Walking the Walk: Using Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Critical Pedagogy as a Model for Preservice Teachers

• In Event: Preachin’ to the Unconverted: Building Community Between Critical Teacher Educators of Color and Their Predominately White Preservice Candidates

Abstract

Traditionally, the teaching force has been largely white, middle class and monolingual (Zumwalt & Craig, 2005) but there is growing evidence to suggest that recent pre-service cohorts are becoming more racially diverse (Castro, 2010). Despite changing demographics and evidence to suggest that current and future preservice teachers are more open to cultural diversity than their predecessors (Castro, 2010), research still suggests that many continue to harbor negative views, stereotypes and biases against students of color (Castro, 2010; Nieto, 2010). If preservice teachers hold these beliefs, one can surmise that based on decades of labeling theory research, expectations and outcomes will be lowered for their students (Brown, 1968; Jackson & Cosca, 1974; Rubovits & Maehr, 1973). If these deficit ideologies exist towards their students, what does it mean for their teacher educators of color?

Past research on preservice teacher development of critical pedagogy has often centered on the ideologies, rather than the instructional methodology of the teacher education classroom. Some teacher educators have demonstrated that the instructional methodology is, in fact, more important in changing the cultural diversity awareness of participants than the message alone (Brown, 2004). This paper examines the impact of my positionality as an Asian-American male teacher education and my instructional methodologies that mirror the tenets of culturally responsive pedagogy and critical pedagogy. This paper specifically demonstrates the use of community-oriented, group meta-cognition strategies to directly challenge existing and traditional forms of hierarchy and hegemony in the classroom.

Using the three main tenets of culturally responsive pedagogy (1) academic success, (2) cultural competency and (3) critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 2009), and critical pedagogy, teachers can recognize their position in society, as it relates to privilege and power. By doing so, they can take ownership over any inequalities they may perpetuate by virtue of their citizenship to dominant groups (Freire, 1993).

The structure of the course exposed preservice teachers to non-traditional classroom structures that valued participant involvement and instructional methodologies that highlight the teacher educator as facilitator. Participants engaged in activities that supported multiple methods of learning, collaborating, questioning and challenging of the status quo. This included explicit meta-cognitive analyses of classroom discourses, structures and the various positionalities of the participants and the instructor.

Data was collected in a foundations course for twenty-one preservice teachers. The course focused on the social context of urban schools. This was their second course in their program towards their credential and Masters degree. Lesson plans, participant reflections, essays, and class observations were analyzed for themes and frequency using grounded theory and critical discourse analysis.

Findings suggest participants developed a more robust understanding of lower-income, urban students of color through their openness and honesty in class activities, reflections, and essays as a result of the collaboratively-established classroom norms and the non-traditional hierarchy of classroom structures. By “walking the walk,” teacher educators should model effective culturally responsive and critical pedagogy so that pre-service educators can witness praxis in action.

Author

• Clifford H. Lee, Saint Mary's College of California