Enacting CritPartnership: Centering Criticality in a Teacher Residency Program

• In Event: Critical Turn in Teacher Residencies

Abstract

Purpose: The current proposal is a reaction to the whitewashing of school-university partnership work, or the intentional removal of references to race, racism, power, and oppression that have occurred in this field to make it more palatable to a white audience (Beck, 2024; Smagorinsky, 2021). This has been especially apparent in work on Third Space which is inherently a postcolonial theory and a reaction to colonialism including racism and power (Sherry, 2008). In this proposal, we present our theory of Critical Partnership, or CritPartnership, and provide an amalgamation of a teacher education program to illustrate the theory’s application.

Theoretical Framework: CritPartnership is grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT). Ladson-Billings (1998) identified five central tenets of CRT: (a) racism is normal, (b) the use of counterstorytelling, (c) critique of liberalism, (d) whites have primarily benefited from civil rights legislation, and (e) interest convergence. These tenets directly informed our application of CRT to school-university partnership theory. CritPartnership includes five tenets: (a) CritPartnership is driven by antiracist, just frameworks; (b) CritPartnership challenges systems; (c) CritPartnership disrupts racism in education; (d) intersectional identities are central to CritPartnership; and (e) counter-storytelling is employed in CritPartnership.

Modes of Inquiry: To illustrate the CritPartnership framework, we present a fictional profile of the Eatonville Teacher Residency (ETR) that embodies the theory’s tenets. Thus, the profile below explicitly translates theory to practice in the hopes that readers may take inspiration from the ideas and techniques presented here. Moreover, we were inspired by Warren (2013) to create this amalgamation. He used the characterization of Ms. Johnson to convey empathetic instructional interactions.

Data Sources: To flesh out our application of CritPartnership to ETR, we use Guha’s (Guha et al., 2016; Guha & Kini, 2016) eight key characteristics of strong teacher residencies. We chose this list for its comprehensiveness and also its attention to diversity. All of the examples provided in this amalgamation are drawn from our own experiences in teacher education.

Substantiated Conclusions: In the amalgamation of the ETR we apply CritPartnership to the following themes: strong district/university partnerships; tightly integrated coursework and clinical practice; full-year residency; high-ability, diverse candidates; financial supports; cohorts in “teaching schools”; expert mentor teachers; and ongoing mentoring and support. Each of these themes is illustrated with examples and connected directly to at least one tenet of CritPartnership.

Scholarly Significance of the Work: As collaborators, we have supported one another in teacher residency work, including fostering critical consciousness in white teacher candidates through affinity groups. This work has been ongoing and imperfect, but has been bolstered by theoretical frameworks like CRT as well as our own critical consciousness (Freire, 1970). We have come to understand how theoretical frameworks can extend beyond writing and can serve to inform entire teacher preparation programs. Our hope is that CritPartnership can serve as a touchstone for other teacher educators, community members, and teacher candidates who want to create more just schooling experiences.

Authors

• Jori S. Beck, College of William & Mary

• Kala Burrell-Craft, Grambling State University