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Education professor to study teacher learning
March 02, 2007
In his fall graduate seminar, “Group Process and the Individual,” education professor Stephen Woolworth exposes students to the impact of social policy and community structure on the public school system.
Students are required to analyze their learning through an electronic portfolio, but the real impact of the seminar has yet to be formally assessed, Woolworth said. He received a $2500 Scholar Award from the Association of Independent Liberal Arts Colleges for Teacher Education to study the students’ portfolios and conduct follow-up interviews.
His research will help determine how the course impacts the students’ preparation to teach. He will conduct his research over the next year and present his findings at the association’s national conference next February.
Woolworth has taught the seminar since its inception four years ago. The seminar is part of the School of Education’s “Project Lead,” a masters program designed for teachers who are already teaching and for prospective school administrators.
Unlike most of his counterparts, Woolworth never taught in the K-12 school system. Instead, he’s worked in a variety of related fields including correctional and mental health facilities, as well as social service, community and youth development organizations.
“I really teach what I do,” he explained.
These social organizations are connected to the educational community, but the connections aren’t always explicitly clear. Additionally, teachers are rarely provided with formal opportunities to learn how these social systems are connected to the lives of their students, school district operations and how they influence the quality of life in the communities and neighborhoods where they teach, Woolworth said.
“We look at all these things that impact schools but are not taught in education,” he said. “How does it play out in the school?”
In urban areas, many teachers don’t live in the community where they teach, and so they don’t always understand the underlying issues affecting their students and the parents, Woolworth said. These issues include public assistance, methamphetamine addiction and gang violence. If teachers can understand the context of a situation, they will be better prepared to successfully teach students and engage parents.
In the seminar, students learn about the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, as well as hear from guest speakers who work with, or advocate for, youth in out-of-school settings. These include those who work with homeless youth, a community liaison police officer, a pastor who operates social service programs and the executive director of a community network that cares for families and youth impacted by methamphetamine addiction.
“It’s about the larger context that explains the community,” Woolworth said.
After learning about what is currently happening in the community where they teach, his students use that knowledge to propose new strategies to address everything from how to use community resources to strategies for increasing parental involvement, he said. Many of his students have taken their learning back to their schools, setting up a mini-public assistance center in the building or educating their peers about the impacts of social policy and community events on the school.
For his research, Woolworth will reexamine 40 to 50 portfolios, send out a survey questionnaire to program graduates and conduct interviews with selected graduates. He will be looking for themes and patterns among the graduates and try to determine how the course helped the teachers think about their craft, he said.
“I’ll be able to get at how their thinking is different and how they think of themselves as teachers,” Woolworth said.
His research will help determine how the course impacts the students’ preparation to teach. He will conduct his research over the next year and present his findings at the association’s national conference next February.
Woolworth has taught the seminar since its inception four years ago. The seminar is part of the School of Education’s “Project Lead,” a masters program designed for teachers who are already teaching and for prospective school administrators.
Unlike most of his counterparts, Woolworth never taught in the K-12 school system. Instead, he’s worked in a variety of related fields including correctional and mental health facilities, as well as social service, community and youth development organizations.
“I really teach what I do,” he explained.
These social organizations are connected to the educational community, but the connections aren’t always explicitly clear. Additionally, teachers are rarely provided with formal opportunities to learn how these social systems are connected to the lives of their students, school district operations and how they influence the quality of life in the communities and neighborhoods where they teach, Woolworth said.
“We look at all these things that impact schools but are not taught in education,” he said. “How does it play out in the school?”
In urban areas, many teachers don’t live in the community where they teach, and so they don’t always understand the underlying issues affecting their students and the parents, Woolworth said. These issues include public assistance, methamphetamine addiction and gang violence. If teachers can understand the context of a situation, they will be better prepared to successfully teach students and engage parents.
In the seminar, students learn about the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, as well as hear from guest speakers who work with, or advocate for, youth in out-of-school settings. These include those who work with homeless youth, a community liaison police officer, a pastor who operates social service programs and the executive director of a community network that cares for families and youth impacted by methamphetamine addiction.
“It’s about the larger context that explains the community,” Woolworth said.
After learning about what is currently happening in the community where they teach, his students use that knowledge to propose new strategies to address everything from how to use community resources to strategies for increasing parental involvement, he said. Many of his students have taken their learning back to their schools, setting up a mini-public assistance center in the building or educating their peers about the impacts of social policy and community events on the school.
For his research, Woolworth will reexamine 40 to 50 portfolios, send out a survey questionnaire to program graduates and conduct interviews with selected graduates. He will be looking for themes and patterns among the graduates and try to determine how the course helped the teachers think about their craft, he said.
“I’ll be able to get at how their thinking is different and how they think of themselves as teachers,” Woolworth said.