Agency, Responsiveness, and Reimagining in Teacher Preparation

• In Event: Teachers as Policy Experts, Agents, Activists, and Advocates

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose: The objective of this project was to analyze teacher candidates’ self-reflective processes for understanding complex educational policy issues at their field placement sites.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework: Teacher candidates engaged in preliminary fieldwork are in a constant state of tension in their understanding of educational policies (Clarke, et al., 2014). When faced with real-life teaching scenarios, teacher candidates deepen their understanding of their own roles as policy agents, creating new responses that in some ways reimagine the policies set forth (Eddy-Spicer, 2019). As individuals who are the cusp of theoretical understanding and real-world application, tracing this particular group of educators’ development in understanding, responding, and reimagining of policies is critically important (Harlin, et al., 2002).

Using a critical policy analysis framework (Ball, 1993; Diem et al., 2014), we explore the ways that teacher candidates deepen their understanding of educational policies through focusing on the evolution of their ideas while placed in a fieldwork setting. Critical policy analysis brings light to the inconsistencies in what policy says versus what agents of policy do; our analysis of teacher candidates’ evolution exists in this nexus.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry: In this qualitative inquiry, we investigated findings from a policy workshop in spring of 2022. Teacher candidates in a dual certification (general and special education) elementary cohort participated in a two-part series of 2-hour long workshops. During the first workshop, participants gained an understanding of policy and their potential role as policy agents in their classroom contexts. Teacher candidates drafted an action plan based on a policy issue they deemed pressing. During the second workshop, participants shared the information they gathered on their action plans and shared their reflections on what they had learned.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials: We collected teacher candidates’ action plans from the policy workshop, and we engaged in a thematic analysis of the 28 total action plans.

Results: Participants gained an understanding of the tenets of policy, their role as a policy agents, and they addressed a personal case study from their practicum placement site. They drafted action plans for addressing these issues of interest, which included building networks towards collective action. Teacher candidates in this project often approached their policy reflections with a sense of rigidity and a tendency to want to utilize stated policies as written. As they progressed through the policy workshop series and gathered information from their field sites, such as interviewing practicing teachers or conducting observations of student behaviors, they acknowledged nuanced perspectives on the issues they had raised (Hawkins & James, 2018). Participants tended toward a more responsive approach to policy development, one that foregrounded the needs and capacities of learners. Teacher candidates showed a greater ability to contextualize their policy choices and recognize the “trade off” inherent in classroom policy decisions.

Scholarly significance: The significance is that there is both the need for fieldwork experience and the need to be able to reflect on what they are learning through mediated experiences (Zeichner, 2010; Zeichner & Bier, 2018).

Authors

• Molly Garner Carroll, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Kate Roberts, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author