This chapter presents the methodological design of this study which was
conducted as I planned for, taught, and reflected on a one-credit undergraduate education course, EDTE 400 Learning through Community Service which included a 20-hour community-based/service component which I call, Freedom Readers Literacy Partners. Pseudonyms are used for all schools, community housing areas, family and community members, and students in this study. I will preface this description of methodology with a look at the history of the course and my association with it followed by a description of the pilot study conducted immediately prior to and informing this dissertation work.
Those sections are followed by a detailed discussion of the research design and methods.
History of EDTE 400
This dissertation study as well as the pilot study preceding it were conducted in the context of a one-credit undergraduate education course taught at the University of South Carolina’s main campus. In order to understand the research contexts, it is
necessary to provide an explanation of the history of this course and the literacy program that provided a field experience for students taking the course as well as my involvement in the course and its redesign.
The Course
Listed on the master schedules of courses as Learning through Community
Service, EDTE 400 is a one-credit, undergraduate education course offered through the
University of South Carolina’s main campus in Columbia, South Carolina. At the time of both the pilot and dissertation studies, EDTE 400 was a required course for students planning to enter elementary, middle, or secondary education programs of study. Six sections of EDTE 400 were offered each fall and spring semester. The course involved (typically freshman and sophomore) students meeting for class sessions on campus six times for 75 minute sessions throughout the semester in addition to serving at least 20 hours of volunteer work in community education settings (hence the course title,
Learning through Community Service). Undergraduate students enrolled in EDTE 400
were provided with a list of potential community education sites at an orientation
scheduled before the start of the semester. A brief description was provided for each site. Students were able to choose three sites in which they wished to serve their
community/service hours and were assigned to one of those sites by the course site coordinator, often receiving their first choice. Typically, each of three instructors taught two sections of the course, meeting with 20-25 students in each section. Site coordinators organized the off-campus component of the course.
Hired to Teach the Course
In 2010, I was hired as the instructor for all six sections of EDTE 400. Prior to taking on this role, I met with the three professors and the off-site coordinator who had organized and taught the course and the community/service component in previous years. They shared their understanding of the course structure as well as their syllabus and
course assignments. One professor explained that the course structure and the two main assignments - a service learning notebook (turned in as a hard copy within a three-ring binder) and an end-of-course presentation - had remained the same for 10 years. All materials (two VHS tapes about service learning and service learning as a route to reform and school improvement) were given to me to use.
At the time I was offered the opportunity to teach the course, the chair and assistant chair of the teacher education department explained their hope that the new instructor of the course would restructure it to better fit the needs of prospective teachers. I briefly shared my vision of what I would do differently as the instructor of the course. I would: (a) examine the service learning/community sites that had been compiled on the list, possibly adding new sites; (b) create curriculum that provided a framework for students to think about the significance of service learning education/the community component; and (c) provide assignments that involved critical reflection of service
experiences and learning through service. Once I was offered the contract to teach EDTE 400, the department chair explained that I could restructure the course and wished me the best in my efforts. I would serve as course instructor for the on-campus component and a site coordinator would organize and facilitate the off-campus community service
component.
Restructuring the Course
Influenced by my life’s experiences and my doctoral studies, I set off to
restructure EDTE 400 by first reviewing doctoral course syllabi of all of the classes I had taken up to that point and reflecting on my most significant learning experiences within these courses. I listed texts and activities that might be useful for EDTE 400.
Recognizing that this might be the only opportunity for these students to learn about critical and sociocultural perspectives, my ambitious goal was to think of a way to fit highlights of my doctoral program into this one-credit, service learning course by
providing simplified versions of and starting points for engaging students in self-reflexive practices and thinking about being culturally sensitive and responsive to children from diverse backgrounds.
I started with the first course I took, EDRD 800 (Literacy Education P-12) as I remember it as one of the most significant courses for shaping my perspectives in the beginning stages. I remembered Chimimanda Adichie’s (2002) speech, “The Danger of a Single Story” as having an impact on my thinking about people from diverse
backgrounds and countries. I previewed the speech again and decided that it may be appropriate learning material for undergraduate students in EDTE 400. I also knew that I wanted to engage students in identity reflections or reflections of self. I pulled out an article that was listed on Blackboard for EDTE 400 but that we did not read. It was entitled, “Identity Matters” (McCarthey & Moje, 2002), in which authors discussed their perspectives on why literacy matters in education contexts, particularly literacy
classrooms. I also remembered reading an article on social identity formation and socialization (Harro, 2002) in a Multicultural Education course I took as an elective towards the end of my doctoral coursework. This course provided a multicultural framework and a more detailed overview of culturally responsive pedagogy. I was somewhat familiar with the content, but only because some of it had been touched on in some of my other doctoral classes and I saw those ideas as the most significant learning from those classes. I considered the multicultural course as an essential course that
influenced the rest of my doctoral coursework. As such, I borrowed a few components from the Multicultural Education course as I planned for EDTE 400: Harro’s (2002) article on socialization and basic definitions of culturally responsive pedagogy and counter-narratives. I created the identity narrative assignment after reading Harro’s article.
