Special Issue of TEJ: What is To Be Done with Critical Curriculum Studies and Educational Foundations' Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Teachers' Racial Conscienzation (original) (raw)
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Guiding White pre-service and in-service teachers toward Critical Pedagogy:
Guiding White pre-service and in-service teachers toward Critical Pedagogy: Utilizing Counter-cultures in Teacher Education Brad J. Porfilio Lewis University Curry S. Malott D’Youville College This essay documents a few key examples of the critical pedagogy and curriculum that we employ to challenge pre-service and in-service teachers to consider the concrete and theoretical contexts of taking on a social-activist-teacher persona. Our vision of social justice is rooted firmly in the critical tradition, as it is anchored in excavating unjust social and economic formations that imperil the vast majority of the world’s population, while concomitantly empowering the economic elite. Not only do we believe that teacher educators must take the lead in helping their students recognize the social, political, and economic forces creating injustice in schools and in the wider society, but they must help current and future teachers develop emancipatory visions of how to develop instructional designs, collaborate with educators, and engage in activist initiatives, which have the potential to eliminate social inequalities and build institutional structures based on democracy, equity, and fairness (McLaren, 2005). Like many teacher educators, we have worked in institutions where almost 95% of the teacher education students have self-identified as “White.” Because of the difficulties of working with this nearly ubiquitous at-risk group (at risk for acting as oppressors), we focus our attention in this essay on the challenges White in-service and pre-service teachers pose to practicing critical pedagogy.
Theory Into Practice, 2021
In this article, we explore the need for decolonizing practices in teacher education for developing critical consciousness with preservice teachers of Color (PTOC). We assert that the development of critical consciousness for PTOC must include practices that specifically attend to their racialized experiences in the context of white spaces- their teacher preparation programs, the teaching profession, and society writ large- where they have been subjected to colonized paradigms of what it means to teach children of Color. We use culturally relevant/responsive teacher education to frame our discussion and place emphasis on the construct of critical consciousness.
Pedagogies of critical race theory: Experimentations with white preservice teachers
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2003
We have taken to heart the call of critical race theorists and critical Whiteness scholars to open up a White discourse on White racism. As White, female, teacher educators, we endeavored to openly address Whiteness and White racism with our White students to help them become more aware of the advantages and biases inherent in their positionality as White teachers. As we did this, we were critically aware of both the negative and positive possible outcomes of our endeavors. Throughout our work with our students and our subsequent reflections on the results, we were able to establish ways of speaking about Whiteness that moved our students, and ourselves, to a more critical, more empowered understanding of race and Whiteness.
Teaching Education
In this essay, we provide a brief introductory statement to the special issue of Teaching Education titled What is To Be Done with Curriculum and Educational Foundations' Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers. In our introductory statement, we describe the specific aim and broad purposes of the special issue and characterize its contents. Our specific aim with the special issue is to advance the conscientization of preservice and inservice teachers via critical pedagogies and race-based epistemologies. Our broad purposes are to (a) resist the ascendant, whitened, and Eurocentric fascism via our collective pedagogical labor in teacher education and (b) reorient curriculum and educational foundations' critical knowledges toward institutional praxis. We conclude our introductory statement by characterizing the contents of the special issue for teacher educators and teacher education researchers.
Whiteness and Education, 2022
Racial understanding is essential for many reasons, one being that the United States population is growing increasingly diverse while many communities are still racially segregated. At the same time, many white teachers are uncomfortable investigating their racial identities, and do not engage pupils in discussions about race. Using critical reflexivity, this study sought to ascertain how, if at all, four white kindergarten to fifth-year teachers who taught in predominantly white schools began developing their racial identities and critical consciousness. We also sought to understand their comfort in discussing race. Teachers did not have identical experiences, but all voiced awareness of racial truths about their own social positions and that of members of non-dominant communities. To some degree, all started advancing their critical consciousness and became more comfortable talking about race committing to further use of multicultural texts. Most importantly, they understood that this ongoing process requires continuous reflection and learning.
In support of the special issue of Whiteness and Education “White Scholars Working against Whiteness,” the author approaches the research question: What learning is needed for White teachers’ race-visible teaching? Through a topical life history reflection adding to second-wave White teacher identity studies, the author narrates racialized curriculum recoding of cherished knowledge as one component of teacher education instructors’ work with White preservice and in-service teachers. Providing this narrative, the author recounts the creative-destruction of his own cherished knowledge of “the radicalism of the American Revolution.” In the discussion and conclusion, the author discusses implications of racialized curriculum recoding for race-visible teaching in teacher education.
In this article I take seriously the call for recruiting and retaining more preservice teachers of color by critically considering some of the pressing challenges they might encounter in teacher preparation programs. I draw from critical race theory (CRT) in education to review the extant literature on preservice teachers of color and teacher education in the US. I excavate how the dominant, (dis)embodied and normalized culture of Whiteness, White privilege and White hegemony pervades contemporary teacher education, and presents a formidable challenge to the goal of preparing teachers (of color) to teach in a manner that is relevant, critical and humanizing while also socially and individually transformative. I conclude by envisioning how teacher education programs might address these challenges in such a way that more effectively meets the needs of preservice teachers.
Educational Foundations, 2011
This essay documents a few key examples of the critical pedagogy and curriculum that we employ to challenge pre-service and in-service teachers to consider the concrete and theoretical contexts of taking on a socialactivist-teacher persona. Our vision of social justice is rooted firmly in the critical tradition, as it is anchored in excavating unjust social and economic formations that imperil the vast majority of the world's population, while concomitantly empowering the economic elite. Not only do we believe that teacher educators must take the lead in helping their students recognize the social, political, and economic forces creating injustice in schools and in the wider society, but they must help current and future teachers develop emancipatory visions of how to develop instructional designs, collaborate with educators, and engage in activist initiatives which have the potential to eliminate social inequalities and build institutional
Critical Race Theory and the Whiteness of Teacher Education
This article uses three tenets of critical race theory to critique the common pattern of teacher education focusing on preparing predominantly White cohorts of teacher candidates for racially and ethnically diverse students. The tenet of interest convergence asks how White interests are served through incremental steps. The tenet of color blindness prompts asking how structures that seem neutral, such as teacher testing, reinforce Whiteness and White interests. The tenet of experiential knowledge prompts asking whose voices are being heard. The article argues that much about teacher education can be changed, offering suggestions that derive from these tenets.
Critical Race Theory: Disruption in Teacher Education Pedagogy
Journal of Culture and Values in Education, 2020
Teacher education programs are charged with preparing teacher candidates to successfully educate student populations that are more racially and culturally diverse than ever. However, a look at graduation rates among teacher education programs proves that the majority still produce, on average, a teaching force that is 80% White, although White students make up less than 49% the total Kindergarten-12th grade public school population (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). Absent from the dialogue on diversity in teacher education is a discussion on how race and racism are institutionalized and maintained within such programs (Sleeter, 2016). In this article, the use of Critical Race Theory (CRT) offers tools to examine the role of race and racism in teacher education. I further consider the role CRT can play in the disruption of postsecondary rhetoric about teacher education programs. Focus is placed on my own experiences in a Teaching Internship Seminar course when applying the struct...