Stop, Collaborate and Listen: Co-designing Social Justice Teacher Education Programs With Preservice Teachers by Mary Rose Kelly B., Northern Arizona University, 2005 M., University of Phoenix, 2008 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Education 2018 i This thesis entitled: Stop Collaborate and Listen: Co-designing Social Justice Teacher Education Programs With Preservice Teachers Written by Mary Rose Kelly Has been approved for the School of Education at University Colorado Boulder ____________________________________________________________________ William McGinley, co-chair ____________________________________________________________________ Elizabeth Dutro, co-chair ____________________________________________________________________ Jamy Stillman ____________________________________________________________________ Ben Kirshner ____________________________________________________________________ Antero Garcia ____________________________________________________________________ Catherine Kunce The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. IRB protocol # 15-0400______________________ ii Mary Rose Kelly (Ph.D, Literacy Studies—School of Education) Stop Collaborate and Listen: Co-designing Social Justice Teacher Education Programs With Preservice Teachers Dissertation Chaired by Associate Professor Bill McGinley and Professor Elizabeth Dutro The three-article dissertation draws on qualitative data collected through a participatory design research framework. The abstracts below detail the analysis of the collected body of work from this study. Making Practice Matter: A Year Long Curriculum for Social Justice Teacher Educators In this book proposal I suggest an innovative method of cultivating equity commitments in practice-based teacher education.
Specifically, I propose a book that tells the story of collaboratively designing social justice teacher preparation with pre-service secondary teachers in English Language Arts and Social Studies. This book is designed for teacher educators, including curriculum and clear and accessible approaches to the development of social justice teacher dispositions and practice. Behind the Curtain: Structuring Preservice Teacher Education for Social Justice Teaching Identities In this article, I report findings from a study of an innovative approach to social justice teacher education in which I collaboratively designed and taught a humanities practice- based, teacher education course called “Studio.” Drawing on research on anti-oppressive practice and theoretical work on the dialogical self, I followed one candidate through a yearlong process of co-designing and participating in Studio. Throughout this study, I analyzed how video recordings of Studio class activities, candidate audio journals, and video recordings of Studio co-design meetings offered a complex mix of discursive opportunities that allowed one candidate to create and improvise as they co-negotiated and narrated their own development as a social justice educator.
She is White but Not Really White: Using Audio Journals as a Form of Critical Reflection in Preservice Teacher Education. The purpose of this article is to highlight audio journals as a reflective practice within social justice teacher education as a way for candidates to question their assumptions around oppressive structures within and outside of schools. In examining how one candidate spoke about her experiences in her practicum site, I analyzed how ideas around race, ethnicity, gender, and ability were negotiated and explored. Throughout this article, I argue that in order to move candidates from passive observers to critical agents who dissect how power indexes and is indexed through learning, it is important for candidates to have a flexible and individualized way to reflect on who they are as social justice teachers and who they want to become.
iii Contents CHAPTER 1. 2 The Importance of Social Justice Teacher Education. 5 Social Justice Teacher Education. 7 Social Justice Teachers.
10 Significance of the Research. 16 CONCEPTUAL FRAMING AND RELEVANT LITERATURE. 16 Building a Critical Stance for Teaching. 18 Anti-oppressive Pedagogy.
21 Bridging Two Theories: An Anti-Oppressive Stance Towards Practice. 24 Power and Positioning in Co-designing an Anti-oppressive stance. 30 “Practice” in Practice-Based Teacher Education. 30 The “Core” Practices in PBTE.
33 Social Justice and Core Practice in PBTE. 35 An Anti-Oppressive Stance Towards PBTE. 38 Co-design and Anti-Oppressive Stance in Practice Based Teacher Education. 47 Participatory Design Research and Co-design.
48 Study Context and Participants. 58 Contexts of Data Collection: Studio. 60 The Structures of Studio. 70 Design Team Meetings.
73 Designing For an Anti-Oppressive Stance. 74 Data Sources and Collection. 76 Individual Interviews with Candidates. 78 iv Audio Journals.
79 Addressing The Research Question: Analysis. 80 Data Analysis During Studio. 81 Conjecture Mapping as an Analytical Tool. 86 Data Analysis After Studio.
88 Issues of Integrity in the Research Process. 91 The Practice of Facing Fear. 92 Overview of Three-Article Approach. 102 Chapter 1: The Design of Studio.
102 Chapter 2: What is Anti-Oppressive Practice?. 102 Chapter 3: What is Considered Normal in School?. 103 Chapter 4: How Do We Design Our Anti-Oppressive Practice?. 103 Chapter 5: How Do We Practice Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy?.
104 Chapter 6: How Do I Perform Inquiry-Based Anti-Oppressive Teaching?. 104 Chapter 7: Where Have We Gone and Where are We Going in Studio?. 105 Chapter 8: How Do We Directly “Teach” Students to Both Question and Learn?. 105 Chapter 9: How and Why Do We Question?.
106 Chapter 10: What Language Do We Use to Question?. 106 Chapter 11: How Do We Guide Students in Both Questioning and Learning?. 106 Chapter 12: How Do I Perform Inquiry-Based Anti-Oppressive Teaching?. 107 The Process of Learning To Teach.
110 The Co-Design Process. 147 Practice Within the Curriculum. 154 Theoretical Framework and Related Literature. 156 Dialogical Approach to an Anti-oppressive Teacher Identity.
166 Data Collection and Analysis. 169 v Findings: The Mediating Teaching Identity. 170 Teacher and Activist I-positions in Audio Journals: Freedom Dreams and Apathy. 171 The Impact of Others on Dominant I-positions: Playful Oppression.
