“It’s just really not me”: How pre-service English teachers from a traditional teacher education program experience student-teaching in charter-school networks

April S Salerno,Natasha A Heny,Mark Boylan

doi:10.1080/2331186x.2016.1142838

April S Salerno, Natasha A Heny + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2016.1142838

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Abstract

AbstractThough teacher educators nationwide are considering ways to provide urban placements for pre-service teachers (PSTs), little research has examined how PSTs experience placements in schools operated by charter management organizations (CMOs). This study considers CMOs—which often hold particular instructional and classroom management philosophies—as a specific type of school-based learning environment. We draw from a Discourse analytic theoretical framework using qualitative methodology to study how three English education focal PSTs experience disconnections between student-teaching placements at CMO schools and their teacher education program. Findings suggest three ways teacher educators can support PSTs in navigating school-based learning. PSTs in this study experienced contexts and philosophies that varied greatly between their schools and teacher education program. Implications include: (1) PSTs must feel that others in their schools value their learning; (2) PSTs in cohorts must feel they be...

Highlights

Appropriateness and effectiveness of charter schools is a popular topic of discussion in education today
Though all 15 cohort members were included in that study, we focus this work on the three pre-service teachers (PSTs)—Cecilia, Grace, and Marilyn1—who completed student-teaching in charter management organizations (CMOs) environments
We organized the story that PSTs told by presenting it in three segments that emerged, in our coding, as disconnects between the teacher-education program and the CMO placements: first, in explaining how PSTs describe their expectations for placements; second, in considering how PSTs describe their schools’ and placement structures; and in examining PSTs’ Discourse about the values of their schools and teacher-education program

Summary

Introduction

Appropriateness and effectiveness of charter schools is a popular topic of discussion in education today. Within both popular and professional discourse, there is heated national dialog about the appropriateness of charter schools— those run by large management organizations—for educating urban students. Professional researchers have considered charter schools’ academic outcomes (Angrist, Dynarski, Kane, Pathak, & Walters, 2012; Silverman, 2013). Despite the much debated nature of charter schools, a specific population—pre-service teachers (PSTs) completing student-teaching assignments in schools run by charter management organizations (CMOs)—has been largely overlooked by current research. This article looks at a less discussed but important aspect of charter schools: what the environments are like for student-teachers learning to teach in charter-school classrooms

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