Teacher Educators of Color as Collateral Damage: The Harm of Performative “Racial Justice” in Teacher Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 7:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Racial Justice Fatigue: Reckoning with Whiteness and Transformation in Teacher Education

Abstract

While most teacher education research focuses on teacher candidates, steady auto-ethnographic documentation shows that teacher educators of Color endure racial harm within the overwhelmingly white teacher education field. Through a lens of critical race theory (CRT), this paper analyzes in-depth interviews with 31 teacher educators of Color, exploring patterns of racial harm experienced. We found that white teacher educators tend to rely on teacher educators of Color to enact racial justice work in isolation, and often do not support when they experience backlash, negatively impacting teacher educators’ of Color wellbeing. We end with a call for teacher educators to understand the harm teacher educators of Color endure, grow their racial literacy, and share responsibility in developing a racially literate teaching force.

Authors

• Rita Kohli, University of California - Riverside

• Marcos Pizarro, California State University - Los Angeles

• Emily Dech, University of California - Riverside