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Honoring Diverse Teacher (Candidate) Voices While Navigating Institutional Demands
Thu, April 21, 2:30 to 4:00pm PDT (2:30 to 4:00pm PDT), Division Virtual Rooms, Division K - Section 06: Approaches and Models for Field Experiences, Student Teaching, and School/Community Collaborations Virtual Roundtable Session RoomAbstract
How do teacher education programs consider the identities, strengths and needs of our diverse teacher candidates while also navigating state and program requirements in a large state institution?
Research indicates multiple factors contribute to more equitable Teacher Education (TE) experiences and create barriers to the success of diverse teacher candidates in TE programs. An explicit focus on equity in TE programs, including structural, procedural and practical disruption of inequities and providing frameworks for social justice, is a key baseline for more equitable TE programs (Burke & Whitty, 2018; Cochran-Smith et al. 2016), but is not sufficient. This explicit focus on equity must include and be extended beyond the programmatic level to include policy advocacy centered around addressing inequities in program access, representation and justice-oriented TE (Cochran-Smith, 2020). This is particularly important to address ongoing racial disparities between teachers of color (TOCs) and students of color (SOCs) in US schools (Boser, 2014; US Department of Education NCES, 2017).
This presentation draws from candidate and recent program alumni of color qualitative data from a single large state TE program to consider how program faculty and leadership can use diverse program-affiliated teachers’ recommendations to help create more empowering, equitable and effective experiences in pre-service TE. Program-affiliated teachers of color cited program factors such as: faculty (particularly supportive faculty of color), critical and integrated coursework related to diverse populations, and opportunities for extended fieldwork placements in diverse districts as important to supporting their success. Structural factors such as program cost and state-mandated teacher performance assessments were seen as barriers to success. The presentation considers how programs can best honor, support and advocate for diverse teacher candidates given programmatic, institutional and state contexts which limit program flexibility.