Rethinking Equity: Preservice Teachers' Perceptions and Practice Around Policy

Abstract

Despite the body of literature around practicing teachers and policy (Knapp, Ferguson, Bamberg, & Hill, 1998; Kumar & Scuderi, 2000; Lortie, 1975/2002), little is known about the involvement of their preservice counterparts. Preservice teachers have limited exposure to policy-related coursework in their professional training (Floden & Meniketti, 2005) and scholarship is relatively silent regarding preservice teachers' experiences with educational policies and their sense-making process (Spillane, 2004; Weick, 1995; see Heineke, Ryan, & Tocci, 2015, for a notable exception).

This paper examines preservice teachers negotiating and making sense of a particular policy, the Massachusetts' Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners (RETELL). It addresses the following questions: First, what do preservice teachers know about policy in general and the RETELL language policy in particular? Second, how do preservice teachers make sense of the implementation of the RETELL policy in the various settings of their professional training? Third, in what ways do preservice teachers' experiences with the policy influence their orientations toward teaching emergent bilingual students? This analysis demonstrates that preservice teachers have limited general knowledge of educational policy process, and limited specific knowledge around the RETELL language policy. Yet, they learn important lessons about how to “do” policy from their field supervisors and play an important role in policy implementation. The impact of the RETELL policy on preservice teachers' beliefs about teaching emergent bilingual students is mediated by the lack of policy information they receive and by their experiences in the field. This paper adds to the limited literature around preservice teachers involvement in policy and offers recommendations for highlighting the importance of policy education in teacher training.

Notes

1 I use the term “emergent bilingual” to highlight the existing language skills of students who are working toward proficiency in English (Garcia, Kleifgen, & Falchi, 2008). The policy language, as well as that of some of the respondents in this study, employ the term “English Language Learner” (ELL).

2 For an extensive treatment of bilingual education, sheltered instruction, and English-only language policy, the problematizing of various models, and teacher agency in the context of the debate around forms of language education in Massachusetts and elsewhere, see Heineke, 2016 and de Jong, Gort, & Cobb, 2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

May Hara

May Hara is an assistant professor in the College of Education at Framingham State University.