"I Don't Like Not Knowing How the World Works": Examining Preservice Teachers' Narrative Reflections.

Abstract

It is inevitable that in the process of teacher-preparation courses students reexamine their commitment to become teachers. This reflection of purpose sometimes occurs during prerequisite courses when students experience conflict and unease as they learn about the challenges of public school teaching. It is also prompted by the sheer amount of work involved in coursework and student teaching. As instructors in both prerequisite and credential-level classes, we see the questioning process students go through. We believe this process of questioning, reflection, and recommitment is vital to developing a strong identity as teacher. We are prompted to explore this process because of our commitment to preparing teachers for excellence in diverse classrooms and the nature of own continually evolving philosophies of teaching and learning. We want students to be fully aware of their identity and position as they enter public school classrooms. We want them to have the tools to engage in reflection and problem solving to better serve their students. We want them to know their own worldview and to be firmly grounded in the notion that their worldview is not the only frame of reference and that their students' cultures, languages and worldviews are resources that must inform the classroom community and classroom instruction. This article is representative of a larger body of work on reflective narratives and narrative reflection that has been ongoing for a number of years. We, the authors, have pursued various iterations of the research topic in various classes at various institutions. We have documented that students focus on skills and attitudes that place them in favorable positions for working with diverse students (Ulanoff, Prado-Olmos, & Garcia Ramos, 2001; Ulanoff, Prado-Olmos, Vega-Castaneda, & Garcia Ramos, 2001; Prado-Olmos, Dome, & Ulanoff, 2003) and that such positions allow them to begin to understand the sociocultural contexts of the classrooms in which they will teach as well as the personal lenses through which they participate in those contexts. It further influences them to question the contexts in place in relation to the education of students from diverse ethnic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Ulanoff, Vega-Castaneda, & Quiocho, 1999; Ulanoff & Garcia Ramos, 1997). In this article, we explore how students process class readings, assignments, and class activities as they come to see themselves and their future teaching situated within the framework of their own cultures and experiences. This paper focuses specifically on the use of weekly narrative reflections of students enrolled in two sections of a course on cultural diversity in schooling. As such it investigates the following research questions: 1. How do preservice teachers come to understand the importance of their past and present experiences for their role as teachers? 2. How can preservice teachers come to understand the lenses through which they view education and their role in it? 3. How can instructors help preservice teachers situate their teaching in ethnolinguistically diverse classrooms? 4. What role does the use of narrative reflection have within the framework of teacher education? This article examines the role of ongoing reflection in a preservice teacher education program at one suburban, public university in southern California. All teachers in the programs receive the Cross-cultural language and academic development (CLAD) or bilingual CLAD (BCLAD) credential upon completing the program. Given their future roles in teaching children from diverse backgrounds, instructors infuse issues of culture and language within both prerequisite and methodology courses. Theoretical Framework Our research is guided by the current literature surrounding the topics of reflective practice, teacher research and narrative inquiry. We approach our teaching from the perspective that our role is to facilitate our students' roles as reflective practitioners (Schon, 1983), recognizing the role they have to play in terms of examining and impacting practice. …