Putting antiracism into action in teacher education: Developing and implementing an Antiracist Pedagogy Course Audit

ABSTRACT

Underscored by a long overdue call to challenge racism in teacher education (TE), we set forth to examine our own university TE classrooms to understand how we are both perpetuating and disrupting systemic racism and decentering whiteness, such that we can move toward sustained antiracist pedagogy for ourselves, our institutions, teacher candidates, and school communities. Undergirded by Critical Race Theory, this paper presents the development of an Antiracist Pedagogy Course Audit– a tool to develop instructor capacity to engage in critically reflective practices in five key areas: 1) Instructor Critical Consciousness; 2) Understanding Students’ Backgrounds and Experiences; 3) Course Readings and Content; 4) Classroom Learning Environment; and 5) Assignments and Assessments. We describe early implementation, process-oriented mechanisms for adaption, and applications of the tool in an early childhood education teacher education course.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We capitalize the terms “Black” and “White” throughout the manuscript. We recognize the on-going discussion about whether or not these terms, especially “White” ought to be capitalized (Dumas, 2016). With a particular focus on antiracism, we note the ideas of the Center for the Study of Social Policy (2020), “the detachment of “White” as a proper noun allows White people to sit out of conversations about race and removes accountability from White people’s and White institutions’ involvement in racism,” (Nguyen & Pendleton, 2020). We do not capitalize “blackness” and “antiblackness” throughout based on Dumas (2016) ideas that these refer “not to Black people per se, but to a social construction of racial meaning,” (p. 13). Similarly, we do not capitalize “whiteness” throughout as it too is a social construction of racial meaning.

2. The “we” of this paper includes Black and White faculty, as well as several Students of Color who contributed to the multi-faceted process of developing this audit. Three White faculty (Call-Cummings, Shaklee, Vesely) drafted the original audit, sought and received feedback from two Black colleagues (Frank, View) and three White colleagues (DeMulder, Dodman, Letiecq), as well as three doctoral Students of Color (Bethea, Chen, N’Diaye) who comprised the board of the doctoral student organization in the college. The initial implementation of the audit was conducted by a White faculty member (Vesely) and a Black doctoral student (Sansbury).

3. While our paper focuses particularly on the sociohistorical context related to Black individuals and families, and even more specifically on the experiences of Black educators given this heightened time of antiblackness, we intend this audit to support early childhood teacher educators in creating antiracist classrooms that support all BIPOC preservice teachers.

4. There was no clear author attached to this audit; however, the authors found a link between the “Self-equity Audit: Looking in the Mirror” tool and David Summergrad. The authors were unable to verify Summergrad’s authorship as he is deceased.

5. Dr. Jones is a pseudonym.

6. 3: good for now, revisit in a year.

2: needs attention before the course is taught next

1: needs attention before the course is taught next and I need help with this/I am not sure how to do this