178 Society and the Self During the Design of Studio. 185 Implications and Conclusions. 196 The Challenge with Reflection in Teacher Education. 196 Reflection for the Development of a Critical Stance.
201 Data analysis process. 208 Audio journals and Whiteness. 220 Reflection and the Development of a Critical Stance. 222 Critical Reflection and Teacher Education Pedagogies.
263 Sample Interview Questions. 266 vi TABLES Table 1. Data Collection and Frequency 29 2. Demographic Information for Participants in Studio 3.
Studio and Practicum Structure 167 4. The Discursive Engagements of Studio 169 5. Demographic Information for Students in Studio 173 6. Self-Identified Demographic Information for Data Analysis 220 6.
Emerging themes and the four dimensions of the critical stance 22 vii FIGURES Figure 1. Bridging the Conceptual Framework and Literature Review 20 2. Four Dimensions of the Critical Stance 21 3. Phases of Design Work 53 4.
The Components of the Studio Design Process 64 5. Cycle for Collectively Learning to Engage in an Authentic and 68 Ambitious Instructional Activity 6. Tool for Developing a Working Theory of Anti-Oppressive Practice 77 7. Generalized Conjecture Map for Educational Design Research 84 8.
Iterative Conjecture Map of the Studio Design Process 87 9. The Design Process in Studio 148 10. The Co-design Components of Studio 153 11. Two Audio Journals of The Same Story 224 12.
Part One of Kylie’s Story 226 13. Part Two of Kylie’s Story 227 14. Part Three of Kylie’s Story 229 15. Part Four of Kylie’s Story 233 16.
Part Five of Kylie’s Story 237 viii CHAPTER 1 RESEARCH PROBLEM “If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” These words, attributed to Aboriginal activist Lilla Watson, serve as an important admonition to those of us who identify as educators for social change. They call into question existing notions of teaching for social justice that argue for a primarily White, cis-gendered, female teaching force to “understand” oppression. Instead, Lilla’s words imply that the preparation of teacher candidates (TC) needs to cultivate a belief that complicity in oppression is against everyone’s self-interest.
Yet, to truly imagine how to develop a teacher education program around these ideals is complicated. According to Kumashiro, we do not want to be the same, we also do not want to be better (since any Utopian vision would simply be a different and foretold way to be, and thus, a different way to be stuck in a refined sameness); rather, we want to constantly become, we want difference, change, and newness. And this change cannot come if we close off the space-between (2000, p. In this view, it isn’t enough that teacher candidates become allies in the fight for justice.
They need to also continuously and iteratively challenge their conceptualizations of justice and self, and reflect on how their experiences and positionality shape and reshape their interpretation of teaching, oppression, and practice. As teacher educators, it is tempting to envision ourselves as being critically conscious. Yet, “even teachers with expressed interest in social justice education fall prey to stereotypes and deficit thinking…No-one is immune” (Picower, 2007, pg. Thus, teacher education inspired 1 by a social justice orientation should be seen, “.less as a triumphant charge from oppression to liberation, and more as a scaffolding of a difficult entry into a new and still imperfect discourse” (Francis & Hemson 2007, p.
It seems that to learn about oppression and even to be aware and critical of our own complicity and collusion with oppression will not automatically lead us to liberation. Rather, teacher education programs need to not only push candidates to confront deficit orientations towards students and families, but also accept responsibility for combating educational and societal injustices as teachers (Portilio & Malott, 2011). Without attending to candidates’ social justice development, Teacher Education Programs (TEPs) risk educating teachers who will perpetuate oppressive school practices and policies (e., Palmer & Mendard- Warwick 2012). To address the development of social justice teachers, innovation in teacher education programs should consider discursive opportunities that invite candidates to conceptualize teaching as a political act and to challenge and reconsider their beliefs around effective teaching.
Proposed Study In this study, I investigated the development of preservice teachers, and specifically, the kind of environment or experiences that invite secondary humanities candidates to consider being socially just. During the 2015-2016 school year, I collaboratively designed a practice- based methods course with secondary humanities candidates. The course, called Studio was designed as a collaborative, improvisational space where pre-service teachers attended to the development of embodied practices—designing and rehearsing the social, cognitive, and emotional dimensions of becoming social-justice educators. Drawing on theoretical frames rooted in social justice like the concept of critical stance (Lewison et al, 2008; Scherff, 2012), as well as anti-oppressive pedagogy (Kumashiro, 2000), I designed Studio with candidates to weave 2 in reflective and performative processes alongside an iterative analysis of practice, and self.
Through the development of the curriculum of Studio, I expanded upon notions of co-design as a form of teacher professional development (Voogt et al., 2015), specifically theorizing the co- design process as a teacher education practice and a possible structure within social justice teacher education (SJTE). Recognizing that many researchers in teacher education collaboratively design research through either research practice partnerships or curricular co- design (e., Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Cobb, 2000; Severance, Penuel, Sumner & Leary, 2016; Coburn, & Penuel, 2016), in this study, I conceptualized co-design as a research methodology as well as a teacher education pedagogy and a process for candidates to contribute and reflect on their own development. In the Studio curriculum, a critical stance towards practice was approached through designing inquiry opportunities for candidates to propose practices to discuss, to break apart, and to perform. Through a critical stance towards practice, Studio participants were invited to develop a social justice teaching literacy and to weave reflection and alternative ways of being into their conception of teaching and learning.