Testimonies and Counternarratives in Early Childhood: An Intersection of Critical Race/Currere and Critical Witnessing

• In Event: 66.045 - Being the Other: Teachers on the Margins

Abstract

Documenting data emerging from a course assignment that developed as a means for early childhood teacher candidates to reconceptualize understandings of the positionalities of children and themselves in classrooms and communities, this presentation offers illustrative examples candidates’ responses to the field-based assignment and documents the evolution of the assignment itself. The assignment--undertaken by nearly 300 teacher candidates over five semesters-- eventually evolved to integrate elements of critical witnessing and critical race/feminist currere as a means to reveal and challenge assumptions and identify broad social narratives that shrink the apertures through which teacher-candidates may view (and calculate) the identities and worth of the children in their urban classrooms and of the communities in which they live.

Authors

• Sheri L. Leafgren, Miami University

• Tiffany J. Williams, Independent Scholar

• Peggy Larrick, Wilmington College

• JOHNNIE LEWIS JACKSON, Miami University

• Catherine A Wolfe Bornhorst, Miami University

• Allison Huff, Miami University - Oxford