Rethinking Realities
Developing Culturally Responsive Secondary Educators: A Four-Year Study of a Teacher Education Program
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tracy Pelkowski
This longitudinal, qualitative program study investigated the impact of a four-year curriculum designed by the lead author to prepare Secondary Education Preservice Teachers (PSTs) to engage in culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP). Participation was voluntary and included six (n=6) White students enrolled at a small Catholic liberal arts college in the U.S. attended by a majority of White (74.0%) female (70.0%) students. Data collection took place over the course of three and one-half years and included student and instructor interviews, analysis of student work, and Helms’s Racial Identity Attitude Scales (pre-and post). Findings confirm that the development of PST’s critical consciousness and culturally responsive practices must be developmental, spiraled, and open to consistent change. The importance of educating PSTs in antiracist teaching practices in addition to CRP, as well as implications for undergraduate teacher education programs, are also discussed.
Understanding Teacher Educator’s Meta-teaching Action: Meaning, Function and Practical Approaches
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Xiaoduan Chen
If the functions of teaching as a particular social activity serving for human cultivation, meta-teaching serves to examine whether the activity is planned purposefully, undertaken rationally and effectively, finished with expected result achieved and to repair problems found. Teacher educators are the pivotal players to improve the quality of teacher education. So, understanding the meaning, function and practical approaches of teacher educator’s meta-teaching action are very important for improving the quality of teaching of teacher educational course. In this paper, we explore the definition of meta-teaching, functions of meta-teaching, fundamental aspects of meta-teaching, absence of meta-teaching in practice of teacher education course so far as teacher educators, meta-teaching action of teacher educators' classroom teaching, teacher educators' meta-teaching practical approaches, and meta-teaching action story as an experienced teacher educator.
Teaching Immigration in the Classroom - an American Experience!
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kazi Hossain
The topic of immigration has become a controversial subject across Europe like that in the United States. Immigrants have become the target of many negative feelings among certain sections of the population both in Europe and America. These feelings also affect children in the school settings and therefore, impact their learning directly or indirectly. This study shares an American experience of college faculty who have successfully implemented strategies to teach immigration in the classroom in a positive manner.
Digital Literacy in the Age of Disinformation: Preparing Future Teachers to Support Student Learning
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carol Doyle Jones, Debbie Mc Cleary, Laura Hermans Nymark
Digital literacy is a vital skill for teacher candidates to develop and incorporate into their pedagogy. Research has shown that people with low digital literacy are challenged in discerning between legitimate and fake news and has revealed that a high percentage of students access news through social media platforms, creating challenges for assessing information correctly. As teacher educators at a Canadian university we wondered, what is the digital literacy of our future teachers? What are the implications of our teacher candidates’ digital literacy skills in their roles as teachers? Informed by Evanson & Sponsel’s (2019) study, we have surveyed four classes of teacher candidates to gain insight into their news and social site use, their understanding of how fake news impacts themselves and society, and how they are able to evaluate stories of information as being truthful or fake. We present the survey results and our initial work with the teacher candidates, post-survey. This post-survey work features participants from three classrooms in literacy-based courses with educational opportunities centering on how the teacher candidates can be responsive to teaching digital literacy. Implications focus on how teacher candidates incorporate their learnings and teaching resources to foster digital literacy among themselves and their students.
