Critical Content for Teacher Education (original) (raw)
Related papers
2019
This autoethnographic study explores our experiences as postsecondary researcher-educators with a particular focus on our team teaching experience in a teacher education course at Western Vancouver University, located in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia (BC), Canada. We have introduced a case study of a Japanese temporary resident family with a toddler to our teacher candidates of BC. This case study was based on an interdisciplinary analytical lens: educational sociolinguistics and clinical psychology, which examined the case of the child having been diagnosed with mild autism in the BC’s medical system. The authors introduced this multicultural pedagogical content in higher education in order to cultivate critically internationalized analytical lenses of the teacher candidates. Our critical analysis of this clinical case suggested more than what the medical diagnosis had claimed. This contribution aims to 1) problematize the lack of societal awareness and the legitimacy of such s...
To Be a Minority Teacher in a Foreign Culture: Empirical Evidence from an International Perspective, 2023
In this chapter, I used critical autoethnography to document my experiences as a minority teacher educator in a predominantly White institution (PWI) of higher education in the United States and examined how my intersectional identities as a foreign-born, non-White, non-native English speaking, teacher educator of Asian descent had influenced my practices as a multicultural educator and researcher. I used tenets of the critical race theory (CRT) and Asian critical theory (AsianCrit), in particular counterstorytelling and intersectionality, as analytic lens to frame my explorations of what it meant to be a minority educator in a foreign cultural and institutional context. Data in the form of reflective narratives drawn from my lived experiences and documents were analyzed and presented as counternarratives to explicate my intersectional identities and navigational strategies used to negotiate my position and practices in the often-limiting, PWI academic space. I ended the chapter with a call for more inclusive CRT and AsianCrit frameworks to understand the unique transnational lives and identities of minority educators in an increasingly global world. By sharing my autoethnographic recollections and counternarratives, I hope this chapter will serve as an empowering invitation for international minority scholars to join the collective endeavor to advance the conversation and transform higher education towards a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable space.
Comparative and International Education
This paper describes a recent initiative designed to provide support for teacher candidates from culturally diverse backgrounds as they traverse a one-year teacher education program in Canada. Results and discussion are based on qualitative data from an information survey, student-professor conversations, a review of seminar documents and processes, and observations and reflections made by professors conducting the seminar. Overall, the Language and Cultural Engagement Seminar was successful in providing a supportive environment in which complicated and politically volatile issues, which would otherwise have remained unacknowledged, were discussed openly. The main concerns expressed by participants were the communication concern (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, accent, etc.), concern for power and authority in the classroom, and the socio-cultural acceptance concern. Power and communication concerns diminished when teacher candidates felt a level of cultural acceptance in the cl...
Teacher Development, 2018
This article examines and theorises the experiences of 12 primary pre-service teachers at an Australian university, undertaking a two-week professional teaching experience in Bangkok. This qualitative ethnographic study of our students' and to some extent our own experiences draws on interviews, questionnaires and observations from the students, as well as reflective notes from two participating supervisors, and set out to account for and understand the sources of the achievements and frustrations experienced by our pre-service teachers. The findings illustrate differences between the students' overseas experiences and Australian-based experiences. These differences include organisational structures, teacher mentoring, and cultural understandings, and the effects these had on the students. In particular, we distinguish the more readily observable structural nature of the schools in which the pre-service teachers were teaching, and the less visible cultural aspects that underlie these structures. We propose ways of helping students, as part of pre-departure briefings, to become more aware of these cultural underpinnings, with a view to helping them become more at ease negotiating intercultural workplaces.
Neither naïve nor nihilistic: researching for teacher education
Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 2016
As the incoming editors of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, we open this edition by extending our sincere and heartfelt appreciation to the previous Editorial Team and, as well, to the ATEA Executive they worked with. Under the leadership of Joce Nuttall and Susan Edwards, the journal has continued to play a vital role in fostering, supporting and disseminating research of the highest quality. This research has, in turn, made a significant contribution to the way we think about diverse and diversifying fields of educational activity: within and beyond schools, universities and other formal educational settings. It need hardly be said that this is important work. Teacher education in Australia and internationally remains under close scrutiny (and we use the term teacher education here in its broadest sense, to refer to all parts of a teacher's education whether it takes place in schools, universities or elsewhere and regardless of whether it occurs before or after graduation). Those who work with/in this complex field are regularly called upon to defend the quality and outcomes of our work: to justify decisions, defend actions and share the basis of our conclusions and the outcomes of our research. This is as it should be. While we now negotiate a seemingly endless period of critical analysis and external commentary, it is vital that we stay focused on our key responsibility: not simply to respond to questions raised by others, but to lead the scrutiny of all our practices and the research by which they are underpinned. Our work, in this area, is critical and not because policymakers deem it so. Decades and decades of large-scale and fine-grained research has shown that educational settings are not, and never have been, neutral, safe or fair. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. First Nations Peoples. Migrants, displaced peoples, refugees. Socio-economics, gender and language. Place of birth, cultural background, family groups and family structure. Geographical location. Religion, sexuality and disability. This is more than a list of convenient key terms we can employ to categorise our research. Individually and in combination these differences matter, both in educational settings, and in day-today life. They shape pathways, experiences and short-and long-term educational outcomes. Detailed knowledge of the lifelong and life-wide consequences of good and bad educational experiences has seen teacher educators repeatedly commit to the pursuit of education characterised by excellence and equity. In the current complex political and social climate, this work, we argue, requires a willingness for teacher educators to serve as our own sternest critics: to continually evaluate our successes, to always acknowledge our failures, and to commit, year in, year out, to education as the practice of freedom.
