Being A “Bridge Builder”: A Literacy Teacher Educator Negotiates the Divide between University-promoted Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and District-mandated Curriculum

ABSTRACT

The divide between university and classroom is a longstanding issue in teacher education. The disconnect between sociocultural theory often endorsed by universities and more behaviorist practices frequently enacted in classrooms is particularly acute in elementary literacy instruction–and is often exacerbated in high-poverty schools that tend to serve minoritized youth. Studying how teacher educators facilitate preservice teachers’ (PSTs’) learning across this divide is imperative if PSTs are to take up research-supported sociocultural and culturally responsive literacy practices. Drawn from a larger study on PSTs’ literacy learning, this paper highlights one literacy teacher educator’s attempt to bridge the university-field divide. Implications for how literacy teacher educators can support PSTs to enact sociocultural and culturally responsive literacy practices within the oft-occurring constraints in high-poverty schools are addressed.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher education
• Urban elementary schools
• culturally responsive pedagogy

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Jody Polleck for her comments on a previous version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was supported by the University of Southern California Provost’s Ph.D. Fellowship;Research Foundation of The City University of New York [PSC-CUNY Award #62329-00 50].