Examining Teacher Educators' Intentionality and Preservice Teacher Conceptualizations of Social Justice Within Study Abroad Programs

• In Event: 25.061 - Narratives of Challenges and Barriers of Intercultural Teaching

Abstract

Objectives:
This two-year study examined how preservice teachers (PSTs) experienced and conceptualized social justice across study abroad (SA) programs situated in disparate contexts. We documented how social justice is experienced, inscribed with new meaning, and conceptualized across distinct SA modalities within various cultural contexts. We examined three programs (Greece, Honduras, Tanzania) within the same College of Education, and studied how the teacher educator’s (TE’s) intentionality shaped how social justice was conceptualized by PSTs in their SA experience.
Theoretical Framework:
To analyze and interpret the data, we used Cazden’s (2012) education-focused modification of Fraser’s (2000; 2005) framework for social justice founded on three dimensions: redistribution (economic: equitable distribution of resources); recognition (cultural: reclaiming knowledges/histories to overcome subordination), and representation (political: decision-making at national, community and school levels). This framework allowed for an examination of how TEs’ intentionality towards social justice related to how PSTs conceptualized social justice across SA programs.
 
Data Sources:
In Year 1, data were collected from two SA faculty and 25 PST participants from Honduras and Tanzania; in Year 2, data were collected from three SA faculty and 42 PSTs from Honduras, Tanzania, and Greece. Faculty data included questionnaires and interviews; PSTs’ data included pre-and-post questionnaires, reflective journals focused on social justice, and post-trip focus group interviews. We used comparative case study analysis (Yin, 2017) to investigate for (a) differences across SA programs indicative of multiple approaches to social justice; and (b) how various contexts, experiences and curriculum interacted in cultivating social justice-minded educators.
Results:
Tanzania and Honduras participants provided specific examples of the lack of material resources and gender inequalities in the schools in which they worked and noted economic disparities in housing and limited school resources. Greece participants, however, did not provide specific examples of social injustices. For Honduras and Tanzania participants, the conceptualization of redistribution shifted in year 2 from solely economic-material equality in schools to include the equitable distribution of human resources (including administration, teachers, and staff). Recognition shifted from understandings of gender and cultural equality toward the recognition that knowledge is entangled with language, context, history, and power, thus demonstrating that decision making/representation is fundamental for recognition and redistribution to be achieved. TE intentionality and the SA curriculum, conceived broadly, were found to be factors in the disparities across programs.
Scholarly Significance:
In this paper, we build on previous research in social justice in teacher education and extend that work to an examination of TE intentionality, seldom discussed in extant literature. This research also demonstrated the applicability/potential of Cazden’s (2012) three-dimensional framework for examining this issue within international contexts. Additionally, TE intentionality has the potential to develop PSTs understanding of social justice, thus, better equipping them to work in multicultural classrooms/communities and provide equitable educational opportunities for all students (Villegas & Lucas, 2007).

Authors

• Jill Annette Newton, Purdue University

• JoAnn I. Phillion, Purdue University

• Kathryn M. Obenchain, Purdue University

• Jairo Isaac Fúnez-Flores, Purdue University

• Stephanie Lightner, Purdue University

• Alankrita Chhikara, Purdue University

• Erin Rondeau-Madrid, Purdue University