Surviving teacher education: a community cultural capital framework of persistence

In this article, we communicate the experiences of a bilingual/biracial Peruvian-Anglo European student teacher, Serina, enrolled in a ‘teacher education for diversity’ program. Although the majority of the 13 (mostly Anglo European) students in Serina’s cohort expressed satisfaction with the social justice focus of the program, Serina was frustrated by the mixed messages she received about teacher professionalism as both teaching for social change and as deference to power. Serina was often vocal in her critique and, as a result, endured and negotiated cumulative microaggressions throughout her teacher education program. Despite these challenges, she drew on her community cultural capital to become a credentialed science teacher in an underserved urban middle school. Serina’s experiences compel us to think about how teacher educators might better support pre-service Teachers of Color – particularly as we strive to more actively recruit Teachers of Color to our teacher education programs. Implications for ‘becoming’ more socially just teacher educators are also discussed.     

‘They were constantly on the losing side of things’: the pedagogical power of an African-American teacher candidate bearing witness in teacher education

The stories of students and teacher candidates of Color (Just as singular racial/ethnic identities are capitalized (i.e. African-American, Asian, Latina, Native American etc.), I capitalize Color to honor the various identities that many ‘non-white’ people hold near and dear. I recognize the nuances in doing so- such as the reality that the term ‘people of Color’ actually erases identity while the term also highlights a shared experience (though also nuanced) of being ‘non-white’ in a white supremacist society.) hold powerful lessons and insights for teacher education programs and educational reform efforts. Yet, rarely do educators and policy-makers solicit or critically engage the educational narratives of these stakeholders. In particular, research confirms that we know little about how students’ of Color educational experiences are impacted by race(ism) and culture and how those experiences subsequently inform their ideas about teaching. This study, framed by critical race theory (CRT), examines an African-American (African-American is used intentionally here as this is how Ariel identifies racially.) teacher candidate’s racialized K-12 and postsecondary school experiences to more fully understand the connection between lived experience and developing teacher identity. Ariel’s story reflects her own school experiences; her focus on her peers’ school experiences when asked about her own; and how those experiences, informed by race and culture, contribute to her development of pedagogy. Analytical considerations illustrate that memory and remembrance, witnessing and bearing witness, and testimony are deliberate and powerful acts in the development of pedagogy and should be central to teacher education curriculum.     

Thinking through the flesh: a critical autoethnography of racial body politics in urban teacher education

Although the ubiquitous nature of whiteness has been scrutinized in research on teacher preparation in the United States, scholarship on how this concept impinges upon the field’s overall culture, as well as on pedagogy, is scarce. Thus, I perform a critical autoethnographic study on the relationships among whiteness, pedagogy, and urban teacher education. The inquiry threads Critical Race Theory and feminist theorizing on (Black) bodies, affects, and assemblages, and extends from extant literature illustrating that the dichotomous thinking characteristic of whiteness undergirds the disembodied approaches to teaching and learning prevalent in teacher education programs. This, I discover, leaves one White pre-service teacher ill-equipped to discern and disrupt the materialization of whiteness in an (inter)corporeal encounter with a Black youth in an urban classroom. Additionally, a pedagogy of disembodiment hinders this pre-service teacher from developing robust understandings of how latent within his lived-in, socio-historically situated White body is the potent potential to exacerbate the psychic pain that racism inflicts upon the racially othered children and youth who navigate urban classrooms under the scorching glare of whiteness. These findings underpin my call for urban teacher educators to embrace a pedagogy of embodiment in order to build pre-service teachers’ capacities to teach racially marginalized children and youth in ways that broaden the boundaries of the human beyond the scope of whiteness.     

Tales from the playing field: black and minority ethnic students’ experiences of physical education teacher education

This article presents findings from recent research exploring black and minority ethnic (BME) students’ experiences of Physical Education teacher education (PETE) in England (Flintoff, 2008). Despite policy initiatives to increase the ethnic diversity of teacher education cohorts, BME students are under-represented in PETE, making up just 2.94% of the 2007/8 national cohort, the year in which this research was conducted. Drawing on in-depth interviews and questionnaires with 25 BME students in PETE, the study sought to contribute to our limited knowledge and understanding of racial and ethnic difference in PE, and to show how ‘race,’ ethnicity and gender are interwoven in individuals’ embodied, everyday experiences of learning how to teach. In the article, two narratives in the form of fictional stories are used to present the findings. I suggest that narratives can be useful for engaging with the experiences of those previously silenced or ignored within Physical Education (PE); they are also designed to provoke an emotional as well as an intellectual response in the reader. Given that teacher education is a place where we should be engaging students, emotionally and politically, to think deeply about teaching, education and social justice and their place within these, I suggest that such stories of difference might have a useful place within a critical PETE pedagogy.     

