“I couldn’t have learned this any other way”: Learning to teach literacy across concurrent practicum experiences
Abstract
The authors, a team of literacy teacher educators who are focused on extending our own understandings of preservice teacher (PST) learning, conducted a cross-case analysis of how PSTs learned to teach literacy in three concurrent practicum experiences. We draw on Grossman’s framework of representations, decompositions, and approximations to describe and interpret what PSTs learned. Through a focus on one student, Deanna, the authors illustrate three findings: PSTs came to value the variety of forms of students’ literacies that reflected their ages, language backgrounds, and cultures/identities; they came to understand that relationships are essential to teaching and learning, and building relationships requires “putting myself out there” as well as “getting to know you”; and coming to know about students’ literacies in contexts in which students can talk, read, make images, and write from life allowed PSTs to coconstruct a curriculum that followed the students’ leads. The concurrence of practicum experience allowed for deepened reflections and understandings of literacy teaching. To extend Grossman’s work, the authors suggest the importance of using artifacts of PSTs’ own practices as representations in a cycle of reflection.
Reference
Mosley Wetzel, M., L. Roser, N., Hoffman, J. V., Antonio Martínez, R., & Price-Dennis, D. (2016). “I couldn’t have learned this any other way”: Learning to teach literacy across concurrent practicum experiences. Action in Teacher Education, 38(1), 70-85.
Journal
Action in Teacher Education
Analysis
Is this article part of a larger project or series of studies?
no
Does this study draw on a large, preexisting data set?
no
Research Approach
Geographic Setting
Institutional Context
Certification Level
Programatic Focus
Research Location Context
- Adult ESOL Methods Course
- Elementary school
- field placements (not related to methods courses)
- field-based literacy assessment and instruction course
Preservice Participants
- Undergraduates (university based program)
Preservice Sample Size
11
Duration of Data Collection
Data Sources
- artifacts
- assignments
- Classroom Discussion
- fieldnotes
- Interviews
- lesson plans
- Observation of PT lessons
- reflective essay
- Written reflections
Data Analysis Tools
- cross-case analysis
- Open coding
Researcher Positionality
- inside (staying their own students)
- Outside (not directly invested in the program or operations)
Research Questions
"In what ways do concurrent practicum experiences, across different contexts, support preservice teachers in building new linkages and understandings of what it means to be literate and to be a responsive teacher of literacy?" (p. 71)
Is this research question explicit from the manuscript? Yes