Barriers and breakthroughs: engaging in socially just ways towards issues of indigeneity, identity, and whiteness in teacher education (original) (raw)

Decentering Whiteness in Teacher Education: Addressing the Questions of Who, With Whom, and How

Journal of Teacher Education, 2021

The work of preparing teachers and adequately supporting them in schools requires that we ensure their ability to meet the academic, socioemotional, and sociocultural needs of young people. It also requires countering the normative culture of Whiteness in teacher education and the perpetuation of its oppressive and debilitating impact on program design and implementation, pedagogy, and community interactions and partnerships. Calderon (2006) states that “the reproduction of whiteness in structures serves to oppress raced, gendered, and classed individuals and communities who deviate from the norms established by the ideology of whiteness” (p. 73). While the field of teacher education has made strides in efforts to be more social justice focused and responsive to persistent challenges facing teachers, schools, and families, there is still much work to do to eliminate the presence and use of White supremacist logics in teacher education programs, policy development and implementation,...

Research in Indigenizing teacher education

The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, 2017

In this chapter we offer a response to the following questions: How is the process of Indigenizing teacher education being taken up within international teacher education research? and How are Indigenous voices situated within the research? We detail the development of this chapter that engages and expands a previous and related review of literature that sorted studies according to pedagogical pathways (Madden, 2015). We then describe the methodology that guided our review and organization of the literature that concentrates on both Indigenous education coursework within Faculties of Education and studies of in-service teacher education. The analysis combines pathways across institutions in order to examine Indigenous voices and explores differences across Faculties of Education and school districts/individual schools to identify pedagogical pathways extensions. We conclude by looking forward to a future pathway for Indigenizing teacher education.

Inside the Contract Zone: White teachers in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands

Australia's Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, through the lens of critical whiteness studies and racial contract theory. The broad aim of the paper is to return the gaze on the white subject within the context of White Australia. Moreover, this article seeks to position the teacher as a site of representation; a site for the reproduction and potential disruption of the relations of dominance 'in situ'. I employ a narrative technique to locate my Self as a writer and as a racialised subject; to critique my structural and cultural location as a teacher in the Pitjantjatjara Lands; and to argue that autoethnography may be harnessed as one of the many tools for negotiating forms of critical pedagogy within the transcultual setting.

Encyclopedia Entry: Whiteness and Teacher Education

Encyclopedia of Teacher Education, 2019

This entry starts with an explanation of the importance of diversity in the teaching force, then draws on the concept of Whiteness and the frame of critical race theory (CRT) to analyze the gap between diversity discourses and practice in teacher education. Finally, it presents components identified by the literature as central to the transformation of teacher education.

The Training of Teachers for Cultural Diversity and Social Justice

2004

Introduction: the ethnocentric curriculum and the challenge of intercultural teaching In what contexts are teachers taught how to address racism and other forms of oppression in schools and society? How do we develop culturally relevant pedagogy for all students, in the interests of equity and social justice? And when teachers do receive such training, what might it look like and how do we evaluate it? It has been suggested that debate about multicultural education tends to take place against a background of social stability and shared debate of the kind that characterizes the wealthy countries of the 'North' (Morrow, 1996: 99). Yet it should be at the forefront of discussions in all societies seeking to teach for social justice, global perspectives and equity. Discussions of issues and strategies in multicultural teacher education seem, in the literature, to be addressing mainly the context of the white-dominant countries. Many compelling teacher education experiments in developing intercultural knowledge and skills are described, but the literature also suggests that an engagement with these issues is the exception rather than the rule. Most teacher education courses carry out only minimally their rhetorical goals of preparing teachers to practise 'inclusive' education. Various subjects introduce the concept that teachers must strive to contribute to equity in the learning experiences of different ethnic, gender and ability groups. However, in Australia, Canada, Sweden, United Kingdom, the United States and other countries very few courses make it compulsory for all student teachers to do a systematic and critical study of how such equity can be promoted (Hickling-Hudson and McMeniman, 1996; Ghosh, 1996; Tomlinson, 1996; Zeichner, 1996). Across the globe, most teacher education courses, like most school curricula, are still founded on a model of cultural hegemony characterized by a narrowly Western ideology shaping the content, structures and processes of learning. As Willinsky (1998: 11) points out, it would be surprising, after five centuries of the educational mission that was a part of Europe's period of 1. My grateful thanks to Dr Roberta Ahlquist for her constructive critical comments on drafts of this essay.

Counter-Movements to Trouble Whiteness in Teacher Education at a PWI: A Pedagogical Approach

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 2021

Educational research and public narratives decry the urgent need to strengthen the preparation of teachers who work in urban schools. This article offers a critical analysis of the authors' course as a material response to a need to radically reimagine how we prepare teachers, presenting a Critical Race Praxis approach that focuses on the social construction of race. In an attempt to move theory into practice this article describes and analyzes approaches used to counter the whiteness of teaching in a diversity course. To create a picture of what these countermoves might look like in action, the authors share stories from a pilot project. Three pedagogical approaches were conceptualized and implemented: diversity by design, reflective practice and relational learning. The article discusses relevant literature for developing these pedagogical approaches. Then, we provide a snapshot of ourselves as teacher-researchers and motherscholars, and the context of the GHS221 project. Next, we offer our framework for counter-movements against the white racial frame. Finally, we offer lessons learned to scholars and teacher educators.

Chapter 3. Educating teachers for cultural diversity and social justice

In what contexts are teachers taught how to address racism and other forms of oppression in schools and society? How do we develop culturally relevant pedagogy for all students, in the interests of equity and social justice? And when teachers do receive such training, what might it look like and how do we evaluate it? It has been suggested that debate about multicultural education tends to take place against a background of social stability and shared debate of the kind that characterizes the wealthy countries of the 'North' (Morrow, 1996: 99). Yet it should be at the forefront of discussions in all societies seeking to teach for social justice, global perspectives and equity. Discussions of issues and strategies in multicultural teacher education seem, in the literature, to be addressing mainly the context of the white-dominant countries. Many compelling teacher education experiments in developing intercultural knowledge and skills are described, but the literature also s...