Resisting Binaries in the Teacher Education Classroom

• In Event: 21.029 - Thinking Beyond Damage-Centered Teaching: Enacting a Humanizing Pedagogy in Teacher Education

Abstract

Resisting binaries helps expand our frames of reference to include knowledge and ways of knowing and being that are often excluded or positioned on the periphery of mainstream socio-political dialogue. The Black/white, immigrant/citizen, and good/bad are three prominent binaries that remain salient teacher education courses dealing with issues of power and inequity in schools. In this paper, the author provides examples of pedagogical approaches that expand and complicate the discourse around the aforementioned binaries as it pertains to matters of race, citizenship, and moral character.

Black/white
In the United States, social justice/critical multicultural teacher education courses often approach conversations about race, racism, and white supremacy through a Black/white binary (Fylkesnes, 2018). Brittany Cooper and Margaret Rhee (2015) challenge the notion that we must move beyond the Black/white binary and instead call for a hacking of the Black/white binary as “a conceptual retooling and a politically resistant act that moves not simply to dewire but also to rewire our current hegemonic binaristic system” (para. 5). The author posits, a rewiring would allow room for divergent and interconnected narratives that are often neglected in conversations about ethnicity, language, and religion, all of which play a role in how people of diverse backgrounds navigate the U.S. educational, social, and political landscape. Resisting binaries offers a more nuanced analysis of race-based oppression in the context of the United States and globally.

Citizen/immigrant
Moving away from a dichotomous understanding of citizenship de-centers dominant narratives that attach the identity of citizen to whites and the identity of immigrant/non-citizen to people of color. Leigh Patel (2017) argues that the construction of citizenship “simultaneously contains within it and obscures complex histories and logics of race and property” (p. 63). A humanizing teacher education curriculum would provide multiple opportunities for preservice teachers to critically explore the ways in which white supremacist agendas have shaped their racialized identities, histories and ancestries and positioned them within constructs that name citizenry. This is important for understanding how many K-12 students experience schooling in the U.S.

Good/bad
Teacher education programs committed to preparing teachers with a social justice-oriented disposition must provide opportunities for preservice teachers to grapple with how they are undoubtedly implicated in systems of power and oppression. The perpetuation of the good/bad binary hinders preservice teachers hinders their willingness to critically examine their role within an unjust society. Therefore, it is important to be conscious of our actions and the ways in which we can work to disrupt the operation and normalization of oppression in our everyday lives.

Resisting binaries requires the intentional selection of course texts, activities, and assignments that offer varying perspectives as well as opportunities for preservice teachers to reflect on the totality of their experiences. These learning experiences challenge preservice teachers to examine their own ways of knowing, seeing and being within an “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks, 2013, p. 4).

Author

• Tashal Brown, Michigan State University