Who(se Reality) Are You Teaching? Disrupting Hegemony in the Teacher Education "Diversity" Course

• In Event: 45.092 - MTCC Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 45.092-5 - "Where Do I Fit In?" Disrupting "Diversity" and "Inclusion" Efforts in Predominantly White Spaces

Abstract

Purposes and Theoretical Framing:
Leonardo (2009) encourages white scholars interested in studying whiteness to ground their anti-racist work in the scholarship and conceptual framings of scholars of color, and write for imagined audiences of color. Discourse on white supremacy, he explains, must not “cater to white racial thinking” (Leonardo, 2009, p. 274). In this paper, the author examines and critiques the tendency for liberal teacher education “diversity” courses at PWI’s – courses required for K-12 teacher certification – to imagine white students as their intended audience and “cater to white racial thinking” in their curricula (Leonardo, 2009, p. 274) despite scholars long warning about the problems of whiteness in teacher education (Ladson-Billings, 2005; Marx, 2004, Sleeter, 2001). These “diversity” courses often center white teacher education students’ experiences and learning about “others” (Matias, 2016), while ignoring the experiences and learning of Black and Brown teacher education students. The author evaluates the affordances of a Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education framing (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1994) to (re)develop “diversity” course curricula and shape the purposes, learning outcomes, readings, assignments, and pedagogy. Key theoretical constructs of CRT will ground the inquiry and analysis: racial realism (Bell, 1992), counter-narrative (Delgado, 1989), critiques of liberalism (Crenshaw, 1988); intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991), whiteness as property (Harris, 1993); and interest convergence (Bell, 1980).

Modes of inquiry and evidence:
This is a theoretical paper, however it is also inspired by the author’s own reflections and experiences as a white college professor at a PWI where she recently revised a syllabus for, and taught, her department’s required teacher education “diversity” course. The author will examine theoretical arguments as well as practical examples of what a CRT framing has to offer this type of teacher education coursework.

Conclusion and Theoretical Significance:
A CRT analysis makes clear that traditional liberal teacher education “diversity” coursework unwittingly reinscribes white racial hegemony in K-12 schools – and within the teacher education program itself. If used as a curricular grounding, however, CRT can destabilize whiteness and could guide teacher educators in developing racially just coursework that honors the reality and learning of young people who are typically dehumanized or ignored in schools. Returning to Leonardo’s (2009) argument about imagined audiences, rather than “diversity” courses that center the middle-class, white, cis-gendered undergraduate as its imagined audience, we need courses about teaching for justice that center the working class, queer, Black undergraduate, or the undocumented, Latinx undergraduate with a disability, as its imagined audience(s). Moreover, at a time when colleges and K-12 schools are urged to find ways to address the education debt owed Black and Brown youth (Ladson-Billings, 2006) – and public schools need more Black and Brown teachers – it is imperative PWI’s offer coursework that authentically educate Black and Brown pre-service teachers, as well as white pre-teachers, to understand the implications of their own identities and to how to teach for liberation.

Author

• Jennifer L McCarthy Foubert, Knox College