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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Education TEACHER PREPARATION AND CORPORATE EDUCATION REFORM: LEARNING FROM CONVERSATIONS WITH CRITICAL TEACHER EDUCATORS A Dissertation in Curriculum & Instruction by Michelle Knotts © 2015 Michelle Knotts Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2015 The dissertation of Michelle Knotts was reviewed and approved* by the following: Kathleen Collins Associate Professor, Language, Culture and Society Chair of Committee Dissertation Advisor Anne Whitney Associate Professor of Education (Language and Literacy Education) Wanda Knight Associate Professor of Art Education and Women’s Studies Jacqueline Edmondson Associate Vice President and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education William Carlsen Graduate Program Head, Curriculum and Instruction Professor of Education *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT This qualitative inquiry explores the practices and lived experiences of critical teacher educators who have taken a stance against the corporate reform paradigm of education in their scholarship, activism, and teaching. Participants are leaders in the movement to resist corporate education reform and teacher educators who prepare preservice teachers for working in the current sociopolitical context; they include: Dr. Wayne Au, Dr. Julie Gorlewski, Dr. Denisha Jones, and Dr. P.L. Thomas. The study focuses on the challenges of preparing teacher candidates in the current sociopolitical context and examines how participants enact a critical pedagogy of teacher education that includes authentic writing, critical literacy, and student-centered approaches in order to meet these challenges. The researcher describes four commitments shared by participants: engagement, scholarship, advocacy, and reflection. Those shared commitments are explored through two themes in order to demonstrate how participants 1) politicize teacher education and 2) humanize teacher education. Data were collected through interviews and documents, and the researcher analyzed the data using an inductive, thematic analysis, guided by a critical theoretical framework and the tenets of critical pedagogy. Findings from this study reveal how critical teacher educators’ lived experiences influence their commitments and how their stances toward corporate education reform influence their pedagogy. The researcher makes recommendations for teacher educators and teacher education based on the findings – namely that critical teacher educators should do more to make sense of and engage with the movement to resist corporate education reform and that teacher education can better prepare teachers for the current sociopolitical context with explicit attention to the issues that contribute to schools as they are and by fostering hope and courage to see new possibilities for schools as they could be. Implications for preservice teachers and their experiences as beginning teachers are also discussed. This study reveals how efforts to politicize and humanize teacher education can better prepare teachers as empowered scholars and reflective practitioners who are able to make sense of the corporate reform paradigm and envision alternatives to it. This research challenges conceptions of teacher education that emphasize technical training and compliance in this era of neoliberalism. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................... vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... viii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................. ix Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Overview of the Study .......................................................................................... 1 Problem Statement ................................................................................................ 4 Current Sociopolitical Context of Education ........................................................ 7 Corporate reform paradigm of education. ..................................................... 7 Neoliberal ideology. ...................................................................................... 11 Critical Approach to Theory and Practice ............................................................ 16 Critical education theory and reconstructionism. .......................................... 17 Critical pedagogy. .......................................................................................... 19 Critical teacher education. ............................................................................. 22 Chapter 2 Methods ....................................................................................................... 28 Qualitative Approaches ........................................................................................ 28 Role of the researcher. ................................................................................... 32 Data Collection Process ........................................................................................ 33 Interviews. ..................................................................................................... 34 Documents. .................................................................................................... 37 Selection of Participants ....................................................................................... 38 Data Analysis Process ........................................................................................... 42 Chapter 3 Participants’ Lived Experiences and Commitments .................................. 47 Dr. Wayne Au: Organizing for Social Change ..................................................... 49 Engagement. .................................................................................................. 53 Dr. Denisha Jones: Advocating for Students and Families .................................. 54 Advocacy. ...................................................................................................... 58 Dr. Paul L. Thomas: Building Disciplinary Knowledge ...................................... 59 Scholarship. ................................................................................................... 63 Dr. Julie Gorlewski: Creating a Safe Space for Dialogue .................................... 66 Reflection. ..................................................................................................... 69 Commitment to Critical Pedagogy ....................................................................... 70 v Chapter 4 Politicize Teacher Education ...................................................................... 73 Raising Awareness about Contested Issues .......................................................... 74 Engaging in the Broader Context ......................................................................... 81 Critical Pedagogy to Politicize Teacher Education .............................................. 86 Authentic writing. .......................................................................................... 87 Reading the word and the world. ................................................................... 89 Chapter 5 Humanize Teacher Education .................................................................... 94 Humanizing our Teaching in a Dehumanizing Context ....................................... 96 Impact on students. ........................................................................................ 96 Preparing advocates. ...................................................................................... 99 Impact on prospective teachers. .................................................................... 101 Preparing reflective practitioners. ................................................................. 106 Critical Pedagogy To Humanize Teacher Education ............................................ 111 Relationships. ................................................................................................ 111 Student-centered classrooms. ........................................................................ 116 Transparency. ................................................................................................ 117 Chapter 6 Ongoing Conversations .............................................................................. 121 Recommendations for Critical Teacher Educators ............................................... 123 Take action. ................................................................................................... 123 Use your outside voice. ................................................................................. 128 Collaborate and connect. ............................................................................... 130 Recommendations for Undergraduate Teacher Education ................................... 133 Explicit attention to the current sociopolitical context. ................................. 134 Working simultaneously within and against the system. .............................. 137 Renewed focus on educational foundations and philosophy. .......................