Rooted in Belonging: Critical Place-Based Learning in Early Childhood and Elementary Teacher Education

Most practitioners and scholars agree that critical and reflective early childhood and elementary teachers are foundational for children’s holistic growth and development. Yet current policies focused on elevating testing and performativity are contributing to student and teacher anxiety and alienation. This book offers a counternarrative to neoliberal standardized preservice teacher development and assessment processes. The author examines how a cohort of teacher educators worked alongside their preservice teachers—both groups predominately White and female—to redesign their teacher education program. Sherfinski reveals how the narrative portfolio, an inquiry-based alternative to accreditation and standards-based assessments, was designed to locally document, resist, and disrupt the status quo. The narrative portfolio speaks back to standardized preservice teacher assessments by providing spaces for teacher candidates to demonstrate their knowledge of theory and practice as enacted in the natural settings of school and community. Rooted in Belonging shows why humanizing, democratic, place-based practices should be at the forefront of teacher education. Book Features: Provides a rare portrait of equity-based teacher education at the confluence of place-based approaches, student diversity, and teacher education. Grapples with tough issues such as how the shared Whiteness of preservice teachers and children and their families play out alongside their differences. Explores how educators negotiate deep ideological differences while still preparing teachers for critical work. Examines how the current political climate around Black Lives Matters, the 2020 presidential election, and the COVID-19 pandemic contribute to the challenges of working in communities. Discusses how race, space, time, and settler colonialism shape the work of preservice teachers and their teacher educators. Shares action research and teacher leadership assignments, critical thinking and planning exercises, personal reflections, and preservice teachers’ narrative portfolio artifacts.

Table of Contents:
Contents Foreword Christopher P. Brown  ix Acknowledgments  xiii Introduction  1 “The Bubble”  2 Place-Based Education and Its Potential  4 A Dynamic Charge for Teacher Education  5 Chapter Summaries  5 1.  The Need for Place-Based Teacher Education  7 Contexts for the Book  7 Three Challenges Connecting the Places  9 Why We Need Place-Based Teacher Education  11 Neoliberal Challenges to Place-Based Teacher Education  13 Reclaiming Accountability  16 Challenges of Reclaiming Accountability  18 Questions for Reflection and Discussion  20 What’s Next?  20 2.  Theoretical Framework  21 The Nature of Meaning-Making  21 Three Approaches to Place-Based Education  22 Humanizing Place-Based Education in School Classrooms  23 Place-Based Teacher Education  29 Negotiation: Sensing and Resisting Neoliberal Policies  32 Questions for Reflection and Discussion  37 What’s Next?  37 3.  The Narrative Portfolio Project  38 Context of the Teacher Education Program  38 The Narrative Portfolio as a Counter-Narrative to Failure  44 Questions for Reflection and Discussion  56 What’s Next?  56 4.  Resisting Neoliberalism Through Place-Based Narrative Portfolio Work  57 Getting Lost in Places  58 Vignette 1. Critical Reflection on Place  61 Vignette 2. Dialogism With Place in Mind  65 Vignette 3. Transforming I-It to I-You  71 Vignette 4. Diffraction: Bending Around Barriers  75 Conclusion  80 Questions for Reflection and Discussion  81 What’s Next?  81 5.  Pairing Our Place-Based Approach With Racial Justice  82 Antiracist Education  83 COVID-19 and Antiracist Teaching  87 Place-Based Education Post-Graduation  99 Conclusion  105 Questions for Reflection and Discussion  106 What’s Next?  106 6.  Practice and Policy Implications  107 Teacher Education Program Assessment in the “Cluster”  108 Transforming Teacher Education Assessment  112 The Change Process  114 Suggestions for Practice  118 Conclusion  123 Questions for Reflection and Discussion  123 What’s Next?  123 Appendix A. Methodology: Capturing Meanings of Place-Based Education and Assessment  125 Background for the Study  125 Method  125 Appendix B. Lenses of Teacher Education and Revised “10 Characteristics of the Novice Teacher” for PDS Mentors and Faculty Professional Development  133 Appendix C. A Portrait of Becoming  137 Our Places  138 Learners and Teachers  139 Beginning the Year: Looking and Seeing as an Ethnographer  139 Exploring the Literature: Disrupting the Commonplaces  140 Our Journey  141 Our Learning  141 A Reflective Pause With an Eye to the Future  142 Final Thoughts  143 Appendix D. Destiny’s Book Club: Stamped by Reynolds & Kendi (2020) (Abbreviated Version)  145 References  147 Index  163 About the Authors  175