Celia Oyler

From Ideal to Practice and Back Again: Beginning Teachers Teaching for Social Justice:

The five authors of this article designed a multicase study to follow recent graduates of an elementary preservice teacher education program into their beginning teaching placements and explore the ways in which they enacted social justice curricula. The authors highlight the stories of three beginning teachers, honoring the plurality of their conceptions of social justice teaching and the resiliency they exhibited in translating social justice ideals into viable pedagogy. They also discuss the struggles the teachers faced when enacting social justice curricula and the tenuous connection they perceived between their conceptions and their practices. The authors emphasize that such struggles are inevitable and end the article with recommendations for ways in which teacher educators can prepare beginning teachers for the uncertain journey of teaching for social justice.

Teacher Preparation for Inclusive and Critical (Special) Education

The author’s preservice program prepares both single and dual certification master’s students to teach in inclusive classrooms. This article provides an overview of the context in which, and for which, the program was designed, a description of the program, including what the author means by inclusive education and critical special education, explanations of key pedagogical and assessment practices that she leans on to meet her goals, and concludes with an account of how the program came to be developed.

Preparing Teachers for Inclusive Classrooms Learning from a Collaborative Inquiry Group

Designing preservice teacher education partially around voluntary study groups offers teacher educators a unique chance to examine group members’ perspectives and understandings. This article examines the topics of concern and questions expressed by six general education student teachers in a collaborative dialogue group focused on inclusive classrooms. Culled from seven meeting transcripts over the course of one semester, we extracted the themes of inexperience, equity, levels, normalcy, labels, and belonging as presented by these teachers in their individual inquiries into inclusive education. We consider how useful the themes, tensions, and issues unearthed in this research are for constructing a preservice teacher education curriculum for inclusive teacher preparation.

Silenced Gender: The Construction of a Male Primary Educator.

Abstract A trio of researchers (including the student teacher) explore the experiences of a male student teacher as he left the Marine Corps and entered his first placement in a first grade classroom. The difficulties this preservice teacher encountered in the field draw attention to the gendered nature of both the primary classroom and the elementary teacher education program. We used the student teaching journal as the primary basis for this collaborative oral inquiry of critical incidents that occurred, and highlight the way that discourses of femininity were deployed in often inconspicuous ways. We conclude with a set of recommendations for teacher education.

Unstandardized Responses to a “Standardized” Test The edTPA as Gatekeeper and Curriculum Change Agent

We examine edTPA (a teacher performance assessment) implementation at one private university during the first year that our state required this exam for initial teaching certification. Using data from semi-structured interviews with 19 teacher educators from 12 programs as well as public information on edTPA pass rates, we explore whether the edTPA served its intended roles as a gatekeeper to the teaching profession and a catalyst for curriculum change. Although the edTPA did not serve as gatekeeper in our context, we did find a wide variety of consequential program-level gatekeeping practices. To explore the test’s function as a curriculum improvement lever, we created weighted change scores to represent the range of edTPA-related curricular changes across 12 programs. We found a wide range of curricular responses to the edTPA, from marginalization of the assessment to deep edTPA integration in program coursework. Finally, we explore teacher educators’ analyses of the edTPA as an instructional tool.

An Inescapable Network of Mutuality: Building Relationships of Solidarity in a First Grade Classroom.

This case study of a first grade teacher enacting a social action curriculum is based on the understanding that schools can be sites where even young children can work toward the common good. This paper examines the way a first grade teacher (Paula Rogovin) and her students built solidarity with a community member and in turn adopted a new social concern as their own. We identify, detail, and analyze the building of ties of solidarity as a practice enacted within a social action curriculum.

Teaching Beyond the Progressive–Traditional Dichotomy: Sharing Authority and Sharing Vulnerability

We explore teaching and learning beyond the familiar dichotomy between the authoritarian concept of the hard place of traditional teaching (in which the individuals experiential knowledge is neglected) and the abdication of authority inherent in the soft place of progressive teaching (in which the achieved cultural knowledge of the teacher is regarded as an embarrassment). Our need to theorize this different place, or a different positioning of teacher and authority, arises in part from the difficulties our students and we ourselves have in a classroom that does not answer to either of these conceptually familiar places. The different place is a place of shared authority. Sharing authority exposes our limitations and leads to a shared vulnerability.

Professional Development for Special Education Reform Rearticulating the Experiences of Urban Educators

As urban districts undertake special education reform initiatives to move toward inclusive schooling arrangements, educators are challenged to reflect critically on their practices to support greater participation of all students, including those with disabilities. The authors describe the narratives of three educators who participated in a professional development opportunity offered in the context of special education reform within a large urban school district. By exploring the parameters of their practice, their professional priorities and their struggles in adopting the offerings of this professional development, the authors derive important clues to the process of change that can inform professional development for inclusive practice.

Preparing Teachers of Young Children to be Social Justice-Oriented Educators

University-based teacher education program curricula vary widely across the United States, yet some programs share a commitment to prepare preservice students from an explicitly social justice perspective. This chapter begins with an overview of approaches and concerns that fall under the umbrella of social justice-oriented teacher education. Then, two broad commitments of such programs are explored in some detail: (1) it is important for teachers to assume a capacity—rather than a deficit—orientation to young children, their families, and their communities; and (2) it is important for teachers to develop knowledge of oppression, a keen eye for inequity as it functions in schools, and a commitment to equity pedagogy. Next, I describe two pedagogical approaches used in one teacher education program: inquiry and multilevel–multicultural instructional planning; and detail how these help prepare educators to teach from a social justice perspective. The chapter concludes by outlining a theoretical framework for researching classroom-based practices of graduates of social justice-oriented teacher education programs.

I Failed the edTPA.

In this article, co-written by a teacher and a professor, the authors examine possible explanations for why Adam (first author), a New York City public school special educator, failed the edTPA, a teacher performance assessment required by all candidates for state certification. Adam completed a yearlong teaching residency where he was the special educator intern of a co-teaching team. He received glowing reviews on all program assessments, including 12 clinical observations and firsthand evaluations by his principal and one student. In this article, the authors analyze Adam’s edTPA submission showing evidence of how he met his teacher education program’s expectations for teaching inclusively in a heterogeneous Integrated Co-Teaching classroom using frameworks from Universal Design for Learning and culturally sustaining pedagogy. They speculate that this pedagogical approach was in conflict with the Pearson/SCALE (Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity) edTPA expectations or scorer training. They conclude by discussing the paradigmatic conflicts between the Pearson/SCALE special edTPA handbook and the aims and practices of inclusive education.