Brown, C. P., Weber, N. B. (2016). Struggling to overcome the state’s prescription for practice: A study of a sample of early educators’ professional development and action-research projects in a high-stakes teaching context. Journal of Teacher Education, 67 (3), 183-202. (original) (raw)

Brown, C. P., Weber, N. B., Yoon, Y. (2015). The practical difficulties for early educators who tried to address children’s realities in their high-stakes teaching context. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 36 (1), 3-23.

The field of publicly funded early childhood education continues to evolve into a discipline in which early educators are expected to teach a more culturally and linguistically diverse student population a standardized set of knowledge and skills so that they can meet policymakers' academic achievement requirements. This creates a range of challenges for early educators who strive to implement instructional practices that attend to children's developmental, individual, and sociocultural needs. The article addresses this issue through examining the implementation of a professional development course for prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers that asked them to reconceptualize their understandings of their role in the classroom. Examining how their practical conceptions were affected by their participation in this course revealed an eagerness to pursue lines of study with children that addressed issues central to children's lives. However, transforming this conceptual willingness into practices within their highly structured teaching context seemed to be a more difficult task. Interpreting these findings generates three central points that teacher educators, early educators, and preservice teachers might consider in developing the practical tools needed to prepare children to be successful in their high-stakes schooling environments and local communities.

Taking Culturally Relevant Teaching to the Big House: Implications for Early Childhood Teacher Educators

The New Educator, 2018

This article discusses the conceptualization 1 of a foundational course on culturally relevant pedagogy for early childhood education majors at a predominantly white university in the U.S. Southeast. The course has been taught for 7 years to approximately 1,000 preservice teachers. A discussion of the complexities involved in teaching equity-focused courses is included (e.g., the magnitude of what we are asking preservice and inservice teachers to do; the depth and historical legacies that must be dismantled, deconstructed, and transformed). I deliberate on issues such as these: How can teacher educators meet preservice teachers (white and persons of color) where they are, but also move them beyond those places and spaces? What frameworks and guidelines have been found useful? How can teacher educators prevent equity-based courses from being derailed and hijacked by a few detractors? What types of supports are necessary for success? Examples of assignments, readings, and activities are shared.

Reluctantly governed: The struggles of early educators in a professional development course that challenged their teaching in a high-stakes neo-liberal early education context

This article documents the pedagogical and practical struggles of a sample of early educators in a large urban school district in the USA who engaged in a professional development course which offered them alternative conceptions of teaching that critically questioned the norms and practices of their high-stakes neo-liberal early education system. Examining the evolution of some of these teachers' conceptions and practices illuminates the challenges that exist in attempting to address culturally relevant issues with students in a highly scripted and surveilled teaching context. It also reveals three key issues that early educators, teacher educators, and those who advocate for early childhood education should consider when developing and/or enacting alternative conceptions of teaching in similar neo-liberal early education environments.

Meeting in the circle: examining identity, attitudes, and pedagogy in the context of an early childhood teacher education program in the United States

Early Years An International Research Journal , 2015

As a team of teacher educators at a university in the United States, we engage in participatory action research to reflect on how reflective tools which we design engage teacher candidates (TCs) in their reflecting on teaching. In this paper, we describe how we invite TCs to write in-class reflections, respond to self-assessment probes, and practice problem-solving processes. We critically analyze our approaches and identify further intentional approaches to promote university students’ understandings of (1) links between the self and working with children and families and (2) connections between attitudes and pedagogy towards social justice and inclusion. We conclude that we must continue to explore how the teaching practices we use affect students’ understandings of social justice in edu- cation. Doing so demands our focus on examining attitudes through self reflection among and between faculty and university students so that identity, relationships, attitudes, inclusion, and social justice are prioritized as pillars of curriculum in early childhood education at all levels of schooling.

Reflections on practice: providing authentic experiences with families in early childhood teacher education

Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 2020

Teachers' positive relationships with families contribute to the social, emotional, and intellectual development of children in early childhood education programs. Effectively involving, communicating, and partnering with families requires a unique set of professional abilities. Teachers must hold a deep understanding of the cultural and socioeconomic needs and characteristics of families and possess social skills and dispositions that allow them to effectively engage the adults in children's lives in sensitive and supportive ways. Are preservice teachers of young children well prepared to carry out this important role in their teacher education programs? Although 60% of teacher education programs require a course on families, few include authentic experiences in which candidates interact with families faceto-face. In the present article, the four authorsa teacher educator, a supervising teachers, and two early childhood teacher education candidatesreflect on a project which included seven elaborate experiences with families in lieu of a traditional, required course. We share our diverse perspectives on the impact of each experience, presenting excerpts from candidates' reflective journal entries and from the field notes of the teacher educator and supervising teacher. Implications of our experiences for teacher education are presented.

