Striving for Critical Hope With Teacher Candidates of Color at a Predominantly White Institution

• In Event: Teachers of Color: Experiences Along the Pipeline

Abstract

Teachers of Color comprise just 18% of the teaching force even though research has demonstrated that many of these teachers of Color choose teaching because they want to support the educational transformation of their own communities and act as racial justice advocates. The current study seeks to examine the efforts of one teacher education program to recruit and retain teacher candidates of Color through engagement with community stakeholders and the use of programmatic and curricular interventions informed by a framework of critical hope (Duncan-Andrade, 2009). Findings suggests that while programmatic/curricular interventions aimed at recruiting and retaining teacher candidates of Color had overall positive impact on participants’ experiences, not all students reported experiences that lent themselves to critical hope equally.

Author

• Terry Kyle Flennaugh, Michigan State University