Stepping Out of the Defensive Zone: Inquiring Into Our Meta-Cognitive Acts as Anti-Oppressive Teacher Educators

• In Event: 35.071 - Perspectives on Social Justice in Self-Study

Abstract

Anti-oppressive teacher educators must engage pre-service teachers in critiques of inequitable social privileges in ways that attend to cognitive dissonance and are sensitive to the emotional dimensions of such work. Additionally, teacher educators concerned with rank and advancement within academia must be cognizant of how their students react to the acknowledgement and critique of social privileges. This study identified two meta-cognitive acts that helped us avoid becoming defensive with our pre-service teachers when they experienced tension with anti-oppressive teacher education content and pedagogy. These findings offer practical and theoretically grounded practices that other can use to improve their teaching of anti-oppressive content while also receiving good student reviews to facilitate their success in the rank and advancement process in academia.

Authors

• Ramona Maile Cutri, Brigham Young University

• Erin Feinauer Whiting, Brigham Young University

• Eric Ruiz Bybee, Brigham Young University