What's Good for the Goose: Designing a Productive Learning Space for Preservice Teacher Discussions

• In Event: 45.046 - Teacher Learning to Position Students as Capable in Class Discussions: Looking Across Subject Matter Domains

Abstract

Purpose. If we believe that student learning benefits when teachers position them as intellectually capable and able to contribute to knowledge building work, how can teacher educators create parallel learning spaces for preservice teachers? Will doing so have similarly instructive and ethical consequences for learning?

As an elementary school-based teacher educator, I work in partnership with our local university to assist in leveraging the intersecting contexts of school, university, and community to prepare skilled and caring teachers for diverse schools. In addition to supervising clinical fieldwork, I am responsible for running a weekly discussion seminar where for years I followed the standard protocol of designing the syllabus, inviting guest speakers, and guiding reflection on classroom experiences. When an unusually self-directed group of student teachers asked if they could lead seminars, I began to rethink what it means to position them as capable within the context of their own certification program.

The purpose of this project is to explore the professional and pedagogical ramifications of supporting preservice teachers in understanding themselves as capable of collectively seeking and creating new knowledge about learning to teach; theorize how restructuring seminar roles and responsibilities creates a productive space for activating agency; and analyze the affordances, challenges and periodic resistance we have faced as a result of taking a more democratic approach to a required course.

Grounding Framework. This project is framed in democratic pedagogy (Apple & Bean, 2007; Payne, 2018; Zeichner, Payne & Brayko, 2015) and critical reflection in teacher education (Kemmis, 2011; Liston & Zeichner, 2013; Wood, 1991), and draws from practitioner and participatory research methodologies (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Fine, 2017) that emphasize teacher knowledge, collaborative inquiry, and shared decision-making.

Methods and Data. Planning notes and seminar agendas, feedback from preservice teachers and seminar guests, anonymous course evaluations, instructor memos, and comments shared at public portfolio presentations were analyzed for this study, and findings focus on how elevating preservice teachers’ role in seminars informs professional identity development and coheres with or runs counter to how they are positioned in other course settings.

Findings. When the preservice teachers proposed taking the lead in facilitating seminars, they turned what had been an instructor-driven course into a space for developing professional agency. A new way of working took hold; each semester, returning members mentored new participants in collaboratively setting norms, designing seminar agendas, and co-facilitating discussions on group-identified topics that included integrating Hmong language and culture into curriculum, mindfulness practice in schools, the school-to-prison pipeline, LBGTQ student advocacy, and managing work-life balance. We have evidence that reconfiguring seminars in this way has positively heightened their meaning and significance for participants. It also provided a way to connect what preservice teachers are learning about themselves with what they are learning in methods classes about positioning young children as intellectually capable.

Significance. This project highlights the importance of positioning our students—our pre-service teachers, not just our k-12 students—as capable and agentive in their learning, while demonstrating strategies for doing so.

Author

• Mary Klehr, Madison Metropolitan School District