Learning to Teach in Diverse Schools: Two Approaches to Teacher Education

With this paper, we explore two approaches to teacher education, paying attention to how teachers are prepared to work in diverse school settings in a time of increasingly competitive neoliberal, market-based reform. These two approaches reflect completion of a traditional teacher education program and completion of Teach for America (TFA). The findings are based on two independent interview studies that are informed by the researchers’ joint commitments to postcritical ethnography, which consider issues associated with positionality, reflexivity, objectivity, and representation. The first interview study engaged teachers who graduated from a traditional teacher education program, as well as two participants with a more specialized urban focus. Interview questions asked teachers to describe their implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy in their classrooms and how prepared they were to do so. The second study addressed the experiences of TFA alumni as they matriculated through the program, with special emphasis being paid to the support that each corps member received during and immediately following their tenure.