Harmful oversights remain in elementary social studies curricula which overlook or misrepresent minoritized communities. This dissertation explores designs for teacher education which address these oversights through community collaborations. This multi-manuscript dissertation is an empirical-conceptual inquiry design (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009), as it is not purely empirical or conceptual research. This design allows for an independent discussion of each study, while interpreting phenomena across the three chapters. Acknowledging my positionality as a white female, in a predominantly white, female profession, I look to Indigenous and Black scholars, both locally and broadly, to inform my perspective and project design. Using a phenomenological lens and ethnographic approaches, I conducted two empirical studies within two different community-based field experiences through an elementary social studies methods course. Sociocultural considerations of space, socioecological considerations of place, and critical culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy (McCarty & Lee, 2014) provide the theoretical frame for this series of investigations. Guidance from "Decolonizing Methodologies" (Tuhiwai-Smith, 2021), methods from the fields of S-STEP, Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices, and reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021), necessitated attention to self-reflexivity, improvement, and relationships. Researching from the positionality of a traditionally defined teacher educator, I hope to build upon collaborative research scholarship which expands who is considered a teacher educator. These studies investigate teaching practices through community "and" preservice teacher narratives, which critically explore places as a means of overcoming curricular misconceptions. Findings describe curricular possibilities and limitations, and the implications when these two phenomena clash, what I am conceptualizing as "curricular dissonance." I provide evidence of this phenomena in the first two empirical chapters. In my third chapter, I conceptualize this phenomenon as a site for learning through field experiences which confront the tensions inherent in teacher education and curriculum studies, to engage scholars across both fields of research. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]