Reconstituting Teacher Education: Monumental Challenges and Opportunities in the Era of Black Lives Matter

• In Event: Teaching Toward Transformative Citizenship on the College Campus: Democratic Education and Civic Praxis With Young Adults

Abstract

As a means of accepting educational responsibility, this paper poses a question and articulates a challenge to teacher education in a moment of deep social unrest: What are the “monuments” of teacher education--those unspoken assumptions, guardrails, and practices that, not unlike the many Confederate monuments currently under scrutiny in the United States, serve to maintain the whiteness of the teaching profession--and how can we reconstitute them toward inclusive, democratic ends? Drawing on the scholarship of Danielle Allen, among others, we identify three such monuments in teacher education and offer a path forward focused on Allen’s concept of “wholeness.”

Authors

• Jessica Masterson, Washington State University - Vancouver

• Lauren Gatti, University of Nebraska - Lincoln