Apprenticing for Equity Literacy Teaching: A Needed Change in Teacher Education

Abstract

Grounded by critical race and landscapes of practice perspectives, this study examined teacher candidates who were asked to use equity as a lens to describe students’ literacy learning opportunities in their practicum sites. Analysis of this writing revealed wide variation in candidates’ participation, including a group who regularly noticed equitable/inequitable literacy teaching practices and structures and discussed how they would resist/change those they considered inequitable and a group that primarily overlooked these reflective opportunities. Follow-up interviews with two candidates revealed their different equity stances. Study findings can be used to reconceptualize literacy practice to help candidates identify and challenge policies and ideas that sustain inequity.

Literacy teacher education has far to go to develop teachers who can see and nurture the literacy and language potential of students of color (Brown, 2014; Picower & Kohli, 2017; Souto-Manning, 2021). Contributing to this problem is a tendency to frame the literacy practicum as a space where teacher candidates (TCs) can practice teaching, instead of one where they can cultivate the dispositions needed to teach students well and advocate for them when conditions undermine their learning (Croom, 2020; Jacobs, 2019). Unless there is a unified commitment to educating teacher candidates to know and advocate for students as an essential part of literacy teaching, then literacy education will continue to be complicit in the miseducation of children and youth of color.

This study examines the use of the literacy practicum as a central space for developing the critical dispositions required to advocate for students (Feiman-Nemser & Schussler, 2010). The study is based on critical race perspectives within literacy teacher education and schooling (Baker-Bell, 2020; Brown, 2014; Milner, 2008; Picower, 2021; Picower & Kohli, 2017; Souto-Manning, 2021), and a “landscape of practice” framework that considers how TCs evolve in their professional competence (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015).

Critical Race Perspectives in Literacy Teacher Education and Schooling

Critical race theory (CRT) is used as a tool to expose and challenge racial injustices in literacy teacher education and schooling (Brown, 2014; Milner, 2008; Picower & Kohli, 2017). CRT is a framework for examining the enduring presence of racial inequality in the United States. U.S. laws and institutions are based on a normalized culture of whiteness and white supremacy, designed to deny Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) equity within a range of sectors, including voting, police protection, housing, health care, the judicial system, and education (Crenshaw et al., 1995). Systems of racial advantage and disadvantage are traced to racist policies and ideas (Kendi, 2019). Dismantling racism requires constant vigilance in identifying and challenging policies and ideas that sustain racial inequity.

Literacy teacher education is complicit in maintaining racism through its failure to develop TCs’ competencies across a number of areas, including critical language awareness (Godley et al., 2015; Smith & Warrican, 2021), racial literacy (Flynn et al., 2018; Milner, 2019; Milner & Laughter, 2015; Mosley, 2010; Rogers & Mosley, 2008; Price-Dennis & Sealey-Ruiz, 2021; Sealey-Ruiz, 2011), critical English education (Baker-Bell et al., 2017; Skerrett et al., 2015), and educating teachers for multilingual learners (García & Kleifgen, 2018). The field is further implicated in its failure to diversify teacher education and teaching through faculty and candidate recruitment (Brown, 2014; Haddix, 2016, 2017). Literacy internships, where TCs engage directly with host teachers and students to learn the profession's competencies, are found to be inadequate for raising TCs’ equity awareness (Croom, 2020; Jacobs, 2019). Content-area internships are typically cast as spaces to try out and adopt “best practices.” They are not generally used to explore equity issues or consider how one might advocate for students in situations where equity is denied to them (Shah & Coles, 2020). The dominant apprenticeship model is shaped and maintained by state teacher certification policies that give scant attention to preparing teachers to challenge inequitable structures within classrooms and schools. Framing the apprenticeship as a space to practice literacy teaching and execute state standards limits the potential of the apprenticeship space to inquire about racial equity, ensuring that candidates maintain dominant European (white) structures and practices in their future literacy classrooms.

Racist policies and ideas have made school literacy learning opportunities inequitably distributed in the United States (Baker-Bell, 2020; Milner, 2019; Picower, 2021). In large urban school districts that serve high percentages of students of color, the cumulative effects of racial segregation, concentrated poverty, educational funding disparities, and systemic racism converge to reduce students’ access to vital educational resources. These resources include experienced teachers, fully functioning libraries, teaching support personnel, and learning resources (Carter & Welner, 2013). Adding to these inequities are differences in teachers’ ability to make instructional decisions to meet students’ individual literacy needs.

Teachers are expected to adhere to scripted curricula and testing mandates in many districts and schools. Further, these mandates are increasingly predicated on a “science of reading” construct that emphasizes basic reading processes and is rooted in experimental psychology (Hoffman et al., 2020). Science of reading promulgates a simple view of reading that “holds that decoding proficiency and language proficiency (typically operationalized as listening comprehension) fully account for reading comprehension proficiency” (Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2021, p. 86). Such a narrowly defined view of reading disregards students’ linguistic, cultural, and individual variations and capacities, as well as their literacy dispositions and engagements across contexts (Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2021; Willis, 2019).

In addition, “racialized diagnostics and remedial literacy education are permanent fixtures in literacy teacher education programs” (Souto-Manning, 2021, p. 590) that operate to harm children and youth of color. Racialized diagnostics include high-stakes standardized literacy tests based on mastery of academic English that have had detrimental effects on students of color (Rosales & Walker, 2021), including multilingual learners (García & Kleifgen, 2018). Other fixtures, like the overrepresentation of students of color in high-incidence disability categories, and remedial programs like Response to Intervention, have failed to improve Black students’ literacy achievement (Cramer, 2015; Willis, 2019). These structures dominate in schools and will continue to do so if future educators are taught to reproduce them.

The ubiquitous presence of race-based inequalities requires a deliberate focus on raising TCs’ awareness of equities and inequities within schools. Antiracist work requires that TCs have continuing opportunities to identify, describe, and challenge policies and practices that undermine school literacy learning opportunities for racially marginalized students (Kendi, 2019).

