Disrupting Evasion Pedagogies in Preservice Teacher Preparation

• In Event: Identifying and Disrupting Evasion Pedagogies

Abstract

Objectives: This study examines student learning in a teacher preparation course for secondary content pre-service teachers learning to work with multilingual students. In this course an anti-evasion pedagogy was instituted that sought to dismantle traditional hierarchies/power relations within the classroom through explicitly anti-oppressive and anti-evasive curriculum and instruction (e.g., Freire, 2018; Kimmerer, 2013; Love, 2019; Simpson, 2017). Through careful constructions of learner agency and a democratic learning community as well as ongoing engagements with inquiry, anti-evasion teaching and learning practices were co-constructed by the professor and pre-service teachers. Therefore, this study examines student learning artifacts to investigate the pedagogical perspectives and understandings pre-service teachers demonstrated through their course participation.

Perspectives: Evasion pedagogies (authors, under review), understood as proactively evading, through teaching and learning practices, opportunities to disrupt inequities and create equitable, humanizing, and democratic pedagogies, provided the conceptual lens for this study. Specifically, the context of this study was a space of anti-evasion pedagogy in practice and the learning examined by the teacher candidates focused on their pedagogical understandings and perspectives, particularly in relationship to evasion and anti-evasion pedagogies.

Method: This is a case study (Yin, 2014) of a pre-service teacher education course for secondary content teacher candidates called, “Teaching Multilingual Learners.” Data were collected from course engagement activities across one semester to answer the research question: How does engagement with anti-evasion pedagogies impact pre-service teacher understandings and perspectives regarding pedagogy?

Data Sources: 22 pre-service teachers consented to participate in this study allowing the use of data generated through course participation to be used for research purposes. The research team selected two major assignments to analyze for this study: a weekly inquiry assignment (across 11 weeks) and the final project for the course. Therefore, we analyzed 242 inquiry assignments and 22 final projects to uncover pre-service teacher understandings and perspectives regarding pedagogy while participating in an anti-evasion pedagogy themselves.

Results: Pre-service teachers documented shifting understandings and perspectives of pedagogies towards anti-evasive pedagogies. However, due to the explicitly pluralist nature of expected engagement and outcomes in the course, these shifts varied and were situated in multiple worldviews, social identities, and life experiences. Overall, pre-service teachers who experienced a teacher preparation course through an anti-evasion pedagogy moved towards embracing such a pedagogy for their own practice, yet, likely still need substantial opportunities and supports to turn their developing pedagogical ideals into their actual pedagogical practices. Further, complex and varied pedagogical understandings and perspectives were revealed that emphasize the value of pluralism in anti-evasion and anti-oppressive pedagogical work.

Scholarly Significance: This study illustrates the kinds of understandings teacher candidates can develop in a short semester through engaging themselves in anti-evasion pedagogies, thus suggesting the possibility of more expansive, grounded supports for pre-service teachers to develop anti-evasion and anti-oppressive pedagogies from the start. Through the implementation of anti-evasion pedagogies in teacher preparation learning spaces, new pedagogical possibilities for future students and teachers are generated.

Authors

• Kara Mitchell Viesca, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Peiwen Wang, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Brandon Heinz, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Alexa Yunes, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Kathryn J. Strom, California State University - East Bay