Learning from Community Members: Preservice Teachers’ Progression Towards Recognizing and Repairing Inequitable Education Experiences

• In Event: Preparation for Equitable Family and Community Engagement That Leads to Culturally Responsive/Sustaining Pedagogy

Abstract

Objectives & Theoretical Perspectives  
Preservice teachers tend to approach family engagement with a “one size fits all” approach (Authors, 2019). To dismantle this dehumanizing approach, preservice teachers need to develop a community teacher mindset (Murrell, 2001). Murrell (2001) defined community teachers as “possess[ing] contextualized knowledge of the culture, community, and identity of the children and families he or she serves and draw[ing] on this knowledge to create the core teaching practices necessary for effectiveness in diverse settings” (p. 52). One approach for developing deep knowledge of communities, families, and students is for preservice teachers to engage in community-developed orientations (Scaife & Zygmunt, 2024). This study examines how preservice teachers integrate learning from community-developed orientations into coursework. Our research question is: How does participation in a community-developed orientation shape preservice teachers' learning in teacher preparation coursework and fieldwork?
Methods & Data Sources
This case study (Yin, 2018) centers the learning experiences of seven elementary education preservice teachers. During Fall 2023, these preservice teachers were enrolled in a community-embedded coursework experience. The preservice teachers participated in a multi-session community-developed orientation during their initial days within the community. Data collection included the course artifacts (i.e., reflections, homework assignments, lesson plans), materials from the community-developed orientation, and reflective field notes. We employed inductive analysis to identify emerging themes related to the community teacher framework (Murrell, 2001). We then drew on the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement’s Family Engagement Core Competencies (2022) to deductively code the data. We engaged in a recursive process between our inductive and deductive approaches to capture the themes embedded in the data and maximize the trustworthiness of our analysis.
Results
Our findings reveal the community-developed orientation served as a critical invitation, prompting preservice teachers to (re)consider their positions and roles as educators within the context of the community. The community's emphasis on embracing its legacy in education emerged as a main takeaway for preservice teachers, as it provided them with stories and specific perspectives on understanding students and their communities. Preservice teachers engaged in reflective dialogues about their classroom and community experiences, which led them to examine the school curriculum and instruction. They became aware of how these elements and other systemic practices affect students and the community. However, they often leaned towards institutional systems and norms, sometimes without recognizing the harm of perpetuating structural racism and power imbalances.
Significance
The findings of this study reveal how community-developed orientations can serve as sustainable and innovative approaches for supporting preservice teachers’ development of critical consciousness and culturally sustaining instruction. Specifically, learning from community members can deepen and complicate preservice teachers’ understandings of curriculum design and practice, their own cultural identities, and the histories that shaped the community and its’ children. Through community-oriented teacher education preparation experiences, such as integrated community orientation sessions, preservice teachers can learn to recognize the structural oppressions and exclusions shaping educational systems and repair inequitable education.

Authors

• Marliese Peltier, Ball State University

• Younkyung Hong, Ball State University

• Angela J Stefanski, Ball State University