Mollenhauer’s Representation: The Role of Preservice Teachers in the Practices of Upbringing

Our recent research study investigated an international field experience for preservice teachers, labelled as a service-learning internship, a term often used to refer to a student teacher in a Bachelor of Education (BEd) program. Relying on what we know to be advantages and benefits of similar international field experiences for preservice teachers to frame our investigation, we explored the impact of a service-learning internship upon beginning teachers, particularly as it related to their professional growth as teachers. To gain insight into teacher education, we drew on the work of Mollenhauer (2014) to critically examine the foundations of how we prepare teachers in our BEd program. Analysis of questionnaire responses, tracked by a digital discussion forum via Moodle™, revealed two dominant themes: (a) gaining a deeper understanding of children, and (b) learning to be flexible regardless of curricular constraints. Results from this study might be of interest to those who share a similar interest in international field experiences, teacher education, and pedagogy. Keywords: pedagogy, Bildung; teacher education; international; field experience; service learning; global teaching

Uncovering cultural assumptions: Using a critical incident technique during an international student-teaching field experience

This research examined the critical incidents of 10 United States (US) early childhood student teachers during a three-week university-sponsored international field experience conducted in three urban preschools in Kathmandu, Nepal. The purpose of employing the critical incident technique was to allow the US student teachers to reflect critically on successful and unsuccessful intercultural interactions in an effort to identify cultural assumptions about teaching young children. The approach was used not only to make assumptions visible, but also to make conceptual and behavioral changes based on what was learned from the critical reflection. The student teachers wrote weekly critical incidents, which were then discussed during weekly individual interviews. Three group discussions, a research journal, and field notes were used to triangulate the findings. A qualitative thematic analysis revealed five types of written critical incidents: descriptive, hypothetical, resistive, reflective, and integrative. Illustrative critical incidents are presented to compare and contrast how the international field experience allowed for productive reflection of cultural assumptions for some student teachers while leading to resistance to cultural assumptions for other student teachers. The findings suggest that outcomes vary based on the student teachers’ ability not only to identify their cultural assumptions, but also to challenge their cultural assumptions with actions grounded in ethnorelative reflection when teaching diverse groups of young children in the US and abroad.