White Institutions and Racial Justice: Perspectives From a Teacher Residency and an Equity Graduate Program

• In Event: Teacher Education and Racial Justice: Insights From Multiple Institution Types and Program Designs

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to engage in dialogue about two approaches by historically and predominantly white institutions to address issues of racial injustice in the teacher workforce and teaching. First, the presentation will highlight the approach of a U.S.-based TR program at a prominent HPWI to fill the teacher education gap, particularly in underserved urban areas. Second, the presentation will discuss the explicit innovative strategies used in the design of two US-based graduate programs to foster equity in the work of in-service teachers. Finally, we will also discuss the need for explicit anti-racist cultures in teacher education programs, whether they are residencies or in-service-based programs.
Guided by BlackCrtit as the theoretical framework (Dumas & ross, 2016), this practitioner research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) uses critical race methodology (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). In each HPWI context, data sources included program design documents, assignments, and reflective journaling evidenced through text messaging, emails, and personal communication that unpacked the experiences. The director of the TR and the co-coordinator of the graduate programs for equity discussed the program-design documents, reviewed assignments and experiences, and unpacked issues related to the racial experiences of Black students and faculty through the lens of critical qualitative research (Bhattacharya, 2019).
Insights from the comparative study indicated that TR and equity program designs play a critical role in ensuring that teacher education for racial justice is not confined to a single course or section (Cochran-Smith et al., 2014; Sleeter, 2017), in either teacher preparation or teacher professional development and advanced studies. Additionally, insights also suggested that despite the various approaches of HPWIs to play their part in addressing racial injustice related to the teacher workforce composition (TR) or the content and pedagogical approaches (equity graduate programs) of practicing educators, HPWIs still function in complicit ways to perpetuate racial injustice against Black faculty.
The presentation is of scholarly significance because it compares two approaches to addressing (racial) injustice in education within the context of HPWIs in two different sites of practice. Second, it contributes to the literature on teacher education and social justice education (Milner et al., 2013). Further, by providing the perspectives and experiences of two Black male faculty in HPWIs, it centers voices often missing from the research in the academy (McGowan et al., 2016) and underscores that merely increasing the number of teachers or teacher educators of color is inadequate if substantial policy, investments, and practices are not transformed (Philip & Brown, 2020; Souto-Manning & Emdin, 2023). Taken altogether, this presentation will illustrate some of the actions taken, and those that are still yet necessary to enable sustained racial justice and positive educational possibilities in teacher education program designs, approaches, and cultures.

Authors

• Shawn S. Savage, University of North Carolina - Wilmington

• Shane A. Smith, New York University