More Than Formalized Structures: Towards Shared Understanding and a Comprehensive Mission of Promoting Social Justice in Professional Development Schools

• In Event: Advancing School-University Partnerships and Professional Development Schools Through National Research

Abstract

Professional Development School (PDSs) partnerships have a legacy of viewing education as a moral endeavor that ensure all learners have equitable access to knowledge; sustain democracy; work towards addressing injustices by eliminating class and social barriers; and support simultaneous renewal and parity of all partners (Goodlad, 1994; Holmes Group, 1990; National Network of Educational Renewal [NNER], 1990). There is a need to more thoroughly understand the types of learning and possibilities that occur in large complex systems like PDSs, which are dialectically influencing and influenced by social, historical, political and cultural practices, PDS partnerships. Thus, this study empirically and systematically studies a transformation within a PDS partnership to center social justice. Informed by Sociocultural Theory (SCT) and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) (Vygotsky, 1978, 1986; Leont’ev, 1978, 1981; Engeström, 2015), this study examines the ways in which the PDS activity system mediates teacher candidates’ development of socially just teaching. Findings revealed constraints on the teacher candidates’ development as socially just teachers: a lack of shared understanding of social justice and the separation of social justice from other learning goals. Implications speak to the powerful role that practitioner inquiry can have when coupled with social justice, and the fruitfulness of Cultural Historical Activity Theory as both a research methodology and a theoretical and analytical framework to theorize the structures and complex webs of interaction in PDS partnerships.

Author

• Megan E. Lynch, Boise State University