Reimagining Resistance: Transforming Teacher Education for Candidates of Color

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 10:50 am
  In Roundtable Session: Innovations and Tactical Tools for Critical Teacher Preparation (Table 8)

Abstract

In race- and social justice-focused teacher education literature, much is written about resistance of—mostly white—preservice teachers to lessons from—often white—course instructors. This literature typically presupposes the moral superiority of the teacher educators’ aims and actions and ignores experiences of teacher candidates of color. As a counterpoint, this paper draws on autoethnographic data to consider the ways in which I, a teacher educator of color, resist the lessons imparted by my teacher candidates of color while attempting to transform a required education course to draw on the funds of knowledge of those same teacher candidates of color. Findings illuminate ways whiteness can continue to infiltrate teacher education practice, even when the intention is to dismantle it.

Author

• Sherry L. Deckman, CUNY, Lehman College and Graduate Center