Teacher Residency Research Articles

Acknowledging Potential in Preservice Teachers’ Collaborative Practices

ABSTRACTWhen the research team began its qualitative exploration of what and how a cohort of preservice elementary/early childhood teachers’ in the University of California, Los Angeles' IMPACT Urban Teacher Residency Program learned, the 12-member team did not anticipate the degree to which preservice teachers would credit peers in their learning. On the urging of participants, the team began to systematically consider peer interactions. Curious about coherence in teacher education experiences, the team also attended to the program’s promotion of collaborative approaches. This article details ways that preservice teachers collaborated, inside the classroom and beyond, to support their learning and teaching. It also explores university features that supported collaboration including curricular inclusions, cohort models, student-centered seminars, mentor relationships, consistent modeling and feedback, and placement swaps. Findings suggest that peer relationships may be especially important to preservice teachers’ learning and also that university messages can reinforce the value and practices of collaboration.

Investigating the Third Space: A New Agenda for Teacher Education Research

The purpose of this article is to advocate for an expansion of third-space ideology to the research conducted in clinical teacher preparation programs including research designs and methods of data collection. Clinical teacher preparation has been advocated since the 1980s and is now being systematically realized in the early 21st century. Thus, it is time to revisit research designs and data collection related to this model. The author illustrates first-, second-, and third-space programs, including an overview of teacher residency programs, before advocating a mixed methods research paradigm that aims to create democratic spaces for teacher education research. Research and practice implications are discussed.

Urban Coaching Fellowships: A New Framework for Hiring and Supporting Sports Coaches in Urban Schools

Many public high schools in large urban school districts face challenges staffing their sports programs with knowledgeable and well-qualified coaches. Compared to smaller and more suburban districts, these schools have low student participation in sports and high coach attrition rates. These challenges make it difficult for districts to provide equitable educational opportunities for their youth through school-based sports. This article presents a vision for how these issues could be addressed by outlining a conceptual framework for an urban coaching fellowship (UCF) program. Inspired by alternative teaching pathway programs like Teach for America, the New York City Teaching Fellowship, and the Boston Teacher Residency, UCF programs would use partnerships between large urban school districts, colleges and universities, and local nonprofits to recruit, train and staff schools with well-trained coaches. Such UCF programs would aim to help urban schools increase student participation in high school sports by (1) increasing retention rates of coaches, (2) promoting innovative career pathways for youth coaches in urban high schools, and (3) recruiting and supporting a diverse workforce of high school coaches.

Characterizing mentoring capital in a residency program through mentor’s voices

The purpose of our study was to examine mentors’ conceptualizations of mentoring residents (preservice teachers) in a teacher residency program. Understanding the nuances of mentoring in a year-long placement in a mentor’s classroom may further illuminate mentoring in this context. In this qualitative, longitudinal study, we used constant comparative analysis to allow the data to drive recurring patterns and ideas linked to real-life situations and values coding to examine mentors’ conceptualizations of mentoring in a residency program. Residents enrolled in the federally-funded Teaching Residency Program for Critical Shortage Areas program were placed in a high-need urban secondary school for a year-long clinical experience to work alongside mentors, who had a non-evaluative role. By examining mentors’ conceptualizations of mentoring in this particular context, our data reveal aspects of their agency that reflected three main themes: (a) professional altruism, (b) extant knowledge, and (c) resident as stimulus. Our findings add to the research on mentoring by illuminating the voices of mentors to describe how they conceptualized mentoring and to further examine their motivations for mentoring, contributions to the mentee, and professional gains.

Using the discourse domain hypothesis of interlanguage to teach scientific concepts: Report on a case study in secondary education

Abstract This paper reports work-to-date on a particular practical context, applying one approach to interlanguage, the discourse domains approach, merged with the rhetorical-grammatical approach, involving both language and content. The context is an MA course for teacher residents placed in urban schools, and their English language learners (ELLs) in math and science classes, providing content area teachers the linguistic support they need to teach the language of their content, and thus the content itself. We were interested in how exactly learners’ interlanguage creation interacts with their understanding of scientific concepts. We primarily look at the rhetorical function “definition,” with discourse level semantic choices, and attendant grammar, with ELL data gathered by the teacher residents. Correct definitions in expected grammatical form point to an understanding of the scientific concept within the discourse domain, providing evidence that the science or mathematics content has been understood by the student. In our data analysis, we concentrated on the semantics and grammar of this rhetorical function, but other functions kept intruding, especially “classification”. Cross-language transfer appears not to be a factor, but cross-domain transfer is. Finally, we discuss how the marriage of this view of interlanguage with safe rule rhetorical/grammatical functions can better support teacher preparation, especially given how challenging teaching ELLs is for content area teachers.