Landscape of Practice

Landscape of practice is a conceptual framework that captures the complicated process of acquiring competency in a profession through involvement in multiple communities of practice across time (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015). A landscape of practice represents the body of knowledge of a profession, “consisting of a complex system of communities of practice and the boundaries between them” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015, p. 13). Each community contributes to the preservation and evolution of the profession. Knowledgeability of a profession is manifested by relating to or engaging in practices across communities. In contrast, competency describes the knowledge that is “negotiated and defined within a single community of practice” (p. 13).

Many communities of practice define knowledgeability within the education profession. They include communities of scholars and scholar-practitioners who produce research to guide practice, teacher educators who structure teacher education programs (TEPs) to foster TCs’ development, and practicing teachers who instruct K-12 students and mentor teacher apprentices. These communities negotiate what constitutes competence in the teaching profession, resulting in a “regime of competence” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015, p. 14)—the knowledge and practices associated with exemplary educators. Expertise requires a sustained history of learning in a profession, creating boundaries between those who do not share this history and those who do.

Boundaries present challenges for apprentices who must make sense of the different regimes of competence across diverse communities. If equity-oriented practice is part of the regime of competence within the TEP but not practiced within schools, confusion is likely to surface among TCs. For example, TCs may learn about the need to validate students’ home languages within the TEP but may apprentice in schools that discourage students’ use of languages other than English. Likewise, if TCs intern in schools that uphold students’ linguistic rights, but their TEPs do not promote this idea, then tensions would likely surface at this boundary. Misalignments between TEPs and schools can frustrate developing candidates who are trying to figure out how to be competent in the profession. Still, these misalignments “hold potential for unexpected learning” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015, p. 17) because they prompt TCs to engage in clarifying dialogues about practice. Suppose the TEP's competence regime focuses on cultivating “best practices” rather than equity-oriented practices. In that case, apprentices may be less likely to notice whether students are getting what they need to advance their literacy growth. Additionally, they may be less likely to dialogue with their mentors about misalignments between equity goals and actual practices. Consequently, they will miss opportunities to develop the dispositions they need to advocate for students (Feiman-Nemser & Schussler, 2010).

The landscape model also considers the ways apprentices see themselves within a given profession. TCs are more likely to identify with practice if they have many opportunities to teach, imagine themselves as teachers in a given school, and see if their expectations about equity-oriented literacy teaching practices align with what is possible in schools. Inviting TCs to look for and reflect on misalignments related to inequitable literacy policies and practices may precipitate TCs’ inquiries about how these policies and practices came to be and how they might challenge them.

Literature Review

Literacy scholars have contributed much to the dialogue about how to best structure TEPs and literacy education curricula to prepare teachers for their roles in creating equitable literacy learning opportunities for students. A meta-analysis of 109 studies published over the last two decades examined how TEPs have fostered TCs’ ability to construct and use sociocultural knowledge to mitigate the effects of a racial mismatch between themselves and their students of color (Wetzel et al., 2019). According to this analysis, candidates’ development was supported by opportunities to (a) reflect on their cultural privileges and identities, (b) investigate the cultural wealth of students’ communities, (c) interrupt racist discourses about students and their communities, and (d) engage in critical literacy teaching. The meta-analysis also uncovered barriers to TCs’ development, including white candidates’ entrenched hegemonic views about race and other social issues and their refusal “to implement such approaches because they denied the existence of structural and institutional forms of discrimination” (Wetzel et al., 2019, p. 151). This finding is consistent with other studies that reveal TCs’ inability to commit to antiracist pedagogies when they have not resolved issues of meritocracy, racial privilege, and their complicity in preserving racial inequality through their roles as teachers, candidates, and future teachers (Castro, 2010).

The meta-analysis provides a valuable road map for structuring equity-oriented literacy education programs and it also revealed gaps in the research. The overwhelming attention to white TCs in these studies reflects their disproportionate majority in most education programs, and such a sustained emphasis on white TCs limits knowledge about how candidates of color develop equity understandings. Another difficulty with the current research base is that 70% of the studies done over the last two decades involved observations of TCs over one or two semesters, allowing only partial glimpses of teacher development and the factors that shape it. Short-term studies do not account for the probability that constructing understanding about equity requires multiple, intensive, long-term, and multidimensional engagements across a range of landscapes (home, college campus, and schools).

One study that tracked the development of three white TCs over four years showed that all had developed understandings about systemic racism and could identify the ways that schooling systems undermined literacy learning opportunities for students of color (Lazar, 2018). Two of these candidates recognized students’ linguistic assets and the knowledge traditions of the families whom they came to know in their student teaching settings and one advocated for a student even though her subordinate position as a student–teacher restrained her ability to do so. Despite her advocacy efforts, she blamed one caregiver for making “irresponsible” family planning choices without considering how racist policies and ideas shaped those choices. This study illuminated the complicated nature of tracking TCs’ equity consciousness over time and how TCs can articulate sophisticated understandings of racial inequity and show a willingness to advocate for students while expressing entrenched racist views. The study also signaled the need to make equity inquiries a continuous component of teacher education programs, including literacy education courses and the literacy practicum.

Longitudinal studies have focused on novice teachers who learn about equity concepts and pedagogies in their TEPs but are not always willing or able to teach according to these principles and practices (Bondy et al., 2013; Jacobs, 2019; Jones & Enriquez, 2009; Mosley, 2010; Whipp, 2014, 2016). A few of these studies examine teachers’ equity-oriented enactments following their participation in long-term, multiyear TEPs (Bondy et al., 2013; Whipp, 2014, 2016). One study investigated the perspectives of 13 graduates in an equity-oriented TEP (Whipp, 2016) and found that after five years, all participants taught with some level of sociopolitical awareness. They all conceptualized caring for students within larger familial, linguistic, and sociopolitical contexts and critiqued schooling elements that undermined students’ learning (e.g., school financing, rigid curriculum, standardized testing, immigration laws). Six of these teachers consistently practiced culturally centered teaching, but only three advocated for their students by resisting the structures, policies, and practices that undermined their students’ academic development. In recalling the TEP experiences most pivotal to their development, these teachers discussed learning about race and systemic racism and having host teachers model critical-caring teaching practices.

