Honoring Preparation, Resisting Prescription: Toward Just and Humanizing Teacher Education

• In Event: Honoring, Unforgetting, and Humanizing Teacher Preparation: Acknowledging Complexity in the Process

Abstract

As scripted literacy curricula become increasingly common in U.S. schools, preservice teachers (PSTs) must navigate tensions between justice-oriented preparation and rigid field expectations. This multiple case study explores how PSTs in two contrasting districts, a Mid-Atlantic urban district and a Southeastern rural district, experienced and responded to mandated curricula. Findings reveal that institutional context shaped how PSTs resisted, adapted, or reproduced scripts, with flexible mentorship fostering agency and rigid fidelity diminishing it. Across cases, PSTs described disconnects between coursework and fieldwork, calling for more explicit preparation to critically engage with curriculum. This study underscores the need to reimagine field experiences as spaces that support pedagogical agency, critical reflection, and the development of equitable, culturally sustaining teaching practices.

Authors

• Taylor Weber, University of Tennessee

• Emily Holtz, University of Tennessee

• Stephanie Michelle Moody, Towson University