Designing Hybrid Spaces for the Development of Community Teachers

• In Event: Using Third Space in Teacher Education Design

Abstract

We believe that in order to prepare teachers for urban teaching, teacher education programs need to collaborate with community and school stakeholders to prepare community teachers (Murrell, 2001). In our proposed paper, we will present the findings from a longitudinal study of a programmatic strand in a College of Education in the Northwest. The “Community, Family and Politics (CFP) strand” is designed to foster this collaboration by bringing families and community-based educators into University courses as well as bringing teacher educators and teacher candidates into neighborhoods and communities. The design of this strand has been influenced by research on the development of hybrid spaces in education (Zeichner, 2010; Zeichner & Payne, 2013).
We examine the following questions: How does the CFP, as a hybrid space, contribute to teacher candidates’ conceptions and experiences related to being community teachers? How do other stakeholders see their work in relation to the development of these conceptions and experiences?

Perspectives
Our work is framed by ideas that address urban schools and their communities, funds of knowledge, and how meaningful engagement by families and communities can make important contributions to students’ success in school (e.g. Warren, 2005; Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Epstein, 2001).

Methods
We undertook this research utilizing a case study approach, which allows for the “search for meaning and understanding… and the end product [is] richly descriptive” (p. 39) (Merriam, 2009). We also employed focus groups, study of artifacts, and lesson observation. To analyze the data, we used Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to make sense and theorize how teacher candidates engage and learn from CFP (Engestrom, 2001).

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
The proposed paper describes analyses from our ongoing longitudinal project, which currently includes data from 58 surveys, over 100 written reflections, 34 CFP-related capstone projects, three semi-structured focus group interviews of teacher candidates and university supervisors, and four case studies.

Substantiated conclusions
Findings from our ongoing analysis illustrate how the CFP strand, designed as a hybrid space, can facilitate collaboration between teacher candidates and university supervisors, include the teachings of community-based educators, and build reciprocal connections between teacher candidates and communities. Our continuing analysis seeks a better understanding of how the CFP strand contributes to these findings.

Scholarly significance of the work
This proposed paper demonstrates how a hybrid space in a teacher education program attempts to forge deep and meaningful ties between the university and the expertise of partner school personnel and community-based educators around issues related to communities, families, and political contexts. We argue that such work is significant to the growing body of literature about community and family engagement in schools and in educational policy-formation because it foregrounds the potentially important role of the design of teacher education to prepare teachers who contribute positively to urban schools and neighborhoods.

Authors

• Michael Bowman, University of Washington

• Lorena Guillen, University of Washington

• Kate Napolitan, University of Washington - Seattle