Recruitment and Teachers of Color

• In Event: 75.020 - Charting the Landscape of Ethnoracial Teacher Diversity: Examining Research Across the Continuum

Abstract

Increasing the ethnoracial diversity of the teaching profession has garnered attention from researchers, policymakers, and practitioners (Podolsky, Kini, Bishop, & Darling-Hammond, 2016). Over the last several decades there has been a growing interest in recruitment programs and initiatives designed to attract Teachers of Color (TOC). These programs and initiatives have included pre-collegiate high school programs, partnerships between community colleges and four-year teacher education programs, career ladders for paraprofessionals in schools, gender specific recruitment campaigns, teacher residency programs, and alternative teacher certification programs. During the symposium, we will spotlight programs and initiatives across the continuum of recruitment efforts, the career lifespan, and geographical context for TOC

In this paper, we will share address how recruitment programs are able to attract individuals of color into the profession despite schools’ well documented history of serving as spaces of policing, oppression, and disenfranchisement for students of color and help them to see themselves as catalysts for disrupting these oppressive systems, structures, and policies (Bianco, 2015; Goings & Bianco, 2016). Additionally, we will highlight the challenges to recruiting a diverse teaching workforce within their respective topics, they also include a perspective of critical hope (Duncan-Andrade, 2009). The following topics will be areas of exploration:

* While we acknowledge the importance of increasing Black male representation in the teacher workforce (and have contributed to this literature ourselves), much less attention has been given to the recruitment of Black females, Latinx (males and female), Native American (males and females), Immigrant and Refugee teachers, Asian American, and Pacific Islander. As such, presented chapters will explore recruitment models and initiatives for these underrepresented groups in the research literature.

* Ethnic studies programs at colleges and universities are also important recruitments sites for TOC and raise the question: How are ethnic studies courses situated to serve as a space to recruit students of color into the teaching profession?

* What policies at the national, state, and district/local level exist and are needed to ensure accountability around the recruitment of TOC?

Authors

• Margarita Bianco, University of Colorado - Denver

• Ramon Goings, University of Maryland - Baltimore County