Building the Capacity of Catholic School Educators to Address Systemic Racism

• In Event: “How Do I Move Forward . . .?” Catholic Colleges and Universities' Efforts to Transform Systemic Racism

Abstract

The challenge of present-day teacher education is not solely a problem of policy or practice; rather it is an “equity problem” (Cochran-Smith, 2023) that centers upon “preparing [predominately white] teachers to work constructively and successfully with highly diverse student populations in the context of a long history of racial injustice” (Cochran-Smith & Keefe, 2022). Scholarship has raised this issue since at least the early 2000s, asserting that teacher preparation programs do not always adequately prepare teachers to operate in schools with culturally and racially diverse populations (Hollins & Guzman, 2005) nor raise their awareness of the dominance of white cultures and knowledge traditions that are at the center of their preparation programs’ curricula and placement patterns (Salazar, 2018; Souto-Manning, 2019). Additionally, teachers are often unaware of how their actions are embedded in systemic injustices that perpetuate oppressive hierarchies (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2020). Therefore, it is paramount to design teacher education programs’ curricula to prepare teachers not only to provide effective instruction but also to address explicitly issues of race, specifically how to serve diverse populations and dismantle power structures. This holds true across school sectors, but especially in urban Catholic schools (Miller et al., in press), wherein, the Catholic Social Teachings of life and dignity of the person, option for the poor and vulnerable, and solidarity call educators to respond in a manner where every human being is invaluable as a member of the human family.
In this paper, we focus on two graduate courses that supported a group of 40 teachers during their first years of practice in urban Catholic schools to develop and implement an anti-bias orientation to their teaching. These teachers are enrolled in [NAME OF PROGRAM at Catholic University NAME] which is a “third space” program that supports and mentors already licensed teachers to teach in urban Catholic schools. These educators live together in university-sponsored housing located within the neighborhoods of their schools, work closely with families and neighborhood communities, participate in professional development, complete a M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction —all the while completing a full-time teaching placement in an urban Catholic school for two years.
There are two data sources for this study. First, weekly journals collected throughout the year. We employed qualitative narrative analysis (Ollerenshaw, & Creswell, 2002) to understand how these teachers reflected upon their teaching practices in general, as well as anti-bias strategies they implemented, how each strategy worked, and how they improved strategies throughout their engagement in these two courses. Second, we analyzed for each teacher a lesson plan that they developed or adapted to make it more culturally relevant for their students. These lesson plans also include teacher reflections regarding their rationale and process for development. This research provides insight into a specific teacher preparation curriculum for urban Catholic educators wherein addressing equity issues is central not only because it is what is necessary in the field but also because it is integral to the Catholic Social Teachings that guide us.

Authors

• Charles T Cownie, Boston College

• Audrey A. Friedman, Boston College

• Myra Rosen-Reynoso, Boston College