Another article from my readings that reflected elements of culturally responsive pedagogy and counter-narratives was titled, “Five Steps in Constructing Counter-
Narratives of Young Children and Their Families” (Lopéz-Robertson, Long, and Turner- Nash, 2010). While highlighting significant points of process from this article, I realized that I wanted to engage students in similar steps (getting to know children and families outside of school) and in the construction of counter-narratives to refute typical deficit narratives about children of Color and children from low income households. As a result, I designed a process for students to be engaged in a particular community setting and to reflect on their observations and experiences in hopes that they would be able to construct counter narratives that would contradict prevailing deficit views of the African American children with whom they would work in a low income housing project setting. I did this by revising the course to include new questions to guide students’ reflections in their service learning/community engagement journals. I also redesigned the journal to be a blog assignment in which preservice teachers would blog online about their observations and reflections. I wanted to engage students in ethnographic-like inquiry while
influencing their observations and reflections with wording and questions reflective of culturally sensitive and responsive pedagogy. I also created a new end-of-course presentation assignment which involved preservice teachers in a less formal service
learning sharing – presentations - (Appendix F), in which they were asked to orally present their observations and counter narratives.
As I started to design the syllabus for the course, I outlined it with the learning processes in mind that I hoped students would experience in EDTE 400 (Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1- Learning Processes Envisioned for EDTE 400
While I knew it would be a challenge to accomplish this even in a three-credit course, it was my hope that I could somehow condense this learning process - a process that I believed to be highly significant for undergraduates at an early stage of their thinking about a career in education – into a one-credit course. I hoped that the students would engage in a transformative learning process through EDTE 400. I was at the least confident that they would gain more from it than I had gained through my education prior to my doctoral program. Since this was a one-credit course with a required 20 hours of
Development and Presentations of Additive Perspectives through Counter Narratives of Children and their Families
Reflexive Praxis
observe/reflect broaden perspectives through learning about others Danger of Single Stories
narrow ways of thinking aim to broaden perspectives Identity Reflection
socialization of social identities identify roles within system of oppression
assignments. Outside of the fact that I would likely receive complaints by students about too much coursework, I believed that fewer and more critical readings and assignments would be more effective for students to gain insights from this course. Each assignment was closely aligned with readings and service experiences and I developed the
assignments specifically to further their understandings about theories presented within the readings. Though I felt that I was on the right track in how I restructured this one- credit course envisioning it a starting point for engaging students in self-reflection and thinking about issues of inequity, the course was under consideration as a course worthy of standing alone within education programs (elementary, middle, and secondary levels) and, at that time, there were no subsequent courses in the students’ programs that built from (carried forward) the ideologies that I would present in it.
The following fall, the second year I taught EDTE 400, I met with two professors who wanted to hear how I had restructured the course. After I provided an explanation, they expressed some disagreement about EDTE 400: one professor argued that my curriculum was important and that the refreshed version of EDTE 400 was a valuable one-credit experience and should be included in the elementary, middle, and secondary education programs; the other professor felt that EDTE 400 was still not valuable and wanted to omit it as a required course for the degree program he represented. His
preference was to add the field-based component of EDTE 400 to an existing three-credit course. He was careful to assure me that his motivation to omit EDTE 400 had nothing to do with how I had restructured it. As a result, in the fall of 2012, EDTE 400 was continued as a required course for the program area represented by the first faculty member (secondary level) and was discontinued by two other programs.
Adding Freedom Readers Literacy Partners as a Service/Community Option
When I taught EDTE 400 for the first semester (the year prior to my dissertation study), my role was strictly as the academic instructor, with little input or responsibility regarding the service/community component. After listening to and reading students’ reflections about their experiences in their service learning sites, however, I felt a disconnect between the academic portion of the course and the field experience
component. I became concerned that my role as the academic instructor was limited and that I needed to also have a role in a service learning/ community site component to better understand the dynamics and possibilities of the course. I was also interested in guiding or supporting preservice teachers in their experiences within the sites according to the critical sociocultural theoretical framework I was trying to convey in the course. As a result, I decided to develop a community site option that would, in many ways, parallel my experience with my friend Tracy and her program, Freedom Readers.
