"What Else Can We Do?" Teacher Preparation Programs as Fields of Epistemological Community Transformations

• In Event: 61.061 - Communities as Central Places of Preservice Teacher Learning

Abstract

As teacher candidates step into urban school settings, how do teacher preparation programs sustain rich teaching and learning clinical experiences? How do teacher candidates develop an epistemology of social justice and transformation within the urban classrooms and communities they teach? Hands and Rong (2014), have shared a common approach when seeing our public schools’ settings as “clinics” of learning and reflection. Yet, the social and cultural strands that interact, shape, and impact economically deprived urban school settings push our ethical engagement to be more than mere spectators of clinical experiences. Cummins (1991), writes about the concept of empowerment of minority students (from a sociolinguistic perspective) as an act of work, relationships, and community engagement with the people we learn from in these pedagogical spaces. This qualitative analysis seeks to connect the academic structure of a teaching preparation program and the visions/missions of social transformation that develop within a cohort of teacher candidates as they enter urban educational settings that embody economic, linguistic, and sociocultural differences. This conceptual analysis includes a discursive analysis derived from the experiences and challenges captured in critical reflections that a student-teacher cohort generates during their teaching practicum as they engage with linguistically and sociocultural diverse students in the city of Worcester, MA. In their year-long reflective experience, the cohort poses critical questions of communal responsibility as they develop an identity as “agents of change and engagement” within the curriculum they develop, the social interactions they build, and the responsibility to transform their preconceived notions of themselves, teaching practice, and the community they work with (Darling-Hammond, 2006). The question posed by our teacher candidates, “what else can we do?” shifts their singular visions as individuals that serve to a communal vision/mission that embraces transformation with their students, the communities they work with, the curriculum they design, and the power of teaching in community with other educators. The significance of this analysis in our national teaching programs confirms the need to provide a significant methodological space for reflection and action as we confirm our commitment to educational equity in marginalized spaces.

Author

• Carmen Ocon, Clark University