Beyond Binaries

• In Event: Exploring Pedagogical Possibilities at the Intersections of Justice and Practice-Based Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives
There is a debate in the field about how teacher education can equip novices, dispositionally and practically to teach in ways that resist the inequities imposed by legacies of White supremacy, settler colonialism, and capitalism in American education. Various dichotomies in perspective have divided the field suggesting that practice-based and asset-based perspectives are incompatible. Some of these relate to forming teachers’ professional identity and judgment and the use of shared language. For example, does employing shared language around teaching practice professionalize or dehumanize (Horn & Kane, 2020)? The purpose of this conceptual analysis is to “trouble binaries” (Dutro & Cartun, 2016) in justice and practice-based orientations within teacher education to surface synergies across these perspectives to invite a discourse that enable greater opportunities to strengthen the perspectival and pedagogical readiness of equity-oriented novice teachers.

Theoretical Frameworks
Asset-based and practice-based teacher education literature serve as the foundational frames for this analysis. Asset-based teacher education literature explores ways that teacher preparation prepares novices to navigate the social complexities that inform the dynamics of classrooms, schools, and teaching to enable teachers to disrupt marginalizing constructs that prohibit favorable educational outcomes (Carter Andrews et al., 2019; Souto-Manning, 2019b). Recognizing that teacher education programs prepare many people with varying characteristics, practice-based teacher education focuses on training teachers to develop the competencies associated with the “work of teaching” (Ball & Forzani, 2009, 2011).

Modes of inquiry
This is a conceptual paper that articulates opportunities for synthesis across asset-based and practice-based teacher education. I sampled seminal texts on practice-based teacher education (e.g., Ball & Cohen, 1999; Ball & Forzani, 2011; Grossman, Compton, et al., 2009; Grossman & McDonald, 2008) as well as on justice-oriented approaches I also cite critical scholars who have positioned themselves in opposition to practice based approaches (e.g., Anderson, 2019; Carter Andrews et al., 2019; Daniels & Varghese, 2019; Philip, 2019; Philip et al., 2019). I conducted an analysis to surface points of convergence as well as tension within the literature.

Point of View
My analysis suggests that while there are continued opportunities to deconstruct points of tension, there are opportunities for synthesis across perspectives. For example, employing justice and practice frameworks within single investigations that analyze the integration of justice matters within teacher educators’ use of pedagogies of enactment (e.g., Kavanagh and Danielson, 2019). Scholars may further examine the ways in which language for the profession is constructed, with particular consideration for who are the owners of the language. Further scholars may consider how pedagogies that strengthen novices’ opportunities to make in-the-moment decisions might balance predictable classroom patterns with responsive understandings of classroom contexts.

Scholarly Significance of the Work
Historically, teacher education has struggled to hold twin ideologies as partners without transitioning them into opposing binaries (Grossman, Hammerness, et al., 2009). Will justice-oriented and practice-based be the next necessary duality of teacher education to fall into a divisive paradigm? Identifying ways for scholars of justice-oriented teaching and scholars of practice-based teacher education to collaborate is imperative to equip novices to deliver rigorous instruction in justice-oriented ways.

Author

• Chenelle Boatswain, University of Pennsylvania