Dialogue 4: Engaging in Critical Praxis in Educator Preparation

• In Event: Beyond Histories of Compliance in Early Childhood Education: Centering Disability and Cultivating Freedom

Abstract

Grappling with histories of ableism in early childhood classrooms also requires that we question the uncritical teaching of “best practices” within higher education as we prepare early educators and related service providers. In the current political moment—just as in moments throughout history (Baynton, 2001; Erevelles, 2002; Goodwin, 2003)—ableism is used to devalue the capacities and contributions of those who threaten white supremacy. In this dialogue, contributors will share ways they engage in critical praxis—ongoing reflection and action aimed at transforming existing power dynamics (Freire, 1970)—in their work with future early educators. Contributors will share: (a) reflections on their own compliance with early childhood pedagogical “scripts” and narrate how they’ve drawn lessons from two social movements- disability justice and abolition—to experiment outside existing scripts as teacher educators; (b) examples of how they have used an innovative framework for disrupting ableism and anti-Blackness in early childhood teacher education; and (c) examples of how students used collaging to disrupt ableism and linguicism in a speech-language pathology program and envision liberated early childhood spaces in which young children’s entire linguistic repertoires are valued and sustained.

Higher education, broadly, has been inundated with narratives about increasing efficiency and anti-DEI efforts that are shuttering support offices for multiply-marginalized students and scholars and rescinding resources for education research (Democracy Forward, 2025; Gretzinger et al., 2025). Teacher education programs, specifically, have recently faced federal grant cancellations that resulted in programs being shut down that were intended to diversify the teaching workforce and support teacher candidates in grappling with inequities our field has perpetuated (U.S. Department of Education, 2025). It is important that we recognize these efforts as being undergirded by ableism, in addition to other systems of oppression (e.g., white supremacy) to address how we have gotten to this point and imagine otherwise. Importantly, teacher educators and scholars are resisting these efforts and building coalitions grounded in interdependence, harm reduction, and hope for an imagined future (e.g., Democracy Forward, 2025). The work discussed in this dialogue represents additional examples of subversive turns, offering ways teacher educators and scholars can individually and collectively grapple with the histories that led us here and resist these rollbacks on progress. How do we engage in “unforgetting” histories of ableism within the university classroom in the current political moment, as policies and program restructuring at every level try to obscure these histories and undermine early educators’ ability to resist them? How might we grapple with our own complicity and resist our own devaluation in coalition? Participants will reflect on ways to redefine the goals of early education within the university, take action to change norms and challenge standardization, and center the knowledges and priorities of multiply-marginalized children and families as we prepare educators and scholars.

Authors

• Hailey Love, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Maggie Beneke, University of Washington

• Lilly Padia, Erikson Institute

• Crystasany R. Turner, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

• Maria Rosa Brea-Spahn, New York University

• Xigrid Soto-Boykin, Arizona State University