Learning to Improve: An Investigation Into Teacher Education Design to Advance Social and Racial Justice

• In Event: Investigating the Promise of Network Improvement Communities to Improve Teacher Preparation Research and Practice

Abstract

Objectives

A central goal for teacher preparation includes preparing candidates to think critically about and enact equitable opportunities to students (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015). Serving as a hub for a network improvement community (NIC) for the continuous improvement of teacher education (TE), we aimed to investigate how TE programs equip teacher candidates with the knowledge, dispositions, and practices to advance racial and social justice in their classrooms. This study acts as the first stage in the improvement cycle to understand: 1) how teacher educators define and prioritize social/racial justice at the program level; and 2) how programs are designed to promote social/racial justice.

Theoretical Framework

Guiding this inquiry, we draw on research on critical consciousness, culturally responsive teaching, and community-based teacher preparation to investigate how programs are organized to prepare candidates to advance racial and social justice in their instruction and pedagogy (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015; Ladson-Billings, 2014; Sleeter, 2017). We also situate this work in relation to literature that seeks to specify program design and coherence among various contexts of teacher education (e.g. Grossman & McDonald, 2008; Zeichner, 2016), to interrogate the alignment of teacher educators’ visions with the practices for advancing racial and social justice within and across teacher preparation programs.

Methods & Data Sources

We use improvement science methodology (Bryk et al, 2015) to investigate the design of three university TE programs in California that share the goal of advancing racial/social justice. We conducted 28 semi-structured interviews with teacher educators and directors across programs. Questions targeted programmatic and individual social/racial justice values and practices. We used axial and open coding methods, with concurrent analytic memos, to identify themes - and similarities and differences among those themes - to document how programs advance racial and social justice in their structure and pedagogical practices (Saldana, 2021).

Results

Preliminary findings provide insight into program design for advancing racial and social justice. All programs defined advancing racial/social justice from the lens of equitable access and opportunities. However, two programs centered social institutions as sites that perpetuate power hierarchies and racial oppression that have consequences for students’ learning. Additionally, all programs positioned candidates to critically reflect on their practices, interrogate personal biases, and challenge deficit mindsets. However, programs varied in the core practices they promoted for candidates to enact racial/social justice in their classroom and the length of time and depth they allocated to support candidates’ learning to disrupt systems of inequality in their instruction. Finally, all three programs used changes in teacher candidates’ perceptions of learners as indicators of successfully advancing this aim. However, program instructors had different approaches to preparing candidates for advancing racial justice that have consequences for how they define success in instructional practice.

Scholarly Significance

This study contributes to the limited knowledge-base on teacher educator practice and pedagogies for teacher preparation. It also has implications for using improvement science methodology to gain insight into program design and practices that are often invisible in current models of the form and structure of teacher preparation.

Authors

• Stephen R Skoropad, University of California - Irvine

• Dana Marie Conlin, University of California - Irvine

• Elizabeth A. van Es, University of California - Irvine

• Carlos Sandoval, WestEd