Rooted in Belonging

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.

Melissa Sherfinski is an associate professor of early childhood and elementary education at West Virginia University. Sharon Hayes is an associate professor of elementary education at West Virginia University.

“Throughout this book, Melissa Sherfinski provides detailed insight into how she has sought to pop what she terms the neoliberal bubble of conventional teaching and teacher education, where teaching is framed by ideas of accumulation, Whiteness, settler colonialism, and racial capital, by implementing a place-based teacher education program. For Melissa, place-based teacher education, which roots instruction in the place in which it occurs rather than in a standardized vision of teaching and learning, seeks to empower preservice teachers to view their engagement as professionals within their school communities as a part of the larger democratic project of working toward racial and economic justice.”
—From the Foreword by Christopher P. Brown, professor, University of Texas at Austin

“Sherfinski and Hayes have written a book of hope in a time of crisis in teacher education and teaching. The authors offer practical illustrations of how place-based teaching and learning can support teacher growth and development while combating injustices found in local contexts. Each chapter offers connections to recent events, such as COVID-19 or racial justice, that demonstrate how place-based learning can support preservice teachers in deep reflections and connections to their communities in order to make change.”
—Sara Michael Luna, associate professor, University of Central Florida

“Sherfinski’s appeal to consider inquiry-oriented, antiracist, place-based teacher education and assessment speaks to me professionally and personally. There is tremendous potential in teaching preservice teachers how to engage with children and families in ways that lead to a deeper understanding of their communities and provide them with opportunities to take action in their neighborhoods.”
—Monica Miller Marsh, executive director, Kent State University Child Development Center

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