From Tinkering to Reimagining: Shifting the Practice of Mentoring in Teacher Education

• In Event: The Role of Mentoring in Supporting Teachers From Diverse Communities

Abstract

Many traditional structures and practices in teacher education are steeped in whiteness, making it difficult to shift in ways that meet the needs of prospective teachers of color. Mentoring, a taken for granted aspect of learning to teach, is steeped in relationships which maintain hierarchies and reinforce systems of privilege and dominance. In this study, a mentoring network that connected teachers of color with teacher candidates of color is examined, and the ways in which whiteness was asserted and undermined the power of mentoring to develop racial identity and teacher agency are explored. As teacher education programs embrace anti-racism and recruit more teacher candidates from marginalized identities, attention to the power of whiteness to resist change is critical.

Authors

• Carrie E Rood, SUNY - College at Cortland

• Anne Burns Thomas, SUNY - College at Cortland