It's Time to Think About Us: Perspectives From Black Women Preservice Teachers

• In Event: For Us by Us: Sustaining Black Girls and Women in Education

Abstract

Purpose and Introduction
Calls to increase diversity in the teacher workforce emphasize benefits to students without strategic consideration of minoritized teachers’ needs. Traditionally, teacher education programs have focused multicultural classes and diversity strategies on “neutralizing dangerous white women'' (Cherry-McDaniel, 2019), without examining the needs of Black teachers. To avoid that pitfall, I investigate the affordances and limitations of a counterspace for Black women pre-service teachers (BWPSTs) in teacher education programs across the United States to support their development as educators. Specifically, I interrogate this counterspace’s potential to support healing among BWPSTs.

Theoretical Framework
Black teachers often experience multiple sources of marginalization, not only through race, but possibly through gender, socioeconomic status, and/or sexuality. Using a lens of intersectionality, this study pushes for a fuller view of what it would mean to support BWPSTs by looking at how “race, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and age operate not as discrete and mutually exclusive entities, but build on each other and work together” (Hill et al., 2016). Teacher education is an entrypoint for bringing newcomers into the profession. If we desire a more diverse teaching force, we would benefit from understanding how pre-service programs can attend to teachers’ intersectional identities at this critical transition. Historically, teacher education programs have primarily focused on the challenges White teachers encounter entering urban school contexts, ignoring the development of BWPSTs (Sleeter, 2001; Gist, 2014). To improve support for this group of teachers of color, this study seeks to reimagine teacher education in ways that center BWPSTs.

Research Design
This qualitative social design research study investigates the unique needs of ten BWPSTs in teacher preparation programs across the U.S. The research question leading this inquiry is: How can teacher education be redesigned to support and sustain Black women teacher candidates working in US schools? The question is being investigated using ethnographic data gathered from the Black+Woman+Teacher (BWT) group, where ten Black women participants engaged in monthly virtual counterspace sessions, along with three semi-structured individual interviews.

Results and Significance
In the final interview, each woman was asked what advice she would give to her program to better support Black women. From preliminary analysis, two major themes emerged: 1) the need for community 2) the need for programmatic transparency. Participants reported feelings of loneliness particularly at predominantly white institutions. They sought out groups like BWT to have a community of women that understand their work load, understand their cultural and social experiences, and a space to push their thinking and ask questions. Additionally, many of the women discussed their programs’ use of phrases such as social justice and anti-racism in recruitment materials, however, the practices of professors, administrators, and other candidates do not reflect these phrases. These two themes are important as teacher education programs examine their practices as they continue to recruit Black women and other minoritized teachers into potentially harmful environments.

Author

• Mariah Deans Harmon, Vanderbilt University