Emerging Practice for Equity: Complex Journeys Through Initial Teacher Education

• In Event: 34.058 - Seeing Patterns in the Kaleidoscope: Understanding Learning to Teach for Equity

Abstract

Objectives/Related Literature
To understand how teacher candidates learn to teach for equity, it is necessary to look at development over time (Hetherington, 2013), including how program intentions and elements combine with professional settings and with teacher candidates’ experiences to shape learning. This study contributes to this area by addressing two questions: What equity understandings and practices emerge when teacher candidates participate in an equity-centered program? What are the conditions and causal mechanisms that support these understandings and practices?

Mode of Inquiry/Data Sources
We employed extended case study methodology (Anderson, Crabtree, Steele & McDaniel, 2005), collecting information from multiple data sources. Five teacher candidates were purposively selected from a cohort of 35 who were part of the [Name of Program], which explicitly focused on equity and social justice. The centerpiece of the program was a set of six broad principles or “facets” of practice (referred to in the remainder of this proposal as The Facets), which were identified through an analysis of common findings across international research syntheses that took a complex view of teaching/learning and empirically linked teaching practice to positive outcomes for marginalized learners (Author, 2017). The Facets are enumerated in Paper 4. The teacher candidates in this study were selected because they ranged from low to high in their understanding and enactment of The Facets, as assessed by responses to key program tasks (see Table 1).

Comprehensive case studies in the form of qualitative text-based narratives (Byrne & Callaghan, 2014) were constructed to account for the five candidates’ learning from program entry until completion. The narratives traced candidates’ responses to key program tasks and experiences using eight major documentary sources: entry surveys; four key assignments from literacy and mathematics courses and a course on teaching and learning; personal written reflections; summaries of practicum and practicum reports/feedback; and, exit surveys/interviews.

Findings/Significance
Cross-case analysis of the five cases focused on how similarities and differences among the candidates and their experiences of the program influenced their understandings and enactments of The Facets. Cross-case analysis focused on: interdependencies, relationships, non-linearities, histories, unexpected events, emergent patterns, and qualitative shifts in system functioning (Byrne & Callaghan, 2014). Major findings include: (1) despite being selected into the program for their explicit commitment to teaching for equity, there was considerable variability in how this was understood and expressed by teacher candidates as they moved through the year; (2) interactions among candidates’ identities and program experiences were particularly potent sources of change and growth; and, (3) despite variations in responses to key tasks, by the time of program completion, the candidates were more alike in their understandings and commitments to The Facets than they were at entry. These findings suggest that it is not a single component of teacher preparation (e.g., teacher candidates’ backgrounds/credentials, preparation program content, or the characteristics of fieldwork settings) that results in candidates’ growth in teaching for equity. Rather change and growth emerge from an interdependent combination of these three elements that is not random, but cannot be perfectly predicted.

Author

• Fiona Ruth Ell, University of Auckland