Laura Kates | Teacher Education Students Inquire into Sociocultural Contexts of Schooling, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Human Services

The Early Childhood and Childhood Education majors in this fourth semester fieldwork seminar and practicum explore a self-selected educational issue meaningful to them as a result of their lived experiences, including time spent as student teachers in New York City public school classrooms. They read other educators’ blogs to learn how practitioners are framing the problems encountered in schools, and how they are organizing toward possible solutions. They conduct qualitative interviews to ascertain firsthand the perspectives of local practitioners about workplace conditions and the possibilities for their roles. The assignment culminates in students authoring, posting, and receiving comments about an entry to our class blog, Voices of Pre-Service Teachers: http://edc90blog.wordpress.com. This enables students to enter into the public discourse about education and receive comments from a wide and diverse audience in their chosen profession.