Towards a new borderland in teacher education for diversity: A narrative inquiry into preservice teachers' shifting identities through service learning

Given the growing demographic gap between a largely homogeneous preservice teacher population and an increasingly diverse student population, prospective teachers need to become familiar with both cultures of difference and the ways they live in relation to them. This narrative inquiry explores four preservice teachers' personal practical knowledge of diversity and the ways this storied knowledge was restoried through a community-based service learning engagement. Through this study, I came to understand how teacher identities (stories to live by) are shaped and can be reshaped.; This inquiry was grounded in three beliefs. First, teacher and student lives are central to the curriculum of teacher education. Second, learning about diversity requires attention to teachers' personal practical knowledge of diversity. Finally, working in relationship and over time, individuals' storied knowledge can be restoried.; In this study, I structured a service learning engagement which recognized participants' stories to live by as situated within the temporal context of a life experience. Participants' past experiences were first explored to understand how they composed their stories to live by. With a view to interrupting their storied knowledge, I involved participants in volunteer work with children in after-school clubs located in culturally diverse and socially disenfranchised communities. The after-school settings provided opportunities to connect with children's out of school experiences. While states of disequilibrium are important to engage the kind of reflection required to focus attention on individuals' stories to live by, preservice teachers need safe relational spaces in which to explore their personal practical knowledge about diversity. Such spaces provide support for the telling, retelling, and reliving of preservice teachers' stories to live by in relation to diversity.; Using a concept of dispositioning participants' knowledge, I inquired into shifts in participants' personal practical knowledge. Four key considerations emerged: learning about diversity begins with experience, occurs in dispositioning contexts, occurs through relationship and occurs through reflection over time. Inquiry-based service learning in the community within a reconceptualized teacher education curriculum for diversity opens possible borderland spaces within which preservice teachers can engage in learning through collaborative, on-going reflection on experience, for their own and future learners' benefit.