Shifting perspectives: preservice teacher preparation in family engagement

ABSTRACT

This is a case study of four students in an early childhood teacher preparation program at a large, state university that intentionally seeks to emphasize supporting children and families from diverse backgrounds and using culturally responsive pedagogy. The program includes a family engagement course in the first semester that is designed to facilitate students’ recognition of the perspectives of diverse families, as well as practica in schools serving children and families from a range of backgrounds. Our investigation revealed that not all of our participants were willing to completely let go of their preconceived understandings of family diversity and engagement, but those who did were very willing to try multiple ways of building mutually beneficial relationships with families. Our findings suggest that teacher educators must have an understanding of the cultural and family backgrounds of teacher preparation students so as to better support students in decentering and resisting normalizing their own family and school experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Preservice teacher demographic information comes from self-reported enrollment information.

2. For the purpose of this study, suburban areas are those communities within the metropolitan area of a major urban center.

3. The mentor family must have a young child with an exceptionality because the FCS course is considered part of the preservice teachers’ required coursework for their endorsement in early childhood special education (birth through preschool). While FCS is not a special education course, there is some special education content (e.g., what happens at individual education plan meetings).

4. For the purpose of this study, researchers are using the definition of rural provided by the USDA, i.e., a place with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants and not located adjacent to an urban area.

5. Like Shannon, Zoey’s mother was also a preschool teacher. However, she was not Zoey’s teacher and her profession was not mentioned as part of Zoey’s critical incident report.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Early Career Research Award from the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators Foundation.