Community-Engaged Teacher Preparation: Understanding Impact on Practice

• In Event: Teacher Education for Agency, Leadership, and Activism

Abstract

Using qualitative case study methods, this study observed graduates from a community-based preparation program as classroom teachers in order to examine (a) their dispositions toward culturally responsive teaching and social justice, (b) the extent to which they enacted culturally responsive teaching in their classrooms, and (c) how they collaborated with families whose children are in their classrooms. This study used activity theory and utilized interviews and classroom observations. The findings in this study indicate that teachers who came from a community-based preparation program enacted practices that were culturally responsive and certain teachers in this study enacted these practices at a higher level when they were situated at schools that promoted their enactment of such practices.

Authors

• Jacob Elmore, University of Virginia

• Eva M. Zygmunt, Ball State University

• Kristin Cipollone, Ball State University