Recursive, Relational, and Reflexive: Deeper Learning Pedagogies

• In Event: Preparing Exemplary Teachers and Leaders for Every Child: Building a Network of Institutions to Inspire a National Movement

Abstract

At one member institution, which is a private, mid-sized university in the Southeast, deeper learning pedagogies are supported through the use of various structures, tools, and practices, most prominently in the form of year-long residencies, live-actor, simulated encounters, and video club (Authors, 2017). The specific design of each support and their dependence on each other in pursuit of deeper learning offers a valuable perspective on what it takes to insure widespread, consistently well-prepared teachers for US schools. This institution poses the question: “How can structures, tools, and practices in educator preparation work in concert with one another in order to support deeper learning pedagogies?”, with particular emphasis on equity orientations. Their work responds by positing that such pedagogies must be supported in ways that are recursive, relational, and reflective.
Recursive: Residencies, simulated encounters, and video clubs are introduced and sustained throughout the program, rather than one-time isolated events. TCs thus come to see each of these as supports for being a teacher rather than simply for becoming one. Relational: The supports all focus on teachers in relation to others – their students, families and communities, other teachers, school or district policies. Teachers come to see the primary concern not as teaching what, but teaching who and how. Reflexive: These supports ultimately use teachers themselves and teaching as a site for learning, transforming how they see students, schools, and their own identity as a teacher.
In addition to these characteristics, the three supports described here work in concert with each other to support TCs’ growth. TCs participate in live-actor, simulated encounters early in the program to develop the mindsets and dispositions necessary to learn from structured analysis and reflection in a bounded scenario. This influences the work that happens in video club where analysis and reflection is further structured but the scenario is from field placements, where they analyze their teaching and the interaction between their content knowledge and knowledge of students, leading to important reflections around equitable and inclusive instruction. When TCs reach their full-year residency, they are thus better prepared to enter the classroom with a strong equity orientation and student focus while recognizing the residency as a site for further learning, rather than an application of learning up to that point.
These practices offer insights to the three discussion questions framing the symposium. For example, both the video club work and simulated encounters provide a chance to consider what it takes for deeper learning pedagogies to be taken up across programs, courses, and disciplines within a single institution, while continuing to provide faculty with considerable autonomy. The residencies and simulated encounters provide a glimpse at how local knowledge, from partner teachers, school and district administration, community organizations, and the TCs themselves, can improve these pedagogies.

Authors

• Elizabeth Anne Self, Vanderbilt University

• Heather J. Johnson, Vanderbilt University