Innovative Teacher Education Projects
in Early Childhood Education

Pam Whitty, Pam Nason and Anne Hunt

Prague, September 1998

For the purpose of this paper and in keeping with the conference theme of New Strategies in Teacher Education, we briefly outline the conception of the Early Childhood Centre at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada and present four projects initiated by faculty and staff at the Centre over the past eight years. These are:

i) The UNB Initiative '91 In-Service Practicum Model

ii) Maternal Literacies Action-Research Project

iii)The UNB Early Childhood Pre-Service Teacher Education Project

iv) Parenting for a Literate Community

For the first three projects we have considered their conception, innovative features, strengths, and lessons learned for teacher education. In particular, we focus upon the importance of collaborative, conversational work across educational communities as a means to illuminate the multiple facets of the teacher education process. For the final project, currently in process, we consider how our early work has shaped this present work, and in particular how the meaning and practice of teacher education is broadening. Our work is informed by the thinking of Jane Roland Martin and Madeline Grumet, feminist philosophers of education, and Sandra Hollingsworth and her work on the importance of conversations in a collaborative change process. We begin with a brief introduction to the Early Childhood Centre as the Centre was initiated through the need to develop an eight year teacher education plan for incumbent kindergarten teachers.

The Early Childhood Centre

The Early Childhood Centre was created in 1991 within the Faculty of Education at UNB. Its creation was coincident with the long awaited establishment of public kindergarten in the province of New Brunswick. This significant educational event that ensured the access of all five year olds in the province to a full day play-based kindergarten program was long overdue, when we consider, for example that Ontario has had public kindergarten for over 100 years. Initially it had been intended that universal education for five year olds in New Brunswick would be instituted in 1976. In 1974, with this eventuality in mind, UNB hired faculty person Pam Nason, an early childhood professor, to establish the program in early childhood education. As part of this program of studies, she also started up a demonstration kindergarten classroom funded for the first year by the Department of Education. In 1976 when kindergarten implementation was postponed, funding for the classroom was discontinued. The Faculty of Education and Nason maintained the classroom on a fees paying basis. It acted as a demonstration site for pre-service and in-service teachers from 1974 until 1994.

In 1991 when kindergarten was implemented, the immediate effect at UNB was to increase the human and financial resources of the Early Childhood Unit at UNB. Another faculty person was hired along with an Initiative '91 coordinator, and an administrative assistant. In addition, the salary for the kindergarten teacher reverted back to the Department of Education as five year olds now gained universal access to public education. These new resources, then, gave impetus to the idea of establishing a centre. As such the Early Childhood Centre is inextricably interwoven with the establishment of universal kindergarten in the province, the continuing education of Anglophone kindergarten teachers, and the direct financial and curricular support rendered by the NB Department of Education. Given that it was kindergarten which gave the impetus for the centre to come into being Anne Hunt will now describe Initiative '91, the continuing education program developed for kindergarten teachers who were without teaching credentials.

The UNB Initiative '91 Practicum Model (Anne Hunt)

When the New Brunswick government put the kindergarten programme into the schools, this meant an additional 301 Anglophone teachers, 127 of whom were without an education degree. Kindergarten teachers were hired under a different contract than elementary teachers and their pay scale increased on two levels, degreed and non-degreed. An eight year implementation period, 1991-1999 for the credentialing of these teachers was established at UNB as part of the Initiative '91 program. During this time UNB worked with the New Brunswick Teachers Association and the NB Department of Education to implement courses and practicum. Initiatvie '91 is finded through teh NB Department of Education and the delivery of the program is the responsibility of the Early Childhood Centre.

Initiative '91 teacher/students are unique in that they are teaching full time in the classroom while in the process of obtaining an education degree. They are also scattered geographically across a province that has about the same land mass as the Czech Republic. Typically pre-service teachers at UNB do a four month practicum as the final component of their program of studies. They work in the classroom of an experienced teacher, the cooperating teacher, under the supervision of a faculty person. For Initiative '91 teacher candidates to teach and do their practicum simultaneously, a new practicum model was necessary. Central to the conceptualization of the new practicum was the idea that these kindergarten teachers, who were accepted upon submission of a portfolio, would remain on the job, and have the opportunity to engage in professional conversations.