Reclaiming ourselves through Testimonio pedagogy: reflections on a curriculum design lab in teacher education

This article details one teacher preparation course centering Latin American Testimonio narratives of struggle/survival amid structural oppression for use in secondary curriculum. As our class of predominantly Latina/o students and two Latina instructors engaged Testimonio pedagogy, we fashioned a hopeful alternative to our own experiences of intergenerational oppression. While research indicates that the experiences and histories of pre-service Teachers of Color lend pedagogical strength and critical consciousness to teacher education, three Latina pre-service students highlight the ways in which Testimonio became more than a pedagogical approach. Testimonio’s collectivity, resistance, hope, and assertions of voice and dignity moved through them not as educators first but as (great-grand)daughters of oppressed though still-resilient People(s). Testimonio emboldened these Latina pre-service educators to recognize and validate their own inherited multiliteracies, (re)claim their connectedness to land, and articulate their visions for more equitable schooling. This work advances research into the essentiality of engaging race and ethnicity in K-12 and teacher education curriculum and pedagogy.     

Making it relevant: how a black male teacher sustained professional relationships through culturally responsive discourse

What we know about the experiences of black teachers is limited, especially considering the vast amount of research conducted on and about black boys and young men. This article describes and analyzes how a black teacher at a suburban high school in the Midwestern United States negotiated professional relationships through culturally relevant discourse. Anthony Bell was the only black male teacher participating in a classroom discourse analysis study group at a diverse suburban high school. Throughout the course of the semester, Anthony’s stated objective for learning discourse analysis was to understand, structure, and facilitate more productive conversations with a struggling student teacher he was mentoring. Yet Anthony also used his discursive inquiry to “trouble the water” in his classroom and in the study group workshops. Participation in the study group provided Anthony with metalinguistic tools to critique his interactions with his students, student teacher, and professional peers. Anthony’s analyses of his own teaching, his student teacher’s work, the study group, and the school index themes in critical and critical race theory in education. As he became a teacher researcher, Anthony reported a greater sense of professional self-efficacy, eventually facilitating a successful workshop at a national teacher conference. Anthony’s case is an exemplar of the unique and critical role of black men who teach, as well as the imperative of practitioner research within the current climate in teacher education.     

Crossing borders in initial teacher education: mapping dispositions to diversity and inequity

In this article, we share a study focused on engaging teacher candidates with multiple forms of diversity and inequity to study emerging patterns of dispositions. Our primary concern is in understanding the processes through which societal inequity becomes reconstituted through teacher education. Our study attempts to deepen discourses of ‘equality’ and ‘equity’ in education, to consider the ways teacher candidates relate to broader systems of power and global and local inequities through their role as educators. Inspired by both decolonial and Western critical theories, we frame this as research that seeks ‘otherwise’ as we invite teacher candidates to ‘cross borders’ to what is ‘other’ to themselves. In this article, we share our study’s priorities, methods, methodological/theoretical framework, data analysis and findings. Our findings identify a significant gap between the priorities of social equity to which teacher candidates state they commit and the educational practices that would affirm those commitments.     

Advancing teacher preparation through ethnic studies: portraits of Filipino American self-identified male teachers

ABSTRACT

At once a political and cultural intervention, Ethnic Studies as a field sought to create an education whereby students’ knowledges and experiences were valued. While research demonstrating how Ethnic Studies affects students’ academic and social-emotional outcomes, the prowess of Ethnic Studies, as a site for teacher preparation remains under examined in empirical research. Drawing from portraiture, critical race and Ethnic Studies frameworks, I analyze in-depth interviews, focus groups, and artifacts with Filipino American self-identified male teachers. I work to make explicit how Ethnic Studies prepared these teachers in ways their formal teacher education did not. I conclude with recommendations for how teacher education steeped in Ethnic Studies supports culturally sustaining, critically conscious, and community responsive learning for students and teachers committed to justice.     

