Why Place Matters in Teacher Education for Rural Multilingual Students

• In Event: Rethinking Inclusivity, Equity, and Diversity for Rural Multilingual Learners

Abstract

Teachers have a profound effect on student learning and their social and emotional development. Research has shown that teachers are the most important in-school factor affecting language minoritized student learning (Calderón et al., 2011), yet language minoritized students receive instruction from teachers with significantly less experience on average (Samson & Lesaux, 2015). One glaring consideration in teacher education for language minoritized students (here, multilingual learners, ML) is the role of place. Teacher education assumes an urban-normativity in its conceptualization, implementation, and evaluation. This geospatial blindness characterizes educational policies and practices, which fail to consider how place shapes education (Roberts & Green, 2013, p. 765). Scholars of rural education (e.g., Brenner, 2016) continue to illuminate why place matters and its role in teaching and learning. The paper addresses the questions: what are the impacts of a place-based rural teacher education program on the education of rural multilingual students?
This paper uses a theoretical framework of spatial injustice (Soja, 2009) and place-conscious education (Greenwood, 2019; Gruenewald, 2003). Soja defines spatial injustice as “an intentional and focused emphasis on the spatial or geographical aspects of justice and injustice… this involves the fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and the opportunities to use them” (p. 2). Soja argues that the spatial shapes the social and vice versa. Place consciousness, according to Greenwood (2019), is a “way of being and knowing” where educators become “more deeply reflective about their own ontological experience” (p. 363). Thus, we see the work of educators of ML students as social and relational (Author, 2020), where place takes a central role in teacher and student learning.
Data were collected over a five-year period with 22 rural educators (teachers, leaders, and school counselors) and include qualitative (archival data from coursework; observations and field notes; focus groups; photographs) and quantitative (satisfaction surveys; and ML student achievement) data. Data were coded and axial-coded by six team members using NVivo R.1 to organize and share. Weekly team meetings were held to identify categories and emerging themes.
Findings show how place shaped participants’ experiences and decisions surrounding their ML students’ learning. However, this was informed by participants’ evolving consciousness surrounding the place – their own, their school, their students. We show educators how reflected on their work and challenged colonizing practices and argue that the soul work of educators enabled them to reimagine (reinhabit) educational programs for MLs with implications for student learning. Finally, we propose a place-based model of rural teacher-leader education for MLs that emerged from the data.

Authors

• Nidza Marichal, University of Florida
  Presenting Author

• Paula Golombek, University of Florida
  Presenting Author

• Maria R. Coady, North Carolina State University
  Presenting Author