The Initiative '91 practicum is eight months in length and is the equivalent in course credit of the typical four month practicum. The teachers continue working in their classrooms with the guidance of a faculty advisor. As a means to reflect critically upon their practice, each teacher chooses an area of curriculum development to explore with their children. Typically, they document the children's growth, and more importantly, in the context of teacher education, their own pedagogical growth. Candidates are asked to phrase their exploration in the form of a pedagogical question. Sample questions the candidates have set, in consultation with their advisor have included: How do I, as a teacher, foster healthy emotional and social growth of the children in my classroom?/How can I provided appropriate curriculum experiences for extremely challenging children who are integrated into the regular classroom?/What is the role of play in the kindergarten curriculum and how does play fit with local need provincial curriculum guidelines? One recurring question, philosophical in nature, why am I a teacher has lead to reflective and sometimes disturbing investigation of that teacher's theoretical stance.

Questions are explored in verbal and written conversations and form some of the text of Saturday seminars that are held on a regular basis over the eight month practicum. These seminars held in a hosting teacher's classroom focus on issues and concern raised by practicum groups each year. Group sizes have ranged from eight to fourteen. Topics have been posed as questions such as: How might we make better connections between home and school? How can observation, planning and record keeping be organized for efficiency? What role does, or might, music play in the classroom? How can children be involved in the evaluation of their own work? How can the community be reflected in the curriculum?

The email discussion group moderated by the faculty advisor provides another forum for pedagogical conversations. List members include current and past practicum teachers thereby creating a network of teachers practising at the kindergarten level. An additional feature that allows for professional conversations is the two days allotted for professional visits to a colleague's classroom.. The Initiative 91 teacher candidate chooses a classroom to visit and reports back to the larger group on her observations, questions and learnings. Another form of conversation occurs with the faculty advisor when she joins the classroom of the Initiative '91 teacher, four times during the eight month period. At this time, the advisor participates in the work of the day and converses with the teacher afterwards on the selected pedagogical question and related practice. At the end of the eight month session all teachers present their learnings in a full day workshop atmosphere. They give evidence of their professional growth and development in the area they explored throughout the year.

The primary strength of this practicum is the space it provides for professional discourse. This happens formally in the seminar sessions and the year end presentation, and informally in the email and classroom discussions. Participants cite the email discussion list as an important tool between meetings and visits. This electronic space allows for questions to be posted advice to be sought and given, and curricular issues to be pursued. Postings to the list fell into three main categories: Technical postings, those on the actual technology of the list; Organizational postings concerning meetings, advisory visits etc.; and Pedagogical postings which were those related to practice. This last category dominated the list each year indicating that teachers have a need and desire to talk with other about their pedagogical thought and practice. One of the first topics discussed every year was home to school transition. Other topics have included how to work in combined grade classes, how to observe holidays, how to communicate with parents, and gender differences.

Perhaps the most difficult component of the practicum requirement is that teachers examine themselves as practitioners and document their growth. Teachers are quite familiar with assessing and evaluating the children with whom they work however they are often challenged when asked to turn the gaze inwards to ask'Why am I doing this?, What all I learning abut myself as a teacher? One practicum participant expressed it in this way,

I struggled with this until I began to see what I had been doing as a teacher was focussing on the room, the schedule, the material, the documentation, in other words what I see as the housekeeping part of teaching. During the practicum year I was being asked to do some mindkeeping.

If teachers are to be truly professionals, teacher educators need to spend more time helping teacher candidates to become better mind keepers. Connecting teachers so that they begin to question and challenge themselves and each other is the goal of Initiative '91.

Maternal Literacies Action-Research Project (Pam Nason)

The Maternal Literacies project was directly linked to the establishment of the Early Childhood Centre. We needed a major research project to establish our credibility as a centre of research and development. In addition we were highly motivated to seek additional funding recognizing that Initiative 91 funding was assured for only eight years. In1993 Pam Nason and Lissa Paul were awarded a research grant from Social Sciences Humanities Research Council, a national funding agency. Feminist and collaborative action research framed our theoretical stance. The fundamental idea of the project was the need to honour and support parents as teachers and to connect informal/home based learning with formal schooling in the early years.

The purpose of our study was to facilitate the inclusion of maternal literacies into schooled literacies. As a group of teachers, professors, mothers, and curriculum developers, we re-thought the complex relational dynamic between women, especially mothers and early childhood educators, and children and what this dynamic means in the development of a literate community. As Anne noted about kindergarten teachers with whom she has worked over an eight year period, the topic of home-school transition is a recurring one. Our aim was to demonstrate the value of the subjective observations and interactions of mothers in relation to the literacy growth of children. Mothers and primary school teachers at two rural sites were invited to participate with us in a two year action research experience to develop home-school literacy interchanges at each particular site, Our role, as researchers, was to facilitate conversations between mothers and teachers - to document their voices. As well we made explicit the implicit theories of teaching and learning which guided mothers and teachers so that we could explore how these theories were congruent and /or complementary and further to determine how their efforts might be better recognized. Rural sites were chosen because we believed that they offered the greatest possibilities for discontinuity between maternal and schooled literacies, and of institutional barriers to maternal participation in schools. Rural life is often less reflected in the school curriculum, distance in rural areas often inhibits parents from greater school participation and because of primary industry jobs, people in rural areas generally have less formal years of schooling than those in urban areas. For these reasons, rural schools represented the biggest challenge for the development of policies which might effectively validate the mothers' contribution to school literacy and ensure the mothers as partners in the institution.

Our work took place in schools. We worked intensively in three schools where it was recognized that we were all learners and teachers - the graduate students, the professors, the teachers, the mothers and children. On the school site, we came to an intimate understanding of each others work. In re-searching our practise and planning for future practise we did so on a conversational tone. We talked with each other as opposed to at each other. The conversational tone was supported by a revolving chair in an effort to guard against hierarchical status which could be reinscribed through the position of the chair. Also, to ensure that our conversation was grounded in classroom practise, when we met with the teachers, they spoke first. Then, when the teachers met with mothers they asked them what they wanted to do to become more involved with schooling, to consider what they thought maternal literacies were and how they might be brought to the classroom. We wanted to pursue questions that teachers and parents were raising rather than academics. The work was really about deconstructing hierarchical relations in educational institutions. Our relationships with the teachers were affected by theirs with their parents and children. We were all conscious that we were working in an historical and social context where hierarchical relations existed. We were intent on deconstructing and valuing all voices equally. This was difficult at first as everyone was "looking up" for direction.

We were all immeasurably enriched by the research experience and permanently changed by it. This speaks to the fact that we were all learning. Everyone - mothers, teachers, graduate students, professors - felt that the knowledge they had was honoured by others while at the same time the knowledge was being enhanced by the others. We could no longer construct the others as other. Another strength was evidence in the ways in which, and by whom "academic" knowledge was disseminated. Knowledge was disseminated to academic and professional audiences by parents and teachers as well as academics via : polyphonic pieces in professional journals, and mothers and teachers presenting with us at academic conference, and without us. We used part of our funding to send mothers out of the province to present at conference. For these particular mothers it was the first time they had travelled out of the province. Their families and communities were enriched by their travel and the academic community was enriched by having the researcher/subject positions deconstructed, in their face, as it were with living, breathing people as opposed to paper people.

Deconstructing hierarchies is not easy but it is worth it. I learned much I would not have learned if I had chosen to occupy my professorial position in the education hierarchy and act as authority in teacher/parent education. Knowledge about what parents really do and why they do it is very thin on the ground of professional and academic consciousness. As academics we tend to structure what we ask from parents rather than enter into equitable conversation with them about the how and what of "domestic literacies." As I came to understand the complexity of the nature of the relational dynamic between mothers and teaches and home and schooled pedagogies, I also began to realize how stereotypic and divisive much of the research on parent professional relations and literacies of the home is. Personally and professionally, I emerged from this research with a convictions that if we are to have a hope of providing home /school continuity for all children we must engage teachers, teacher educators , parents especially mothers in face to face conversation which is structured so as to disallow 'normal practices of teachers telling parents , of both groups being told by academics. I also learned that as a teacher educator I can play an important role as a catalyst in helping teaches and parents understand each others lifeworlds and the complementary of their work.

UNB Early Childhood Practicum Project (Pam Whitty)

In 1991 I was hired at UNB as the second early childhood faculty person. As part of my teaching load I was required to "supervise" five student interns in their practicum placement. All five were in their fourth year of the then 4 year Bed program. The typical supervisory model of teacher education is a teacher training approach, whereby ostensibly theory is learned in the university classroom and practice enacted in the school classroom. When the interns enter their practicum classroom, they often leave the university behind, theoretically as well as physically. In my first year of practicum supervision, I visited five interns in five schools at different locations across the province. Typically what I heard from interns as they assumed multiple aspects of their teaching role was that the school room was the "real world." The university was polarized from the school, devalued as other. The challenge became how to bring these two worlds a little closer together and value the learning and people in both.

The idea of this particular teacher education centre can be traced to three sources; personal frustration, collegial support, and a request for volunteers to pilot teacher education centres. Personally my deep professional frustration with the teaching training model of education including the fragmentation of theory and practice and the isolation of the educators - interns teachers, professors - from each created a desire to try something different. Collegial support came from Pam Nason and a host of educators across our province as we worked over a two year period through the development of a practicum prior to the development of teacher education centres, Through this project we gained experience in working across professional roles and establishing spaces for critical conversations about teaching and learning. Finally the direct impetus for UNB-Park St. Teacher Education Centre came from the administration of the Faculty of Education and their request in 1994 for volunteer faculty willing to experiment with a new approach to the practicum. As the Dean of Education put it, the aim of the to pilot was to create a community of learners within the community of the school and to encourage deeper collegial relationships between the school and the Faculty of Education.

The particular partnership I was involved with over a three year period included five early childhood interns yearly, as well as the administrative staff and several cooperating teachers of a local elementary school with about 400 children. Through the introduction of four structural changes to the teacher training model of practicum supervision, we - school and university educators- created physical, intellectual and emotional spaces for ongoing pedagogical conversations about our learning and teaching and that of the children. As Anne and Pam have both demonstrated in their respective projects, opportunities for equitable, thoughtful conversations greatly enhance the teacher education process for all of us. The structural changes that provided these conversational spaces in this project included clustering the student interns in one school, rather than one student intern per school; opportunities for participation in multiple classrooms rather than one classroom practicum experience; the development of a student interns seminar as part of the practicum, and the sustaining of written conversations across a number of educational sites and partners.

The strengths can be constructed in relation to the structural changes. The physical proximity of the students to one another - upstairs , down the hall and sometime paired in the same classroom provided them with countless opportunities for conversations. When they spoke with me about their conversations the commented on the reciprocal curricular and moral support they received from each other. They indeed did establish their own community within the school and as such had the strength of numbers from which to speak. For myself, as the university liaison, I was able to spend all my practicum time in one school and develop relationships with the staff and students in that particular community. In terms of changing classrooms within the school, - although the idea of change was daunting to teachers and interns because this was a break from the past, all student interns reported benefits from the change. In particular the exposure and interactions to different teaches and children was accompanied by the realization that there are multiple ways of educating self and others. One of the major strengths was the on-campus weekly seminar. I was able to redistribute my work within the faculty and thereby sustain a seminar on a cost recovery basis. Seminar topics ranged from curricular integration across subject areas to the gendered dynamics of the playground. Literacy and math specialists were brought in and students interns re-visited ideas learned earlier. Writing to each other, myself, and their cooperating teachers gave all of us the opportunity to record critical incidents in the teaching day and be introduced to the practice of teacher as researcher.

In a professional faculty such as education it is crucial to negotiate the gap between theory and practice; to bring the two worlds of schooling and education closer together - this project provided a way for all of us involved to do that. The practice of clustering provides support from experienced teachers, university and peers during a student interns'' transition from place of study to role of quasi-teacher. As the interns experience the strength in their growing collegiality and negotiate their placement within the school recording, reflecting upon critical incidents and ethical dilemmas, they come closer to what Deborah Britzman calls a dialogic image of teaching in which"tensions among what has preceded , what is confronts and what one desires shape the contradictory realities of learning to teach." (1991, p8) Informed critical conversations make a differences and institutionalizing these space so they become part of everyday practice ought to be a priority in teacher education settings.

Parenting for a Literate Community (Anne Hunt Pam Whitty and Pam Nason)

We close this paper with a few comments on our newest project. Parenting for a Literate Community brings all three of us together for the first time on one joint project. Our partners in this Health Canada project extend beyond the parameters of schooling and into health and community services. The goal of this project is to enhance the ability of incumbent Early Intervention and Family Resource Centre staff to strengthen literacy development of priority preschool children and their parents. This involves developing their capacity to work within the existing infrastructure to strengthen the literacy component of home and centre based programs and to nurture a more co-ordinated and coherent approach to effective literacy education. How is this related to teacher education? Our pre-service students are learning first hand how parents teach their children in informal settings outside school. Also they have been involved in literacy projects with children and parents who take part in the demonstration classroom associate with this project. thought field involvement with a new demonstration classroom. We are all extending our notions of domestic literacies and how these can be linked to the schooled curriculum in ways that respect the learning of the home. Also we are working with early intervention and family resource workers and learning from them about the literacies of their work and how they negotiate the space between home and school for the children and families with whom they work. We continue to learn about the importance of informal education thereby allowing us to bring such knowledge and dispositions to the teachers with whom we work.

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