Community Engagement as Catalyst for Professional Learning, Reflection, and Agency in Preservice-Teacher Education

Abstract

I am a public elementary teacher currently serving as a school-based supervisor for a Professional Development School (PDS) undergraduate elementary-teacher-education program in Madison, Wisconsin, where our charge is to leverage the intersecting contexts of school, university, and community to prepare skilled and caring teachers for urban schools. A fundamental requirement of the clinical model in this constructivist, social-justice-oriented program is for preservice teachers to cultivate professional agency by embracing opportunities that connect them with others both in and outside of school and to show evidence of being reflective practitioners who recognize and evaluate the effects of their assumptions, choices, and actions on themselves and others. In this article, I consider the collaborative spaces that school-wide, inquiry-focused activities and a recent series of tension-filled civil protests at the state capitol provided for preservice teachers to take professional initiative in connecting and learning from others on behalf of their own development as preservice teachers.