Rooted in Belonging: Critical Place-Based Learning in Early Childhood and Elementary Teacher Education

by Melissa Sherfinski

With Sharon Hayes

Foreword by Christopher P. Brown

Series edited by Christopher P. Brown, and Nancy File

Published by: Teachers College Press

Imprint: Teachers College Press

Sales Date: 2023-02-24

Paperback

CA$50.95

Published: February 2023

Product Details

Imprint: Teachers College Press

Page Count: 192 Pages

Dimensions: 6.10 x 9.00

192 Pages, 6.10 x 9.00 x 0.50 in

Paperback

CA$50.95

ISBN: 9780807768228

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Description
Authors
Contents

Most practitioners and scholars agree that critical and reflective early childhood and elementary teachers are foundational for children?s holistic growth and development. Yet current policies focused on elevating testing and performativity are contributing to student and teacher anxiety and alienation. This book offers a counternarrative to neoliberal standardized preservice teacher development and assessment processes. The author examines how a cohort of teacher educators worked alongside their preservice teachers?both groups predominately White and female?to redesign their teacher education program. Sherfinski reveals how the narrative portfolio, an inquiry-based alternative to accreditation and standards-based assessments, was designed to locally document, resist, and disrupt the status quo. The narrative portfolio speaks back to standardized preservice teacher assessments by providing spaces for teacher candidates to demonstrate their knowledge of theory and practice as enacted in the natural settings of school and community. Rooted in Belonging shows why humanizing, democratic, place-based practices should be at the forefront of teacher education.

Book Features:

Provides a rare portrait of equity-based teacher education at the confluence of place-based approaches, student diversity, and teacher education.
Grapples with tough issues such as how the shared Whiteness of preservice teachers and children and their families play out alongside their differences.
Explores how educators negotiate deep ideological differences while still preparing teachers for critical work.
Examines how the current political climate around Black Lives Matters, the 2020 presidential election, and the COVID-19 pandemic contribute to the challenges of working in communities.
Discusses how race, space, time, and settler colonialism shape the work of preservice teachers and their teacher educators.
Shares action research and teacher leadership assignments, critical thinking and planning exercises, personal reflections, and preservice teachers? narrative portfolio artifacts.

Contents

Foreword Christopher P. Brown ?ix

Acknowledgments ?xiii

Introduction ?1
?The Bubble? ?2
Place-Based Education and Its Potential ?4
A Dynamic Charge for Teacher Education ?5
Chapter Summaries ?5

1. ?The Need for Place-Based Teacher Education ?7
Contexts for the Book ?7
Three Challenges Connecting the Places ?9
Why We Need Place-Based Teacher Education ?11
Neoliberal Challenges to Place-Based Teacher Education ?13
Reclaiming Accountability ?16
Challenges of Reclaiming Accountability ?18
Questions for Reflection and Discussion ?20
What?s Next? ?20

2. ?Theoretical Framework ?21
The Nature of Meaning-Making ?21
Three Approaches to Place-Based Education ?22
Humanizing Place-Based Education in School Classrooms ?23
Place-Based Teacher Education ?29
Negotiation: Sensing and Resisting Neoliberal Policies ?32
Questions for Reflection and Discussion ?37
What?s Next? ?37

3. ?The Narrative Portfolio Project ?38
Context of the Teacher Education Program ?38
The Narrative Portfolio as a Counter-Narrative to Failure ?44
Questions for Reflection and Discussion ?56
What?s Next? ?56

4. ?Resisting Neoliberalism Through Place-Based Narrative Portfolio Work ?57
Getting Lost in Places ?58
Vignette 1. Critical Reflection on Place ?61
Vignette 2. Dialogism With Place in Mind ?65
Vignette 3. Transforming I-It to I-You ?71
Vignette 4. Diffraction: Bending Around Barriers ?75
Conclusion ?80
Questions for Reflection and Discussion ?81
What?s Next? ?81

5. ?Pairing Our Place-Based Approach With Racial Justice ?82
Antiracist Education ?83
COVID-19 and Antiracist Teaching ?87
Place-Based Education Post-Graduation ?99
Conclusion ?105
Questions for Reflection and Discussion ?106
What?s Next? ?106

6. ?Practice and Policy Implications ?107
Teacher Education Program Assessment in the ?Cluster? ?108
Transforming Teacher Education Assessment ?112
The Change Process ?114
Suggestions for Practice ?118
Conclusion ?123
Questions for Reflection and Discussion ?123
What?s Next? ?123

Appendix A. Methodology: Capturing Meanings of Place-Based Education and Assessment ?125
Background for the Study ?125
Method ?125

Appendix B. Lenses of Teacher Education and Revised ?10 Characteristics of the Novice Teacher? for PDS Mentors and Faculty Professional Development ?133

Appendix C. A Portrait of Becoming ?137
Our Places ?138
Learners and Teachers ?139
Beginning the Year: Looking and Seeing as an Ethnographer ?139
Exploring the Literature: Disrupting the Commonplaces ?140
Our Journey ?141
Our Learning ?141
A Reflective Pause With an Eye to the Future ?142
Final Thoughts ?143

Appendix D. Destiny?s Book Club: Stamped by Reynolds & Kendi (2020) (Abbreviated Version) ?145

References ?147

Index ?163

About the Authors ?175