Teachers' Stunned Silence: Warning Lights for Teacher Education

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

Abstract

Despite our best efforts to prepare preservice teachers for equity and social justice, the new teachers in our study were stunned into silence in the face of the recent election rhetoric which boiled over into schools. Discursive analysis of teacher talk during an induction experience revealed that while these teachers recognized the need for explicit discussion about the dehumanizing rhetoric that surfaced in their schools pre and post election, they were silent. We argue that these lived moments, in which children perform acts of dehumanization while educators withdraw as stunned spectators, ought to serve as warning lights for teacher educators as we prepare teachers for social justice.

Authors

• Jocelyn A. Glazier, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Sarah Byrne Bausell, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill