It's Not Just about Teaching Kids to Read: Helping Preservice Teachers Acquire a Mindset for Teaching Children in Urban Communities

Abstract

This study looks at preservice teachers' attitudes toward children and teaching in an urban high-poverty community in relation to their involvement in two different literacy education experiences: one literacy course sequence addressed issues of cultural diversity with respect to this community, and the other did not explicitly address these issues. The study specifically examines preservice teachers' (a) attitudes toward children's literacy potential, (b) confidence in teaching children to read, and (c) interest in teaching in urban schools. The diversity-oriented literacy experience, combined with highly satisfying field placements, positively affected preservice teacher's confidence and interest in teaching children in this community. Further, these preservice teachers tended to recognize children's literacy potential, while those who took the more typical literacy courses tended to doubt these children's literacy abilities. They also exited the diversity-oriented literacy courses with an enriched sense of children's culture and home language, although their awareness of literacy as culturally situated practice remained superficial. Analysis of preservice teachers' cultural autobiographies provided evidence that they acquired many new understandings about race, class, culture, literacy, children, and teaching in the first literacy course. Based on these findings, recommendations are made for reforming preservice teacher curricula and forming stronger alliances with schools in high-poverty communities. What happens in classrooms is first and foremost about the personal and collective connections that exist among the individuals who inhabit those spaces. Consequently, teachers' beliefs and values, how these are communicated to students through teaching practices and behaviors and their impact on the lives of students—these are the factors that make teaching so consequential in the lives of many people (Nieto, 1999, p. 130).