Developing Horizontal Expertise with Professional Learning Communities in Social Studies Teacher Preparation

As teacher education programs become increasingly organized around accreditation and licensure standards, finding opportunities to be responsive to teacher candidates\u27 needs and interests has become more difficult. This paper traces the evolution of a professional learning community for secondary social studies teacher candidates as a key feature of one teacher education program and analyzes the collaborative projects designed for the purpose of developing horizontal expertise. We find that professional learning communities can serve as dynamic spaces to co-construct learning experiences with candidates in ways that prepare them for future professional learning as practicing social studies teachers

Conserving the American Man: Gender, Eugenics and Education in the Civilian Conservation Corps

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a novel United States federal education programme that enrolled nearly three million men during the 1930s and early 1940s. This public work relief programme provides a case study of the ways that masculine, eugenicist ideas concerning public education evolved from the Progressive Era through the Great Depression. This educational philosophy was espoused by a small group of men – some educators, some not – who sought to remedy what they saw as the failures of public schooling, namely its overly feminine nature. Through an analysis of their public writings and the images that were used to advertise the CCC, we examine the programme’s vision of education for white working-class men intended to help rebuild the United States following the Great Depression. Our exploration of these ideas provides an important bridge between the educational theories of the Progressive and the Post-Second World War eras

Developing Horizontal Expertise with Professional Learning Communities in Social Studies Teacher Preparation

As teacher education programs become increasingly organized around accreditation and licensure standards, finding opportunities to be responsive to teacher candidates\u27 needs and interests has become more difficult. This paper traces the evolution of a professional learning community for secondary social studies teacher candidates as a key feature of one teacher education program and analyzes the collaborative projects designed for the purpose of developing horizontal expertise. We find that professional learning communities can serve as dynamic spaces to co-construct learning experiences with candidates in ways that prepare them for future professional learning as practicing social studies teachers

Teaching, Learning, and Leading: Preparing Teachers as Educational Policy Actors

Within the current federal, state, and local contexts of educational reform, teachers must be recognized as central actors in policy work, but rarely do we explicitly consider preparing teachers to become policy actors. Understanding these implications for teacher education, we investigate teacher candidates’ learning of the complexity and dynamism of educational policy through a field-based teacher preparation program. Situated across four unique school contexts in the diverse neighborhoods of Chicago, Illinois, we qualitatively study the cases of eight teacher candidates as they explore policy in practice. We found that candidates developed enduring understandings about policy as complex, situated, and multilayered, as well as the central role of the teacher. This learning was mediated by multiple facets of the field-based module, including readings, panels, and observations. Implications center on the use of field-based teacher education to support policy-related learning and development

Mapping the Indigenous Postcolonial Possibilities of Teacher Preparation

In this article, a team of teacher educators collectively think through the many possibilities of how concepts such as decolonization, abolition, and fugitivity intersect with and are taken up by teacher education programs. To do so, we undertook a critical interpretive synthesis of scholarly literature spanning 2000 to 2020 to locate, examine, and organize existing examples of teacher education programs that work to transgress hegemonic colonial models of education. We revisit de Oliveira Andreotti et al.’s social cartography as a framework for comparing the theoretical foundations and social implications of each teacher education program

Quality of Research Evidence in Education: How Do We Know?

The persistence of inequitable education is the fundamental fact facing education researchers as we reflect on the quality and value of the evidence we produce (American Educational Research Association & National Academy of Education, 2020; Educational Opportunity Monitoring Project, 2020). As a field, we must critically examine what it means for us to develop increasingly sophisticated research tools and research design models while disparate outcomes along familiar lines of race and class continue apace. This issue’s importance has been laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic and the global protests for racial justice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. If our research endeavors are not effectively combating racism in education, providing help as our schools refashion themselves for remote and hybrid teaching, or supporting schools in other ways to address the myriad of equity gaps they face, then what are we doing? What are we generating evidence of and for

Teaching, Learning and Leading with Schools and Communities: Preparing Sophisticated, Reflective, and Resilient Elementary STEM Educators

Loyola University Chicago’s Teaching, Learning and Leading with Schools and Communities (TLLSC) program is an ambitious break from traditional, university-based teacher preparation models. This clinically-based initial teacher preparation program, fully embedded in local schools and community organizations, takes an ecological perspective on the development of sophisticated, reflective, and resilient elementary science educators who are able to prepare and inspire students and act as agents of change in their schools. This paper describes how TLLSC leverages time for science across elementary teacher candidates’ entire program through an emphasis on practitioner inquiry and integrated (inter- and trans-disciplinary) teaching and learning. TLLSC’s innovative approach is designed to foster STEM habits of mind, integrate scientific practices, and support candidates’ ongoing self-examination of personal and social applications of science for themselves and their future students

Developing Educational Websites in lieu of Clinical Fieldwork

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted education, forcing teachers and teacher educators into emergency, remote instruction. While there were noted challenges, there also were global success stories of innovation in preparing current and future teachers. This AACE and SITE-published, open access eBook contains 133 chapters with over 850 pages documenting best practices, strategies, and efforts by teacher educators, professional developers, researchers, and practitioners. It is divided into seven sections that address pedagogy, collaboration, field experiences, preservice education methods, professional development, digital tools, and equity issues. Chapters are presented as innovations with supporting materials that could be easily replicated or studied. (v1.02

The Question of School Resources and Student Achievement: A History and Reconsideration

One question posed continually over the past century of education research is to what extent school resources affect student outcomes. From the turn of the century to the present, a diverse set of actors, including politicians, physicians, and researchers from a number of disciplines, have studied whether and how money that is provided for schools translates into increased student achievement. The authors discuss the historical origins of the question of whether school resources relate to student achievement, and report the results of a meta- analysis of studies examining that relationship. They find that policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders have addressed this question using diverse strategies. The way the question is asked, and the methods used to answer it, is shaped by history, as well by the scholarly, social, and political concerns of any given time. The diversity of methods has resulted in a body of literature too diverse and too inconsistent to yield reliable inferences through meta-analysis. The authors suggest that a collaborative approach addressing the question from a variety of disciplinary and practice perspectives may lead to more effective interventions to meet the needs of all students

Statement on the Effects of Law Enforcement in School Settings

School-based law enforcement (SBLE) have become increasingly common in U.S. schools over recent decades despite the controversy surrounding their presence and lack of consensus around their associated benefits and harms. Drawing on the history and evidence base regarding SBLE, we advocate for an end to SBLE programs. Grounding our argument in principles of Community Psychology and positive youth development, we outline how the presence and actions of SBLE negatively affect individual students as well as school systems, with particularly harmful outcomes for students with minoritized and marginalized identities. Research on SBLE and school crime does not provide consistent evidence of positive impacts, and many studies find null effects for the relationship between SBLE and school crime or increases in crime and violence in schools. Though funding for SBLE is often prompted by high-profile acts of gun violence in schools, evidence suggests that SBLE neither prevents these incidents, nor lessens the severity when they do occur. Thus, we advocate for removing law enforcement from school settings and redirecting resources into inclusive, evidence-informed responses that are generally safer and more effective than SBLE. We close by outlining the policy landscape governing SBLE programs and ways communities can lobby for change