These American lives: becoming a culturally responsive teacher and the ‘risks of empathy’

Abstract

Do teacher candidates who identify as White and European American think about issues of difference in ways that vary distinctly from teacher candidates who identify as Latina/o or Hispanic? In this article, we engage with the literature on culturally relevant teaching that suggests teacher candidates of color are more likely to have some of the characteristics of culturally responsive teachers than are White teacher candidates when they enter teacher preparation programs. By comparing the attitudes of teacher candidates from a majority Hispanic-serving university and a university that serves mostly White and European American students, we question the idea that certain bodies are coterminous with particular ideologies.

Keywords:

• culturally responsive teaching (CRT)
• multicultural education
• United States
• teacher preparation
• teacher dispositions

Notes

^aThis Texas city is part of a border region that includes another city with an estimated 2007 population of 1,301,452, which makes the two research locales quite comparable.

1. Study participants were asked to self identify their ethnicity and or race with no prompts, and among those of Mexican descent, the majority chose ‘Hispanic’ and one person chose ‘Latina.’ Following the tradition within anthropology to refer to participants as they refer to themselves (Gonzalez 2001), we have elected to use the term Hispanic and have used Latina once.

2. White is the identity category that all of the students of European American descent selected for themselves.

3. The experience of Latinos in the US makes the conceptual distinctions between race and ethnicity complex. Goldberg (1993) suggests the category ‘ethnorace’ can bring both aspects of identity together, highlighting two categories that are essential to understanding Latino experience in the US. Alcoff (2006) echoes Goldberg’s use of ‘ethnorace’ as it prevents White Latinos and White European Americans from thinking that the category of race does not apply to them.

4. Additional materials that teacher educators might use include: (1) Stories for Change http://storiesforchange.net; (2) Digital Story Center, http://storycenter.org; (3) Los Cenzontles, http://themockingbirds.info and www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130866714; (4) Theatre of Urban Youth: Youth and Schooling in Dangerous Times, Kathleen Gallagher, 2007, University of Toronto Press; (5) Two for One, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Two-for-One-An-Urban-Drama/290201197338; (6) Youth in their own Words, http://bayareabibliophile.wordpress.com/category/urban-drama/; (7) Global Debate, http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/debate-sharpens-minds-of-urban-youth.html; (8) Boys Will Be Men http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/boys.html; (9) Violence among Urban Youth, http://wn.com/Effects_of_Violence_Among_Urban_Youth_in_Oakland; (10) Soul talk, urban youth poetry: A writing project featuring syracuse city school district students, M. Kristina Montero ed., 2008. Syracuse University Press; (11) Unheard voices, http://courses.unt.edu/nunezjanes/voices/voices.html; (12) The Class (2008) A French film about a teacher in an urban school.