Getting Past the "Chill": Navigating Attacks on Teachers in Pursuit of Racial Equity Action Research

• In Event: Topographies of Antiracist Teacher Preparation: Insights and Interrogations Across Four Universities

Abstract

Objectives and Theoretical Framework
While the NIC universities initially focused on efforts to create more racially just teacher preparation programs, they have realized they must collaborate more deeply with P-12 schools to attain systemic change. Interviews with teacher preparation faculty revealed concerns that candidates have clinical placements in schools that lack a focus on social justice and/or with P-12 teachers who do not exhibit a racial equity mindset. Moreover, P-12 schools are a major source of the lived experiences (many of which involved racial inequities) that candidates bring with them to their teacher preparation programs. This paper will describe how the NIC IHEs are learning more about the racial equity climates in their partner schools and districts and bringing the voices of P-12 educators into their efforts to prepare antiracist teachers.

The NIC seeks to transform the enterprise of university-based teacher preparation and use it as a fulcrum on which to leverage reductions in racism and racial inequities at all levels of schooling. In pursuing these ambitious and intertwined goals, the NIC IHEs are acknowledging that schools of education are complicit in a growing body of highly publicized racist incidents and racist curricula in public schools across the U.S. (Picower, 2021; Harper & Bridgeforth, 2019). Michael Dumas (2013) characterized schools as “sites of suffering.” From the viral images of students of Color being handled with violence and disrespect to the curricular violence of racist assignments, schools have exposed how race and racism shape the learning conditions for BIPOC communities.

Methods, Data Sources, and Results
While data from both the racial equity climate surveys and the exit surveys suggested that candidates generally reported positive experiences in their clinical placements, faculty across the member universities revealed concerns about disconnects between university efforts to promote racial justice and field placements. Some noted that candidates observe inequities or even regress in these placements and suggested that teacher preparation programs need to do more to support the selection and growth of mentor teachers--and actively recruit more mentor teachers of Color. Interviews and focus groups conducted with teachers in P-12 partner schools suggested a need for additional data and exploration of new ways to collaborate around preparation of teachers.

Scholarly Significance
As explained in the paper, the NIC originally planned to administer a survey to teachers and administrators in P-12 partner schools in the spring of 2023. This plan was abandoned because of concerns that a survey could be weaponized at a time of increased censorship, fear mongering, and restrictive directives from state legislatures. The NIC IHEs pivoted to a more collaborative approach to learning more about a smaller number of partner districts and convened an Institute in August 2020 that brought P-12 educators from about 10 districts together with teacher preparation faculty to develop initial steps for partnering to prepare teachers The Institute will be followed by action research projects and/or additional focus groups, the findings of which will be reported in the final version of this paper and shared with symposium participants.

Authors

• Terry Kyle Flennaugh, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Beth Beschorner, Minnesota State University - Mankato
  Presenting Author

• Terri Lynn Purcell, Cleveland State University
  Presenting Author