Friendly Resistance: Narratives From Preservice Teachers of Color Navigating Diversity Courses

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Tensions in Cultivating an Equity Mind-Set in Preservice Teachers

Abstract

The national effort to recruit more black and brown teachers has not drastically shifted curricular and pedagogical approaches in teacher education programs (TEPs). TEPs maintain the dominance of whiteness, which is preserved by assumptions that incoming preservice teachers will be white and that teacher candidates of color (TCCs) will be, inherently, culturally competent. This paper underscores the experience of two TCCs enrolled in a diversity course and their passive resistance to curriculum and pedagogy aimed at developing critical pedagogues. Using qualitative methodologies, the paper explicates how these TCCs peripherally engage with pedagogy and content they find irrelevant or in direct conflict with their values. Moreover, it illuminates the challenges faculty face with TCCs who do not culturally identify with marginalization.

Authors

• Chelda Smith Kondo, Georgia Southern University

• Christian Alejandro Bracho, University of La Verne