Embedded experiences, critical conversations: Learning about teaching in a professional development school cohort setting

Using qualitative research techniques, the researcher explored preservice teacher learning among traditional college-age students engaged in a semester-long early field experience in an urban elementary school within a Literacy Education Professional Development School (LEPrDS) cohort setting. The purpose of this study was two-fold: (a) to explore preservice teachers\u27 evolving knowledge construction regarding teaching and the teacher\u27s role and (b) to examine preservice teachers\u27 professional growth from a community of practice perspective. From a community of practice perspective, traditional college-age preservice teachers were studied in terms of how they defined the teacher\u27s role, what challenges they faced during their field experience, and how they and other members of their cohort community both interacted with and learned from and alongside each other. Four female preservice teachers participated in the study. Semi-structured qualitative interviews (Mason, 1996), together with participants\u27 personal narratives in the form of audio diary entries, provided much of the data for the study. Extracts from participants\u27 clinical coursework (especially the Reflection and Self-Evaluation component of their Teacher Work Sample) provided a further source of data. The process of data transformation, or the progression from organizing data to making sense of it, broadly followed Wolcott\u27s (1994) ethnographic approach that calls for description, analysis, and interpretation. Findings indicated that all of the study participants underwent some shift in their understanding of what it means to be a teacher in the course of their LEPrDS activities. The experiences that proved to be most powerful were those in which the preservice teachers were most fully engaged, on both a personal and a professional level, in carrying out authentic teacher tasks that directed their attention away from their own concerns towards the social, emotional, and intellectual needs of the elementary students with whom they interacted. They found the practical help and emotional support needed to plan, complete, and reflect on these tasks in the extended learning community that developed over time among themselves and their fellow cohort members, embedded professors, and faculty and staff members in the school. Implications for practice for preservice teachers included: (1) openness to new ideas about teaching and the teacher\u27s role; (2) a readiness to embrace the challenges of unfamiliar classrooms; (3) learning about the teacher\u27s role beyond the classroom; and (4) active participation in a community of learners. Implications for teacher educators included: (1) alertness to potential personality clashes when making clinical placements; (2) regular, hands-on experience in area field experience schools; (3) developing and maintaining strong, mutually-beneficial school-university partnerships; and (4) encouraging preservice teachers to recognize and experience the multiple roles and responsibilities of teachers inside and outside the classroom