Decentering Whiteness in Teacher Education: Addressing the Questions of Who, With Whom, and How (original) (raw)
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Told from the perspective of two early career professors teaching courses in elementary education diversity, this study uses purposive sampling and qualitative methodologies to examine how white students with impervious dispositions that would likely not qualify them to work with diverse children at this point in their lives present us with opportunities to better understand the deeply rooted and complicated nature of whiteness in teacher education candidates and teacher education programs. We found that among white students who seemed challenged most by course content in our classes, a recurring narrative was that many seemed to think they were being indoctrinated into anti-American values. Through interrogation of their own experiences in school, some found their personal experiences with discrimination made them less open to accepting the legitimacy of the lives of marginalized peoples. In some ways, they felt the values they were taught from their families and communities were being threatened by an overt attention to diversity in the class. Our aim is to disrupt the notion of the single caricature of an angry, resistant white student and search, rather, within the roots of white identifications and learn what our deeper understandings reveal in terms of our ability to more effectively teach courses such as these.
Chapter 6 Equality and Justice For All? Examining Race in Education Scholarship
Review of Research in Education, 2007
D oes race (still) matter in educational discussions, analyses, and policies? This question seems to be a perennial that comes and goes, is hidden and reemerges, but is consistently (if implicitly) present. Consider, for example, educators' and educational researchers' concerns with assimilation, civilization, vocational training, IQ, poverty, cultural difference, remedial education, school readiness, achievement gaps, accountability, and standardization-all of these conversations were and still are intimately connected to race and racism regardless of whether we name them as such. Although the scholarship on race in education is vast, we attempt to review some of the most pressing and persistent issues in this chapter. We also suggest that the future of race scholarship in education needs to be centered not on equality but rather on equity and justice. It is important in this chapter for us to outline what we mean by equity and equality and to explicate the differences in these terms. In the areas of race and education, "commonsensical" uses of these terms have been conflated. Within popular discourse, what is meant by equality is the same thing as what is meant by equity, and having equal resources for schools means that the schools are equitable, fair, and equal. But we understand these terms and their relationship differently and suggest that notions of justice must be intimately connected with these terms for equity and equality to have meaningful emphases. By equality, we mean sameness and, more specifically, sameness of resources and opportunities. This concept of equality is the long-term goal of a just society: children, regardless of race, socioeconomic class, or gender, should have access to the same
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Routledge, 2022
Recipient of the 2022 Excellence in Equity Award. It is not enough to be against racism in education - teachers must be actively antiracist. Yet how do we start reflecting on our own beliefs and lives so we can truly teach for racial literacy? Authors Tonya Perry, Steven Zemelman, and Katy Smith engage in honest conversations among educators of color and their white colleagues. Authentic, inspiring, and sometimes uncomfortable, teachers share stories of personal histories and experiences that shaped them as people and educators. Practical insights included are: * Strategies to understand different backgrounds through a racial lens. * Ways to address potentially difficult conversations with fellow educators. * Overview of Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz’s Archaeology of Self™ and how it can be personally and professionally explored to develop racial literacy. * Lists of resources for teaching about and actively interrupting racism in education * Documentation of systemic inequalities in American education. * Ways to facilitate student-led conversations which examine race and inequitable conditions found nationwide
Applying Disability Critical Race Theory in the Practice of Teacher Education in the United States
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, 2019
Strategies for behavioral management have been traditionally derived from an individualistic, psychological orientation. As such, behavioral management is about correcting and preventing disruption caused by the “difficult” students and about reinforcing positive comportment of the “good” ones. However, increased classroom diversity and inclusive and multicultural education reform efforts, in the United States and in most Western societies, warrant attention to the ways preservice teachers develop beliefs and attitudes toward behavior management that (re)produce systemic inequities along lines of race, disability, and intersecting identities. Early-21st-century legislation requiring free and equitable education in the least restrictive environment mandates that school professionals serve the needs of all students, especially those located at the interstices of multiple differences in inclusive settings. These combined commitments create tensions in teacher education, demanding that educators rethink relationships with students so that they are not simply recreating the trends of mass incarceration within schools. Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) shifts the questions that are asked from “How can we fix students who disobey rules?” to “How can preservice teacher education and existing behavioral management courses be transformed so that they are not steeped in color evasion and silent on interlocking systems of oppression?” DisCrit provides an opportunity to (re)organize classrooms, moving away from “fixing” the individual—be it the student or the teacher—and shifting toward justice. As such, it is important to pay attention not only to the characteristics, dispositions, attitudes, and students’ and teachers’ behaviors but also to the structural features of the situation in which they operate. By cultivating relationships rooted in solidarity, in which teachers understand the ways students are systemically oppressed, how those oppressions are (re)produced in classrooms, and what they can do to resist those oppressions in terms of pedagogy, curriculum, and relationship, repositions students and families are regarded as valuable members. Consequently, DisCrit has the potential to prepare future teachers to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interactions and active engagement in learning focused on creating solidarity in the classroom instead of managing. This results in curriculum, pedagogy, and relationships that are rooted in expansive notions of justice. DisCrit can help preservice teachers in addressing issues of diversity in the curriculum and in contemplating how discipline may be used as a tool of punishment, and of exclusion, or as a tool for learning. Ultimately, DisCrit as an intersectional and interdisciplinary framework can enrich existing preservice teachers’ beliefs about relationships in the classroom and connect these relationships to larger projects of dismantling inequities faced by multiply marginalized students.