Antiracism and Civic Education: White Teacher Candidates' Reinscription of Settler Colonialism in Canadian Teacher Education

• In Event: White Supremacist Ideologies and Culture in Teacher Education

Abstract

This comparative case study examined how White teacher candidates’ knowledge development during education foundations courses at two Canadian universities affected their pedagogy. Building from a postcolonial citizenship education conceptual framework, the study utilized Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies to situate the findings in White settler colonialism. Findings indicate that the degree to which teacher candidates were aware of their own positionality influenced their understandings of structural injustice and anti-racism. In the areas of civic engagement, racism, and Whiteness, the rejection of structural discourses was pervasive, and teacher candidates resisted self-implication in historical and ongoing settler colonialism. Access to alternative frameworks for understanding the social construction of identities and structural determinism were somewhat effective at tackling meritocratic discourses.

Author

• Jenn Bergen, University of Saskatchewan