Learning to Teach for Social Justice: Measuring Change in the Beliefs of Teacher Candidates

Abstract

This article speaks to two current trends in teacher education—the press to assess teacher education in terms of measurable outcomes, on one hand, and the growing emphasis on social justice as a theme of teacher education, on the other. The article begins with a discussion of the concept of teacher education for social justice. Then, using Rasch Item Response Theory techniques and analyses, the article shows that certain aspects of the complex construct, “learning to teach for social justice,” can be measured reliably and validly across multiple groups of teacher candidates and graduates using a “Learning to Teach for Social Justice-Beliefs” (LTSJ-B) scale. This scale is part of a suite of teacher preparation surveys, which are in turn, part of a larger portfolio of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies designed to explore the effects of teacher education and the process of learning to teach. The analyses presented here show that the LTSJ-B scale can detect changes in beliefs related to teaching for social justice over time and across cohorts of teacher candidates. Specifically, we show that the scores of cohorts of exiting teacher candidates far exceeded the scores of entering candidates. We also show that after one year of teaching, graduates of the program maintained these higher scores. The analyses in this article contribute to the argument that although “learning to teach for social justice” is a complex matter that requires complex measures, it can indeed be constructed as a legitimate outcome of teacher education and thus expand the larger agenda to make teacher education accountable for the quality of teachers it prepares.

Notes

¹UNITE existed as a sub group of the Holmes Partnership, explicitly focused on the preparation of teachers for urban schools, from 1994–2003.

²The Teachers for a New Era (TNE) project, which began at Boston College in 2003, is an initiative sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and other funders to change how teacher education is understood and enacted at eleven selected institutions across the nation. As part of the BC TNE project, an inter-disciplinary Evidence Team was created to assess the effectiveness of teacher education and study the process of learning to teach. The team developed an evidence portfolio with quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies designed to examine impacts and relationships among teaching, learning, learning to teach, and social justice. The project reported in this article is part of that portfolio. The Evidence Team includes Boston College faculty members and administrators: Marilyn Cochran-Smith (Chair), Sarah Enterline, Alan Kafka, Fran Loftus, Larry Ludlow, Patrick McQuillan, Joseph Pedulla, and Gerald Pine; TNE Administrators, Jane Carter and Jeff Gilligan; and doctoral students, Joan Barnatt, Robert Baroz, Matt Cannady, Stephanie Chappe, Lisa D'Souza, Ann Marie Gleeson, Jiefang Hu, Cindy Jong, Kara Mitchell, Emilie Mitescu, Aubrey Scheopner, Karen Shakman, Yves Fernandez Solomon, and Diana Terrell.

³All of the instruments and tools developed as part of “Evidence Portfolio” at Boston College are available at: http://tne.bc.edu

⁴The WINSTEPS software package was used (Wright & Linacre, 1998).

⁵A more detailed explanation of logits is presented in Ludlow and Haley (1995).

⁶Details regarding the sample size for each cohort and nature of survey analyses for each survey administration are located at http://tne.be.edu.