"Why Am I White?" Race Consciousness and Racial Identity Development in Teacher Preparation

• In Event: 15.024 - Challenging Beliefs: Critical Race Analysis of Teacher Work

Abstract

Teacher educators have sought to understand the challenges associated with teaching predominantly White teacher candidates about race, racism, power, and privilege and preparing them to teach and act for racial and social justice. In this article, I build on this work by exploring: (1) how White teacher candidates express race-consciousness upon completion of a social justice-oriented teacher preparation program; and (2) what White teacher candidates’ expressions of race-consciousness indicate about the role of racial identity development in social justice-oriented teacher education. Findings show that White teacher candidates express varying degrees of race-consciousness that have important implications for teacher education and teacher induction. I argue that race-consciousness and racial identity development needs to be carefully mediated by teacher educators throughout the preparation program and that future research needs to examine how teacher education can effectively cultivate race-consciousness within existing social justice-oriented frameworks.

Author

• Kimberly Oamek, University of Wisconsin - Madison