Field-Based Methods

What do we mean by field-based methods?

Each section of our methods courses (literacy and mathematics) is partnered directly with one elementary school classroom for the duration of the courses (one academic ten-week quarter). Depending on class sizes, each novice teacher is paired with 1-2 elementary student "buddies" from the partner classroom and small groups are formed (~3 TEP students, ~4-6 elementary students). Within this model, each novice teacher has opportunities to interact directly with an individual student over a sustained period of time as well as engage in small group instruction or observe whole class instruction (led by the teacher educator or host classroom teacher).

Our courses are fundamentally tied to the elementary classrooms with which we partner. The content we work on in the methods course is aligned with what the elementary classroom is working on. Planning meetings with the host teacher before the start of the course enable us to lay out a scope and sequence; regular check-ins with the host teacher throughout the quarter support weekly shifts to respond to ever-changing needs of elementary students (as well as unanticipated events that arise because we are working with real children within a real school). Being planned yet intentionally flexible is key to making this partnership work to best fit the needs of the novice teachers, elementary students, and methods course goals.

Visit Navigating Schedules to see how we balance our coursework with time with children.

Visit Working on Content and Pedagogy within the Space of an IA to read more about how we work on content and teaching embedded within enactments with children and a bounded instructional activitiy.

How did we get here?

What started out as a routine methods meeting between Dr. Megan Franke and Dr. Sara Kersey in the spring of 2015 led to deeper questions about teacher candidate learning, elementary student learning, field work, and the goals of methods course work. For quite a number of years prior to 2015, Megan had been taking her math methods class to the UCLA Lab School to practice some of the activities the novices learned in her class. The novices enjoyed practicing with students and learned quite a lot through the planning, enactment, and reflection of the activities. Sara had also tried out having students teach read aloud lessons at the Lab School as part of a graduate student's dissertation research. In that conversation in the spring of 2015, both Megan and Sara talked about the benefits and drawbacks of working with students at the Lab School during methods classes and wondered what it might be like to facilitate similar experiences in the schools where the novices would be student teaching.

During that summer, Megan and Sara reached out to colleagues at 2 different universities, Dr. Elham Kazemi at the University of Washington and Dr. Elizabeth Dutro at the University of Colorado Boulder, who had been doing similar field-based methods work for advice. After several months of planning and conversation, field-based math and reading methods began at UCLA in the fall of 2015 with a model that includes space for content learning, planning of the instructional activities, rehearsal of the plans, teaching children, and reflection. Logistically, our TEP teacher candidates get credit for both methods and field work within this structure. Since that first quarter, we have learned so much about field-based teaching experiences and firmly believe that the field based method structure supports our teacher candidates to be successful. With the change in CTC guidelines for field hours in 2017, field based methods has become a cornerstone in our pathway for elementary teacher candidates.