Raising Race-Consciousness? Teachers of Color and Uneven Ideations for Justice

• In Event: Racial Realism Revelations: A Loving Critique of Racial Justice Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives & Research Question
Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1988) “race-conscious pedagogy” outlines the conditions necessary to support students’ understandings of race in the law. Insightful for teacher educators, she writes: “...my role is to open up possibilities for students to reconnect with their personal, experiential knowledge and to develop a critique that reflects rather than conflicts with their experiences and characteristics” (12). This paper attends to the challenges of developing a race-consciousness with teachers of Color. Although the development of “critique that reflects” should be the goal for teacher educators, this study demonstrates how some teachers of Color can uphold what Jayakumar and Kendi (2023) described as the “fantastical nature” of race-neutrality. The research questions guiding this study were: 1) What are the experiences of teachers of Color learning about race-consciousness in teacher education? and 2) How can teacher education programs support instructors to better prepare candidates to teach for racial justice?

Theory
This paper uses critical race pedagogy (Lynn, 1999; Lynn, Jennings, & Hughes, 2013) and critical race theory in teacher education (Solórzano, 2019) to guide the study design and analyses. Critical race pedagogy emphasizes the necessary work of reflexivity to understand the stratification of race and power in society. Critical race theory in teacher education provides an, "explanatory framework that accounts for the role of race and racism in teacher education and that works toward identifying and challenging racism as part of a larger goal of recognizing and disrupting all forms of subordination in schools and other social institutions" (p. 108). Taken together, these framings facilitate cross-disciplinary praxis in reimagining a racially just teacher education.

Methods/Sources
Data for this study comes from a larger 3-year case study of a teacher education program working to embed racial justice curriculum across the entire program. Interviews and focus groups with 30 students and 22 teachers were among the study’s main data sources. Emphasizing CRT’s value of storytelling and experiential knowledges, the authors combine autoethnography (Chang, 2016) and portraiture (Dixson, et al., 2005) to consider the challenges associated with supporting pre-service teachers’ consciousness around race and racism. We follow Derrick Bell’s (1995) assertion of the “use of first person, storytelling, narrative, allegory…and the unapologetic use of creativity” (p. 899) to highlight findings. In this way, we offer a critical race portrait of tensions associated with teaching and learning about race for pre-service teachers of Color.

Findings & Significance
This study examined how a racially just teacher education program engages a critical race pedagogical approach in its preparation of teachers. It documents the complexities connected to how teachers of Color make sense of racialization, especially when their racial literacies and consciousness are emerging. Findings challenge the field of teacher education to consider: 1) The messy and incremental work of justice-centered teacher education and 2) How some racialized teachers’ ideas of justice remain tethered to myths of “equality” and flattened versions of multiculturalism. In so doing, this study reveals how teacher educators must expect and contend with uneven ideations of justice as part of dismantling racial injustice.

Authors

• Edward R. Curammeng, California State University - Dominguez Hills

• Laurie D. Inman, California State University - Dominguez Hills