Abstract
There exists much potential for the use of community-based partnerships to support preservice teachers’ learning and development. These opportunities can also expand preservice teachers’ understanding of when and where teaching and learning take place. This paper reports the results of a qualitative, yearlong pilot study focused on secondary preservice teachers’ (N=42) weekly community-based field experiences at a newly opened secondary public museum school, located in a large Midwestern urban area. Specifically, preservice teachers worked weekly with sixth grade students in an urban public museum setting as part of a required undergraduate content area literacy teacher education course. This study highlights ways this community-based field experience served as an important clinical component for preservice teacher learning. Working in this community-based setting provided expanded and varied opportunities for preservice teacher learning, including practice using and facilitating small group instruction and opportunities to support adolescents’ learning through accessing, exploring, and examining museum artifacts and exhibits. Therefore community-based field experiences, when and where feasible, may serve as an important clinical component for preservice teacher learning.
Highlights
Field-based experiences are a central tenant of global teacher education, in which preservice teachers transition from theory to practice (Ball and Cohen, 1999)
Data analyses reveals that there existed a variety of opportunities for secondary preservice teacher learning in a public museum school
Having access to and facilitating adolescent learning in a public museum setting, preservice teachers had opportunities to directly link the sixth graders’ learning outcomes in their English Language Arts and/or social studies classes to the museum through small group work and assigned tasks. The uniqueness of this community-based setting afforded participants regular opportunities to learn to teach through accessing, exploring and examining the museum’s permanent and traveling exhibits as well as its many artifacts, something not available in traditional PK-12 settings
Summary
Field-based experiences are a central tenant of global teacher education, in which preservice teachers transition from theory to practice (Ball and Cohen, 1999). The assumption is that these field experiences will enable preservice teachers to better understand and facilitate their own transition from student to classroom teacher (Heafner et al, 2014) The purpose of these placements is for preservice teachers’ experiences to be what Ball and Cohen (1999) term, “practice-based teacher education,” which roots preservice teachers’ experiences and learning directly within formal learning settings such as PK-12 schools and classrooms (Forzani, 2014). Expanding field experiences to include community-based settings further informs preservice teachers’ understanding and awareness of when and where teaching and learning take place, allowing them see and experience teaching and learning pedagogy and practice beyond traditional PK-12 school settings (Hamilton et al, in press; McGregor et al, 2010; Brayko, 2013; Harkins and Barchuk, 2015)
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