These long-term studies offer a sobering picture of what it takes to support TCs and novice teachers in their ability to become equity conscious and enact equity-oriented practices over time. According to Whipp (2016), “It is not enough for teachers to simply recognize and acknowledge structural advantage; they need to be encouraged throughout their coursework and field experiences to reflect on the ways their practices either support or undermine larger unjust systems and structural arrangements” (p. 13). Teacher educators need to frame literacy practicum experiences as contexts for critically examining how schools afford or deny students access to equitable literacy learning opportunities.

Methods

In this qualitative study, I examined the ways TCs noticed and reflected on instances of equity and inequity while working with youngsters in literacy classrooms. I used interpretive methods and grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to analyze their written observations and oral reflections of their practicum experiences. Through this analysis, I identified three participant groups based on how they observed and discussed literacy learning opportunities for students. Two questions guided the research: How did candidates notice and reflect on students’ literacy learning opportunities from an equity perspective? How did the reflection experience help candidates imagine how they might support or enact equity principles in their future teaching practices?

Context and Positionality

Findings for this study are drawn from my work with upper-level undergraduate students in a private, urban-based Catholic university in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The university is located between a predominantly white, affluent community and a mostly Black working-class community. Equity and inclusion are prominent themes in the university's mission and inform many of its structures, policies, and practices and the mission of the TEP. Courses that address cultural diversity and globalization are required in the undergraduate program. Students of color make up about 20% of the undergraduate population.

When the study took place, one quarter of the teacher education faculty was affiliated as BIPOC. The TEP curriculum addressed systemic racism, critical literacy, language awareness, and culturally sustaining instruction. All TCs were placed in culturally and linguistically diverse field placements throughout the program. As a white, cisgender, English-speaking teacher educator in the TEP, I have spent two decades chronicling the perceptions and experiences of TCs in literacy courses designed to raise their awareness of equity. I have been invested in becoming racially literate but know that developing antiracist understandings and accepting the need to challenge racism in practice and policy are ongoing struggles.

Thirty-four TCs, 32 of whom were white and female, participated in a literacy practicum course that focused on preparing candidates to develop children's literacy abilities in late first grade to fourth grade (a prerequisite literacy course addresses the development of emergent/beginning readers). Course readings, discussions, and assignments addressed several elements of equity-oriented literacy practice. Concepts such as critical literacy (Labadie et al., 2012; Wargo, 2019), multicultural literature (Johnson et al., 2018), culturally sustaining literacy practice (Dunsmore et al., 2013; Nash et al., 2018), and critical reviews of literacy practice (Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2016; Hoffman, 2017) were addressed through required readings and seminar discussions. Candidates also read and analyzed children's picture books that addressed systemic racism (Tonatiuh, 2014; Woodson, 2001).

I invited all course participants to take part in the study. Twenty TCs signed consent forms to allow their ungraded activity logs to be used for the study and to be interviewed after they completed the course. The consent form stated that TCs’ decision to participate in the study would not influence their course grades; these forms were placed in a sealed folder until final course grades were submitted. The TCs were assigned to local elementary schools to complete a practicum one day per week during the semester. Eighteen interned in public and charter elementary schools that served almost exclusively Black and Latinx students who were eligible for free or reduced-cost meals. Two candidates interned in a school that enrolled 20% students of color, with 10% of the student body receiving free or reduced-cost meals.

Over the years, school site selections have been scrutinized by faculty, with increased identification of schools that provided authentic and culturally centered literacy teaching experiences. Test-driven and scripted literacy teaching operated in some schools. Expectations for the practicum included working with students individually and in small groups. Candidates were asked to teach one assessment-based lesson to develop students’ critical responses to texts and another to develop their writing abilities.

Data

Data sets for this study consisted of candidates’ observational and activity logs and interviews. Each week, participants were asked to observe and describe the nature of literacy learning in their field classrooms, including observations of any policies, structures, or practices that appeared to either promote or limit students’ literacy learning. I provided candidates with a list of general categories for reference (e.g., literature, libraries, technology, curriculum, instruction, assessment, staffing, grouping procedures). I reminded candidates throughout the semester to consider the course articles and discussions on racial equity to frame their field inquiries. I also invited them to write about how educators at their field sites addressed opportunity gaps to foster students’ literacy growth and how they might address opportunity gaps in their future teaching practices. In addition, I encouraged them to explore evidence of family and community capital and use this knowledge to help students develop in literacy. Candidates did not receive letter grades for the logs but needed to submit one each week. Each candidate produced approximately six pages of field observations during the semester, totaling 118 log pages for all participants combined.

Analysis of the logs revealed a range of profiles, from TCs who regularly noted and reflected on equitable and inequitable school literacy learning opportunities and discussed how they would address inequities as future teachers to those who did not actively reflect on equity issues. I invited six students to participate in a follow-up interview five months after they had completed the practicum. The first group included three TCs who regularly noticed and named several instances of equity and inequity in their logs; the second group attended inconsistently to these elements. Four agreed to be interviewed, including three in the first group and one in the second group. Candidates were asked questions about the elements they believed either fostered or limited students in developing literacy, how they could help students grow in literacy in these settings, and what they thought they needed to know and do to foster students’ literacy development. I invited participants to give specific examples to support their responses. The interviews, averaging about one hour each, were recorded and transcribed.

