Ways of Being in Community: Centering Preservice Teachers’ Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in Field-Based Literacy Teacher Education

Abstract

A common model for connecting theory to practice within literacy teacher preparation programs involves preservice teachers (PTs) working in field-based courses to contextualize their learning. Field-based courses create hybrid spaces for personalizing curricula and following students’ lead outside of the pressures of normal classrooms. Researchers note that although PTs have found field-based courses in diverse, minority school settings helpful, many PTs feel unprepared to work with diverse populations. There is a need for literacy teacher preparation programs to enhance field experiences and incorporate culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) within coursework. Few studies, however, have explicitly examined the role of CSP in literacy courses or field-based coursework. Moreover, even coursework intended to prepare teachers to work in diverse settings often centers the experiences of White PTs and reinforces pedagogical practices associated with White cultural and academic norms. In this qualitative case study, we explore the potential of experiences in field-based teacher education courses to disrupt White values, traditions, and curricular norms when CSP is centered and when PTs have the opportunity to work with, and learn from, young students. Findings highlight innovative ways three PTs worked in community with young students and built innovative curricula around their students’ funds of knowledge: by restorying deficit narratives about students’ literacies, following students’ lead into multimodal literacies, and bridging linguistic differences through translanguaging.