Decolonizing Teacher Education: Humanizing Pedagogies as a Way Forward

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Perspectives on Teacher Preparation Programs and the Faculty Within Them

Abstract

In an era when standardization, surveillance, and ideological colonization are increasingly digitized, globalized, and proliferated across educational institutions, teacher-education practices can become swept up in what Callahan (1964) called the “cult of efficiency.” Such a model, which centers a Western approach to the efficient delivery of “content” at scale, can dehumanize the experience of education for all, while specifically silencing the voices and perspectives of those who have been historically subjected to colonizing educational practices (Paris & Alim, 2017). The purpose of this paper is to push back on this notion by examining practices of humanizing, culturally-responsive, and critical pedagogies developed and enacted by three early-career teacher-educators and educational researchers across institutional contexts.

Authors

• Rohit Mehta, California State University - Fresno

• Earl Aguilera, California State University - Fresno

• Catharyn Crane Shelton, Northern Arizona University