Imagining “Urban” Students: Practice-Based Opportunities to Influence Preservice Teachers’ Mindsets

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: (Re)imagining Growth and Equity in Preservice Teaching (Table 23)

Abstract

Practice-based teacher education research has primarily focused on teacher educators’ influence upon candidates’ thinking about instruction, but that thinking is inseparable from candidates’ imagination of students. This case study builds on longstanding concerns about deficit mindsets amongst white and novice teachers to ask how teacher educators’ uses of practice inform candidates’ perceptions of urban students. Observing six teacher educators at three institutions that represent a spectrum of views about practice, I found that teacher educators exercised substantial control over the discourse during episodes of practice. They frequently emphasized urban students’ capacity as thinkers, but rarely highlighted students’ funds of knowledge or addressed students’ subjectivity. These findings suggest both opportunities and potential pitfalls in the use of pedagogies of practice.

Author

• Lightning Jay, Binghamton University - SUNY