Teaching in color: a critical race theory in education analysis of the literature on preservice teachers of color and teacher education in the US

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.     

Shaking the bad boys: troubling the criminalization of black boys’ childhood play,hegemonic white masculinity and femininity,and the school playground-to-prison pipeline

ABSTRACT

Few studies have sought to understand the childhood play experiences of Black boys in early childhood education (ECE), and a majority of those that investigate them often socially construct Black boys’ play as criminal, dangerous, and monstrous. Considering the dangers of hegemonic masculinity and femininity or the racial and gendered power and privilege White boys and girls bring to societal spaces including playgrounds, little is known about how such power influences the experiences of Black boys who play with them. In this conceptual paper, I draw on critical race theory (CRT) to trouble the criminalization of Black boys’ childhood play and hegemonic White masculinity and femininity, which can prove violent and dehumanizing to Black boys. As such, I suggest that similar to the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP), Black boys may become victims of what I call the school playground-to-prison pipeline (SPTPP) as a consequence of White children’s accusations, fears, misperceptions, and misreadings of Black boys’ play. Recommendations are provided for teacher and ECE to better support Black boys and the cross-cultural play interactions between them and White children.     

The legacy of Derrick Bell and Latino/a education: a critical race testimonio

In this article, we trace Bell’s influence in our lives from graduate students to teacher educators and engaged scholars, and note how we have always read Bell alongside and inseparable from Latino/a Studies and Latina/Chicana feminist thought. We highlight the powerful and fruitful tensions of these interconnections in addressing our curricular struggles and innovations, professional identities and scholarly trajectories. We address Bell’s theory of interest convergence to discuss the tensions and possibilities of personal ‘success’ in the academy by interweaving our testimonios with Critical Race and Latino Critical Race (LatCrit) scholarship in Latino/a education. Latina feminist scholars have re-worked the Latin American tradition of testimonio as a way to link individual stories to a collective story of Latina/o racialization in the US, and to epistemological racism in the academy. Our collective story centers the intersections of race with indigeneity, class, citizenship, language, gender and sexuality. We begin from the earliest influence of Bell’s counterstorytelling method for examining Latino/a students’ racializing experiences in higher education and move through other critical race work in Latino education that both directly and indirectly addresses Bell’s scholarship as these intersect with our intellectual journeys. Finally, we offer a story of the complex legacy of Bell’s anti-subordination and social justice scholarship for intellectual alliances, coalition building, and inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary engaged scholarship.     

学校教育中传承民族文化存在的问题及对策——以北川羌族自治县的学校教育为例

The Qiang are one of the most ancient ethnic groups in China, and their rich cul-ture is an important part of Chinese culture. Bei-chuan Qiang Autonomous County, in Sichuan province, is a unique Qiang Autonomous County in China, which has an exceptional foundation for transmitting Qiang ethnic culture through school education. However, the county’s transmission of Qiang ethnic culture through school education still faces some problems, such as lack of educational investment, poor teacher resources, lack of ethnic cultural inheritors, and students’ lack of ethnic self-confidence. In view of series dilemmas faced by Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County in trans-mitting Qiang ethnic culture through school educa-tion, this article proposes the following suggestions based on our investigations:1 . Increase the investment in school educa-tion In view of the lack of educational investment, we suggest the following measure be adopted: 1 ) increase educational investment from various levels of the government, especially increasing special in-vestment in transmitting Qiang ethnic culture through school education;2 ) raise funds from the public;3 ) have the schools engage in their own fundraising, and 5 ) make efforts to get foreign aid. 2 . Strengthen the investment in improving teacher resources In view of the problem of poor teacher re-sources, we suggest the following measures: 1 ) strengthen policy support from the national level, and solve the problem of poor teacher resources through training teachers in universities for nation-alities. 2 ) invite Qiang cultural inheritors to be teachers; 3 ) strengthen the technical training of the school teachers, and improve the teachers’ skills;4) add more teacher positions, and improve the treatment of teachers;5 ) encourage teachers to devote their life to the education and inheritance of Qiang culture. 3 . To promote the motivation for studying eth-nic culture In view of the students’ lack of motivation for studying ethnic culture, and the lack of people who go on to inherit the ethnic cultural heritage, we suggest the following: 1 ) Beichuan Autonomous County should help the young Qiang people to be locally employed through developing ethnic econo-mies, and to inherit ethnic culture via developing tourism with ethnic characteristics. 2) Family edu-cation should be closely connected with school edu-cation;3 ) to include an exam on Qiang ethic cul-ture in school entrance examinations in order to re-flect the importance of ethnic culture study;4 ) to add some ethnic culture courses in schools for na-tionalities. 4 . To strengthen the ethnic pride and confi-dence of Qiang students In view of the issue of Qiang students’ lack of ethnic confidence and pride, we suggest the follow-ing:1 ) open Qiang language courses in schools in Qiang areas; 2 ) enlarge the usage range of the Qiang language; 3 ) help students to understand the charm of Qiang culture, and let them feel eth-nic pride. 5 . To standardize and promote a common Qiang language In view of the issue that Qiang have no written language, their spoken language is too complicat-ed, and there are too many dialects, we suggest that the National Languages and Scripts Work Committee should work with Qiang scholars and ex-perts to create a basic dialect of the Qiang-a com-mon Qiang language, which should be promoted in school education, just like mandarin Chinese in school education.     

