Preparing and Supporting Teachers for Equity and Racial Justice: Creating Collective, Co-Constructed, Intergenerational Spaces

• In Event: 35.042 - "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing": Narratives of Teacher Educators Transforming Practices for Social Justice

Abstract

Objectives
Centering racial justice and equity in the preparation and support of teachers happens in community--both our community of women scholars collaborating across time and space and the communities with whom we work in four distinct locations. By centering critical theory and conducting teacher inquiries in contrastive settings - a writing initiative with an indigenous community in North Dakota, the programmatic and curricular transformation of an environmental education program in Washington state, an urban teacher residency program in New Jersey, and a teacher inquiry community in New Mexico - we generated a typology of justice-oriented teaching that highlights the importance of creating collective, co-constructed, intergenerational and culturally-relevant spaces.
Theoretical Framework
Recognizing that teaching and learning is never neutral but rather nested within social hierarchies that systematically disadvantage and privilege individuals based on real or perceived group membership (Freire, 1970; Love, 2000; Bell, 2007), we draw upon critical theory/pedagogy to center power and knowledge within our work. Moreover, we assert that critical theory/pedagogy involves making political and ethical decisions influenced by our “pedagogical imperative” (Shulman, 2003, para 4).
Modes of Inquiry
As researchers concerned with generating knowledge from the ground up, we draw on teacher research methodology (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993) to problematize mainstream educational practices that have been shaped by neoliberalism (Giroux, 2014), white supremacy (Gillborn, 2005; Leonardo, 2013; Sleeter, 2017) and settler colonization (Wazayatawin & Yellowbird, 2012; Patel, 2014). In doing so, we seek to expose inequities, generate counter-narratives, reframe what counts as knowledge, and offer possibilities for resistance.
Data sources
Data for this paper are drawn from four distinct sites in order to highlight how principles of racial justice/equity education might be applied across contrastive settings. Data sources include both qualitative and quantitative data, such as document analysis and interviews.
Results
Looking across these four sites yielded insights into shaping spaces for educator preparation that intentionally center racial justice and equity. Our shared analysis generated key principles that suggest that social justice education must be collective, co-created, intergenerational and culturally relevant. For example, in North Dakota, tribal knowledge supports, contradicts, and questions the knowledge of teaching argument writing within a national network. In New Mexico, pre-service and practicing teachers support and challenge one another to enact critical practices that are both informed by and responsive to the sociopolitical and historical context of New Mexico. In Washington, the refusal of settler colonial logics in environmental education requires student experiences immersed in land pedagogies, freedom, reclamation, and reparations. Staff and faculty from across a college in New Jersey disrupt institutional power structures by collaborating to develop an urban teacher residency program that seeks to impact teachers’ conceptualization of social justice.
Scholarly Significance
Nash (2004) urges us to think of ourselves as wise and living people who, like the ancients, have stories to tell that might help others to become wiser. Teacher education needs a new set of stories. Using collaborative teacher inquiry to look across our contexts allowed us to identify core principles that illuminate the complexity and multidimensionality of social justice education.

Authors

• Tanya Maloney, Montclair State University

• Katherine Crawford-Garrett, University of New Mexico

• Nini Hayes, Western Washington University

• Kelly Sassi, North Dakota State University