Tracy’s Freedom Readers. Mentioned in Chapter One, the inspiration for my restructuring of one option for the service learning/community engagement component of the course came about as a result of my summer of 2010 participation as a literacy tutor in my friend Tracy’s program, Freedom Readers. This was a non-profit organization developed by Tracy and supported by individual members of her church. Although not considered a faith-based organization, members of her church acted as volunteers and provided portions of financial support for the program. The pastor of the church was also involved in Freedom Readers, acting as a Board of Directors member and helping to facilitate social gatherings and meetings in support of Freedom Readers at the church. Tracy’s Freedom Readers program was developed to involve adult tutors pairing with
children ages 5-13 (referred to as young scholars) reading together and working on literacy skills.
I enjoyed my experiences as a volunteer in this program for many reasons, but what most resonated with me was that it was situated in the children’s community, a low- income housing area where the residents were primarily African American. This meant that tutors had to engage with children and families on their turf rather than in the confines of a school building, an element of the teaching/learning process supported heavily by many in the field of sociocultural and culturally relevant pedagogies (Lopéz- Robertson, Long, & Turner-Nash, 2010).
My participation in Tracy’s Freedom Readers. I started commuting with Tracy during spring semester 2010 to take classes at the University of South Carolina and that is when she told me about Freedom Readers and the vision she had for it. That semester was the first time Freedom Readers had been in session. I was inspired by her efforts and vision and told her that I would love to participate in it. I started volunteering that
summer as a reading tutor at the Freedom Readers site in Conway, South Carolina (Horry County), the second time it was in session. The summer session took place in the
community center of a government housing development called Dresden Heights. I tutored a young boy named Hakeem. We read together, worked on vocabulary, writing, and oral presentations. We often took walks or read outside of the community center. As we walked, Hakeem showed me where he played, where he lived, and where some
friends and relatives lived. He introduced me to his grandmother who lived in one of the apartment units. This was one of the most enjoyable and informative experiences I had participating in Freedom Readers. I learned that Hakeem had friends and family living
near him in the same community. They seemed like a close niche and Hakeem seemed excited to introduce me to everyone. When I met his grandmother, she told me how proud she was of Hakeem for participating in Freedom Readers and doing well in school. Tracy knew I valued the community walk and asked if I would write a blog entry about the day which she posted on the Freedom Readers’ website (“Freedom Readers,”
Freedomreaders.org.). I began to think about the fact that this type of community site and experience was not available for students in EDTE 400. I believed that preservice
teachers could greatly benefit from getting to know children in sites such as the community where Freedom Readers was held that summer.
Planting the seed for a Freedom Readers in Columbia. One day, when Tracy and I were headed back to Myrtle Beach from our university classes, I asked Tracy to share her process of envisioning and starting the first Freedom Readers site. She went through, in detail, all of the steps she had taken to achieve it including contacting government housing properties and speaking to residence managers there. She said that they were excited to have an afterschool literacy program and that they would be there for each session and would communicate with the residents about the program. But this first attempt did not turn out as well as Tracy expected; the residence managers were not able to be involved or present at any of the sessions. As a result, she took responsibility for contacting the residents, getting a key for the community center, and addressing any issues that arose. She said it was difficult to get Freedom Readers started but that it was set up and children were attending. She was excited to see the program take form.
During this same car ride, I began talking with Tracy about EDTE 400 and the list of sites provided for the community/service component (Appendix L) explaining that
there were no site options in children’s housing communities. Most of the sites were either programs in schools or programs set up in businesses, community buildings, or churches. I asked Tracy about what it might take to establish a Freedom Readers site near the university inviting EDTE 400 students to be the reading tutors. She thought that was a great idea and suggested that I set up a site and lead it. I immediately replied, “I don’t think I can do that.” She said, “Sure you can!” and offered to come with me to meet the resident manager and discuss implementing the program when I found a site.
My initial thoughts about leading a Freedom Readers. Even with Tracy’s
support, I was still unsure and uncomfortable about setting up and leading a Freedom
Readers in Columbia. I wondered what it was going to be like as a White person going
into a low-income housing development to set up a literacy program to work with children of Color. I knew I might be viewed as someone who saw herself as a Great White Hope and I also did not want to be the White person who thinks she knows what is best for the children with whom I had no prior interaction and no common racial,
cultural, political, or heritage background. I was motivated and excited to do it however,