"They Were Wrong About Everything": Interrupting Preservice Teacher Perspectives on Marginalized Students

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Finding the Words for Freedom and Justice: Negating Silence and Misinformation in Teacher Education

Abstract

It is an act of justice that leads to freedom, to understand that perspectives and perceptions can be wrong. We discuss in this paper the goal and experience of interrupting pre-service teachers’ deficit perspectives of marginalized students, through a side-by-side learning experience within a racially diverse high school. We intentionally set out to use “space as curriculum” in order to make justice oriented moves to utilize a humanizing framework for teaching. Our comparative analysis of several sections of our Diversity and Equity Issues in Education course, showed evidence that a justice oriented experience to interrupt deficit notions of racially diverse schooling spaces, does yield positive results.

Authors

• Joy Howard, University of Southern Indiana

• Timberly L. Baker, Arkansas State University