Analysis

I used concept generalizing techniques (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to code the logs and interview transcripts. After copying participants’ logs, I noted any signal words and phrases that candidates used to describe or evaluate the instructional practices they observed (e.g., “racism,” “equity,” “opportunity gaps,” “unfairness,” “missed opportunities,” “I liked how she…”). I wrote analytic notes of the typical and atypical patterns that began to surface across the logs with each reading. After multiple readings, I identified seven statement types:

attributed literacy difficulties to students or their caregivers or communities

described conditions and practices that promote students’ literacy learning opportunities

described conditions and practices that undermine literacy equity

included explicit references to equitable conditions and practices

included explicit references to inequitable conditions and practices

described conditions and practices that were described to be inequitable in the course but were not framed as ones that would inhibit literacy learning

explained how participants might enhance students’ literacy learning opportunities

For categories 2 through 5, participants commented primarily on classroom organization, availability of materials, grouping arrangements, and their host teacher's instructional moves. Identification of category 6 statements involved noting the extent to which participants overlooked opportunities to critique inequitable practices, based on the perspectives and practices that were promoted in the course. For example, the course described permanent ability grouping as an inequitable practice. If candidates described such practices but did not identify them as inequitable, I tagged such statements as “overlooking inequities” (category 6). Although noting some TCs’ tendency to overlook inequitable practices, I grouped them primarily according to their inconsistent attention to equity issues. I associated an equity stance with the inclusion of statement types 4 and 5 (noticing equities and inequities) and the exclusion of statement types 1 (deficit language) and 6 (overlooking inequities) in the logs. Conversely, the inclusion of statement types 1 and 6 and the omission of statement types 4 and 5 constituted a relative lack of development in seeing students and examining literacy instruction from an equity orientation.

The second phase of analysis involved creating a table with TCs’ names arranged in a vertical column with the seven statement types placed horizontally across the top. I used the chart to note the statement types each TC used in her log. From these data, a profile of each candidate emerged based on patterns of consistency in the ways she wrote about the field experience. For example, those who tended to reflect on equity issues in their logs (categories 4 and 5) also avoided deficit descriptions of students and their caregivers and communities (category 1). Likewise, those who tended to use deficit descriptions of children and caregivers also tended to overlook instances of inequitable structures or practices that were noted in the course as undermining literacy development. The completed chart revealed outlier profiles—candidates who consistently attended to issues of equity and how they would respond to these issues in the future, those who inconsistently exhibited these tendencies, and those who inconsistently demonstrated these tendencies but also framed students and their families in deficit ways. Data analysis also involved looking at relationships between candidates’ logs and their interview statements.

First, I will present findings that surfaced in the analysis across the field logs and will point out key distinctions between three groups of candidates. I will then present the cases of two interviewed candidates, one who displayed strong equity orientations and one whose equity orientations were comparatively less demonstrated. These cases reveal several conditions across the university and school landscapes that converged to shape TCs’ equity orientations.

Findings

Patterns of Engagement

Analysis of the logs reflected a few general trends among the 20 participants in their ability to engage in equity inquiries during the practicum. Of the participants, 75% (15/20) used the terms “equity” or “inequity” in their field log notations. In addition, 65% (13/20) shared observations of inequitable structures and practices in their field settings, and 40% (8/20) discussed instances of equitable literacy structures or methods, with several candidates noting how their host teachers tried to reduce opportunity gaps for their students. The analysis yielded three broad groups of TCs, distinguished by their levels of participation in noticing and naming equitable or inequitable conditions or teaching practices in their field placements, their attention to future practices, and their descriptions of students, caregivers, or communities.

Group 1: TCs consistently named equitable and inequitable conditions and practices. Group members tended to reflect on the specific ways they would work against inequitable conditions in their future practice (six cases).

Group 2: TCs attended less frequently to issues of equity and inequity in their logs relative to those in Group 1. Three did not observe or reflect on these issues at all. Most Group 2 members admired or critiqued conditions and practices and described some as opportunity gaps. A few members discussed how they would work against inequitable conditions in their future teaching practice (eight cases).

Group 3: Attended to equity and inequity in ways that were similar to Group 2 participants. In addition, Group 3 members suggested that some students lacked exposure to print or support for literacy learning outside of school (six cases).

Members of Group 1 wrote most frequently and intentionally from the perspective of equity. Most described ways they would correct the inequity or opportunity gap if they were in a position to do so. Group 1 members included an average of 5.8 statements about equity and inequity in their logs, and all but one discussed how they would teach in the future in response to what they had observed. Members of this group observed the ways their host teachers used culturally centered texts and materials, individualized or differentiated instruction, gave students extra time to complete assignments, or made a range of books or materials available to students. Katie, for instance, admired much about her host teacher's capacity to connect with students’ culture during literacy lessons and the way she scaffolded instruction. Katie wrote about an instance when her host teacher invited second graders to create “All About Me” bags with items from their homes that were important to them. Katie's host teacher asked students to share and talk about these items in class. Katie commented: “This ties to equity because all students are being valued, and their identities are being developed and nourished.”

A few candidates wrote about how their host teachers advocated for students to change school policies. They consistently named structures that limited literacy learning, such as the lack of resources, crowded classrooms, and the gatekeeping function of standardized testing. They also discussed the use of undifferentiated instruction and instruction that was targeted beneath students’ competencies and the limitations of fixed-ability groupings. Katie, for example, observed the undifferentiated use of the Fundations program at her field site and believed it worked against the students who had already mastered the phonics skills being taught:

I think that this was not necessarily equitable to all students as there were many who had already mastered the sounds she was reviewing. These students were not paying as much attention and distracting those who did not know the sounds. This was not beneficial to anyone and could have been approached in a better way that would best suit all the students. This could be done by pulling students who were having difficulty with these sounds in a small group during SSR [sustained silent reading] time while other students are benefitting from independent reading.

Notice Katie's aspirational goal to differentiate instruction by “pulling students” for work during SSR time as a possible solution. This goal was well-intended from an instructional fit perspective. Still, from a meaning-making perspective, Katie would need to consider how taking SSR time away from some children and replacing it with phonics instruction might create another type of inequity. Katie also tagged as inequitable instances when students answered low-level “recall” questions in response to a short story they had read:

Today at field there was a large chunk of time dedicated to reading a short story followed by questions about it. These questions related to the names of characters in the story and the sequence of events. Due to the fact that there was a large amount of time allotted for this lesson, I believe it was inequitable. There were many students who had already mastered the skills of identifying characters and sequences of events. This lesson was only beneficial to the few that still need assistance with these skills. The other students were bored during this lesson, which resulted in 30 min of wasted learning time.

Like Katie, other Group 1 members consistently attended to equitable and inequitable practices and structures and reflected on how these would shape students’ literacy learning opportunities.

Group 2 members admired and critiqued school structures and practices, but compared with their Group 1 peers, they were much less engaged in describing structures and practices from an equity stance. Of the eight members of this group, five averaged 1.6 log statements about equity and inequity and another three did not refer to equity at all. Of the eight candidates, only two discussed what they might do to preserve equitable practices and structures or challenge inequitable ones. Among this group was Molly, who twice referred to opportunity gaps that she felt limited students’ literacy learning opportunities. In one log entry, she focused on the shortage of books and materials available to students:

Usually, within language arts and literature in my field class, students are rarely given books during reading. Rather they either listen to the teacher read (missing out on book handling skills) or they are given printouts to read. Also, students sometimes are not given worksheets/handouts; rather they are given lined paper to complete assignments.

Molly linked the lack of school materials at her field site to students’ diminished opportunities to learn how books were used. She and some other Group 2 members overlooked opportunities to question practices that could limit students’ literacy development, as addressed in the course.

Group 3 members included four TCs who admired or critiqued structures or practices within their field placements. Two-thirds of this group wrote uncritically about conditions or structures that could compromise students’ literacy learning, based on the research studied and discussed in the course. What distinguishes Group 3 members from the other groups is their deficit assumptions about students’ out-of-school literacies or family support to develop literacy. TCs’ descriptions also reflected a lack of understanding about the cultural wealth of communities of color, as reflected by one TC's use of the term “impoverished area.” A few TCs indirectly accused caregivers of failing to provide either books or bedtime reading rituals, as reflected in this log entry: “I don’t know what these students’ home life is like, but if they are not being read to at home, this would be a reason why they aren’t seeing and hearing reading as much and maybe struggling because of it.” Another TC attributed students’ literacy difficulties to their presumed lack of motivation: “This may be due to students not wanting to try or some other factors.” None of the TCs in this group noted the possibility that students engaged in varieties of family and or community literacies that are not recognized in schools, even though this concept was addressed in an introductory course taken in the first two years of the TEP.

A discussion of the field log notations and what they suggested about TCs’ varied equity orientations and their levels of participation in the equity project provides a backdrop for discussing the cases of Jessica (Group 1) and Anne (Group 3). These cases show how these TCs attended to issues of equity differently in their practicum settings.

Jessica

Jessica (all names are pseudonyms) was a senior when she interned in Ms. Flynn's fifth-grade classroom in a charter school that served a primarily Black community. Ms. Flynn, a white woman in her 30s, returned to teaching in the city after having taught for a few years in a suburban school. Jessica admired many elements of Ms. Flynn's practice and consistently framed them as equitable. These included the ways Ms. Flynn invited students to “book shop” books that were interesting and accessible for independent reading, enhanced students’ understandings of stories by providing background knowledge through multimodal means, demonstrated the different text features of informational texts, modeled how to annotate texts for close reading, clarified differences between fiction and informational texts, provided an explicit demonstration of how to use context clues to construct understandings about unknown words, charted how long students were able to read independently, honored writing processes by having students work on their written pieces over extended time periods, and validated students’ writing through authors’ celebrations that included families.

Although Jessica admired most of Ms. Flynn's literacy teaching practices, she wondered about one practice that appeared to limit students’ thinking about texts. She described how Ms. Flynn praised one student's interpretation of a story, which simultaneously reduced other students’ ability to consider their own interpretations:

The class read a story yesterday and today they were answering questions about that story. The teacher asked the question, “What was the lesson of this story?” and many students raised their hands. The first student she called on said the lesson of the story was that hard work pays off, which was correct. The teacher stated that this was correct, praised him, and she said, “You took the words right out of my mouth.” Then, she asked all of the students, “Who else thought this was the lesson of the story?” and almost everyone raised their hands.

When reflecting on this teacher-led discussion, Jessica connected to one of the course articles, “Closely Reading ‘Reading Closely’” (Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2016). The authors of this article critiqued the practice of encouraging communal responses to texts and consequently reducing opportunities for students to form and justify their understandings about key ideas in stories. This article was discussed at length in one seminar class. Jessica wondered if Ms. Flynn restricted her students’ opportunities to construct their own responses to a text, and she wrote about how she would change this practice if she had a chance to do so:

If this were my classroom, I would not have stated that the first student was correct. Instead, I would say, “That’s a great idea,” and I would ask him for text evidence to support his idea. Then, I would open the question up to students again to hear students’ varying perspectives. I don’t think all students were thinking the same thing; rather I think that they just wanted to say that they did in order to please the teacher and move on. Therefore, by having all students share their ideas they would be able to engage in discourse and practice supporting their ideas with text evidence. This is an example of a communal close reading where the teacher has a specific answer in her mind and students try to cater their thinking to fit the teacher’s.

In this entry, Jessica identified herself as a teacher who would invite students to construct and defend text interpretations using text evidence, a practice she associated with equitable literacy teaching.

Jessica also observed that the students in this class did not have access to enough books during independent reading time, resulting in giving students books that Jessica felt were much too easy for them. Jessica imagined that she would need to raise funds for age-appropriate books and accumulate a class library with a wide variety of texts. She reasoned that this practice would “help bridge the opportunity gap between students in low-economic areas and students in middle-class areas.”

Jessica also focused on the inequitable ways that time was allocated to literacy instruction in this classroom. She commented on a time when Ms. Flynn was interrupted by a colleague:

Today in the field my teacher was engaging the students in a read-aloud to model using our “inner voice” for comprehension. During the lesson, another teacher came in to discuss the science lesson that was happening immediately after the read-aloud. They discussed what they were doing during the lesson and how they were going to set up. This conversation took up about 5 min of the literacy instruction time. Because the teachers were not properly prepared for the day, the students lost valuable instruction time.

Jessica critiqued Ms. Flynn's willingness to interrupt her lesson in order to assist another teacher who appeared to be unprepared. In her log, she set her own goal to prepare in advance so as not to take away from students’ instructional time.

