Teaching for diversity by troubling whiteness: strategies for classrooms in isolated white communities

Abstract

This paper explores strategies to help prepare pre‐service teachers from a predominantly white, relatively isolated island in Atlantic Canada to teach for diversity. The paper proposes a modified framework for ‘teacher identity development’ that pivots around three foci for enhancing teacher awareness and commitment to action: (1) relations of power and privilege; (2) youth culture and critical media literacy; (3) theory as an interpretive tool. These foci contribute to a ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ through which white pre‐service teachers confront their resistance to and complicity in the inequities that play themselves out in the school system. The ongoing capacity to sustain the emotional labour of confronting this discomfort is seen as critical to making a positive difference.

Keywords:

• teacher education
• diversity
• whiteness
• critical pedagogy