Refusing to Romanticize: Preservice Teachers Confront and Avoid the Inadequacies of Plantation Field Trips

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 3:45 pm - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Challenging Neutrality: Educators Shaping Social Justice and Reflective Practice in Education

Abstract

Throughout the southern United States, there are hundreds of former plantations, many of which students are taken to for field trips. This study focuses on the interpretations of sixty-three white preservice teachers of the history presented at a former plantation. Preservice teachers noted the avoidance, deflection, levity, and ill-preparedness of the tour guides when it came to confronting the realities of chattel slavery at this site of historic violence. Despite these shortcomings, however, most preservice teachers maintained their intention to take future students on similar tours.

Author

• Meghan Moore-Hubbard, Kennesaw State University