Debbie Pushor PhD » Teaching

Representing Families Summer 2010 (ECUR 898)

Debbie — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:41:10 +0000

Representations of families exist everywhere – in literature and media, in our lived experiences of family and stories of others’ experiences, in curriculum documents and subject matter materials. Course members will explore dominant social, cultural and institutional narratives about families which underpin these representations and consider the influence they have on curriculum-making and decision-making in schools. Through interrogating course readings alongside experiences with families, course members will work to interrupt their living out of these dominant narratives as they discover ways to use knowledge that resides in families to co-construct educational experiences for children.

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Engaging Parents in Teaching and Learning (ECUR 898)

Debbie — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:31:23 +0000

The term “parent engagement” represents a conceptualization of the positioning of parents in relation to school landscapes as integral and essential to processes of schooling. Course members will learn about aspects of parent engagement which differentiate it from involvement and which create opportunities for parents to take their place alongside educators in the schooling of their children, fitting together their knowledge of children, teaching and learning, with teachers’ knowledge.

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Connecting Research and Teaching.

Debbie — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:05:43 +0000

Currently, in preservice teacher education programs in colleges and universities, there is very little attention being paid to the development of teacher candidates’ thinking around engaging parents in their children’s schooling. While the topic may be touched on briefly in some courses, it is a topic which is largely absent in the curriculum of teacher education. It is not any wonder, then, that new teachers surveyed by the Metlife Foundation in 2005 “report that engaging and working with parents was their greatest challenge” (Constantino, 2005). It is not any wonder, then, that teacher candidates returning to the university after an internship experience have frequently adopted a dominant plotline common in education, telling stories of parents as interfering, demanding or deficit. They position parents in their stories as outsiders and perhaps even individuals to be wary or fearful of. They position themselves in their stories as vulnerable in relation to parents’ demands or emotions and to what parents do – or do not do – to support their children’s schooling.

My coursework with teacher candidates intends to interrupt this plotline. I design class activities and course assignments to thoughtfully and deliberately break in on well-known and well-rehearsed stories of schools, and of parents’ positioning in relation to schools. I challenge teacher candidates to consider what opportunities are missed, and what harm may be done, if they as educators continue to live out these stories of parents in typical, historical and taken-for-granted ways. I challenge them to consider who is rendered visible, who is validated, who finds schooling an educative process in these dominant stories – and who is/does not.

I believe inquiring alongside teacher candidates into conflicting and competing stories of parents enables an explicit rethinking of beliefs and assumptions, trust and relationships, and the place and voice of parents on school landscapes. I believe it presents the possibility of transformation – of teachers, of teaching, and of teacher education curriculum.

Qualitative Research Methodologies (ERES 845)

Debbie — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:22:19 +0000

ERES 845 links my research and my teaching through an exploration of methodology rather than through the topic of parent engagement or parent knowledge.

In this course, graduate students have the opportunity to learn and practice inquiry processes for conducting qualitative research. Together, the students and I explore the role of the researcher and the ways this influences research decisions. Narrative inquiry, my research methodology, is one of the selected methodologies we examine to develop students’ understanding of research design elements applicable to a range of qualitative research methodologies.

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Oracy and Literature (ECUR 273)

Debbie — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:17:48 +0000

ECUR 273 is an introductory language arts methodology course. In it, I provide students with opportunities to develop a vision of themselves as teachers which reflects and encompasses their knowledge of children as situated in the context of their families and communities. To this end, we talk about welcoming parents and building relationships with them, about engaging parents in their children’s schooling experiences, and we explore how classroom and student programming decisions can be made collaboratively with parents.

For one of their assignments, teacher candidates come to know an elementary school-aged student as an individual, as a reader and writer, and as a member of a family and community. As they spend time engaging with the student both in and out of school, they reflect on, discuss with colleagues and demonstrate to me how their beliefs and practices as a teacher (e.g. planning, classroom design, instructional strategies and activities, selection of literature) will be shaped by the contextual knowledge they gained of the child.

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Early Childhood Education (EDUC 498)

Debbie — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:26:54 +0000

EDUC 498 is an elective course in which teacher candidates have the opportunity to explore current issues and trends in early childhood education. As a frame for the course, I ask teacher candidates to challenge the prevailing “school readiness” model, exploring instead what might be done to prepare schools and teachers to welcome and respond to the needs of the children and families they are meant to serve. Themes I have addressed in the course include such foci as an image of the child, the teacher, and the parent; an emergent curriculum; creating a rich and educative environment for young children; children’s, parents’ and teachers’ place in the curriculum; teacher identity in an interagency framework.

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Parents and Education (EADM 892)

Debbie — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:03:09 +0000

EADM 892 is a graduate level course I co-planned and co-taught with Bonnie Stelmach, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Administration. Like mine, Bonnie’s program of research focuses on parents. With her focus on policy and mine on curriculum, we designed a syllabus in which we began by challenging assumptions about parents and parents’ positioning in relation to schools, and by exploring the diversity of families and family contexts. We then moved to thinking about parents in educational policy and parents in curriculum. The course provided graduate students opportunities to reflect on scholarship, policy, and practice in the field.

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Reading and Writing (ECUR 370)

Debbie — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:53:23 +0000

In ECUR 370, teacher candidates learn about teaching reading and writing at an elementary school level. As a synthesis assignment, I ask teacher candidates to write a parent newsletter for an imagined class in which they:

describe the organizational structures inherent in their language arts program and their rationale for them,
describe the role they will invite parents to play in regard to their children’s literacy development,
use language, tone, and newsletter formatting which reflects their beliefs about their relationship with parents and their specific knowledge of families and community.

For me, one of the most significant outcomes of the course is to help them see themselves as teachers who make programming decisions in relation with children, parents and families.

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Children’s Literature (ECUR 373)

Debbie — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:46:15 +0000

In ECUR 373, I work with teacher candidates to develop an understanding of children’s literature as a “mirror and a window” for children. I want teacher candidates to be conscious of selecting children’s books for their students in which all children can see themselves represented and thus can be valued and validated. I also want them to select literature through which all children can be introduced to individuals and families different from their own and thus learn to honor the richness of difference. Together we explore high quality children’s books which provide a rich range of diversity in aspects such as race, culture, gender, family structure, sexual orientation, age, ability, and religion.

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Community Education (ECUR 401)

Debbie — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:05:53 +0000

In this course, I invite teacher candidates to re-conceptualize the schooling of children in the context of family and community and to learn how, as an educator, to step out of the school and into the community. I challenge them to consider the stance they take when they enter a community and to see themselves as learners in that place as much as teachers.

As they work alongside children, parents, families, educators and staff in various ways in community schools, I believe the teacher candidates develop a sound philosophy of parent engagement and learn how to translate this philosophy into practice. As they learn from this engagement what parent knowledge is and how to use parent knowledge as well as teacher knowledge in decisions regarding teaching and learning, they learn to position parents alongside them in meaningful ways rather than as aides or organizers who do support work for them.