The learner profile: piloting a tool to support contextualized understanding of the learner

ABSTRACT Deficit discourses in early childhood education position families of color, bilingual families, and families who are experiencing poverty as culturally and educationally deficient and are often reiterated through teacher education that relies on approximation of practice as modeled by a mentor teacher. Learning Teaching as an Interpretive Practice (LTIP) (Hollins, 2015) provides an assets-based framework for teaching that relies instead on a contextualized understanding of learners. Here, we examine our attempts as teacher educators to implement LTIP in our urban Midwestern early teacher education program. We focus on implementation of a tool for understanding individual children, the Learner Profile. Through case study, we analyze twenty learner profiles completed by five teacher candidates over the course of three semesters. Our findings suggest the Learner Profile guided teacher candidates toward more nuanced understandings of learners including multiple perspectives and unique aspects of lived experiences rather than over prescriptive developmental stages and categories. Still, we found understanding was highly mediated by the field placement context, teacher candidates’ own worldviews, and our facilitation as teacher educators. We conclude with implications for teacher educators who are interested in implementing the Learner Profile Tool and other tools for teacher education.