The (em)bodiment of blackness in a visceral anti-black racism and ableism context

Over the years, many scholarly publications have extensively discussed disability ‘diagnoses’ and placement practices in special education programs in the United States and the United Kingdom. These publications argue that racism and classism rather than clinically predetermined factors appear to influence the disability diagnosis and placement practices in special education. The present essay is contributing to the debate by critically exploring the relationship(s) between race, class, and disability ‘diagnoses’ and placement practices in special education programs in Toronto, Canada. The core ideas noted in the essay are drawn from a personal story of an African-Canadian parent – a story of a daughter with a diagnosed disability and her mother’s struggle to resist the disability ‘diagnosis’ as well as her battle rejecting her daughter’s placement in the special education program in a Toronto public school. Using this personal account, other literature, and anti-black racism theory, I argue that special education programming in Toronto, Canada helps white middle/upper class Canadians achieve a de facto race/class-based segregation in the Toronto public school system. Whereas the Supreme Courts’ rulings on Brown vs. the Board of Education in the United States and Washington vs. the Trustees of Charlottesville in Canada have insisted that whites and non-whites attend the same school, special education identification practices ensure that whites and non-whites do not have to belong to the same classroom. I conclude that when educational practices move into spaces of pathologization, blacks and working-class students are continually at risk of facing exclusionary practices. One thing is clear: the significance of skin color in the mind of the racist cannot easily be dismissed.     

Under the cloak of professionalism: covert racism in teacher education

This study focuses on manifestations of racism and colonialism in teacher education. I build on the theoretical framing of Critical Race Theory and decolonization in order to expose racist and colonial assumptions at the core of teacher education. I highlight in particular the work of covert racism under the cloak of teachers’ professionalism. I focus on what I call ‘professional microaggressions’: subtle forms of racism and colonialism hidden beneath professional definitions. By interviewing graduates of a well-established Indigenous teacher education program in British Columbia, Canada, I examine the mechanisms that still hinder the success of Indigenous teacher candidates in teacher education and in the school system. The study highlights the resilience, resistance, and strategic planning that Indigenous teachers use to challenge the system while advancing their position within it. Lastly, I suggest ways to support Indigenous teacher candidates in teacher education.     

‘It wasn’t racism; it was more misunderstanding.’ White teachers,Latino/a students,and racial battle fatigue

This article explores how and why a group of Latino/a high school students identify and explain racism differently over the course of an 18-month participatory action research (PAR) project. To do this we examine what recent scholarship has termed racial microaggressions in what is thought of as the Post-Racial America public school system. Pulling examples from student and teacher interview, focus group, and class discussion data we first examine how these students’ teachers conceptualize and talk about racism, cross-racial relationships, and racial misunderstandings, and then we juxtapose that with students’ discursive work to make sense of the ways their teachers make their conceptualizations known and/or seen in school. Focusing on the K-12 context, this study finds racial battle fatigue may be why students switch between how they label these aggressions.     

