Institutional Context

Future teachers participate in our field-based methods courses as part of UCLA's Teacher Education Program. Our program is situated within UCLA's Center X, part of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

We in Center X believe that transformative work must tackle head on the deep social inequalities manifest in schools as gaps in educational opportunities and achievement. We do not believe that these inequities can be addressed by schools alone, yet we remain committed to public schooling as one of the best democratic spaces for working to become a better, more just society.

Combining research-based, culturally sustaining curricula with focused efforts on recruiting teachers of color, Center X’s Teacher Education Program (TEP) began in 1994 as an intensive two-year program leading to state certification and a master’s degree. In their first “novice” year, teacher candidates (who we refer to as "Novice Teachers (NTs)") engage in coursework and student teaching. The next “resident” year consists of full-time classroom teaching in a partnership in LA's low-resourced and underserved schools, supported by a faculty advisor, and engagement in a master’s inquiry project.

Our TEP partners with schools to create learning opportunities for all of us. The students (and in some cases their families), teachers, school leaders are central to the work we do together. We are fortunate to work with schools across Los Angeles Unified School District, Lawndale Elementary School District, and Centinela Valley Unified High School District. As folks who work to support and learn with our TEP students we come from a range of backgrounds with different experiences in teaching and teacher education. We have different positions within TEP but all are involved in the teaching of methods.

It is critical to situate our work in methods courses within broader programmatic work. Our work on the relational nature of teaching is situated in a teacher education program with a particular focus on social justice articulated partially through a commitment to a common set of principles:

• An explicit commitment to social justice, made real by continual struggle about what it means and how it is enacted in urban schools;

• Constant grounding of practice in theory and of theory in practice, both in university courses and in K-12 fieldwork;

• A commitment to engaging a diverse group of faculty, teacher candidates, and practicing educators to serve students in Los Angeles’ hardest to staff schools;

• Viewing learning as social and dialogical inquiry within communities of practice;

• Integrating the technical dimensions of teaching with the moral, cultural and political;

• Emphasizing the importance of knowing communities as well as knowing schools and classrooms.

As teacher education candidates experience methods they have explored theories related to structural inequalities, race and education, language acquisition, and learning. Specifically, they would have engaged with Critical Race Theory, Social Reproduction Theory, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, and Sociocultural Learning Theories as well as developing an understanding of the history of LA. They then draw on these ideas as they engage in considering the teaching and learning of literacy and mathematics.