School-Based Leader Stories of Field Experiences Constituting the Teaching Profession
Date
2021-07
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Abstract
While there is a significant body of research on teacher preparation field experience, there are few studies that include the school-based leader stories. The purpose of this qualitative study was to use Critical Narrative Inquiry to draw on school-based leader experiences to provide insight into how they perceive preservice teacher preparation in their own school community. A secondary purpose was to identify communicative processes that shape the teaching profession at the point of preservice teacher field experiences using Bourdieu’s social theory to reveal practices and dispositions that are valued and reproduced. I applied a communicative flows model to examine how communication constitutes an organization, a method of critical narrative inquiry. I conducted two semi-structured interviews of ten school-based leaders who regularly participate in field experiences. Using a constant comparative analysis, I identified communicative acts that revealed ways in which the teaching profession is organized and reproduced through field experiences. The findings revealed that school communities use a variety of communicative acts including collaboration, questioning, and reflection to engage in sense-making of explicit and implicit knowledge of teaching practices and dispositions. Consequently, contextual knowledge and partner teachers as role models are positioned as authorities in preservice teacher preparation. School-based leaders also indicated preservice teachers were expected to be more prepared for teaching than they are. Yet, they viewed preservice teachers as emerging teachers when they enacted the dispositions and language of their field experience community. The communicative flows revealed that school-based leaders view field experience as a social location of knowledge transmission through which local and collective practices develop. This study also highlighted the tension between socializing preservice teachers to the field experience community and a desire for preservice teachers to be well-prepared for all contexts. I recommend opportunities to increase collaboration between school-based leaders and school communities to facilitate a broader view of field experience contexts. I also provide recommendations for increased reflection and disruption of the idealized partner teacher and preservice teacher.
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Critical Narrative Inquiry, Organizational Storytelling, Communication Constitutive of Organizations, School-based Leaders, Preservice Teachers, Field Experience, Bourdieu, Socialization, Knowledge Acquisition, Recognition, Evaluation, Partner Teacher, Preservice Teacher Preparation
Citation
Crawford, K. (2021). School-Based Leader Stories of Field Experiences Constituting the Teaching Profession (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.