Community engagement and student learning: Making community a core element of teacher education

Students’ engagement in learning and schooling depends to a large extent upon how teachers can relate to the students, their communities and their worlds. The focus and direction of teacher education has been upon competency and skills, registration and accreditation. In contrast to the external requirements of teacher registration and teacher educators the realities, for many students, of school retention, learning achievement and engagement lie within the contexts of their varying learning communities within and beyond their schools. Universities and teacher educators have begun to realize their own need to engage more with their varying communities if institutions and staff are to gain the confidence of students, parents and community members. The authors acknowledge the influence of service learning and the ways it has been incorporated into many teacher education programs, at times, as a core unit. However, this paper argues for a more substantive change in the preparation and role of teachers who need to engage with communities if they are to meet the diverse learning needs of both mainstream and marginalized students. In this paper, particular learning needs about the issues of cultural difference, acceptance and listening to the voices of others are addressed through three case study representations: Indigenous, homeless people and East Timorese. It is through these examples that teacher educators develop their self-efficacy in being able to interact with community members from diverse backgrounds. This substantive change requires engagement with the communities to be central within the institution and its teacher education programs. Such community engagement, that moves beyond the concepts of service learning, is a key to student participation and learning and begins to address the socio-cultural needs of teacher education.