Sankofa: The Historical Roots of and the Routes to Community-Based Practicum Experiences

• In Event: 61.061 - Communities as Central Places of Preservice Teacher Learning

Abstract

If institutions purpose to restructure (teacher) education as a meaningful response to the question of how best to prepare teacher education candidates for the challenges and promises they will face in today’s classrooms, schools and communities, then the curriculum of teacher education programs must be radically altered to do so. How might preservice teacher education clinical placements be (re)designed to honor the historic and contemporary role of community as a critical and central site of pedagogical knowledge? Moving beyond garnering the input of communities served by teacher education programs (as often is the case with most research) is possible if communities, and community based organizations, are engaged as educators of those seeking to be teachers.

Situated in a graduate level teacher education program in a public Research I university in the Southeast, this paper explores the challenges and possibilities of designing community-based practica experiences. The author draws upon the three years of data to respond to explore how preservice teacher education clinical placements can be (re)designed to honor the historic and contemporary role of community as a critical and central site of pedagogical knowledge. An Equity and Community Engagement course was developed for secondary education teacher candidates across content areas with the dual aims of (1) deepening their knowledge of equity in practice by their working with diverse students in non-classroom based learning contexts and (2) learning from and with community organizations as partners in their growth as teachers (Richmond, 2017; Zeichner, Bowman, Guillen, & Napolitan,2016; Zeichner, Payne, & Brayko, 2015).

In this paper, the author first explores historical curricula routes and roots of community based practicum experiences as foundation for contemporary efforts to do so (Grant, Brown & Brown, 2015; Mizell, 2010; Perry, Steele & Hilliard, 2003; Shujaa, 1993; Anderson, 1988) is conceptualized. By framing the current research on community based practicum experiences within the historical roots of black education opens an important route for teacher educators to support authentic relationship building for preservice teachers and the communities they serve in schools. Making explicit the interdisciplinary connections between curriculum studies, teacher education and social foundations strengthens our work as teacher educators and meaningfully responds to the larger community movement to insist community be central to teacher education (e.g. recruitment and retention diverse teacher corps, robust relationships between school-community-university partnerships grounded in equity and justice).

Findings address the curricular challenges and opportunities for situating teacher education in community-based settings.

Author

• Daniella Ann Cook, University of South Carolina - Columbia