Jessica's field logs reflected a high level of engagement in examining instances of equity while in the practicum and in setting equity-focused goals for her future literacy practice. In my follow-up interview with Jessica, she indicated that she stayed at the same school site for another semester to student teach and most recently accepted a job offer to teach there. She described the school as “a good fit” because she “was already familiar with all of the students,” and the teachers and administrators made her feel welcome. She also identified with the school's mission: “They are into caring for the whole child…the emotional and the social.”

Jessica also felt that Ms. Flynn was instrumental in helping her construct a vision of herself as a teacher who used culturally meaningful literacy experiences while also attending to explicit skill and strategy instruction. Further, she felt more accomplished to work with students’ families through Ms. Flynn's demonstrations. She explained:

She taught me how to do publishing parties where we invited all the parents and siblings, and we did a lot of that. We did gallery walks for Black History Month, and we had a lot of trying to invite families into the school and after school. During the day, we had a lot of families, mostly grandparents, aunts, and uncles. It was nice to invite all types of families; there was a pretty good turnout.

Ms. Flynn’s close mentoring style was instrumental in Jessica's decision to accept the job in this school. During the interview, I directed Jessica's attention to how she critiqued Ms. Flynn's handling of a story discussion. I said: “In the fall, you wrestled with the idea that your teacher was encouraging a communal response [from the students].” Jessica responded by saying that she and Ms. Flynn “loved talking and sharing” and that she sent her the course article written by Aukerman and Chambers Schuldt (2016) so they could discuss it.

Jessica felt that students’ exposure to reading and texts would heavily determine their literate development. She worried that not all of her students were reading “actual books.” At the same time, she acknowledged other literacies that shaped students’ development, including cell phone texting and video games where players communicated through chats. However, she expressed concern that these exchanges required “very conversational English and not academic.” When I asked her to elaborate on this point, she replied that students “were into rap music and Fortnight and a lot of TikTok and things like that.” She indicated that “it would be cool to incorporate texting and communicating through videos” but was not quite sure how to utilize these literacies in the classroom.

Jessica reflected on her own professional identity as one who can teach well in this community. She stated: “I have a lot to learn, but I can get there knowing where they [students] are at [and] how much they can do. I have to know what they can do and know where they are developmentally.”

Anne

Anne interned in a second-grade classroom at an elementary school that served primarily Black students. She found the school to be rich with resources, including a well-stocked library with a full-time librarian and personal laptops for each student. She observed, however, that her field placement classroom was somewhat crowded. Her host teacher, Ms. Walker, identified as an African American woman and had been a 10-year veteran of the district.

Anne commented that the curriculum at her field site was “effective,” but she questioned whether it served the needs of academically talented students. She did not tag this observation as a possible instance of inequity. Anne included in her field log her goal of “creating an atmosphere in which all children believe in themselves and feel confident in their abilities.” In a later notation, Anne observed that the school was “striving to address opportunity gaps to foster students’ literacy growth.” Still, she was unclear about caregivers’ role in nurturing their children's literacy development. She wrote: “I spoke with some students about reading at home and they responded in ways that indicated little literacy opportunities outside of school.”

In a few log entries, Anne focused on the practice of text selection in literacy instruction based on one of the course articles, “What If ‘Just Right’ Is Just Wrong? The Unintended Consequences of Leveling Readers” (Hoffman, 2017). The article prompted a lively class discussion, which Anne captured in one of her field notes:

One of the most complex discussions we’ve had in class this year was about leveled reading. As a class, we debated the whole concept, wrestling between the ideas of limiting students’ abilities and wanting to provide them with enough books that are “just right.” Nonetheless, we determined that leveling could serve as an effective tool if implemented in a way that did not limit students to only one “just right” level. It should help children grow in their abilities and feel like they can take on any challenges they face as readers.

Based on this discussion, Anne noted when Ms. Walker reminded a student that she should be reading J-level books. Reflecting on the Hoffman article, Anne wondered about the practice of confining students to read texts of a particular level and noted: “It's important to remember that children need to enjoy their reading and be challenged in a healthy way.” Anne asked Ms. Walker how she selected texts for students and what her expectations were about which books her students could read. Through this exchange, Anne discovered that Ms. Walker's approach to book selection was consistent with the views expressed in the Hoffman article:

She explained to me that she gives them several assessments, such as a DRA [Developmental Reading Assessment], in order to identify their [text] levels. Then, she encourages them to pick both “comfortable” books and “fun” books. The fun books can be chapter books or anything of the sort that is above their level but interests them. She strives to work with students when they’re reading these books and help them figure out words that they don’t understand.

Anne felt Ms. Walker's assessment and text selection practices would advance students’ literacy development, but she did not specifically identify Ms. Walker's practice as equitable. Anne also admired how Ms. Walker frequently used classroom observations to assess students’ knowledge. She observed one instance when Ms. Walker asked students to write words that included certain letter sounds to guide her decision about what word study work she would introduce next. Anne noted in her field log: “This lesson served as a type of formative assessment, and it enabled the teacher to gauge where the students were in their learning.”

In other entries, Anne observed that Ms. Walker understood her students’ literacy strengths and challenges and provided several accommodations to help them meet school literacy expectations. As she reflected on her future practices, she wondered whether she could differentiate instruction in the seamless way that Ms. Walker did. Anne envisioned a need to set individual literacy goals for each student but wondered how difficult it would be to do this with so many students in the classroom.

Anne used her field log to make connections between course concepts and field activities, and her entries showed that she admired many of Ms. Walker's practices. Although she identified a few structures within the school that undermined students’ literacy learning opportunities, such as the high student–teacher ratio, she did not frame them as inequitable. There was no commentary in her log about culturally sustaining literacy teaching, nor did she note the significance for Black students of having a teacher who looked like them.

In my follow-up interview with Anne, I discovered that she had remained in that placement school to student teach. As a dual elementary and special education major, she was assigned to intern with a special education mentor teacher for part of the semester. When asked about the elements that she believed shaped her students’ literacy development at this site, she said that negative expectations of students “set for them before they get in the classroom” undermined their development. She added that some students may not have a lot of books or opportunities to go on trips. Still, they have other resources at home to foster their literacy development, like having conversations with family members, using television and social media, and going to local stores or the park. She added that students come to school with different funds of knowledge and that teachers need to know students and connect with them “on a level that they connect with at home.”

Reflecting on the student teaching placement, Anne discussed her close association with Tanesha, a second grader who strongly identified as a songwriter and hip-hop artist. Anne learned that Tanesha's father often sang to his daughter. This discovery prompted Anne to ask her host teacher whether she had ever considered having Tanesha compose song lyrics during writing time. She recalled that her host teacher had not thought of this idea but acknowledged using it to motivate her students to write. Anne used the example of Tanesha to critique the culturally disconnected ways that children are often taught to write in school. Anne felt that her TEP's emphasis on equity studies enhanced her ability to teach in schools that served students of color. Unlike Jessica, she did not indicate a desire to do so.

Discussion

The literacy practicum allowed TCs to reflect on students’ literacy learning opportunities from the perspective of equity. The findings show that TCs attended differently to this invitation. Jessica and Katie were among six candidates who consistently named equitable and inequitable school elements that shaped students’ literacy learning opportunities and frequently articulated how they would work as future equity-oriented teachers. Although acknowledging the literacies that students used primarily outside of school, Jessica seemed unsure about their place in the literacy classroom. At issue is whether her privileging of “actual books” and academic language will interfere with her ability to see students’ fullest literacy and linguistic capacities and utilize these literacies in her future classroom.

Anne evaluated literacy practices based on their alignment with concepts promoted in the practicum course. Still, she did not consistently identify structures and practices as equitable or inequitable and wondered how she would set individualized goals for students in a classroom with so many children. Anne asserted that some students at her practicum site engaged in few literacy opportunities outside of school. At this juncture, it seemed that Anne had not developed critical perspectives about literacy as a culturally situated practice. During the interview, however, she demonstrated a more evolved stance by suggesting that it would be helpful to draw from a family literacy practice (a father singing to his daughter) to frame writing instruction.

These findings reveal the complicated nature of each TC's development toward equity awareness. From a landscape of practice perspective (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015), apparent misalignments of ideas promoted in the TEP and observations of school literacy practices prompted each candidate to dialogue with their host teachers. Jessica questioned whether Ms. Flynn adequately attended to students’ individual but defensible interpretations of texts. Jessica's ability to share an article with Ms. Flynn about the importance of preserving students’ interpretations of texts helped both the apprentice and the host teacher establish a common language around practice. Similarly, Anne wondered about Ms. Walker's comment that one of her students should read books of a certain level. In a subsequent conversation with Ms. Walker, Anne discovered that her host teacher had developed a research-supported system that enabled students to choose books that matched their comfort levels and interest profiles. In both situations, initial inquiries about equitable literacy practice led to rich dialogues that helped these TCs construct literacy teaching competencies. An unexplored area of data analysis is the racial/cultural dynamic between these TCs and their host teachers. Jessica interned with a white teacher, while Anne interned with an African American teacher. Investigating how they interpreted and perceived the practices of the host teachers they were partnered with would have added more nuance to the landscape framework.

Evidence from this study indicated that most participants attended to issues of equity in relation to students’ literacy learning opportunities during the practicum. It also revealed some participants’ deficit assumptions about students’ literacy exposure outside of school and caregivers’ ability to support children's literacy development. Six participants produced these comments despite participating in an introductory course that addressed race, equity, and literacy (Lazar et al., 2012), the cultural wealth of communities of color (Yosso, 2005), literacies as cultural practices (Heath, 1986 Street, 1995), funds of knowledge (González et al., 2005), and culturally sustaining instruction (Ladson-Billings, 2009; Paris, 2012; Souto-Manning & Martell, 2016). This finding raises questions about the coherence of the TEP and the need to link earlier studies to upper-level methods courses. Further, relatively few TCs commented on how racism operated either within their school sites or in the TEP.

Findings from this study indicate the need to make course and program-level changes to advance the competencies that TCs will need to join professionals who are dedicated to instilling equitable teaching practices. I recommend specific changes in the literacy practicum experience, based on the commentaries of candidates who (a) did not explicitly connect their observations to equity and or race; (b) overlooked opportunities to critique inequitable practices and did not consider how they might promote equitable practices or confront inequitable ones; and (c) framed students, caregivers, or communities in deficit ways. One guiding principle in this work is that equity issues need to be centered in the landscape of practice, and not at the periphery.

The finding that some TCs wrote evaluative statements about the conditions and practices they observed in the field but did not explicitly frame these conditions and practices as either equitable or inequitable indicates a need to respond to and share the field log observations more consistently and critically during the practicum. For instance, it would have been instructive if I had invited Jessica to share her comments about Ms. Flynn's publishing parties with families and held this up as an example of equitable and culturally sustaining literacy teaching. Vivid examples of culturally sustaining and family-centered classroom literacy events are available to candidates through the professional literature (e.g. Souto-Manning & Martell, 2016), but having TCs share their local examples would be significant additions to the seminar.

It would have been equally important to share the entries of TCs who critiqued the conditions and practices that they believed compromised students’ literacy learning opportunities. Jessica could have shared her observations about the lack of books for independent reading time at her school site or her host teacher's initial practice of honoring communal interpretations of texts over individual justifiable ones (Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2016). Additionally, more seminar time could have been spent examining how the equities and inequities that surfaced in these logs either advanced or limited literacy learning opportunities for the primarily Black and Latinx students in our field sites. Field phenomena could have been studied from the perspective of how they shaped students’ identities, intellectualism, skills, and criticality (Muhammad, 2019).

More frequent sharing of the logs in the seminar is also warranted because some candidates observed inequitable structures and practices in their practicum sites but did not critically comment on them. I am reminded of Katie's observation about undifferentiated phonics instruction. Inviting her to share this observation with her peers could have prompted critical discussions about how phonics programs are being used in classrooms, why certain programs are adopted, how district-level policies regarding intensive phonics instruction are made (Johnston & Scanlon, 2020), and how these decisions can translate to inequitable classroom practices (Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2021; Hoffman et al., 2020; Willis, 2019). Additionally, we could have debated Katie's suggestion to have some students engage in phonics work while their more phonetically developed peers read silently. There was a need to problematize the idea of giving one group of students individualized skill instruction while simultaneously denying their opportunity to enjoy and make sense of whole connected texts during silent reading.

