This issue contains five articles that address critical and timely issues in educator preparation. Two articles address social justice work and culturally responsive teaching in two unique contexts: one during the COVID-19 context and one in an international teaching context. One article explores the curricular re-design of a teacher education program. Two articles address the knowledge and skills associated with free speech protections and engagement in political advocacy work among teachers and teacher educators. We hope that together, these articles pique readers’ curiosity and spark thought-provoking questions and dialogue that will ultimately lead to improvements in educator preparation.
First, in “From ‘Social Justice Vacant’ to ‘Social Justice Explicit’: An Analysis of How Elementary Pre-service Teachers Imagine Teaching about COVID-19,” Darolia and Kessler share findings from an action research study in which elementary pre-service teachers in a social justice-focused social studies methods course were tasked with developing inquiry plans for elementary students. Darolia and Kessler analyzed their students’ plans and developed a spectrum of social justice orientation in their students’ inquiries, which ranged from “social justice vacant” to “social justice explicit.” While many prior studies explore the challenges PSTs face when it comes time to apply what they learned in educator preparation courses to actual classrooms, this study adds the context of clinical teaching during a global pandemic and suggests that PSTs’ personal contexts may either restrict or expand their capacity to consider the larger social, economic, and structural implications of the pandemic. This study should prompt teacher educators to consider how we can modify curricula, assessments, and instructional practices to move PSTs further along the social justice spectrum.
In the second article, “Transformative Learning within an International Teaching Experience: Developing as Emerging Culturally Responsive Teachers,” Jacobs and Haberlin share findings from a qualitative case study of 12 teacher candidates who engaged in an international teaching experience in Costa Rica and identify ways in which their students’ cultural experiences shape their development as emerging culturally responsive teachers. The two-week study abroad experience prompted the PSTs in the study to develop a broader conceptualization of culture and to question the cultural norms of US schools. While their findings suggest that international experiences, when paired with intentional opportunities for self-reflection, can greatly benefit PSTs’ growth as culturally responsive teachers, their study also encourages teacher educators to consider other ways in which we might recreate what they call “disorienting dilemmas” to prompt similar growth and self-reflection while still in a traditional teacher education college classroom context in the US.
The next article, “Does Practice Make Perfect?: The Curricular Give and Take of One Teacher Education Program’s Re-Design” by Kissau, Dack, and Fitchett, reports on the process one educator preparation program underwent to redesign their program to make it more conceptually coherent, more convenient, and affordable. In this mixed methods study, Kissau, Dack, and Fitchett collected and analyzed data including performance assessments, surveys, and interviews to explore the impact of the program re-design on their PSTs’ performance and perceptions of the program. Their new program focused on high leverage practices, which the authors hoped would better prepare their students to apply the knowledge skills gained in their educator preparation courses to K-12 settings. Findings from this study should interest teacher educators who are considering re-designing their programs to respond to the challenges and criticisms confronting traditional university-based educator preparation programs.
In the next article, “‘If You’re Not at the Table, You’re on the Menu’: Learning to Participate in Policy Advocacy as a Teacher Educator,” Aydarova, Rigney, & Dana create an evocative framework outlining the evolution of teacher educators from passive followers of educational policy to passionate advocates for policies that support public education. They acknowledge how teacher educators often do not consider themselves major players in the world of education policy advocacy and instead only view their roles as educating teachers to follow policy. This multiple case study digs deep into how teacher educators become involved in education policy advocacy and the challenges and personal convictions they face along the pathway. The compelling findings urge the field of teacher education to incorporate innovative support systems to allow teacher education faculty to build education policy advocacy skills and knowledge.
In the final article, “Sensible of Stifled: What Public-School Teachers Know About Their First Amendment Speech Protections in the Classroom,” Seigel-Stechler focus on the complex and evolving issue of free speech rights of teachers in the classroom. Parents’, teachers’, and legislators’ arguments over what is or is not appropriate in the classroom have been discussed on multiple national media and news organizations and are currently a hot topic at many school board meetings across the country. Findings of the survey described in the article are critical to teacher education because they indicate a gap in the legal understanding of teachers in the field in regards to free speech and basic understanding of their rights in the classroom. This article calls on teacher educators nationwide to increase the legal literacy of teachers in order to better prepare teachers to navigate the increasingly legal complexities of the current political and social conversations about what is being taught in classrooms.