Teaching Advocacy in Early Years Initial Teacher Education Programmes

Teacher education programmes in the United States and in England with early childhood certification usually include courses with topics such as early childhood theory and curriculum, child development, model programs, and history of early childhood education but less often include courses with content focused specifically on advocacy. This article interrogates the possibility of developing courses on advocacy for pre-service teachers to build a knowledge base on advocacy for parents, families and children and to develop competency in inter-personal, cross-cultural communication. Drawing on data from Liebovich's study on beliefs about advocacy of early childhood education students in the United States, the authors share pre-service teachers' narratives about advocacy, discuss the process of moving from advocacy awareness to empowerment, and propose content for a university level course on advocacy in England and the United States. Using a feminist theoretical perspective, this study critiques teacher education programs and how student identity as advocates is rarely nurtured. The authors demonstrate how pre-service teachers reflect about the role teacher's play working with, informing, and empowering families to truly become collaborative partners in the education of their children

Educating Citizens: A Cross-Cultural Conversation

This paper explores pre-service teachers’ beliefs about citizenship across two nations, the United States and Singapore, and the nature of their conversation about those beliefs.  Data is based on a Black Board-based threaded dialog, over two different semesters, between pre-service social studies teachers in the two countries.  The discussions focused on the meanings each group held about the concept of an effective citizen. Data was analyzed around themes of knowledge, skills and values.  Within these broad categories, we found that several dominant themes emerged across both groups and both years.  The conversations provided some insight into the similarities and differences in conceptions of citizenship held by these two groups of preservice teachers. However, while American and Singaporean preservice teachers held similar views of the “good” citizen, they expressed and explained these within the contexts of their particular cultural experiences.  While many similarities were evident, there were also clear differences which the facilitators attributed to differences in disciplinary grounding and cultural contexts