Educational research widely neglects the effectiveness of multicultural education courses among teacher candidates of color (TCCs). In this article, the experiences of six Black preservice teachers enrolled in a diversity course are explicated to unearth nuanced pedagogical missteps that hinder their development as students of asset pedagogies. Undergirded by the five principles of critical race theory, findings reveal that TCCs exhibit varied forms of resistance to monolithic content that frame minoritized groups in the deficit. In this particular study, Front Streeting refers to the vulnerability teachers of color experience when their minoritized identities are fetishized in diversity classrooms, through an expectation of confirmed lived experiences or expert knowledge of their demographic groups. The article explores the general privileging of whiteness in multicultural education curriculum and instruction while challenging teacher educators to reconsider how to engage students from diverse demographic groups. [Asset pedagogy, teacher education, multicultural education, critical race theory, front streeting, critical pedagogy] And a lot of time…yeah... they like…give their views on African Americans, but…they don't really put like…Caucasians in this. I mean….not the Caucasians in this class, But they don't really put like-Caucasians on Front Street.Frustrated with her peers dancing around the commonplace essentialism of Black life in curricular material and pedagogy, Imani called out the practice of compelling Black students to share lived experiences regardless of whether they feel comfortable doing it. Imani's outburst disrupted the polite criticisms offered by her friends when I asked, "Have you ever experienced anything in this class that offended you?" Evidently, she had. And the resounding echo of her sentiments by the other four Black women in the focal group interview validated her position.
Background: Teacher education programs (TEPs) have a mandate to prepare teachers qualified to educate culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. In addition, the demographic imperative compels TEPs to recruit preservice teachers from underrepresented communities; yet, just as youth of color are marginalized in schools, so too are teacher candidates of color (TCCs) marginalized in TEPs. Just as conventional TEP curriculums fail to decenter dominant social groups, so too do many teacher educators fail to enact asset-based pedagogy. A teacher quality gap and culturally rooted disenfranchisement persist. Purpose: I examine how TCCs are prepared to teach critically in demographically pluralistic schools and how one teacher educator of color attempts to close the teacher quality gap with a diverse preservice teacher cohort through the application of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). Although asset pedagogies are widely accepted as best practice in P–12 classrooms, there exists a dearth of research on their impact on postsecondary spaces. Moreover, multicultural education scholarship focused on the experiences of TCCs is limited. Research Design: Drawing from a larger critical ethnographic study of two diversity courses in an urban TEP, this article explicates one teacher educator’s application of CRP. I utilize the core tenets of CRP—academic achievement, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness—to bridge the gap between theory and practice through illustrations of intentional critical pedagogy. Data were analyzed from field notes, interviews of students and faculty, course assignments, readings, syllabi, evaluations, and other relevant artifacts. Results: Findings indicate that modeling CRP is paramount to developing culturally relevant pedagogues and that making known the interdependence of CRP’s three fundamental pillars is central to transformative learning experiences for preservice teachers. Although challenging, CRP at the postsecondary level is an achievable endeavor that requires increased faculty innovation, reflexivity, and humility. Conclusion: The project offers practical applications of CRP that are adaptable to most teacher preparation courses. Recommendations include a call for more studies that examine the use of asset-based pedagogies in higher education, especially in TEPs.
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