“Change your approach”: how youth organizers, adult allies, and teacher candidates engage in the praxis of community-based pedagogy within teacher education

Abstract

In this paper, I share the process of designing, implementing, and analyzing a community-based methods course alongside youth organizers, adult allies, and teacher candidates (TCs) through a critical qualitative research project. Informed by intergenerational grassroots community organizations, community-based pedagogy is a praxis to center the strengths and needs of local people, places, and ecosystems in the classroom. I discuss the framework and use of community-based pedagogy in a teacher education methods course as informed by youth organizers and adult allies of two local youth-centered grassroots organizations. To further the development of community-based pedagogy, I examine how the facilitation of adult ally trainings by youth organizers in a methods course informed their community organizing endeavors and also encouraged TCs to conceptualize community-based pedagogy in PreK-12 classrooms. The findings and implications identify community-based pedagogy as a possible strategy for schools, communities, and teacher education programs to collaborate for transformative social change.