"Feeling Professional:" Teacher Preparation Programs in the Face of Ethnic Studies Reforms

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session Three
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT051 (Friday)

Abstract

This paper examines how a Southern California teacher preparation program incorporates justice-oriented reforms into existing structures and practice. Drawing on organizational theory, I analyze how faculty and pre-service teachers negotiate the state's recent Ethnic Studies graduation mandate against typical logics of accountability and expertise. Ethnographic observation and interviews reveal an emerging organizational terrain of affective, moral, and civic negotiation, extending typical theoretical models of reform that emphasize technical, cognitive, and functional translation. In doing so, the study shows how teacher education programs act as key sites within the lifecycle of school reform by translating ideological aims into recognizable forms of institutional change.

Author

• Amy Gong Liu, University of California - Irvine