This presentation describes a study utilizing social justice vignettes designed to challenge prospective teachers in identifying troublesome knowledge concerning diverse learners, consider beliefs and dispositions, and acknowledge the dissonance between their own life experience and that of their students. Teacher candidates are also asked to consider adjustments to practice based on independent examination of these issues and small group discussions fostered by the scenarios. Through the experience, participants are pressed toward transformational change in adopting an asset perspective in their interactions with diverse learners.
United States teacher preparation programs are being challenged to provide opportunities to address beliefs and conceptions of practice that limit effective instruction in increasingly diverse classrooms (Darling-Hammond and Bransford, 2005), considered broadly here as including differences in ethnicity, race, culture, social and linguistic background, learning modalities, and academic abilities. This requires the generally homogenous pool of teacher candidates in US schools – largely made up of white, middle class women - to see beyond their own life experience in developing an asset perspective to diversity as they form positive interpersonal connections with families, deepen and broaden cultural understandings, develop high expectations for all students, and effectively differentiate in support of student learning. Further, there is an increasing expectation that teacher candidates move beyond reflection on beliefs to transformation of practice, though few promising formats have been identified to facilitate transformative experiences (Gay, 2010). The vignettes utilized here offer a means for teacher candidates to identify and struggle with real life situations, toward this end. The format also provides potential for other disciplines in addressing these sorts of sensitive issues.
The presentation will describe the vignettes, as well as findings from use with teacher candidates from a US teacher preparation program.