Toward Transforming a Teacher Education Program: Uprooting Whiteness, Replanting Seeds of Racial Justice and Equity

Session Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

Teacher education programs are predominantly White and structurally designed based on whiteness (Sleeter, 2001). Our nation’s current crisis, necessitates programs to take responsibility to develop and produce racially conscious teacher candidates. To achieve this, several actions must be taken to foreground racial justice and equity into the fabric of programs in order to transform them. Thus, this symposium is designed to address the following objectives (1) provide information about the actions taken overtime to change the trajectory of systemic racism in one College of Education (COE); (2) highlight one department’s efforts to change their admissions process; (3) explore the practice described as a racial justice seminar; (4) the proposal of a new course focused on Critical Race Theory in Education.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Division K - Section 04: The Socio-Cultural and Racial Foundations of Teaching and Teacher Education

Chair

• James Bridgeforth, University of Southern California

Papers

• Carving a Path in the Unknown: A Journey of Uprooting Whiteness - Robbie Burnett, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities; Beth Beschorner, Minnesota State University - Mankato

• Program Admissions: Merit Is More Than Just a GPA - David Kimori, Minnesota State University - Mankato; Beth Beschorner, Minnesota State University - Mankato

• Digging Through the Roots: Discussions of Racial Justice Through Seminar - Bernadette Castillo, Minnesota State University - Mankato

• Proposing a New Critical Race Theory Course to Uproot Whiteness - Timothy Berry, Metropolitan State University

Discussant

• Paul Spies, Metropolitan State University