Twenty percent of Canadians do not speak English as their first language. This is the highest reported proportion of non-native English speakers to comprise Canada’s national demographic in 75 years (Statistics Canada, 2011). Factoring into Canada’s classrooms, this demographic contrasts sharply with a public school professoriate comprised mainly of white middle class females (Bascia, 1996; Cone, 2009; Cooper, 2007; Gambhir, Broad, Evans, Gaskell, 2008; Hodgkinson, 2002). The resulting gap that exists culturally and linguistically between many of Canada’s teachers and many of Canada’s most vulnerable students is cause for concern, especially in regards to the low level of achievement many ESL students experience in the classroom (Watt & Roessingh, 2001). Despite a discourse steeped in advocacy and empowerment, there is little agreement on how to most effectively prepare preservice teachers to work with diverse learners (Cochran-Smith, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 2001). There is however, a general consensus that preservice teachers need experience working with diverse populations in order to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to assist minority students to reach their full potential (Goodlad, 1990; Phillion; Malewski, Sharma & Wang, 2009).
My research attempted to address these gaps by investigating how incorporating community-based learning (Dallimore, Rochefort & Simonelli, 2010) into a teacher education course informed preservice teachers’ understandings of ESL learners, their lives, and ultimately, the pedagogical approaches necessary to most effectively support them. Subjugating the needs and perspectives of community members in community-university partnerships is a criticism recycled throughout the discourse on community-based engagement (Bortolin, 2011; Giles & Cruz, 2000; Howard, 2003; Stoecker & Tryon, 2009; Vernon & Ward, 1999; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2000). For this reason, this research sought to pay particular attention to the principles of reciprocity in community engagement, as well as how community partners experienced the partnership.
Data was collected from students, community partners, and the instructor and analyzed using a qualitative, open-coding approach to inform a holistic understanding of how all participants experienced the project, how community members could be incorporated as co-educators in a teacher education course, and how assumptions of student participants were challenged. The findings suggest a number of advantages to participants in participating in a community-based learning experience, ways to improve the design and implementation of community-based courses, and recommendations for future research. These directions include assessing and challenging existing attitudes and assumptions about ESL learners by practicing teachers by looking at projects that bring community partners and school-based practitioners together to encourage reflection on these attitudes and assumptions. / Graduate / 0530 / 0745
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/4863 |
| Date | 29 August 2013 |
| Creators | Bortolin, Kathleen |
| Contributors | Sanford, Kathy |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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