Criticality Is Not About Critique: Developing Criticality Alongside Reflexivity in Social Foundations for Ethnic Studies

• In Event: The Spaces We Make and Take for Preservice Teachers

Abstract

This paper will present findings from a study of the reflective writings of pre-service teachers, the majority of which identify as people of color, in an ethnic studies pathway. We take up practitioner inquiry to examine a series of journal writings situated within a social foundations course, intentionally focused on surfacing the tensions between criticality and reflexivity in the learning and development of pre-service teachers. We find that tensions among ideologies, notions of criticality, hyper-masculinity, racial innocence, and Indigenous erasure, also provide opportunities for engaging in possibilities defining critical theory, criticality, ideology, self-reflection, self-actualization, and reflexivity beyond US or Western-centered pre-service teacher education.

Authors

• Lorena Guillén, University of California - Los Angeles

• JC Lugo, California State University - Northridge

• Sara Montejano, University of California - Los Angeles