Community-Based Placements As Contexts for Disciplinary Learning

Abstract

Community-based field placements have shown promise as a strategy for preparing teacher candidates to work in diverse, high-needs schools, but they have rarely been designed or researched with subject-area methods learning in mind. Drawing on data from observations, interviews, documents, and journals, the author investigated how placements in two case study community-based organizations (CBOs) shaped candidates' learning about literacy and literacy pedagogy. Using cultural historical activity theory as an analytic framework, the author found that contextual components in CBO activity systems guided teacher candidates to take up more complex theories of literacy, demonstrate unusual proficiency in engaging languageminority students in text-based conversations (a critical strategy for promoting reading and language development), and leverage teacher-student-family relationships in ways that enhanced pupils' literacy engagement and learning experiences. Findings highlight implications (related to literacy and other skill/subject areas) for prospective pupil learning, course-based mediation of community-based fieldwork, and placement site selection.

Preservice Teachers' Community-Based Field Experiences

“…In addition to orienting preservice teachers to the realities of teaching and learning in school contexts, community-based field experiences also serve to expand preservice teachers' understanding of pedagogical approaches as well as opportunities to engage in approximations of practice (Grossman et al, 2009), particularly those they may not regularly have opportunities to try out in traditional PK-12 classroom settings. Thus, it is critical that preservice teachers have opportunitieswhen and where possible-to engage in varied clinical field experiences, particularly those which are situated in "third spaces" (Zeichner, 2010) and community-based (Brayko, 2013). Therefore, community-based field experiences, when and where feasible, may serve as an important clinical component for preservice teacher learning.…”

“…Guillen and Zeichner (2018) suggest that teacher educators can help preservice teachers bridge theory and practice when working in settings outside traditional PK-12 educational environments. If preservice teachers are to expand their understanding of teaching and learning beyond "traditional" school settings, what Lortie (1975) termed "apprenticeships of observation, " they must participate in field experiences that provide experiences in settings different from those they experienced as PK-12 students (Brayko, 2013).…”

“…Additionally, there is a need for and value of expanding preservice teachers' field experiences beyond traditional school settings to settings within the broader community as evidenced in Barchuk et al (2015) study of preservice teachers working in a community-based field experience in an African Nova Scotian community as well as Harkins and Barchuk's (2015) examination of preservice teacher learning in diverse practicum settings such as non-profit, government-affiliated health care institutions, museums, community colleges, as well as environmental and humanitarian organizations. Expanding field experiences to include community-based settings further informs preservice teachers' understanding and awareness of when and where teaching and learning take place, allowing them see and experience teaching and learning pedagogy and practice beyond traditional PK-12 school settings (Hamilton et al, in press;McGregor et al, 2010;Brayko, 2013;Harkins and Barchuk, 2015).…”

The Role of the Community in Teacher Preparation: Exploring a Different Pathway to Becoming a Teacher

“…The benefits of boundary crossings with local communities have been well documented in the literature (Zeichner, 2012;Brayko, 2013;Harfitt and Chow, 2018). For example, through sustained engagement with community projects novice teachers have the chance to mature as "community teachers" who possess contextual knowledge of the community and learn to work more effectively with children and families of diverse backgrounds (Murrell, 2001).…”

“…I am convinced that if teachers today are to initiate young people into an ethical existence they themselves must attend more fully than they normally have to their own lives and its requirements; they have to break with the mechanical life, to overcome their own submergence in the habitual, even in what they conceive to be virtuous and ask the 'why' with which learning and moral reasoning begin (Greene, 1978, p. 46). This paper suggests that carefully structured communitybased settings can provide invaluable knowledge that not only connects but also supplements traditional university and school partnerships and offers hybrid or "third" spaces with diverse expertise to novice teachers (Hartley, 2007;Brayko, 2013;Zeichner et al, 2015); in sum, it posits the community as a rich and powerful knowledge space, which is non-hierarchical and where academics, teacher educators, school heads, and teachers and communities bring together different expertise that are conducive to the development of teachers in the Twenty-first century (Hartley, 2007;Zeichner, 2010).…”