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

Critical and reflective early childhood and elementary teachers are essential for children's holistic growth, but current policies focused on testing and performativity are contributing to anxiety and alienation. This book offers a counternarrative to neoliberal standardized preservice teacher development and assessment processes, focusing on humanizing, democratic, place-based practices. It provides a rare portrait of equity-based teacher education at the confluence of place-based approaches, student diversity, and teacher education.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 192 pages
Publication date: 24 February 2023
Publisher: Teachers' College Press

Most practitioners and scholars concur that critical and reflective early childhood and elementary teachers are essential for children's holistic growth and development. However, current policies focused on elevating testing and performativity are contributing to student and teacher anxiety and alienation. This book presents a counternarrative to neoliberal standardized preservice teacher development and assessment processes. The author explores how a cohort of teacher educators collaborated with their preservice teachers, both predominantly 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 responds 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 showcases why humanizing, democratic, place-based practices should be at the forefront of teacher education. Key Features:

Provides a rare portrait of equity-based teacher education at the confluence of place-based approaches, student diversity, and teacher education.

Grapples with challenging issues such as how the shared Whiteness of preservice teachers and children and their families interplay alongside their differences.

Explores how educators navigate deep ideological differences while still preparing teachers for critical work.

Examines how the current political climate surrounding Black Lives Matters, the 2020 presidential election, and the COVID-19 pandemic contribute to the challenges of working in communities.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780807768228