Piloting the Learner Profile Tool to Support Learning Teaching as an Interpretive Process (L-TIP) (Poster 4)

• In Event: The Way Education Is Can't Be How You Teach: Learning Urban Teaching as Interpretative Process

Abstract

Purpose. In this poster presentation, we focus on the implementation of the Learner Profile tool in our early childhood teacher education program situated within an urban Midwestern College of Education. Implementation of the Learner Profile tool was intended to further ground our teacher education program in the Learning Teaching as an Interpretive Process (L-TIP) framework (Hollins, 2015). We embarked on this work with an understanding that knowing the learner is prerequisite to effective teaching. We also acknowledge mainstream early childhood education discourses and practices reflect deficit perspectives of children and families that position families of color, bilingual families, and families who are experiencing poverty as culturally and educationally deficient (Souto-Manning & Rabadi-Raol, 2018) and these discourses are often reiterated through teacher education that relies on approximation of practice as modeled by a mentor teacher. L-TIP provides an assets-based framework for teaching that relies instead on a contextualized understanding of learners and one’s self.
Perspective. Within L-TIP, Reflective Interpretive Inquiry (RIQ) is a cyclical process used to develop ever-deeper understanding of the self, the context, and learners to continuously improve education outcomes through teaching cycles. To aid teacher candidates engaging in RIQ, we developed the Teacher Candidate Profile tool, a tool for better understanding one’s self as a teacher and a cultural being, and the Learner Profile tool, a tool for better understanding individual students through observation of students in multiple settings, interviews with learners, their families, and education professionals, and the collection of work samples and academic records (Hollins, 2015). Within the learner profiles, this data is organized into Learner’s Values and Interests, Learner’s Daily Concerns, Learner’s Life Experiences, and Learner’s Learning Experiences (Hollins, 2015).
Method. Through ethnographic content analysis, we examined twenty learner profiles completed by five teacher candidates over the course of three semesters.
Findings. Our findings suggest the Learner Profile Tool guided teacher candidates toward more nuanced ways of seeing learners through multiple perspectives and unique aspects of lived experiences rather than over-prescriptive developmental stages and categories. Still, we found that while the Learner Profile provided noteworthy affordances, it was highly mediated by the field placement context, teacher candidates’ own worldviews, and our own facilitation as teacher educators.
Significance. In this poster presentation, we share outlines of and prompts associated with the Teacher Candidate Profile tool and the Learner Profile tool. We also share a framework for understanding the ways in which teacher candidates’ use of any tool is mediated by teacher educators, teacher candidate worldviews, and field placement contexts. We explain how this manifested in teacher candidate-created learner profiles in our program. We conclude with implications for teacher educators who are interested in implementing the Learner Profile Tool and other tools for teacher education.

Authors

• Ekaterina Strekalova-Hughes, University of Missouri - Kansas City

• Rhianna K. Thomas, New Mexico State University

• Connor Warner, University of Utah