This paper reports findings from an 18-month qualitative study that followed the experiences of nine teacher residents, their site professors, site coordinators, clinical teachers, and principals in three Professional Learning Schools (PLSs). The study examined the tensions that emerged as teacher preparation theory intersected with the context-bound realities of daily life in schools and the political constraints that diminish possibilities for inclusive education. The paper addresses implications for teacher preparation programs by reporting how teacher residents negotiated their understanding of and commitment for inclusive education through three themes:
The Teacher Educator, 2018
Global multicultural teacher education courses and programs have made claims to offer Prospective Teachers (PSTs) a global understanding of diversity and multiculturalism. However, there is very little research that has examined the classroom experiences of PSTs and teacher educators. Drawing on a collaborative autoethnography, this article explores the ways our transnational identities shaped our experiences (as a PST and a teacher educator) in a global teacher education course focused on diversity and multiculturalism. We were guided by the following research question: How do we, as South Asian transnational migrants, experience the curriculum of a global multicultural education course in the United States? We found that the curricular nationalism within multicultural education courses often negates any critical engagement with the influence of transnationalism on immigrants and their educational experiences. Transnational migrants are expected to translate their experiences, cultural practices, and life ways to fit into the container of the U.S. nation-state. Furthermore, there was a visible absence of narratives and research about transnational lives and identities in the course curriculum. As teacher education programs prepare PSTs to enter classrooms with growing immigrant populations, it is important that we attend to this glaring gap in both practice and research.
Disability & Society, 2020
With an increasing number of children diagnosed with Autism-Spectrum-Disorder in Canada, this paper focuses on how their mothers, as Asian immigrant women, experience the process of diagnosis and learn to parent their children. By taking two Asian (Korean and Chinese) mothers' critical personal narratives as major data sources, this paper aims to explore the diagnosis process of Autism-Spectrum-Disorder through a sociocultural lens on the intersectionality of (im)migrants and their cultural competence, and argues that their identity (re)construction and learning for parenting take place at the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and disability. This paper highlights possible implications for everyone involved in this 'medical' process, in the context of Canadian or other similar multicultural societies.
THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF TEACHERS WORKING WITH YOUNG STUDENTS WITH AUTISM
Vygotsky and ASD, 2024
In the last 5 years, teachers have had challenging experiences while educating young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as the diagnostic numbers have increased from one in 60 in 2019 to one in 33 in 2021, impacting the classroom ratios and social dynamics. The increase in the prevalence of ASD diagnosis is impactful, specifically for teachers educating these students in the classroom. Educational psychology and ASD research highlights the issues students with ASD have during the school day, struggling with social skills. This study regarding teachers' lived experiences (i.e., social interactions) is essential for informing professional development content. Transcendental phenomenological study will capture teachers' lived experiences translatable with social constructivists research questions for teachers' lived experiences, with students with ASD, during social activities. Educational psychologists, educators and professionals in the ASD field will benefit from better understanding the lived experiences, specific knowledge about teacher-students social interactions informing training practices, and professional development content. The results reflect the psychological impact of the lived experiences special education teachers are encountering based on the themes and patterns that emerged from the data analysis, with their young students with ASD during social periods. In fact, four themes have emerged for data analysis 1. lack of diagnosis prior to entering the classroom, 2. challenging social skills, 3. lack of knowledge (training), and 4. community neurodiversity awareness. These four themes generated patterns of diagnostic knowledge stress, emotional impact recognition, affective disquietude, cognitive-experiential dissonance, practical pedagogy quest, challenging misconceptions about ASD, educational psychology improvements, teacher-student interactions, and social-constructivist interactions.