| Popis: |
This paper is about one student's undergraduate experience at Miami University as an early childhood education major: the opportunities she had, the questions she raised, and the answers she found. Through auto-ethnography, narrative inquiry, and scholarly research, the author explores the meaning behind her experiences. The author talks about her transformation from a first year student, who wanted to be a classroom teacher, to a graduating senior, who no longer planned on entering the teaching profession. Throughout the process, she used her ongoing experiences, both in the college classroom and outside the four walls, to question the purpose of education. Her answers came as she explored new places, cultures, and ideas. Throughout her developmental process, social justice was an important value of the author as well as a recurring organizing theme. Given that context, the core of this work explores the following questions: What is the purpose of education? What is social justice? What is the place of social justice in education? What does educating for social justice mean to pre-service teachers? What questions does this raise for teacher education programs? Within those answers, all of which are explored in the paper, the author found that working for and teaching for social justice is necessary in order to break down oppressive systemic barriers in society. The author's conclusion is that there is a world of education outside of a four-walled classroom. Discovering it, questioning it, and taking action to change it, will make the world a more just place. |
