From the Margins of the Classroom to Mattering: How Community College Education Students Develop Teacher Identities

• In Event: Putting "Community" Back Into Urban Education: Lessons From Community College Service-Learning and Practicum Experiences

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the early practicum experience can impact how students in a teacher education program at an urban community college develop their future teacher identities. Research shows that pre-service teachers begin with an idealized teacher identity based on a fantasy view of the field (Pillen et al., 2013). As students encounter conflicts related to the profession, they move towards a more reality-based understanding of teaching. Our quasi-experimental change to fieldwork consisted of placing students in a racially and socio-economically diverse public school where they would complete an action research assignment that consisted of writing mini-grants to propose and make changes to their cooperating classroom.

This work is significant because of well-documented teacher shortages in large urban areas throughout the United States (Shutcher et al., 2016). Recruiting and retaining culturally competent and diverse teachers is even more challenging (Coleman & Dilworth, 2014). Furthermore, research on the development of pre-service teachers has exclusively focused on teachers nearing certification, enrolled in bachelor’s degree or master’s degree programs (Welsh & Schaffer, 2017). Education departments within community colleges provide a large pool of potential teachers largely from socio-economic and cultural backgrounds that are underrepresented within the teaching profession. This work is unique in that it explores pre-service teacher identity development in the early part of the post-secondary education after which many students do not persist in completing their teaching degree.

We use sociocultural theory as a framework, which considers learning to be inseparable from the identities of learners engaged in meaningful social activity. Especially relevant to the present study is the concept of learning as participation in communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991). According to this view, novice learners develop skills and knowledge through supported participation in the central tasks and practices valued by their community. We hypothesized that by participating in classroom communities where they would have a central role while working with teachers and children who shared their backgrounds the students who are predominantly women of color from low-income backgrounds, would develop a future teacher identity. To test this theory, we designed a semester where half of the students followed the traditional practicum placement and course-work and the other half participated in the multicultural service learning, action research-infused practicum experience. This was done over three years with n=90 participants.

Using data generated by students, professors, and cooperating teachers (CT), we found themes that emerged consistently across various contexts. Elements of future teacher identity were discovered for all students, however the experimental group showed significantly more growth in critical self-reflection, understanding complex concepts of teaching and learning, and classroom realities. The socio-cultural fieldwork context, as well as the more central role of the student intern in the experimental cohort, fostered the development of a future-teacher identity. We present a theoretical model of how belonging and mattering were highlighted in the experimental fieldwork and thus fostered professional identity development.

Authors

• Rebecca Garte, Borough of Manhattan Community College

• Cara Kronen, Borough of Manhattan Community College