Exploring Whiteness and Multicultural Education with Prospective Teachers

Abstract

In this article, I describe how I initiate an examination of whiteness with predominantly white students in teacher preparation programs by the use of group collages-a pedagogical tool that combines visual, textual, and oral representations of subject matter. In doing so, I illustrate one of the ways teacher educators can provide students with opportunities to (1) "see" whiteness as an integral aspect of educational discourse, (2) fix their gaze on themselves as a collective racial group, and (3) engage in processes aimed at changing beliefs, stereotypes, and practices that reproduce social and educational injustice.

Citizenship and race in second-language education

“…Given the persistence of (and recent increase in) racism within Canada and elsewhere it is no longer appropriate to remain polite. Of course, as Kubota (2002) and McIntyre (2002) have noted, politeness stifles meaningful debate within academia and has never really been appropriate in this regard.…”

Whitened Geographies and Education Inequalities in Southern Chile

“…Scholars suggest the need to interrogate the 'culture of whiteness' in schools and its double hegemonic bind by which racial difference is constructed as a scientific/ natural category and marked as other in relation to whitened norms of neutrality, transparency and universality, assumed to be non-racial (McLaren 1995, Giroux 1997, McIntyre 2002. Posing as an unmarked or invisible category, whiteness thereby facilitates non-ethnic (and uncritical) explanations for enduring educational differentials, usually premised on 'culturalist' differences (Reay et al 2007, Hollinsworth 2014.…”

Clashes within one teacher’s racial logic: space of possibles?

“…West, 2001), there are several research studies that show the importance of understanding the effects of teachers' racial beliefs in their pedagogical practices (e.g. Arber, 2008;Bergh, Denessen, Hornstra, Voeten, & Holland, 2010;Gere, Buehler, Ballavis, & Haviland, 2009;Greene & Abt-Perkins, 2003;Kubota & Lin, 2006Lewis, Ketter, & Fabos, 2001;McIntyre, 2002;McVee, 2004). Gere et al (2009) showed in their study how different prospective secondary school teachers and researchers encountered and interpreted culturally responsive pedagogy very differently.…”

“…According to these researchers, different positions taken by different educators in regards to how they interpreted culturally responsive pedagogy were largely shaped by their raced consciousnesses. Using collage exercises as a medium, McIntyre (2002) examined racial identities of white preservice teachers and showed how their racial identities inform their perspectives of teaching and multicultural education. She concludes that seeing whiteness as the "center stage problem" (p. 46) and focusing on white teachers as a collective racial group will help them engage in the kinds of transformation necessary in working against (as opposed to just talking about) inequality in education.…”