Enhancing Teacher Education and Community Learning Center Programs through Critical Participatory Action Research

Center for Practitioner Research at National Louis University. 122 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603. Tel: 800-443-5522 x2277; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: https://digitalcommons.nl.edu/ie/

Y

25

Teacher Education Programs; Community Centers; Participatory Research; Action Research; School Community Relationship; Outcome Measures; Partnerships in Education; Preservice Teachers; Liberal Arts; Schools of Education; Summer Programs; Teacher Educators; Student Research; Administrators; Service Learning; English Language Learners; Reflection; Program Implementation; Stakeholders; Educational Needs; Elementary School Students; Children; Curriculum Design; Multilingualism; English (Second Language); Specialists; Community Needs; Data Use; Instructional Improvement; Culturally Relevant Education; Critical Theory

2154-6282

This paper describes the impact of using Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) to enhance a campus-community partnership. The key stakeholders, who are also the participants, share how learning from the reflective journals, collaborative sessions, and interview data analysis transformed their practice. The collaborative partnership was designed to allow prospective teachers from a School of Education at a U.S. liberal arts college the opportunity to teach Diverse language learners (DLLs) who were attending a summer program at a nearby community learning center. The teacher educators responsible for teaching the prospective teachers, the director of the community learning center, and a student researcher joined the project as collaborative participant researchers. Together they analyzed the data collected from various participating groups, which included their own work and reflections, as well as those of the prospective teachers and prevention specialists who were employed by the community learning center. The findings from this study revealed that all participants benefited from the campus-community partnership because it was built on trust, mutual respect, reciprocity, and the use of shared language among key stakeholders. This CPAR project provides specific ideas and steps implemented to develop a well-functioning and reflective partnership between a community learning center and a local college. Examples of the specific praxis involved in such partnerships are often absent from the literature.

As Provided

2019

EJ1217400