Not a ‘Who Done it’ Mystery: On How Whiteness Sabotages Equity Aims in Teacher Preparation Programs

Abstract

This essay interrogates the seeming diversity paradox of multicultural teacher education and its connection to the White world of education. Applying a critical race methodology and concepts from critical whiteness studies and the Black radical tradition, the authors draw from their combined lived experiences as teacher educators at institutions located across the U.S. as an important source of critical knowledge about the White world of education to highlight specific, representative moments of practices typical in many U.S. teacher preparation programs. The authors' purpose is to critically examine these moments of teacher preparation practices as one way to better understand and push toward ameliorating the mechanisms and modus operandi of Whiteness in teacher preparation and expose how equity-oriented aims are daily sabotaged; it is not to blame individuals or programs or to promote White defensiveness or guilt. For multicultural teacher education to realize its equity-oriented goals, the realities of active complicity in protecting the Whiteness embedded within teacher preparation must be exposed and challenged. The persistent Whiteness in education is not accidentally or coincidentally [re]created behind the backs of individuals and programs-as if it were a kind of "who done it" mystery, despite historical collective cries of [White] innocence.

Interrogating Democracy, Education, and Modern White Supremacy: A (Re)Constitution Toward Racially Just Democratic Teacher Education

“…Even in acknowledging the catering to white emotionalities in teacher education (Matias, 2016), providing a myriad of teaching strategies to support white female teachers (Emdin, 2016; Hancock & Warren, 2016; Howard, 2016; Moore et al, 2017), and admitting to the overwhelming presence of whiteness in teacher education (B. G. Harris et al, 2020; Levine-Rasky, 2000; Sleeter, 2016, 2001), white teachers continue to display racially biased attitudes, dominant white ideology, and/or straight-out white racism (see Cross, 2005; Evans-Winters & Twyman Hoff, 2011; Picower, 2009).…”

Rhetorically speaking: on white preservice teachers’ failure to imagine an anti-racist English education

“…Recent studies, too, have noted how whiteness in teacher education is often sustained by emotional responses such as guilt, fear and shame by white PSTs (Matias, 2016;Matias et al, 2016;Sleeter, 2016) and by white teacher educators (Harris et al, 2019) in conversations around their whiteness and their white privilege. Matias (2016) points out that the visible and visceral reactions of white PSTs mean that teacher educators focus more on the emotional needs of White students rather than those of students of color, who are often socially penalized for showing emotion by being labeled "too angry" or "too sensitive."…”

The Social Justice Teaching Collaborative: A Collective Turn Towards Critical Teacher Education

“…Despite these calls to action, there are still few teacher preparation programs centering social justice across coursework (Liu & Ball, 2019), and even fewer programs that require courses in race and ethnicity (Cook, 2015), gender and sexuality (Gorski et al, 2013), or disability studies (Annamma, 2015). In general, race, ethnicity, and whiteness continue to be undertheorized in teacher education (Harris et al, 2019).…”