Educating tomorrow’s reformists: factors affecting the development of undergraduates’ social progressivism

Researchers have unpacked the ways in which students participate in democracy through voting and other forms of civic engagement. However, very little empirical work has delved into how students develop socially progressive values, despite their unprecedented importance to young people during their years in higher education. Rooted in a rich historical context of campus demonstration spanning the past 75 years and current events in the United States, this inspection of college students’ social progressivism was grounded by Pascarella’s model of students’ learning and cognitive development, and uses OLS (ordinary least squares) regression to investigate the phenomenon. Analyzing data collected by the Cooperative and Institutional Research Program from 159 institutions across the United States, this study explored the predictive capacity of students’ interaction with influential agents of socialization and other variables central to undergraduates’ college experiences. Results indicate that socially progressive students tended to interact more with faculty outside of office hours and had a higher cumulative GPA. Additional findings and implications are discussed.     

Unpacking racial identities: the salience of ethnicity in Southeast Asian-American youth’s schooling experience

This article reconceptualizes white teachers’ notion of their Asian-American students’ racial identity. Forty urban Southeast Asian-American (SEAA) students and seven of their white European-American teachers were examined to determine how the students responded to the white teachers’ assumptions about their identity. This study provides an overview of the U.S. historical and political contexts that shape the positionality of Southeast Asian-American youth in the black–white racial discourse. It found that despite the fact that the teachers lumped the SEAA students into one category, the students highlighted the salience of ethnicity in their lives. One implication of this study is for teacher education programs to train new teacher candidates to move beyond simple racial categorization or race-blind approaches. Instead, teachers should be taught to acknowledge the importance of ethnicity to their students; to examine their own positionalities; and to incorporate more culturally relevant pedagogies into their instructional practices.     

Enoch Powell,empires, immigrants and education

2018 marks the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, an intervention that is still viewed as one of the most incendiary statements of the perceived decay and violence likely to follow legislation intended to assure minoritised British citizens of equal rights regardless of their ethnic origin. In this essay, Sally Tomlinson (one of Britain’s foremost multicultural theorists) reflects on Powell’s legacy and the contemporary scene where in the US, UK and across Europe, White resentment and fear is increasingly shaping ‘mainstream’ debates about nationhood, migration and education.     

Unpacking internalized racism: teachers of color striving for racially just classrooms

Within racial inequitable educational conditions, students of color in US schools are susceptible to internalizing racism. If these students go on to be teachers, the consequences can be particularly detrimental if internalized racism influences their teaching. Framed in Critical Race Theory, this article investigates the process pre-service teachers of color took in unpacking their internalized racism as they strive for racially just classrooms. In-depth interviews and focus groups were conducted with black (four) Latina (four) and Asian American (four) women enrolled in a social justice-oriented urban teacher education program in California. Data revealed that participants in this study: (1) had experienced racism and internalized racism in their K-12 education; (2) had done self-work prior to enrolling in their teacher education program to begin the process of unpacking internalized racism; and (3) felt that critical dialogues about internalized racism within teacher preparation was essential to develop pedagogy that challenges racial inequality. This study adds to the field by taking a cross-racial approach to understanding the struggles of teachers of color with internalized racism in their own lives. It additionally outlines an important process many teachers of color go through to develop racially just classrooms.     

Ideal liberal subjects and Muslim “Others”: liberal nationalism and the racialization of Muslim youth in a progressive Danish school

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of Muslim youth in a Danish lower secondary school, this article explores teacher talk about Muslim immigrant students and how teachers engaged liberal ideals of respect, individualism, and equality in ways that racialized immigrant students. I consider moments of vacillation in teacher talk to explore tensions between teacher’s desires to assimilate immigrant students to national norms of belonging and their desires to be perceived as inclusive and ‘open.’ In doing so, I ask how visions of liberal schooling impose ideas of what a ‘normal’ citizen should be and how teachers produce ‘ideal’ liberal subjects in their talk and in the everyday practices of schools. I argue that teachers engage the ideals of abstract liberalism to establish a colorblind discourse of non-racism. While educators described the school as an idealized space where students are encouraged to freely express themselves, to develop unique individual outlooks, it was clear that this vision of ‘openness’ did not include Muslim students’ attachments to religious and cultural identities.