Unique Needs and Opportunities of Preparing Black Teachers: Addressing Barriers Impacting Enactment of Sociopolitical Awareness

• In Event: 28.049 - Preparing African American Teacher Candidates to Enact Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Lessons From a Historically Black College/University

Abstract

This presentation will address strategies for helping African American teacher candidates to overcome barriers associated with enacting sociopolitical awareness in their future classrooms. When challenged to create and present a lesson addressing Black Lives Matters for elementary aged students, teacher candidates created opportunities to explore and address perceived barriers that impact their willingness to plan to meaningfully engage with sociopolitical awareness with their future elementary students.


One of the most underemphasized components of CRP involves engagement in sociopolitical awareness (Gay, 2010). While the African American teacher candidates involved in the study felt impacted directly by racial relations in the US, few felt empowered to engage meaningfully with their future students around this topic. This presentation provides insight regarding a strategy for helping African American candidates to become more comfortable engaging in sociopolitical awareness with their future elementary students, a topic underexplored within education reserach.


This study employs Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) as a means of examining and unpacking the preparation and experiences of African American teacher candidates in teacher education programs. Culturally responsive pedagogy served as the framework for engaging and evaluating the African american teacher candidates featured within the study. Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) reflects a teachers’ ability to integrate the cultures, interests, and values of students in the planning and execution of lessons. Ladson-Billings (1995a, 2014) identified culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) as framework for teaching African American students and other students of color. The framework serves as a counter to the dominant research and approaches to teaching marginalized students that is often negative and deficit oriented. CRT serves as a lense of analysis for interrogating those institutional structures (i.e. teacher education programs) that contributes towards the candidates’ outlooks (Parker and Lynn, 2002).


Data was collected through a qualitative pre and post assessment composed of 10 questions exploring candidates perceptions of relevant political and social issues that influence equity for marginalized populations, their perceived role in engaging around those issues with their learners, and ways of meaningfully engaging in those issues. Participants are 19 African American college students enrolled in a Reading Course intended for upperclassmen majoring in elementary education at a HBCU located on the East Coast. Participants ranged in age from 19-22.


When challenged to explore and present issues related to Black Lives Matters, an example of a sociopolical issue teacher candidates viewed as important, with elementary aged students, candidates unveiled a host of perceived barriers to engaging in sociopolitical awareness of with their future students. Concerns voiced resulted in modifications to syllabus which extend beyond the creation of cogent and meaningful lesson plans and include: establishing rapport with parents, addressing misperceptions of school administrators, understanding teacher rights within the classroom, questioning vs. persuading.

Author

• Simone Gibson, Morgan State University