A place- and community-based approach to teacher preparation for English language learners education

• In Event: Elevating Refugee-Background Communities’ Ways of Knowing, Doing, Being, and Becoming: Canadian and U.S. Perspectives

Abstract

This study investigates how a place- and community-based approach to pre-service teacher education in a northeastern U.S. university influences teacher candidates in understanding local immigrant- and refugee-background communities as well as their language and literacy practices in order to create culturally and linguistically relevant teaching for English language learners. This approach provides pre-service teachers with opportunities to develop a sense of agency through place- and community-engaged pedagogy, positioning them as knowledge producers rather than mere recipients of knowledge (Author 6, 2016; Gruenewald, 2003a, 2003b; Smith & Sobel, 2010). Grounded in this approach, this descriptive case study explores the ways that preservice teachers engaged in observations and interviews with recent refugee arrivals in a low-income, multiethnic neighborhood with refugee backgrounds. The groups in this neighborhood are from Bhutanese, Burmese, Karen, and African backgrounds. This study intended to reveal the ways in which such place-based and community-engaged learning impacted the pre-service teachers’ perceptions on refugee arrivals’ family and community language and literacy practices. Data were collected from place- and community-based participant observations and interviews with pre-service teachers along with their course artifacts. The analysis of the data combined critical discourse analysis (Gee, 1996) and coding procedure (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). The analysis of pre-service teachers’ data was shared between Author 6 and her research assistant allowing for cross-checking. This study indicates that preservice teachers’ interactions with the refugee-background neighborhood led to significant insights, characterized as “aha-moments,” increased awareness, and imagined classroom design among pre-service teachers regarding teaching refugee-background students who are English language learners. This study recognizes that the place- and community-based approach to teacher preparation contributes to pre-service teachers’ critical awareness of English language learners from multilingual, multicultural refugee backgrounds. It, moreover, highlights evidence-based strategies that leverage local community-university partnerships to enhance reflective, empowering, and equitable teaching and learning experiences.

Aligning with the theme of the AERA 2025, this study is a part of holistic remedy and repair to allow us to better prepare teachers for English language learners. It also makes invisible refugee-background community/family language and literacy visible. This study offers implications for place-based teacher education and education practitioners on how to support culturally and linguistically diverse students from refugee backgrounds in U.S. schools.

Author

• Xia Chao, Duquesne University