Aim

This study examined undergraduate elementary education teacher candidates’ interrogation of student engagement as a strategy for addressing educational inequality through the structure of Professional Learning Community (PLC) seminars. PLCs are a context where TCs develop knowledge and skill needed to support student learning through the application of equitable teaching practices.

Framework

PLCs are oriented toward a humanizing pedagogy where “educational practice requires the existence of ‘subjects’, who while teaching, learn. And who in learning also teach” (Friere, 1998, p. 67). This orientation prioritizes theory in practice and is concerned with pointing TCs toward teaching for equity. Grounded in the theoretical lens of communities of practice (CoP), PLC seminars focus on socialization, learning, and individual/collective identity development of teacher candidates (Wenger, 1998).

Methods

Data comes from reading guides and exit tickets collected during PLC seminars. This data was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019). After identifying patterns and coding the data, themes were generated and defined. These served as analytic lenses framing our sense-making.

Findings

TCs’ latent notions of student engagement were disrupted; TCs operationalized the relationship between theory and practice; TCs envisioned their growth as a process of stitching at the edge of theory and practice. Themes point to teacher candidates’ adoption of an inquiry stance toward student engagement as central to providing students with access to rich learning.

Relevance

PLCs are an effective context in which TCs developed a unifying perspective of student engagement that is agentic for students from diverse backgrounds and circumstances. Key pedagogies of disruption, operationalization of, and the stitching together of theory and practice have the potential to cut across all areas of teacher education and novice teacher learning thereby preparing teacher candidates as they develop quality equitable teaching practices that impact student learning.

This study applies the concept of place-making (Fataar & Rinquest, 2019)—emphasizing bottom-up, participatory approaches that challenge traditional authority and highlight student agency—within an elementary school situated at the urban-rural interface in Southwest China. This region was selected due to its unique juxtaposition of limited educational resources and the dynamic interplay between urban and rural educational demands, providing a rich context for exploring innovative educational strategies (Wang, 2011). Over six months, ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with teachers and students were conducted to investigate how participatory seating arrangements impact student engagement and educational equity.

This school has implemented an innovative classroom layout divided into zones where students autonomously choose seats based on their academic performance. This method contrasts with traditional teacher-led seating and aligns with place-making principles, fostering student participation in shaping their learning environments. This empowerment is vital for enhancing students' motivation and sense of belonging.

Findings from the study indicate that:

1. Allowing students to participate in seating decisions boosts their motivation and engagement, enhancing the overall learning process.
2. Decentralizing control over seating disrupts conventional power hierarchies within the classroom, contributing to a more equitable and balanced educational experience.
3. This approach facilitates the creation of diverse, student-driven micro-environments within the classroom. Each zone caters to varying student needs and preferences, thus promoting a more inclusive and adaptable learning environment.

Reference

Fataar, A., & Rinquest, E. (2019). Turning space into place: The place-making practices of school girls in the informal spaces of their high school. Research in Education, 104(1), 24-42. https://doi.org/10.1177/0034523718791920

Wang, G. (2011). Bilingual education in southwest China: a Yingjiang case. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(5), 571–587. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2011.554971

Relevance: This study’s focus on participatory place-making aligns with the conference's theme of innovative educational practices that enhance social justice and student empowerment in diverse contexts.

The teaching placement, a widely accepted element in teacher education programmes worldwide, presents persistent problems around equity and inclusion for student teachers. Placements, with established hierarchies, mean student teachers are peripherally positioned as novices (Baize 2023; Rosehart et al. 2022) with implications for their professional agency development (Heikonen et al. 2020). This international research project aimed to understand student teachers’ development of professional agency when COVID-19 interrupted their placements and when previous ways of understanding how to teach and how to educate student teachers became insufficient when schools moved online. We used historical socio-cultural theory to conceptualize the pandemic as a societal rupture at the phylogenetic level which also disrupted the ontogenetic (practice) and microgenetic (individual) levels of the social practice of teaching and learning to teach.

For this small qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were piloted, amended, then conducted with student teachers whose schools closed during placement. Using inductive and deductive thematic analysis, with both data-driven and theory-driven codes (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane 2006), we identified how disruption to traditional hierarchies in teacher education created generative spaces to develop student teachers’ professional agency by positioning student teachers on a more equal footing to experienced teachers, especially when their digital expertise assisted the pivot to teaching online.

This study gives a fully developed theorization of teacher education as a social practice and responds to calls for teacher education to foster agile and adaptable future teachers (Kidd and Murray 2022; la Velle 2022). Our findings led us to question the enduring deficit positioning of student teachers. Instead, we suggest a strength-based approach that is cognizant of what student teachers bring into teaching is necessary to foster high quality teacher education and highlight adaptive learning environments and inclusive practices for developing student teachers’ professional agency to intentionally create adaptable future educators.

Student dropout is a significant yet under-researched issue in Russian higher education, particularly within teacher training master's programs. The reasons behind this dropout phenomenon remain largely unexplored both in Russia and globally.

This lack of research hinders efforts to foster an inclusive and equitable teaching profession, which is essential for achieving quality education in a more just world.

In this regard, the aim of this study was to identify the reasons for student dropout from teacher training master's programs.

Guided by V. Tinto’s theory of student attrition, which highlights the importance of academic and social integration, the research involved a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with former students (n=21) from the "Teacher Training" master's program at the Institute of Education, Higher School of Economics (HSE), Moscow, Russia. The data collection method used was spontaneous sampling.

Based on the analysis of the collected data, the authors presented a typology of reasons for student dropout from pedagogical master's programs and explained the mechanisms by which these factors, individually or in combination, lead to dropout.

The primary factors contributing to dropout included difficulties balancing work and study, weak social integration, and disappointment with the teaching profession, often manifesting as a waning interest in pedagogy and teaching methods. Additionally, students who dropped out frequently mentioned challenges in conducting lessons, particularly those without prior teaching experience.

While the study provides valuable insights, its findings are limited by the sample, as the interviews were conducted exclusively with former students of the particular teacher training master's program at the HSE Moscow campus. This limits the generalizability of the results to other universities in Russia and abroad.