Supporting Teacher Candidates' Learning in a Nascent Immigrant Community

• In Event: Reconceptualizing Equity, Voice, and Input in Complex Supervision Contexts

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand how supervisors support and challenge teacher candidates during their student teaching placement in a nascent immigrant community. Using a social justice and equity lens, the author identifies ways in which two teacher candidates made sense of and negotiate their school’s differing and deficit orientations toward emergent bilinguals and their families. Using Transformative Learning Theory (TLT), the researcher conducted an analysis of two teacher candidates’ student teaching artifacts, seminar recordings, reflection logs, interviews and written cases to reveal ways in which teacher candidates drew on their teacher education program and supervisor to challenge school culture. Implications for supervisors navigating a new placement site and ways to work with teacher candidates in such a context will be discussed.

Author

• May H. Lee, Pennsylvania State University