Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
In the summer of 2008, we met at an alehouse in Columbia City, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood on Seattle's south side, to begin conceptualizing and designing a School & Society class we were teaching that fall in a Master of Teaching (MIT) elementary teacher education program at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. One of us (Isaac) was working on a dissertation and was the instructor of record, while the other (Michael) was transitioning from master's to doctoral student, and was the teaching assistant. This was the first preservice teacher education social foundations course either of us had taught. The experience of working together on that course has led to several years of collaborative thinking about social foundations in teacher education, including developing what we call a “place-conscious approach”—an approach that grounds the political and normative questions at the heart of social foundations in the history of places in which preservice teachers learn to teach.
1 For an earlier iteration of our thinking, see Bowman, Michael and Gottesman, Isaac, “Why Practice-Centered Teacher Education Programs Need Social Foundations,” Teachers College Record (March 22, 2013), http://www.tcrecord.org, ID number: 17066.Google Scholar
2 Though written with a focus on preservice teacher education, we believe the issues of geographic context and programmatic context are relevant in all place-based case study approaches. In this forum, for instance, these issues are notably central to the type of work undertaken by Daugherty, Jack, Erickson, Ansley, Hale, John, and Lewis, Heather.Google Scholar
3 For further discussion, see Bowman, and Gottesman, , “Why Practice-Centered Teacher Education Programs Need Social Foundations.”Google Scholar
4 Each program offers two sections of a foundations course. One of us (Isaac) has taught Elementary and Secondary sections while the other (Michael) has taught several sections of Elementary. Individual instructors determine course syllabi for foundations in both programs.Google Scholar
5 The UW is also a central site for the development of practice-centered teacher education scholarship. For farther discussion on practice-centered teacher education, see Zeichner, Kenneth, “The Turn Once Again Toward Practice-Based Teacher Education,” Journal of Teacher Education 63, no. 5 (2012): 376–82.Google Scholar
6 Preservice teachers complete practicum and student teaching in the Seattle area, and frequently in Seattle public schools. This is also the area in which most candidates seek in-service positions.Google Scholar
7 The coinstructor in this course was Kate Napolitan. These individual and group interviews were part of a Spencer Foundation Small Grant—funded programmatic research project at the UW concerned with the implementation of a Community-Family-Politics strand within teacher education. This work was done in collaboration with the Multicultural Education Rights Alliance (McERA). Publications based on this work are currently under review. For a brief description and its potential relation to social foundations, see James Fraser, “HES Presidential Address: The Future of the Study of Our Educational Past—Whither the History of Education?” History of Education Quarterly 55, no. 1 (February 2015): 27.Google Scholar
8 Thrush, Coll, Native Seattle: Histories front the Crossing-Over Place (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2009).Google Scholar
9 Nelson, Bryce, Good Schools: The Seattle Public School System, 1901–1930 (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1988); Lee, Shelley Sang-Hee, Claiming the Oriental Gateway: Prewar Seattle and Japanese America (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2012); and Pak, Yoon, Wherever I Go, I Will Always Be a Loyal American: Schooling Seattle's Japanese Americans during World War II (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002).Google Scholar
10 “Segregated Seattle,” Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/segregated.htm.Google Scholar
11 Singler, Joan, Durning, Jean, Valentine, Bettlylou, and Adams, Maid, Seattle in Black and White: The Congress of Racial Equality and the Fight for Equal Opportunity (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2011).Google Scholar
12 As is the case with all large teacher education programs, cohesion, even if desired, is rather difficult to realize due to the sheer volume of students, faculty and staff, and the numerous moving parts, such as placements.Google Scholar
13 The other three are Educational Technology, Special Education, and Multicultural Education.Google Scholar
14 Moll, Luis C, Amanti, Cathy, Neff, Deborah, and Gonzalez, Norma, “Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms” Theory Into Practice 31, no. 2 (1992): 132–41.Google Scholar
15 Rury, John, Education and Social Change: Contours in the History of American Schooling (New York: Routledge, 2015).Google Scholar
16 Beecher, Catherine E., “An Essay on the Education of Female Teachers for the United States,” in The School in the United States: A Documentary History, ed. Fraser, James E. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 57–60; Counts, George S., Dare the School Build a New Social Order? (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978); Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954); and “Plyler v. Doe, 1982,” in Latino Education in the United States: A Narrated History from 1513–2000, ed. MacDonald, Victoria-Maria (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 286–93.Google Scholar
17 Roberts, Dorothy, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century (New York: New Press, 2011); Rubin, Beth, “Detracking in Context: How Local Constructions of Ability Complicate Equity-Geared Reform,” Teachers College Record 110, no. 3 (2008): 646–99; Rothstein, Richard, “Why Children from Lower Socioeconomic Classes, on Average, Have Lower Academic Achievement than Middle-Class Children,” in Closing the Opportunity Gap: What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance, eds. Carter, Prudence L. and Welner, Kevin G. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 61–74; Grossman, Arnold H., Haney, Adam P., Edwards, Perry, Aless, Edward J., Ardon, Maya, and Howell, Tamika Jarrett, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth Talk About Experiencing and Coping with School Violence: A Qualitative Study,” Journal of LGBT Youth 6, no. 1 (2009): 24–46; and Ahram, Roey, Fergus, Edward, and Noguera, Pedro, “Addressing Racial/Ethnic Disproportionality in Special Education: Case Studies of Suburban School Districts,” Teachers College Record 113, no. 10 (2013): 2233–66.Google Scholar
18 Ravitch, Diane, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools (New York: Vintage, 2013).Google Scholar
19 In an attempt to leverage individual instructor expertise and to foster an environment of collaboration and dialogue across sections, instructors meet regularly to reflect on student work, share instructional activities, and more generally discuss the course. Course instructors over the past few years have thus been instrumental in improving the class and deserve recognition: Achter, Chuck, Butler, Malika, Fairchild, Ellen, Farley, Jennifer, Moen, Tami, and Gillern, Sam Von.Google Scholar
20 In addition to the valuable contributions of other course instructors, we are also collaborating with a faculty member in elementary social studies education, Swalwell, Katy, who taught a class in Summer 2015 on Teaching and Learning Iowa History: Iowans and the Civil Rights Movement.Google Scholar