Teach as I Say, Not as I Do: How Preservice Teachers Made Sense of the Mismatch between How They Were Expected to Teach and How They Were Taught in Their Professional Training Program

Examining Preservice Teachers’ Conceptions of Teaching to Consider the Impact of Policymakers’ Neoliberal Reforms on Their Sensemaking of Their New Profession

“…Second, alongside this understanding that teaching as a political act has been altered by policymakers’ neoliberal reforms, TEs and their PTPs must assist PSTs in fostering a sense of action, be it the process of refusing (Ball, 2016) to enact neoliberal reforms (e.g., Henning et al, 2018) or seeking out allies within the profession and/or among the families and communities in which they will work as classroom teachers (e.g., Apple, 2001). For example, TEs, within their PTPs, can assist PSTs in “setting up their own support networks, such as teacher collaboratives that meet regularly and online discussion lists or forums” (Loh & Hu, 2014, p. 20) or implement staggered mentoring relationships that begin as PSTs enter their PTPs and continue into their first few years of teaching (Brown, Barry et al, 2021). Having these relationships can better prepare PSTs for the reality of working with MTs or future colleagues who “do not reject the idea of setting standards, collecting data, making pedagogical and curricular decisions based on data, and holding educators accountable for student learning” (Ellison et al, 2018, p. 166).…”

“…We followed the selected participants (all names pseudonyms) through the entirety of their program. These PSTs reflect the range of students who typically participate in this PTP; most being female and about half identifying as White with a growing number of students who identify from diverse sociocultural backgrounds (Brown, Barry et al, 2021; Brown, Puckett et al, 2021).…”

“…The investigation discussed in this article addressed a limited set of issues, with a small sample of PSTs ( n = 11), in a single teacher education program, in one state in the United States enrolled in an EC-6 PTP (Brown, Barry et al, 2021; R. Y. Yin, 2018).…”

Dedication to the craft: developing pre-service teachers into social justice advocates through PDS and poetry

“…Upon entering the field, interns may feel that there is a disconnect between their initial teacher preparation program and the realities of the classroom (Brown, Barry, Ku, & Puckett, 2021;McKay, 2016). In one case study, demands of their academic, personal, and professional responsibilities led to interns feeling unprepared during their internship (Brown et al, 2021). In a similar qualitative study, McKay (2016) explored PSTs emotional responses to inclusion, and observed that their frustrations often centered on feeling as though they were not reaching all students' needs.…”

“…It acted as a place to commit to ideas they wished to enact once they found a classroom of their own. Becoming a social justice advocate requires both community and mentorship to support critical reflection, as social justice is a shared struggle (Brown et al, 2021;Oakes & Rogers, 2006). Mentorship through this shared struggle is essential, and for PSTs it is critical that such mentorship occurs in a non-evaluative, comfortable setting built on trust (McKay & Manning, 2019), which I feel was built in our book club and my weekly support of the PSTs in the school.…”