Community-based placements as contexts for disciplinary learning: A study of literacy teacher education outside of school

Brayko, Kate. (2013). Community-based placements as contexts for disciplinary learning: A study of literacy teacher education outside of school. Journal of Teacher Education, 64(1), 47-59.


A teacher education program is only as good as its required field experiences, I have always said. As a former colleague of mine, who had many years of experience as an elementary school principal, used to say, “That’s where the rubber meets the road.” What I think he meant was that unless we can do things that actually help our teacher candidates learn to confidently teach in ways that are effective (i.e., that help children learn), anything else we might do is probably worthless. Field experiences should provide those essential kinds of professional skills. It is in field experiences that prospective teachers learn to do what they need to do to help children learn—or at least that should be what is happening.

Brayko’s study here looks like support for my colleague’s statement. Brayko looked in depth at the experiences of two teacher candidates who were working with children in two diverse community-based field experience sites. Community-based sites are becoming more common, in part because the increasing push for more field experiences from teacher education accreditation bodies has collided with an increasing reluctance by public schools under accountability pressures to allow large numbers of teacher candidates into their buildings. My own university has begun seeing that happen. Just as we need more field placements, they are getting harder and harder to find. Brayko’s study only looked at two teacher candidates, so we cannot conclude that community-based field experiences are unequivocally the best route to go. However, the evidence here does seem to point to some benefits for teacher candidates (at least the two Brayko observed). We don’t have enough evidence here to speculate about benefits to the children.

A couple of points stood out for me in the study. First, Brayko looked specifically at how the field experience affected the two teacher candidates’ learning about reading, about cultural and linguistic factors influencing literacy learning, and about how to enact teaching behaviors associated with effective literacy instruction. Both candidates seemed to make strides in learning to have effective discussions about texts with culturally diverse groups of children. Because the community-based programs were more informal than the typical public school field placement, and involved more small group and one-on-one work, these two candidates actually had more opportunities to talk with children and hone their discussion skills than they would in the typical classroom, and they had more opportunities to interact with family members. These insights are especially valuable because they look specifically at learning about literacy and literacy instruction. Other studies of community-based field experiences have focused more on general teacher outcomes like dispositional change. Though dispositions are important, it seems at least as important that we look at how what we do in fieldwork actually affects children’s learning.

Another point really caught my eye as a literacy teacher educator. Brayko states that there are two elements that influence whether a field experience will be effective. One factor is, of course, site selection. Field experiences only work if we find good sites that value the same things we do in our programs, and that have people who are invested in the process of teacher education and are willing to do what it takes to be sure we have a qualified generation of teachers for the future. The other factor Brayko mentions is the way the field experiences mediate teacher candidates’ learning. Mediating l requires engagement and collaboration to make sure teacher candidates complete assignments that give them opportunities to grow. We have to provide good modeling and mentoring, and all that requires engagement, hard work, and a lot of time, energy, and probably money. Brayko’s article did not provide us with the kind of evidence that we need to draw far-reaching conclusions, but it did get me thinking about ways we could work to make those “rubber meets the road” field experiences as effective as they can be, whether they take place in public school classrooms or in community-based programs.