Developing the Teacher Lens: Learning From School Communities

• In Event: Developing Preservice Teachers' Knowledge of the Social, Political, and Cultural Realities of Educational Contexts

Abstract

This paper addresses the development by pre-service MA candidates of a greater critical awareness of school communities, and a struggle to re-define their prospective work as immediate work, and to recognize their role in this work of empathy, maturity, responsibility, watchfulness, professional caring, and community involvement. It focuses on the attempts by an large urban institution to approach this challenge by engaging pre-service teachers with school communities in and out of school, and focusing on the dynamics of these communities, its members, and their lives, rather than on the methods of the teachers. Early field experiences shift from observation and a simple focus on pedagogical content knowledge, towards an active engagement with the school community, a partnership in learning.

Author

• Frank Pignatosi, New York University