Curriculum, Social Justice, and Inquiry in the Field: Investigating Retention in an Urban Teacher Residency

ABSTRACTThis qualitative study analyzes the retention data of an urban teacher residency program, a recent approach to developing quality teachers. The authors identify patterns of movers, leavers, and stayers and draw on interview data to better understand residents’ (program graduates) perspectives on ways the program informs their practice after graduation. Using the university conceptual framework of curriculum, inquiry, and social justice, the authors examine how residents might demonstrate retention and practice of key concepts and principles that undergirded their residency program. This study furthers our understanding of how residencies support the preparation of new teachers in high-needs schools and shortage areas.

Inquiry in the Round? Education Rounds in an Teacher Residency Program

ABSTRACTIn education, the Rounds model provides opportunities for engaging educators as communities of learners who examine instructional issues for purposes of understanding and improving them. Over the past 10 years, Rounds have been implemented in school-based experiences in teacher preparation programs across the nation. Yet despite recent interest, there is little description of the opportunities and challenges of implementing the Rounds in teacher preparation. The purpose of this article is to describe Education Rounds implemented in one urban teacher residency program. To do so, we explore the emerging literature on Rounds and the residency program’s process of implementing Rounds. We present examples of residents’ experiences with Rounds, and we discuss tensions that arise when implementing Rounds as an innovative pedagogical approach in teacher preparation.

The power and potential of teacher residencies

Teacher residency programs (modeled after the clinical residency model in medical training) show great promise in helping local school systems build a highly capable and diverse teaching workforce. Jointly run by districts and nearby universities, these programs recruit teaching candidates, pair them with carefully selected mentor teachers, and give them a gradual introduction to classroom instruction while simultaneously moving them through a graduate-level course of study. While such programs are not yet widespread — since the first residency was launched in 2001, roughly 50 others have been created nationwide — early research findings suggest they provide an effective means of recruiting, preparing, supporting, and retaining excellent teachers.

Coherence, dissonance, and personal style in learning to teach

Concern that practical realities in classrooms will ‘trump’ theories has led some universities to design residency teacher education programs that maximize coherence between university coursework and field experiences. Yet, some research suggests that student teachers can learn from dissonance. This qualitative case study of one cohort in an urban teacher residency program that sought to maximize coherence asks how the apprentice teachers experienced connections between the university and the field. Although apprentices experienced dissonance, they nonetheless expressed coherent philosophies aligned with university values. Coherence was something that individual apprentices constructed for themselves as they developed a personal ‘style’ or way of teaching in a program that welcomed their prior identities. Coherence was achieved through early development of a personal professional identity, not perfect alignment between field and university.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Urban Teacher Residencies

Despite the rapid expansion of and investment in urban residency programs, a key tenet of the residency model—that they prepare teachers for targeted urban settings—remains largely unexamined. Although some might argue that a “good teacher” can transcend contexts—we ask in this issue whether there may be particular features of the setting or context that are important for new teachers to learn about. In the papers in our special issue, the authors examine more closely what kind of preparation may be necessary for specific contexts. This themed issue features scholarship that examines efforts to prepare teachers for clinical practice in particular contexts. The articles share evidence from three residency programs (each engaged in systematic data collection) on opposite sides of the US to point to features of the context that may matter for teaching; the design of opportunities to learn in these programs; and data that sheds light upon these questions. Given recent findings about the strong retention of graduates of ‘context-specific programs’ these examinations not only provide insight into the promise of urban residency programs but also serve as a call for programs to be epecially clear about the specific features of the setting that may matter for teaching.

Freezing Out Injustice: Using ICE to Foster Democratic Inquiry

In an urban teacher residency program, preservice science teachers experience what it's like to teach for social justice through the use of a democratic inquiry stance, thus moving toward an understanding of teaching for social justice as larger than one individual teacher in a classroom.

Highlighted & Underlined

The September 2016 Highlighted & Underlined feature included items about the positive reading attitudes and behaviors of children, support for teacher residencies, a quotation by Columbia University professor and author Christopher Emdin, a quotation from an interview with literacy specialist Lucy Calkins, and a chart about the dropping enrollment in teacher preparation programs.

Context as Content in Urban Teacher Education

Urban teacher residencies have emerged as an innovation for recruiting, preparing, and retaining teachers for high-need urban schools. Though residencies aim to prepare teachers for specific urban contexts, we know little about how context is conceptualized in the teacher education curriculum or what teachers learn about it. This study finds that participants in one residency in San Francisco came to see context as complex and layered, interrupting stigmas often associated with urban schools. Participants felt well prepared to teach in particular high-need settings, but their knowledge and skills did not necessarily transfer to other urban settings in the same city.

