Teacher Educators as Policy Actors: Navigating the Racial Politics of Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Teaching Standards

• In Event: Shifting Paradigms: Understanding Critical Policy Analysis as a Lens for Equity-Focused Education Policy Research

Abstract

Purpose

As states across the US adopt standards grounded in culturally responsive and sustaining education (CRSE), racial backlash to these policies has grown in equal measure. In Pennsylvania, CRSE standards prescribe particular competencies for K-12 teachers, and teacher education (TE) programs are mandated to integrate them into teacher preparation. However, intense racial backlash led to a partial rescinding of the standards in November 2024 (Hanna, 2024). These developments raise critical questions about how TE leaders and teacher educators implement CRSE guidance amidst contentious state and local racial politics. We ask: (1) What do TE leaders and teacher educators know about the CRSE competencies? (2) How do the institutional and political contexts of programs shape their implementation of these standards?

Framework

Drawing on critical sensemaking (Helms Mills et al., 2010) and racial politics (Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Leonardo, 2013), we investigate how TE leaders and faculty mediate the implementation of CRSE policy. We build on scholarship showing that educators’ responses to reform—ranging from meaningful uptake to symbolic compliance—are shaped by prior beliefs, organizational contexts, and policy messaging (Coburn & Woulfin, 2012; Spillane et al., 2002), and additionally consider how individual sensemaking is shaped by shifting racial politics.

Analytical Approach

Using a multiple case study design, we examine three TE programs across varied institutional and political settings in Pennsylvania: a private institution in a liberal-majority county, a public institution in a conservative-majority county, and a public institution in a moderate county. Data sources include interviews with program leaders and faculty (n=20), artifacts such as syllabi (n30), and course observations (n20 hours). We analyzed the data through iterative coding and memoing (Miles et al., 2014), synthesizing patterns using analytic matrices.

Findings

We find evidence that the studied programs varied in their implementation of the CRSEs, based on their local institutional contexts and their local racialized political environments. For example, individuals in the private institution in the liberal-majority county reported feeling “protected” from external policy guidance, which made them both slower to adopt guidance and more buffered from political resistance. Implementation in the public institution in the conservative-majority county was more politically fraught; the work of adopting the CRSEs fell onto a few faculty members, who reported feeling isolated in implementing the policy.

Across institutions, we find that TE programs experienced a chilling effect in response to the shifting state and federal policy landscape the past year, which has encouraged anticipatory obedience. These dynamics were mediated by the institutional contexts TE programs were operating within. For example, in one institution which took a proactive stance in rescinding DEI language, one individual noted that there was “a sense of depression and suppression” around the CRSE work as well.

Significance

This study sheds light on the role of teacher educators as policy actors and illuminates the strategies they employ to implement equity-oriented policy amidst racial backlash. We interrogate how the implementation of CRSE policies is a contested process, where racial ideologies, political interests, and individual beliefs come to shape how policy is enacted.

Authors

• Maya Kaul, University of Pennsylvania

• Meghan Comstock, University of Maryland

• Joy Esboldt, University of Delaware