Interrogating How Teacher Educators Make Sense of and Enact a Program's Equity Commitment

• In Event: Making Teacher Education a Site for Transformation by Empowering Teacher Educators

Abstract

Purpose. With the premise that teacher education should be a lever for social transformation, this study explores university-based teacher educators’ (TEs) understanding of and activities for preparing preservice K-12 teachers to teach for equity and social justice. Two research questions are:
How do university-based TEs make sense of the goal of preparing preservice teachers (PT) to teach for equity and social justice?
What pedagogical activities do they intentionally employ to support PTs’ learning to teach for equity and social justice and why?

Perspective(s). Grounded in the perspective of teacher preparation as a sociopolitical practice (Sleeter, 2016, 2017), we attend to how race and power significantly shape the process of creating PSTs’ learning contexts. Additionally, taking inquiry as a stance (Cochran-Smith, 2003), this study focuses on understanding deeply and critically about the various discourses and pedagogical activities utilized by TEs. We deliberately focus on problematizing, challenging, and problem-posing about settled structures, activities, discourses and practices of teacher education.

Methods. This study employs a self-study approach where “teacher educators researching their practice with the purpose of improving it, making explicit and validating their professional expertise and, at the same time, contributing to the knowledge base of teacher education” (Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015).

Data sources and analysis. Data include interview transcripts, teaching artifacts (course syllabus, signature equity assignment, student work samples) and observation field notes collected from 17 participating TEs in one university-based program. Guided by the framework, the multiple sources of data were analyzed by three researchers for 13 months. Through open and closed coding, TEs’ interpretations about the program’s equity commitment (RQ1) were analyzed focusing on: increasing critical consciousness of self and of systemic issues, pedagogical repertoires for equitable instruction, and agency. TEs’ signature pedagogical activities were identified and further analyzed focusing on its affordances (RQ2).

Findings. More than half of TEs interpreted the equity goal as developing PTs’ multiple capacities, such as critical consciousness about systemic issues or critical teaching practices. About half of TEs interpreted the goal focusing mostly on increasing PTs’ repertoires of equitable practices (see Table 1 and figure 1). There were only a few TEs who noted critical consciousness of self while critically reflecting his/her own identities. Most signature activities noted by the TEs were intended to expand candidates’ teaching repertoires (i.e., “teach how to”); There were a few activities designed to develop PSTs’ critical consciousness of systemic issues. The in-depth analysis of TEs’ discourses and pedagogical activities revealed the intersections of TEs’ racial and gender identities, status, power and privilege associated with their roles in the program (e.g., full time vs. part time faculty, directors, course instructors) as well as their membership (e.g., participating year-long equity workgroup activities). We present three cases to illustrate the intersections and its meanings in contexts.

Scholarly significance of the study. This study calls for better supporting TEs’ collective sense-making about a program’s equity and justice-centered commitment, coupled with expansion of critical pedagogy, in order for teacher education to become a lever for social transformation.

Authors

• Hosun Kang, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Jiwon Lee, University of California - Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ella Rose, University of California - Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author