"Part of Your Job Is to Take Time to Understand Your Students": Teacher Candidates' Reflections on Empathy and Equity

• In Event: In Our Feelings: Exploring Emotionality in (Teacher) Education

Abstract

We analyze the reflective writing of preservice teachers to explore the impact of racism, social justice, and empathy in early childhood teacher education. Through cross-case syntheses, we use cultural humility to unpack teacher candidates’ constructions of empathy for children and families who are from a different culture and race. We probe the possibilities of engaging in empathetic interactions with children and families from marginalized groups in combination with self-reflection within the different cultural, geographic, political, and social contexts. Findings suggest that the vast majority of BIPOC teacher candidates’ and a minority of white teacher candidates reflected an asset-based approach in their field placement classrooms, demonstrating the possibilities for early childhood educators to refute colonialist and white supremacist constructs and practices.

Authors

• Leah Schoenberg Muccio, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa

• Lea Ann Christenson, Towson University

• Kevin McGowan, Bridgewater State University