Complexity in Social Justice Teacher Identity Formation

• In Event: Preservice Teachers' Transformative Journeys in a Multicultural Education Course

Abstract

This paper explores the identity development of pre-service teachers throughout the course of the semester. Using sociocultural perspectives of identity development (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner & Cain, 1998) this paper investigates development across eight different course assignments. Teacher identity development is complex, linked to prior personal experiences, and constructed using the available cultural tools (Olsen, 2008). The innovations in this course seek to provide our students with new sets of cultural tools with which they may begin to construct a new sociocultural consciousness (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). Ten participants were selected for this analysis from the larger dataset. Each of their assignments was coded using a combination of inductive and deductive methods. Deductive codes were developed from literature in teacher development, especially in relation to culturally relevant pedagogies; inductive codes arose from the data. In addition to coding each of the assignments and examining patterns that emerged across files, case profiles were created for each of the participants, in order to examine their development more holistically. Their development was then analyzed along a social justice continuum (Author, 2017), which maps out different forms or aspects of social justice pedagogy.

Awareness is the initial stage, where pre-service teachers develop an understanding of diversity and difference and begin to explore aspect of power and privilege. The inclusive stage includes understanding PK-12 students backgrounds as assets to draw from during classroom instruction. Once they reach the critical stage teachers examine not only how power operates in society, but also explicitly engage PK-12 students in critical analysis. At the transformational stage, teachers extend beyond critical analysis and begin to consider how to make change themselves and engage their students in design and development.

Analysis demonstrated that these development trends were non-linear. Instead of moving from one end of the spectrum towards the other, pre-service teachers often demonstrated emerging understandings at multiple stages. For example, students often cited inclusive instructional approaches in their analysis of Jessica’s actions in the novel, White Bread. But the same student would struggle with exploring their own whiteness and how that is implicated within the work of teaching – an aspect of awareness.

For pre-service teachers deeply understanding themselves is a gateway into the trajectory, but critically analyzing themselves, their families, and their ancestry is also one of the most difficult tasks pre-service teachers engage in. This was because fully exploring their whiteness and what that meant required them to create entirely new conceptions of their lived experiences. When these lived experiences include their closest family members, this work became fraught with deeply personal and emotional tension.

These findings demonstrate a need for course instructors to provide both conceptual tools and holistic support for pre-service teachers through this process. Broad conceptual tools may help depersonalize some of the tension so that pre-service teachers can situate it in a systemic framework. Next steps involve exploring what kinds of holistic support structures could be included in the course to support their identity development as social justice educators.

Author

• Rebecca Buchanan, University of Maine