Translating Teaching Across Urban and Rural Contexts With Epistemic Practices

• In Event: The Way Education Is Can't Be How You Teach: Learning Urban Teaching as Interpretative Process

Abstract

Purpose This poster discusses an exploratory qualitative self-study of the redesign of early and mid-level field experience coursework across urban and rural schooling settings by integrating epistemic practices, or assignments that highlight the, “discursive processes, reasoning, and actions taken in interpreting and translating the experiences and responses of learners in authentic situations” related to the “relationship between learners, learning, pedagogy, and learning outcomes” (Hollins, 2011, p. 403).
Perspective Hollins (2011; 2015) highlights focused inquiry and directed observations within her framework where focused inquiry is “an investigation into particular phenomena that influence the processes and conditions for learning within and outside of classrooms” and directed observations are guided, authentic investigations of the phenomenon in action—typically within a learning or schooling setting. During these practices, pre-service educators take on a variety of social and theoretical perspectives and philosophical positions resulting in deeper understandings of how student learning is constructed, determined, and made sense of in multiple ways (Hollins, 2011). Thus, this research sought to understand the theoretical and philosophical perspectives taken up by preservice educators and how epistemic practices facilitated the interpretive process.
Methods This poster will display the results of content analysis of multiple data sources that feature the use of epistemic practices at one private, Southeastern urban and rural-serving university (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 1998). In the College of Education (COE), the educator preparation programs enroll 764 pre-service educators seeking early childhood through high school initial teaching certifications in residential undergraduate, blended, and online Masters of Arts in Teaching programs. Designing field experiences that are coherent yet adaptable for the contexts where pre-service educators are completing field based components or are already teaching is complex work. This challenge is further nuanced by shifting requirements for certification at the state level surrounding the implementation of the edTPA performance based portfolio assessment in 2015, revised implementation rules in 2018 which forced the immediate creation of new field experience courses, and again in 2020 when the assessment was removed as a state licensure requirement.
In Mercer field experience coursework, this redesign resulted in nine assignments that translate epistemic practices into assignments used across all programs and certification areas. These assignments range from a critical incident analysis related to classroom climate to guided observations of differentiated instruction to teaching dilemmas related to ethics of the profession.
Findings The findings center on program coherence. Specifically, how the introduction of field experience assignments aligned with Hollins’ epistemic practices was an opportunity for faculty to experience the L-TIP theoretical framework in action. After taking the assignments through the teaching cycle to improve their efficacy and relevance for diverse contexts, personal experiences with L-TIP increased program consistency and connectedness to the program’s existing theoretical framework. Thus, the findings suggest L-TIP’s ability to complement and extend existing SOE frameworks to adapt for diverse schooling contexts in culture centered ways.
Significance This study strengthens the trustworthiness of L-TIP and offers internal consistency measures for diverse teacher preparation contexts that foreground diverse learners, schools, and communities within assignment design and assessment (Hollins, 2011).

Authors

• Leah Panther, Mercer University

• Michelle Vaughn, Mercer University

• Dr. Felicia Baiden, Mercer University