Race, Culture, and Teachers’ Inquiry Into the Comforts and Discomforts of Preparing to Teach

• In Event: Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Beliefs and Minority Youth

Abstract

This paper will present findings from a study of prospective and early career teachers engaged in a course on race, culture, and literacy, examining the ways students and instructors in the course integrate these issues into their constructions of teaching pedagogy and practice. The study focused on two questions: (1) How do students perceive the importance of issues of race, culture, and difference in relation to their preparation for and everyday practice with students in schools, and (2) how do they experience discourses on difference in relationship to their personal and intellectual comfort and discomfort as well as to their understandings of inquiry?

Authors

• Vivian L. Gadsden, University of Pennsylvania

• Katharine Emily Bartow Jacobs, University of Pittsburgh

• Nora Peterman, University of Pennsylvania

• Karim A. Mostafa, University of Pennsylvania

• Danielle Gioia, University of Pennsylvania