Learning to See Students: Opportunities to Develop Relational Practices of Teaching through Community-Based Placements in Teacher Education

Abstract

Background For decades, scholars have argued that teaching and learning depend fundamentally on the quality of relationships between teachers and students, yet there is little research about how teachers develop relationships with students or how teacher education prepares teachers to do this work. Arguably, articulating the relational practices of teaching is critical for those aiming to prepare teachers to reach across differences, educate from a social justice perspective, and teach an increasingly diverse population of students. Noting the emphasis on relationships in community-based organizations (CBOs), the authors investigated preservice field placements in CBOs as potentially strategic contexts for learning about relational aspects of teaching. Objective The authors engaged the questions: What do candidates learn in CBO field placements? What are sources of variation between candidates’ learning outcomes? What are individual and contextual factors that shaped candidates’ opportunities to learn in CBOs? Specifically, which factors influenced candidates’ inclination and capacity to enact relational teaching practices (e.g., the methods and skills associated with learning about and connecting with students, families, and communities)? Research Design This study was a 3-year longitudinal investigation. Authors followed two cohorts of candidates from their first quarter of preparation into their first year of teaching. Qualitative methods, such as interviews, observations, and document review were employed in this inquiry of 12 case study candidates. To examine questions of variation, authors also conducted an in-depth comparative case analysis of a subset of two candidates and their CBO placement contexts. Findings CBO placements facilitated opportunities for candidates to “see students”: candidates developed deeper understandings about children and more nuanced conceptions of diversity; experienced and examined school from an out-of-school perspective; and demonstrated greater attentiveness to the role of context in learning. The more detailed comparative analysis of two cases revealed variation in candidates’ experiences and their enactment of practices involved in building relationships with children and families. This analysis identified individual and situational factors (in coursework and CBOs) that facilitated and impeded candidate learning in CBOs. Conclusions Findings from this study highlight the types of learning outcomes that preser-vice community-based placements potentially afford, as well as factors that make some placements more educative than others. The authors offer a theoretical lens that attends to variation in learning, which could be leveraged in future empirical work. This research contributes to the field's developing efforts to identify key social justice teaching practices and to conceptualize pedagogies of enactment for such practices.

Preservice Teachers Taking Action: Enacting Teaching Practices and Pedagogical Theories in an After-School Literacy Club Field Experience

“…As with other practitioner research studies where teacher educators study their own teacher preparation programs (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2015;McDonald et al, 2013), we note that our participation as researchers is inherently intertwined with our work as teacher educators. Throughout our engagement in the after-school club, we enacted roles of researcher and teacher educator.…”

“…Community-based experiences also afford unique learning opportunities for preservice teachers (McDonald et al, 2013). Brayko (2013) found that preservice teachers’ learning about literacy in school settings typically focused on students’ learning of literacy skills, often from a deficit perspective of what students did not know.…”

Teaching to (un)learn: enacting social justice in the identity development of multilingual/Latinx/BIPOC teacher candidates

“…Applying these frameworks in our class discussions both supports and deepens critical thinking by offering students a way to think about their cultural knowledge as valuable, agentive and transformative cultural currency. This not only advances their success as students and sustains them in the field (Navarro et al , 2019) but enables them to build classrooms that promote sophisticated insights into diversity (McDonald et al , 2013).…”

Family- and Community-Engaged Teaching: A Systems Approach to Preservice Teacher Preparation

“…Community-based learning for pre-service teachers through university partnerships between teacher education programs and community organizations and school settings has previously been researched in our geographic region in the Pacific Northwest (McDonald, Bowman, and Brayko, 2013;McDonald et al, 2011). Such research suggests that…”