Partial Knowledge in Early Field Experiences: Cultivating Anti-Oppressive Tools for Seeing and Learning From Children

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Perspectives in Clinical Teacher Education (Table 9)

Abstract

This qualitative study leverages sociocultural and queer theories of learning to explore how undergraduate, preservice teacher candidates (TCs) in early field experiences make sense of their partial knowledge (Haraway, 1988; Kumashiro, 2001) as emerging equity- and justice-centered teachers. We report what happens when TCs face the question: What don’t you know about the children in your classroom, and what might you never be able to know? Findings suggest TCs learned to grapple with partial knowledge in uncomfortable yet nuanced ways that began to resist easy, institutional assumptions about children. Our study offers insight into how partial knowledge might be leveraged to mediate early field experiences by providing anti-oppressive tools for preparing TCs to see and learn from children in classrooms.

Authors

• Devon Hedrick-Shaw, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Jamy Stillman, University of Colorado - Boulder