Abstract

Fine et al. (2005) argue that newcomer schools are “sites of possibility” for social justice-oriented research because they challenge dominant educational models that marginalize many immigrant youth. Yet promising practices from newcomer schools often remain unincorporated in teacher education programs (TEPs), where reforms are needed to prepare teachers to support multilingual and immigrant youth. In this study, we engage in community autoethnography (Ellis et al., 2011) to examine our memories of teaching in newcomer schools, which shaped our development of praxis as critical pedagogues. We apply Harro’s Cycle of Liberation (2013) to explore how our memories inform our current work with teacher candidates, including the agentic practices we envision them enacting in schools; namely, disrupting deficit discourses and supporting asset-based framings, engaging newcomers in critical dialogic pedagogies, and centering students’ prior knowledge and lived experiences. We identify how our experiences in newcomer schools manifest in our teacher education as a focus on close listening to students, a slowing of pacing to allow for intentional noticing of self and others, and a protection of spaces where multilingual newcomers remain centered. We suggest next steps for scholarship on teacher educator development to support much-needed reforms, focused on multilingual newcomers, in teacher preparation programs.

Keywords: multilingual learners, newcomer schools, teacher education, critical pedagogy, teacher agency

How to Cite:

Tauzel, B., Noel, S. & Schuster, E., (2025) “Teacher Educators’ Narratives of Practice and Possibility From Multilingual Newcomer Schools: A Community Autoethnography ”, International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 14(1). doi: https://doi.org//ijcp.1406