Privileging the Pragmatic: Interrogating Stance in Teacher Preparation

• In Event: 25.067 - Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: 25.067-3 - Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Navigating Whiteness

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
As a White teacher educator, I spend a lot of time talking about race. I sit in predominantly White faculty meetings where I talk to other White teacher educators about recruiting and retaining a diverse pool of teacher candidates. We disaggregate data from the growing number of tests required for teacher licensure, and write reports forecasting the disparate impact of those tests on candidates of Color. We critique the Whiteness implicit in the literary canon, P-12 curriculum, success of the testing industry and our own requirements. We recognize that Whiteness is overwhelming, in our field, our communities, our students and ourselves. We know it, and we talk about it. But we never seem to know what to do.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
Much has been written about White inaction on critical issues of institutional racism, both within and beyond the academy (e.g. Gorski, 2015; Hayes & Fasching-Varner, 2015; Picower & Mayorga, 2015). My White colleagues and I talk about the “pipeline problem” but, despite our supposed best intentions, over and over again, our field fails to effectively recruit or retain candidates of Color. Our classrooms, our faculty meetings, our graduation ceremonies are predominantly White, even in institutions—like my own—that serve a racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse student body. There is a problem with Whiteness in teacher education. And White teacher educators are good at talking about it.

Methods/ Data
In this paper, I use autoethnography (Cole & Knowles, 2000) to examine the implications of (my) Whiteness in teacher education policy and practice. Through the analysis of a series of critical incidents (ethnographic narratives) within and beyond the classroom, I grapple with the ways Whiteness has prevented me—a racially conscious, justice-oriented, teacher educator—from asking the question or doing the analysis or taking the action I should have. In so doing, I seek not to recenter (my) Whiteness, but rather to hold it accountable for the ways it undermines (my) efforts to enact social and educational equity.

Results/ Significance
Our schools and communities are in crisis, and White teacher educators have a critically important role in confronting racism, in ourselves, our candidates, and our universities. Our responses, however, are too often limited by a stance shaped by privilege. In this paper, I don’t claim to offer an answer to the dilemmas facing our profession, but rather center the questions we should be asking.

Author

• Alison G Dover, California State University - Fullerton