Let's Talk About Representation: Challenging and Affirming Disruptions to Preservice Teachers' Voices

• In Event: Purposeful Equity Work: Centering Intersectional Perspectives and Practices in Teacher Education

Abstract

To help foster equitable education systems for the 21st century, teacher-education courses need to guide preservice teachers to interrogate and question their beliefs surrounding representation in the classroom. This presentation explores how explicit talks about representation in a children’s literature course disrupted students' thinking, either affirming less salient or challenging more stable views about its importance. Findings highlight how two preservice teachers, one who identified as Latina and the other White, shifted their voices on how they saw themselves, their views, and values in regards to reading and children’s literature. The study illuminates the value of disruptions, and how the nature of students' disruptions are influenced by their racial/ ethnic identity.

Author

• Lauren Fletcher, University of Louisville