Facilitating TCs’ equity inquiries requires explicit modeling on taking field notes that direct their attention to inequitable arrangements that appear to undermine students’ learning opportunities. The instructor could think aloud about the types of questions that TCs might take into the field to examine questions of equitable literacy practice: Do the children appear disinterested or unengaged during an interactional read-aloud lesson? Do children remain in the same ability groups for reading? Do some children get left out of gifted programs because the assessments used to assess their eligibility are racially or culturally biased? Inventories of the inequitable structures and practices that TCs observe should be generated and discussed in class. Further, TCs could be encouraged to communicate with their host teachers about whether they feel certain policies or practices equitably meet the needs of their students.

Deficit views about students’ caregivers and home literacy practices need to be challenged continually throughout the TEP. There is a need to tighten the program's focus by linking the equity perspectives addressed earlier in the program to later coursework and upper-level practicum courses. Teacher educators must structure coursework to expose TCs to multiple forms of cultural capital that exist within homes, including the social networking that caregivers engage in to support students’ school performance (Compton-Lilly, 2007). Most importantly, the TEP needs to create closer ties between apprentices, caregivers, and community groups. Many of our partner schools hold regular Home and School Association meetings that apprentices could attend or learn more about. Doing so would expand the landscape of practice to include the voices of caregivers and community members. Through these associations, TCs could more directly explore family and community funds of knowledge (González et al., 2005) and the possibilities for including caregivers and community members in culturally affirming practices (Ladson-Billings, 2009; Muhammad, 2019; Paris, 2012; Souto-Manning & Martell, 2016).

TEPs are primarily concerned with developing TCs’ content and procedural knowledge of the profession (Milner, 2019). Findings from this study affirm the need to build TCs’ racial literacy as well. The exclusion of commentary about systemic racism within the field logs requires a serious look at how the TEP fosters TC’ racial knowledge. Systemic racism, white supremacy, meritocracy, settler colonialism, and many other equity concepts need to be addressed throughout the TEP. Further, the findings support the need to restructure literacy education courses around antiracist and abolitionist literacy education frameworks (Baker-Bell, 2020; Love, 2019; Muhammad, 2019) to ensure that TCs examine relationships between racism, literacy, and language. TCs should inquire about how the literacies, languages, heritage, and experiences of BIPOC children, youth, and communities are represented and validated in schools. TCs should also be directed to notice and reflect on incidents of linguistic violence toward BIPOC children, youth, and communities (Baker-Bell, 2020; Souto-Manning, 2021). Further, there is a need to show candidates how the literacy profession privileges whiteness and positions the languages and literacies of BIPOC communities pathologically. For instance, it would be essential to examine how a simple view of reading is encased in the TEP and in schools (Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2021).

Doing this work depends on teacher educators and host teachers becoming racially literate, which requires ongoing study and reflection about how ideas about race and equity live deep within us (Price-Dennis-Sealey-Ruiz, 2021; Sealey-Ruiz, 2021). Racial literacy is essential for those who affiliate as white, cultural outsiders to BIPOC communities, and those who have not grappled with systemic racism within society, schooling, or literacy education. Such reflection is also necessary for TCs of color, who tend to see the capacities of students who look like them but who may have absorbed racist ideas about minoritized families that are ubiquitous in America (Kendi, 2019). TCs also need more direct access to equity-oriented practitioners who build culturally affirming literacy classrooms and routinely advocate for their students. Since TCs are often assigned to one host teacher within a literacy practicum experience, they have limited access to a range of advocacy-oriented practitioners. Arranging for these practitioners to engage with TCs on campus or via virtual meetings would expand and complicate the landscape of practice, providing TCs with more expert voices to construct equity teaching competencies.

In tandem with these efforts, a more diversified university landscape is essential for preparing teachers for equity work. Cross-cultural dialogues happen in formal and informal spaces across the college campus, and primarily white TEPs severely limit these opportunities. Recruiting faculty and students of color to college campuses is vital for challenging and expanding all TCs’ understandings about race, family and community capital and cultural heritage, cross-community literacies, and the life circumstances of families. Recruiting candidates of color into the TEP is critical for producing teachers who identify with their students’ cultural and linguistic experiences and are committed to transforming education around antiracist goals (Brown, 2014; Haddix, 2017).

Conclusion

Predicated on the idea that literacy teacher education has been complicit in failing to interrogate whiteness as the norm that drives the way BIPOC students’ languages and literacies are pathologized and undervalued in schools (Souto-Manning, 2021), this work focuses on reconceptualizing literacy education around investigations of equity and inequity in the literacy practicum. Having TCs inquire about equity within literacy practica can foster awareness of how school literacy learning opportunities are inequitably shaped and distributed. Findings from this study showed the different ways TCs took up this work and imagined how they might uphold or enact equitable school practices and structures and how they could challenge inequitable ones. These findings can guide a revision of the practicum and the TEP around equity goals to produce educators with the mindsets and skills required to advocate for BIPOC students (Love, 2019).

We can no longer afford to frame literacy internships as a space to practice literacy teaching as this is only a partial landscape of practice to enculturate TCs into the teaching profession. There is a need to reframe these spaces around apprenticing for equity literacy teaching, which means having TCs grapple with equity issues as they work with advocacy-oriented mentors. Such work is daunting for TCs who are trying to learn about literacy teaching, district and school policies, curriculum standards, students’ needs, caregivers’ hopes, and the expectations of mentors and TEPs. Such complexity makes the literacy practicum a vital space for developing the dispositions needed to advocate for students equitably (Feiman-Nemser & Schussler, 2010). This work must be done by racially knowledgeable teachers and teacher educators and by creating additional landscapes of practice where apprentices are in the company of caregivers and community members. These efforts, set within a more culturally diverse TEP and campus, would advance the goal of producing teachers who can support their students’ fullest literacy capacities.