Cross-Cultural Student Teaching: Examining the Meaning-Making of One Female, White, Middle-Class Preservice Teacher

• In Event: 46.087 - Poster Session 8
  In Poster Session: 46.087-1 - Division K Section 6 Poster Session. Field Experiences: Student Teaching, Supervision, School/Community Collaborations, and Approaches in Teacher Education

Abstract

Cross-cultural experiential learning programs—where student-teachers live and work in cultures other than their own—have become widely accepted as a means of preparing preservice teachers for diverse classrooms. However, little is known about how preservice teachers make meaning from their cross-cultural experiences. This year-long narrative inquiry investigates how one female, White, middle-class preservice teacher made meaning from her experiences student-teaching in a small farming village in the Kasese district of western Uganda. Results from this study indicate that this specific preservice teacher drew upon her prior experiences and dispositions of 1) flexibility; 2) critically questioning social norms, customs, and the purpose of education; 3) and, recurrent and sustained self-reflection to make meaning of her cross-cultural student teaching.

Author

• Stephanie Shedrow, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay