BUILDING PRE-SERVICE TEACHER AWARENESS OF ENGLISH LEARNERS THROUGH PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH

Abstract

Ten percent of all public-school children in the United States are considered English Learners (ELs) (NCES, 2020). Yet pre-service teachers receive little, if any, training to work with this population during their teacher preparation programs (Harklau & Ford, 2022; Leider et al., 2021; Lopez & Santibanez, 2018; Education Commission of the States, 2014). To address the lack of training in teacher preparation, this practitioner inquiry examines pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the knowledge, skills, and mindsets needed to serve ELs in the secondary education content-area classroom and how these perceptions can inform the practice of teacher educators. In phase I of the study, pre-service teachers acted as both participants and researchers as they completed a short-term field experience in a beginning level EL classroom and corresponding participatory action research project that was embedded into their teacher preparation coursework. They analyzed course artifacts and identified themes that described their perceptions of the knowledge, skills, and mindsets needed to serve ELs. In phase 2 of the study, the researcher used thematic analysis to analyze the findings of participants’ project in addition to other data sources collected throughout the experience. Overall, eleven key themes emerged that highlight the impact of using participatory action research and short-term field experiences in teacher preparation to serve ELs.