Counter-narrative as method: race, policy and research for teacher education

Abstract

The authors argue for a research and conceptual agenda that complicates and disrupts common narratives in teacher education that have serious implications for race. Building on the pivotal work of legal scholar Derrick Bell and through a critical race theory (CRT) lens, this article challenges researchers to broaden and complexify traditional ideologies related to: (1) characteristics of ideal teachers recruited into the field; (2) the amount of time teachers should be expected to remain in the field through alternative programs such as Teach for America; (3)weight placed on teacher entrance examinations; (4)racial diversity of P-12 teachers; (5)racial and ethnic makeup of teacher educators; and (6)over-reliance on subject matter knowledge in teacher preparation to the exclusion of other aspects of learning to teach. The authors argue given the present racial divide in schools between teachers and students it is imperative for teacher education programs to complicate and intensify the utility of race in their recruitment, retention, and support of teacher education practices and policies. The authors offer a counter narrative framework and agenda to advance policy and research through a CRT lens.

Keywords:

• critical race theory
• race
• research
• narrative
• counter-narrative
• equity
• teaching
• teacher education
• instructional practice
• policy

Notes

1. Derrick Bell was born on November 6, 1930 and died on October 5, 2011.

2. We are not only focusing on traditional university teacher education in our analyses. We focus on both traditional/university-based teacher education as well as alternative teacher education programs.

3. Dating back to the pivotal and seminal work of Du Bois (1903) and Woodson (1933), researchers and theorists have attempted to unravel and to understand the salience of race and education. Race is not a myopic, linear, simple construct. For as long as discussions have focused on race and education, scholars have been attempting to figure out just what race is and how it can be studied and conceptualized to improve educational experiences of those who have historically been marginalized and undereducated in schools across the US. According to many scholars, race is physically, socially, legally, and historically constructed. The meanings, messages, results, and consequences of race are developed and constructed by human beings, not by some predetermined set of laws or genetics. Genetically and biologically, individuals are more the same than they are different.

4. Several additional important principles of CRT in education exist. For a more exhaustive list, see Ladson-Billings (1998) and Tate (1997).

5. This critique of the (under-)theorization of teacher education is not to suggest that theories and conceptual tools do not exist and are not prevalent in the field to make sense of and to theorize about matters of race, equity, and social justice in teacher education (see, for instance, Banks, 2006; McAllister & Irvine, 2000; Tatum, 1992; Sleeter, 2008).

6. Ladson-Billings (2006) concluded there is no achievement gap but rather an education debt that our education system owes to so many students, especially those living in poverty that it has underserved. The education debt carries several important features according to Ladson-Billings (2006): historical debt, economic debt, sociopolitical debt, and moral debt. Ladson-Billings challenged educational researchers to re-conceptualize and move beyond the achievement gap discourse. Irvine (2010) explained that a perceived achievement gap is the result of other gaps that seductively coerce people into believing that an achievement gap actually exists. Rather than focusing on a perceived achievement gap, from her analyses, Irvine recommended that attention should be placed on closing other gaps that exist in education, which cause researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and administrators to believe there is an achievement gap. For Irvine, other gaps that shape our belief in an achievement gap include: ‘the teacher quality gap; the teacher training gap; the challenging curriculum gap; the school funding gap; the digital divide gap; the wealth and income gap; the employment opportunity gap; the affordable housing gap; the health care gap; the nutrition gap; the school integration gap; and the quality childcare gap’ (xii). From Irvine’s perspective, when we address the many other gaps that structurally and systemically exist in educational practice, achievement results can improve.