Diverse Pathways in Early Childhood Professional Development: An Exploration of Early Educators in Public Preschools, Private Preschools, and Family Child Care Homes

Early Education & Development, 2009

This paper presents a naturalistic investigation of the patterns of formal education, early childhood education training, and mentoring of a diverse group of urban early childhood educators participating in the Los Angeles: Exploring Children's Early Learning Settings (LA ExCELS) study. A total of 103 preschool teachers and family child care providers serving primarily low-income 3-and 4-yearold children in Los Angeles County provided data on their education, training, and beliefs about teaching. This sample worked in public center based preschool programs including Head Start classrooms and State preschool classrooms (N=42), private non-profit preschools including community based organizations and faith-based preschools (N=42), and licensed family child care homes (N=19). This study uses a person-centered approach to explore patterns of teacher preparation, sources of support, supervision, and mentoring across these 3 types of education settings, and how these patterns are associated with early childhood educators' beliefs and practices. Findings suggest a set of linkages between type of early education setting, professional development, and supervision of teaching. Public preschools have the strongest mandates for formal professional development and typically less variation in levels of monitoring, whereas family child care providers on average have less formal education and more variability in their access to and use of other forms of training and mentorship. Four distinct patterns of formal education, child development training, and ongoing mentoring or support were identified among the educators in this study. Associations between professional development experiences and teachers' beliefs and practices suggested the importance of higher levels of formal training for enhancing the quality of teacher-child interactions. Implications of the findings for changing teacher behaviors are discussed with respect to considering the setting context.

Action-Research and Early Childhood teachers in Chile: analysis of a teacher professional development experience

In early childhood education, teacher professional development is crucial due to the impact of teachers on children’s learning. This study presents the experience of action-research included in a teacher professional development program focused on improving pedagogical interaction from a sociocultural perspective. From 2012 to 2015, three cohorts of early childhood teachers from nursery schools located in vulnerable contexts participated in this program. These teachers developed intervention plans according to the action-research framework. In this report, these plans are analysed through a qualitative content analysis. Reports made by the participants and interviews with three tutors are also analysed. The results of the intervention plans show that most of them are focused on teacher professional development using video supported reflection to enhance the quality of interaction with children. In the reports, teachers identified important improvements in their skills, knowledge, beliefs and practices, and developed critical reflection on the process. Tutors found some problems during the program, which took them into a reflection process that led to transformations in their practice. These results are discussed in the context of a neoliberal society that might interfere with the development of alternative programs.

Bridges for Academic Success: Opening Spaces for Culturally Responsive Practice in an Urban Pre-School

LEARNing Landscapes, 2015

It has become widely understood that formal early childhood education can be an important factor in school success. Equally significant is the role of culture as a determinant in negotiating school. Thereby, the inclusion of student culture remains an important aspect in conversations on school success. This discourse is capable of promoting learning using the lives of students by building on what they already know, while offering opportunities for academic achievement. This study investigated how professional development workshops on culturally responsive practice for urban pre-school teachers encouraged the examination of current classroom practices and offered a process for transformation.

Culture and Practice in Early Childhood Teacher Education: A Comparative and Qualitative Study

2014

This study currently in progress focuses on two early childhood teacher education programs in contexts where the participants are undergoing rapid social and personal change: a program in Namibia, and a program for immigrant childcare educa- tors in Canada. The objective is to provide in-depth understanding of the ways in which differing ideas about teacher education are reflected in practice. It is important to en- sure that teacher education programs prepare teachers to dovetail children's prepara- tion for school with meaningful connections to the culture and language of the home community. Without such connections, many children in settings undergoing rapid change will continue to drop out of school before literacy and other skills are firmly established. The study uses ethnographic methods to undertake fieldwork in teacher education classrooms at the two research sites over a period of two terms. The central research question focuses on the way conceptions of young children...

Revisiting culturally responsive teaching practices for early childhood preservice teachers

Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 2020

The US Census states that Americans under the age of five are a majority-minority with 50.2% of this population from minority backgrounds. As our country continues to grow as a rich, diverse multicultural nation, it is imperative that early childhood teacher educators prepare future teachers to embrace this diversity and provide experiences that affirm all students, families and communities. In our past work, we (teacher educators) synthesized the current research into five frameworks that we believe embody the foundation of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) in an early childhood setting. In this article, we review the previous frames and continue this work with additional frameworks that are imperative for developing a culturally responsive early childhood educators and their future classrooms. We situate each framework within the larger context of research, and then we move beyond discussing CRT practices by offering ideas on how culturally responsive classrooms look and how to implement this pedagogy in an early childhood setting with authentic classroom practices.