Where Is the Critical Conversation in Teacher Education? A Critical Race Perspective

• In Event: 73.051 - Race(ing) Teacher Education: Critical Race Theory as a Transformative Practice in Teacher Education

Abstract

Using the Critical Race Theory methodology of counter-storytelling, this research presents a composite story to highlight and analyze how race and racism influence the preparation of future teachers in ways that typically sustain rather than challenge the Whiteness of education despite widespread self-reports of successful multicultural teacher education. While a great deal has been written about the need to better prepare future teachers for the multicultural realities of contemporary public schools, less examined is the modus operandi of race-based dominance in teacher education. Thus, this paper seeks to use an examination of the intersections of White racial domination and the daily business of teacher preparation as a learning tool for pushing forward endeavors to prepare all teachers to successfully teach all students.

Across U.S. teacher education there is widespread agreement on the importance and necessity of preparing future teachers for today’s increasingly socially diverse classrooms (Ball & Tyson, 2011; Cochran-Smith, Davis, & Fries, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 1999a, 1999b). Fortunately, most teacher preparation programs self-report that they are successfully preparing teachers who are culturally competent and qualified to meet the opportunities and challenges in today’s public schools (Bell, 2002; Gay, 2002; Gollnick, 1995). Unfortunately however, perhaps ironically, most teachers continue to be credentialed and enter contemporary public schools best prepared to teach primary English speaking White students who come from middle class, two-parent heterosexual, Protestant Christian homes, a demographic that is rapidly decreasing (Blanchett, 2006; Grant & Secada, 1990; Sleeter, 2001; Weiner, 2000).

This paper draws on the valuing of the experiential knowledge of people of color as a tenet of CRT to create a composite counter-story that examine the experiences of faculty in teacher education programs. Counter-stories serve as an entry point illustrating how subordinated people fight interlocking race, class, gender, and spiritual oppression while providing a forum for communities of color to call into question the hidden referent of White middle class communities as the standard by which all others are judged (Delgado, 1995; Dixson & Rousseau; 2006; Yosso, 2006). Toward the development of the counter-story, a variety of data sources are utilized including personal experiences and professional experiences of colleagues and friends of color, those published and those shared informally, who have challenged and thus become targets of Whiteness. An analysis of teacher preparation program documents (e.g., syllabi, meeting minutes, e-mails, department memos, and other written institutional artifacts), and formal and informal, individual and focus group interviews are included as data.

Teacher educators and vested others, individually and collectively, participate in and help to perpetuate the Whiteness of teacher education, intentionally or otherwise. Since individuals and groups make decisions to perpetuate Whiteness, very importantly, they can also make decisions to unmake Whiteness. The hope is to use this examination of the intersection between the Whiteness of teacher education and the daily business of preparing future teachers as learning tool for interrupting the seeming multicultural paradox of teacher preparation.

Authors

• Brenda Gayle Juarez, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Cleveland Hayes, University of La Verne