Is Experience the Best Teacher? Extensive Clinical Practice and Mentor Teachers’ Perspectives on Effective Teaching

This article presents a study of mentor teachers who work with residents in an urban teacher residency program in New York City. Forty-six mentor teachers (i.e., cooperating teachers) were asked to describe moments of effective mentoring, as well as their own strengths, weaknesses, and goals as mentors. Implicit in mentor teachers’ descriptions of effective mentoring were their perspectives on effective teaching. These perspectives offer much insight into the challenges of clinically rich teacher preparation for a particular urban context, raising several dilemmas that should be considered amid the calls for teacher preparation that is deeply rooted in field practice.

“Context-Specific” Teacher Preparation for New York City

In this article, we examine a residency program that was developed to prepare teachers specifically for New York City schools—the Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching Urban Teacher Residency program. This focused preparation on the particular urban context of New York City provides us with a unique opportunity to examine the nature of preparation—how such targeted preparation is conceptualized and organized, what it offers, and what might be missing and need to be strengthened. We also describe the development of a yearlong course aimed at preparing teachers for New York, which emerged from this study.

Teacher learning as curating: Becoming inclusive educators in school/university partnerships

The purpose of the study was to answer the following questions: (a) What contradictions emerge in the context of a school/university partnership for inclusive education? And (b) How do resident teachers resolve these contradictions as they learned to be inclusive education teachers? Contradictions emerged as teacher residents were required to use in their classrooms pedagogical artifacts taught in the masters’ program that were in conflict with the school district’s curricular policies and mandated practices. We use the notion of curating to explain how resident teachers resolved contradictions in situated practice. We provide recommendations for research and teacher learning efforts for inclusive education.

“Teachers are works in progress”: A mixed methods study of teaching residents’ beliefs and articulations of teaching for social justice

Teacher candidates’ beliefs about teaching for social justice affect the ways in which they act with students, schools, and communities. There is a growing body of research on teacher candidates’ beliefs of teaching for social justice, however there is limited research on larger samples over the course of teacher preparation. This mixed method study examines the beliefs and articulations of teaching for social justice of two cohorts of teaching residents who completed an urban teacher residency program. Findings suggest that residents developed nuanced ways of articulating and generally left the program endorsing ideas related to teaching for social justice.

Learning to Teach in an Urban Teacher Residency

In this article, I employ sociocultural theory to analyze the learning to teach process of two novice teachers enrolled in one Urban Teacher Residency (UTR). Findings show that Genesis and Jackie were differentially drawing on programmatic, disciplinary, relational, experiential, and dispositional resources as they learned to teach in an urban context. I show that programmatic resources of supervision and classroom management requirements (i.e., Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion) not only differentially influenced teachers’ learning and development but also differentially impacted the development of trust with students.

A teacher residency melds classroom theory with clinical practice

The University of South Florida has designed and initiated a two-year teacher residency program that intends to meld classroom preservice teacher instruction with work in classrooms with children from low-income and urban backgrounds. The Urban Teacher Residency Partnership Program is a joint effort between the University of South Florida and Hillsborough County Public Schools. Six elementary schools are part of the program. Clinical preparation is central to the program. So is collaboration between USF faculty and the Hillsborough school district. The author calls for more study and research into the residency model for preparing preservice teachers.

Support and assist: approaches to mentoring in a yearlong teacher residency

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine mentor teachers’ approaches to mentoring preservice teachers in a yearlong teacher residency program (TRP).Design/methodology/approach– This multiple-methods study examined 15 mentor teachers’ approaches over the course of a year in an urban TRP through the lens of Wang and Odell’s (2002) framework for mentoring. Data sources included mentors’ self-assessments over three points in time across one academic year. These self-assessments included numerical ratings of practice (quantitative) as well as open-ended rationales and goal setting (qualitative).Findings– Mentors predominately provided support and technical assistance to the residents learning to teach, drawing on humanistic, and situated apprentice perspectives on mentoring. They worked to develop residents’ self-confidence and exposed residents to a range of practices and school contexts. Glimmers of a more critical constructive approach were apparent in some mentors’ discussions of reflection and collaboration.Research limitations/implications– This study informs the work of teacher education programs as they develop mentoring structures that align with program visions, expand notions of mentoring, and consider the many roles of a mentor teacher.Originality/value– Increased emphasis on clinical experiences for preservice teachers highlights the need to attend to the practices of the mentor teachers with whom they work. These mentors, as field-based teacher educators, play a critical role in teacher education, and teacher education programs need to support their professional development as mentors. Understanding mentors’ approaches to mentoring is necessary in order to provide this support.