Professional Learning for Teacher Educators Toward Transformative Teaching and Learning

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

Abstract

Purpose. This study explores one teacher education program’s efforts to instantiate a set of Guiding Commitments centering transformative teaching and learning. Professional learning was offered to teacher educators on a quarterly basis over three years to help them prepare candidates to teach for equity and social justice in K-12 educational settings. We ask:
In what ways did instructors understand and use the teacher education program’s Guiding Commitments (GCs)?
What features of Professional learning (PL) facilitated instructors’ engagement and development towards equitable and justice-oriented teaching?

Perspective(s). Teacher education programs across the country are articulating strong commitments to prepare new teachers for equitable practice. While there are promising examples, many programs struggle to create meaningful forms and markers of justice oriented preparation (Powell, Cantrell et al, 2016; Milner, 2012, 2020; Weiner 2000). Preparation can afford teacher candidates opportunities to reflectively shape their praxis, develop ideas about principled theories of learning, and cultural ways of knowing embedded in local community contexts (Nasir et. al., 2020; Gutierrez & Vossoughi, 2010) but key to this endeavor are teacher educators (Authors, 2021). Because studying one’s own practice can promote a type of learning in ways that traditional professional efforts cannot (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2004), we use a design-based research (DBR) approach to facilitate a self-study of the program’s PL for teacher educators, which is devoted to supporting equity and justice-oriented instruction.

Methods. Our study takes place over three year-long PL cycles. A cycle includes three sessions, followed by data collection and analysis (Reinking & Bradley, 2008) which was used to study and design evolving PL efforts (Cobb, Jackson & Dunlap, 2016).

Data sources and analysis. Data sources consist of quarterly PL meeting recordings, instructor surveys, meeting artifacts, instructor interviews, and course syllabi. Data was jointly coded, inductively and iteratively by a research team of three reviewers seeking thematic patterns across the data, while attuning to certain repeated key words or ideas across the data.

Findings. Our analysis suggests that instructors developed an increased sense of the program goals and philosophy by attending PL. This level of coherence led to greater understanding of the transformative teaching and learning the program aspires to. Instructors could identify aspects of the GCs that were most pertinent for their courses. By engaging with colleagues around their courses, they acquired a sense of communal validation–having something to contribute as well as to gain. However, instructors are still working towards considering the GCs from a subject matter lens and the classroom conditions also needed to facilitate them. They desire more interaction with peers to exchange teaching ideas regarding key activities and course design, more discipline-focused support, and time to work with their course materials.

Scholarly significance of the study. There are a number of design implications for program based PL: Instructors gain colleagueship and connectivity through PL participation, but yearn for compensated and differentiated configurations of individual and small group opportunities to reflect and design. PL needs to extend its reach beyond content alone and support instructors towards creating learning environments that embody justice oriented practice.

Authors

• Paula K. Hooper, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Kavita Kapadia Matsko, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author