Critical race theory and the teacher education curriculum: challenging understandings of racism, whiteness, and white supremacy

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate how preservice teachers (PSTs) respond and reflect in a University course that centres Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) in the United States. Using artefacts from 100 PSTs class assignments we found two main themes. PST display a surface level consciousness which contributed to some contradictions in their responses and a discourse of whiteness was difficult for the PST in this study to decentre. Additionally, through this course, some of the students began to raise their consciousness critically in promising ways. Our findings illuminate the importance of PSTs having more than one course to wrestle with contradictions, their own deficit thinking, and to foster the new understandings. Additionally, this study displays the importance of having teacher educators in teacher education who develop their own critical consciousness in order to teach courses that decentre whiteness.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical race theory
• critical whiteness studies
• teacher education
• preservice teachers

Notes

1. It should be noted that not all instructors teach through a CRT/CWS lens, but they do use this reader that centres social justice as teacher leadership.

2. We use the definition of critical social justice that, “recognise[s] that society is stratified (i.e. divided and unequal) in significant and far reaching ways along social group lines that include race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Critical social justice recognises inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e., as structural), and actively seeks to change this. (Sensoy and DiAngelo, 2012, xviii)