K–12 Ethnic Studies Teachers: Thoughts on Negotiating Third Spaces Transformational Politics

• In Event: Ethnic Studies in Teacher Preparation: Programmatic and Cultural Shifts Supporting Ethnic Studies Teacher Development

Abstract

Objective - context and purpose
Increasingly, school districts, and some states, across the country are considering ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement (e.g., , CA Assembly Bill 2772, IN Senate Bill 337, OR House Bill 2845). While most k-12 teachers of ethnic studies have had a variety of preparation experiences, the demand to scale up has left many questioning the supply of qualified ethnic studies teachers. As a response to both the external need, as well as an internal push from pre-service teachers, one university-based teacher education program launched what would be the first cohort of pre-service ethnic studies teachers in 2015. This study explores some of the assignments and instructional activities of the first cohort as they co-constructed an ethnic studies pathway within their teacher education program.

In challenging “teacher educators to unlearn teacher education,” Cochran-Smith (2004) argues that there are different sets of assumptions about what teachers and candidates should know and be able to do, and by extension, what the ultimate purposes of schooling should be. She suggests the field consistently asks two fundamental questions: 1.) What should be the outcomes of teacher education, learning, and pupil learning? and, 2.) How, by when, and for what purpose, should they be documented, demonstrated, and/or measured?

Methods and Theoretical Framing
This paper will explore student-produced documents from a two-year teacher education program offering an Ethnic Studies pathway to secondary History/Social Studies and English Language Arts teacher candidate. Through an exploratory, single-case methods approach (Yin, 2014) we analyze pre-service teacher work through an intersectional Ethnic Studies praxis framework that (1) questions white supremacist ideas of ideological objectivity and neutrality, 2) moves towards anti-essentialist representations of racialized communities, 3) centers a community-grounded praxis in the practice of teaching, and 4) nurtures opportunities for self and collective empowerment through social transformation (Fong, 2008; Reyes McGovern & Buenavista, 2016), to understand the initial learning outcomes of the first cohort.

Results
Findings from the first year indicate a dialectical relationship of Ethnic Studies in hegemonic schooling structures, limiting the possibilities of Ethnic Studies to create radical change while also providing opportunities for students to embody Ethnic Studies. Participants described this dialectical relationship through: (1) a tension between Ethnic Studies and “traditional” content areas (i.e. History/Social Studies); (2) the importance of a systems analysis in Ethnic Studies curriculum and the struggle to make abstract concepts concrete for secondary students; (3) the reciprocal relationship between decolonization and healing from personal and intergenerational trauma; and (4) the balance in creating a disciplined, authentic classroom community - without resorting to punishment (Yang, 2009).

Significance
We understand ethnic studies to center race, using interdisciplinary methodologies and pedagogies to critique and dismantle systems of power (Hu-DeHart, 2004). Our evolving understanding of what it means to teach ethnic studies in the k-12 classroom setting is an invitation to the field to reconsider the outcomes of teacher education and by extension, the ultimate purposes of schooling.

Authors

• Lorena Guillén, University of California - Los Angeles

• Elexia Reyes McGovern, California State University - Dominguez Hills