the clinical context required teacher candidates to deeply consider personal ideologies that shape their cultural assumptions and cross-cultural interactions.
Disequilibrium referred to the uneasiness that accompanied experiences central to clinically-based teacher preparation projects.  The notion of disequilibrium seems at odds with a staple of pedagogical advice: Create a comfortable, predictable environment in which students will be able to attend to learning. Piaget (1977) argued that comfort and predictability, although necessary, must be occasionally interrupted by uncomfortable and unpredictable moments. Students were not alone in this—teacher educators, too, reported feeling untethered and apprehensive.
Relationships influenced every action students and the research team undertook.  Work shaped by context and refined by disequilibrium (discussed above) might have led to cynicism or outright negativity were it not for the refracting lens of relationships.  Relationships, the importance of which was theoretically established (Noddings, 2005), were witnessed and enacted over an extensive period of time.  
Scientific or Scholarly Significance of the Study or Work
This model represented a radical shift in not only how we prepare teacher candidates for teaching but who is responsible for that preparation. The partnership between the university-based teacher preparation program, a local school district, and a host of community experts allowed the research team to create a third space crossing institutional, psychological, and metaphorical boundaries that typically cause distance between theory and practice as well as school-based and university-based practitioners.

Authors

• Julie R. Horwitz, Rhode Island College

• Gerri S. August, Rhode Island College