Possible Paths Forward for a Practice-Based Teacher Education Centered on Justice

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to address limitations of Practice-Based Teacher Education (PBTE) in relation to (1) narrow conceptions of practice and teacher learning, and (2) peripheralization of equity and justice. After aiming to understand the landscape of limitations in PBTE, this study situates itself within specific manifestations of these limitations that exist in common conceptualizations of teacher learning and practice-based pedagogies. To (re)emphasize the situated nature of practice and center equity and justice in PBTE, I theorize an expanded notion of teacher learning, develop design features for contextually situated pedagogies of practice (Grossman et al., 2009), and implement the design with a group of three mathematics teacher candidates. This dissertation, as three manuscripts, represents, through theory and practice, a possible version of PBTE that attends to “issues of voice, power, context, and subjectivity” (Peercy et al., 2019, p. 1175). Within the first manuscript, I pursue questions related to understanding the conversations of critique around PBTE – specifically as it relates to the use of undertheorized notions of ‘practice’ and the peripheralization of equity and justice. Within this manuscript, through an integrative review of literature (Torraco, 2016), I synthesize the critiques and re-envisioned aspects of PBTE in order to generate possible paths forward for research and practice in the field. The second manuscript highlights work that consequently pursues one of the possible paths, theorizing an expanded framework for teacher learning that spans justice and practice-based notions. Using case-study methodology (Merriam, 2009), I investigate what is made visible and possible to understand about teacher resources by using the Critical Framework for Teacher Learning (Karr, 2021) as a lens for analysis. The final manuscript aims to answer a call to emphasize the situatedness of teaching by articulating design features for pedagogies of practice (Grossman et al., 2009) that provide “opportunities to experience the complexities of power that permeate learning of teaching practices” (Dutro & Cartun, 2016, p. 119). I then show how these pedagogies assist in making visible TCs’ resources for responding to injustices. Findings from this study highlight how PBTE might develop deep interrogative stances on subjectivities, envision pedagogies of practice centered on enactment toward justice, and leverage robust conceptual frameworks for teacher learning to include justice-based dimensions. It also illustrates how, when leveraging robust notions of teacher learning, we can view teaching practice as a contextually complex construction, which moves PBTE away from viewing practice and practices as static, universal, or ‘best.’