Communicating Social Justice in Teacher Education

Insights from a Critical Classroom Ethnography

Aubrey Huber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000465723
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación multicultural

Evolving out of ethnographic fieldwork, this text examines how ideas of social justice are articulated and communicated by pre-service teachers and graduate teaching assistants in the US.

By positing the concept of "help" as a central tenet of social justice within teacher education, this volume offers a unique performative analysis of how the concept is communicatively constituted in teacher education and training. Using a social justice framework, the book examines the ways in which new teachers contend with their identities as educators, and demonstrates how these communicative performances influence pre-service and new teachers' perceptions of their role, as well as their responsibility to engage with social justice and critical approaches in the classroom.

This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators in higher education with an interest in teacher education, critical communication studies, and the sociology of education more broadly. Those specifically interested in teacher training, mentoring, and social justice in the classroom will also benefit from this book.

1 Are You a Teacher or What?

Communicating Help and Social Justice

DOI: 10.4324/9781003036418-1

Chapter Introduction

Help, and the logic of helping, is constituted by teachers in their daily communication. I contend that how teachers constitute “help” is especially important in courses that emphasize social justice, and for those who align themselves with social justice pedagogies. A social justice approach to education works to name and change the normative educational practices that privilege certain groups of people and maintain established hierarchies of authority while help seamlessly reproduces conventional ideologies. Obfuscating the institutional architecture that it serves, help maintains meritocracy, insists upon assimilation, and valorizes the commodification of knowledge, and therefore excludes groups of people based on class, race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc. I articulate teacher training programs as critical research sites for considering the ways social justice pedagogies are conceptualized and enacted and explain how teacher education is linked to questions of social justice and help. I argue that enacting a social justice approach to education reveals the limits of help because it compels teachers and students to examine not only the content of the curriculum, but the conditions in and through which they learn.

Trinkets, Tokens, and Traces of Teacher Education

After a long day of teaching and observing university teachers, I come home to find a heavy cardboard box addressed to me. Even though I have not lived with my parents in almost two decades, they are still in the process of clearing out my things, which means every once in a while, I receive a random blast from the past. Today’s offerings include notebooks and binders filled with French verbs, vocabulary, and assignments I completed for my coursework as a secondary French Education major. Amidst my notes are activities I created in modern language methods courses and developed during my student teaching, or teaching internship, in which I taught four levels of French to high school students. Toward the bottom of the pile, I find my notebooks from my first ever course in the college of education, a course relating to child development, and one my dad warmly referred to from his days at university as, “teacher and creature.”

Though it has been almost twenty years since I was enrolled in “teacher and creature,” I can still recall the room, the circular arrangement of tables and chairs, my lively classmates who, though they were serious about teaching, would bowl themselves over joking about everything from the residence hall food to the sometimes archaic examples in our textbook. I can still picture my professor’s expectant face, her brightly colored tunic shirts, and the exasperated scowl she would feign when one of us became overly ebullient. I can still hear her voice challenging us to look beyond the surface to extend our explanations and discussions. I can hear her urging us to get to know all our classmates by requiring we change our seating arrangement each time we met, a strategy I now use myself. Though many other factors precipitated my decision to become a teacher, it was my experience in that first class that bonded me to the teaching profession.

Connected to other teacher education students, I was part of a community of people negotiating the same coursework and required field experiences on our journeys to becoming educators. Our future profession required us to work in tangible hypotheticals, developing activities, assignments, and assessments as if we were teachers for the time when we would become teachers. Our coursework in teacher education also encouraged us to consider how we would develop modes of assessment, engage different learning styles, integrate different technologies into our lesson plans, and negotiate diverse backgrounds and experiences of our future students. In essence, in this community I learned various ways of helping students.

The courses I was most drawn to were ones that asked me to consider the philosophies and ideologies that undergirded educational structures and practices as well as those that emphasized pragmatic strategies for addressing structural inequities. It was during my experience as a teacher education student that I began to critically examine what it meant for an educator to teach, and to help students. Being part of this population was notable for me and is central to the ways in which I conceptualized pedagogy. My experience of and with teacher education is also instrumental in my research and fundamental to how I ultimately developed the teacher-training program in my home department of communication.

In communication departments it is common to have faculty members serve as course directors who coordinate common, multi-section classes and train graduate students to be teachers. At the university level course directors are responsible for teacher education of graduate students. As teacher educators, course directors work with graduate student and adjunct instructors on designing and implementing curriculum, cultivating teaching methods and strategies, and developing models and tools for assessment. For example, at my institution I am the course director for the public speaking course, which is primarily taught by graduate student instructors, and is often their beginning experience with teaching.

In addition to working one-on-one with instructors, course directors may teach courses or run workshops on teaching-related topics and engage in observations and evaluations of teaching. These workshops may relate directly to the specific course in question or teaching more broadly. As an illustration, at my institution the course I coordinate is public speaking, but I am also responsible for preparing graduate students as teachers more broadly. Part of my job is to ready instructors to teach other courses in different contexts. Therefore, I run pedagogical workshops that pertain specifically to teaching public speaking, and workshops about classroom management, assessment, curricular development, creativity in classroom, and educational research that apply to teaching more broadly. Because of their experience and expertise, course directors often serve their departments as pedagogical liaisons about teaching related issues. For instance, in addition to working with new teachers, I have been asked to review faculty syllabi and help develop a departmental model for assessing teaching for tenure-track and full-time faculty.

Though my role has shifted from that of teacher education student to a teacher educator working with new instructors in the Department of Communication, questions of help and social justice persist. Engaging in teacher education of graduate students, I am concerned with the ways in which I help graduate students that prepare them for the classroom, enable them to negotiate emerging classroom situations, and ready them to engage with the students in their classrooms of whom enter the classroom with their own experiences and needs. Similarly, as course director I am committed to helping graduate students in ways that account for their liminal role as both teacher and student and respect their various lived experiences and needs. In essence, I am concerned with how I can help graduate students function as students who are becoming teachers and how I can help them help their own students. The site(s) of teacher education therefore provide rich insight into the field of education, particularly in terms of the ways in which teachers conceptualize themselves as helpers. The teacher-as-helper conceptualization is further complicated by teacher education students and new teachers who are asked to contend with social justice in their pedagogy.

Teachers constitute help and logics of helping in their daily communication. Therefore, I contend the ways in which teachers constitute “help” is especially important in courses that emphasize social justice, and for teachers who align themselves with social justice pedagogies. A social justice approach to education works to name and actively change the normative educational practices that privilege certain groups of people and maintain established hierarchies of authority. Throughout this book I argue help and logics of helping seamlessly reproduce conventional ideologies and structures. Help enables students to exist within the established system by perpetuating normative educational practices and academic competencies. Obfuscating the institutional architecture that it serves, help maintains meritocracy, insists upon assimilation, and valorizes the commodification of knowledge, and therefore excludes groups of people based on class, race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc.

I begin this chapter with a discussion of the ways I come to teacher education and social justice pedagogy. I describe teacher education and future teachers as a critical research site for considering the ways social justice pedagogies are conceptualized and enacted. I then explain how teacher education is linked to questions of social justice and help. I ultimately argue the enactment of social justice pedagogy reveals the limits of help because it compels teachers and students to examine not only the content of the curriculum, but the conditions in and through which they learn.

Teacher Education and Future Teachers as Critical Research Site

I locate my bond with the teaching profession to my experience as a teacher education student. However, I trace my desire to become a teacher to upbringing and to my experience as a laboratory school student, while my commitment to social justice pedagogy emerged alongside graduate coursework in critical communication pedagogy. I grew up in a family of teachers. When I was born my dad worked as a high school history teacher and guidance counselor teacher, and my mom worked as a middle and high school science teacher. After earning her PhD in science education, my mom got a job teaching at a laboratory school where she taught science courses to secondary students and mentored and assessed future teachers who completed pedagogical observations, teaching demonstrations, and student teaching internships in her classes.

In addition to my upbringing in a household of teachers, the road to teacher education was similarly bolstered by my experience as a laboratory school student. The year after my mother began teaching at the laboratory school, my family moved so that my sister and I could enroll. Founded in the 1880s as a part of the state’s Normal school, the steadfast goal of Malcolm Price Laboratory School was not only to function as a K-12 institution, but also to serve as a model of teaching organization methods, and strategies working to train future teachers. During the twelve years I spent at Malcolm Price Laboratory School (MPLS) I not only learned and participated in innovative curriculum from the full-time faculty, but I also engaged in lessons and activities led by teacher education students, often referred to in my classes as “pre-service teachers” and “student teachers,” who often completed their final teaching internship at MPLS before completing their degrees and entering the teaching profession. By the time I graduated from high school, I had been exposed to over 200 pre-service and student teachers enrolled in the teacher education program at the University of Northern Iowa.

It is not surprising that I chose to pursue teacher education as an undergraduate student when my entire embodied experience with education was layered in and textured by teacher education. Similarly, after earning a degree in French education with a minor in Speech and Theatre education I applied and was accepted into a Master’s and later PhD program in Communication at Southern Illinois University. Offering an emphasis in communication pedagogy, this program enabled me to further extend my experience as a student of teacher education. Committed to preparing teachers to teach communication courses at the university level and creating a culture of teacher-scholars, the program included pedagogy courses paired with teaching experiences and combined with pedagogical observation and mentorship. While in the program, I not only developed practical teaching strategies and competencies, but I also learned how to examine and theorize implications of pedagogical interactions. In my last year of graduate school, I worked with the department’s pedagogy director. As the assistant pedagogy director my role shifted from being a teacher education student to becoming a teacher educator who helped prepare and train new teachers for the college classroom.

Future Teachers: Teacher Education Students and Graduate Student Instructors

Today, I continue to work with new teachers leading the teacher education program in the Department of Communication at my institution. In many ways, working with graduate teaching instructors parallels the teacher education student experience, but there are some notable differences. Unlike undergraduate teacher education students earning their degrees to teach in elementary and secondary schools, the graduate student instructors are advanced Master’s and doctoral students poised to teach in post-secondary institutions with university students. In my experience, undergraduate teacher education students are enrolled in comprehensive programs for teacher education, which include various field experiences in which they apprentice with and are observed by practicing teachers and university instructors. This usually culminates in a final teaching experience such as “student teaching” or “teacher internship” in which they spend an extended time in with a particular teacher and class, where they are able to develop and facilitate curriculum with more autonomy.

Alternatively, graduate student instructors complete a year of required pedagogical workshops related to teaching communication and can elect to take one or two communication pedagogy classes that they can apply to their degree programs. And, although some graduate student instructors have experience working as teaching assistants and apprentice with established university professors, they have varying experiences teaching when they become graduate teaching instructors. Often the assistant role functions as an observational apprenticeship, in which teaching assistants observe the instructor and aid him/her/them by leading discussion groups, responding to student questions, and participating in gr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Are You a Teacher or What?: Communicating Help and Social Justice
• 2. Critical Classroom Ethnography
• 3. Help and Teacher Altruism: Humanization of the Educational Condition
• 4. Help and Independence: The Road to Self-Reliance
• 5. Help and Commodity: The Professionalization of Human Resources
• Conclusion
• Index