Toward Shared Commitments for Teacher Education: Transformative Justice as an Ethical Imperative

Abstract

In this article, we assert that it is our responsibility as teacher educators to commit to fostering justice and equity in and through teacher education as an imperative. To document ingrained injustices across time and space, we engaged in critically reading the landscape of teacher education in the US, guided by the questions: What are the responsibilities and commitments of teacher education as a field? and How can teacher education become answerable to the communities it serves? Seeking to redress how justice and answerability have been peripherally positioned in and by teacher education, we propose shared commitments grounded in transformative justice to ensure that teacher education commits to interrupting its role in the re-production of inequities. We thus argue that such shared commitments have the potential to forge a path toward equity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional Resources

1. Haddix, M. M. (2017). Diversifying teaching and teacher education: Beyond rhetoric and toward real change. Journal of Literacy Research, 49, 141–149. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X16683422

After reflecting on her own experience of never having a teacher who looked like her or who shared her cultural heritage “outside of the Black women educators” in her family (Haddix, 2017, p. 141), in this article Marcelle Haddix critically analyzes new teacher diversity initiatives and problematizes the call for more teachers of color. As she examines the historical conditions that influence the presence (and the absence) of teachers of color, she addresses important questions and offers an “agenda toward change” (p. 145).

2. Sleeter, C. E. (2017). Critical race theory and the whiteness of teacher education. Urban Education, 52, 155–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085916668957

In this article, Christine Sleeter uses three tenets of critical race theory to critique the common pattern of teacher education focusing on preparing predominantly White teacher candidates to work with racially and ethnically diverse students. Specifically engaging with “the tenets of interest convergence, the myth of neutrality and color blindness, and experiential knowledge,” she parses “out various ways in which Whiteness is deeply embedded in systems of teacher education” (p. 165). In doing so, she argues that much about teacher education needs to be changed.

3. Souto-Manning, M. (2019). Toward praxically-just transformations: Interrupting racism in teacher education. Journal of Education for Teaching, 45, 97–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2019.1550608

In this mixed methods study, through learnings from a survey of US university-based teacher educators who constructed student teaching placements in schools serving students of color as problems, Mariana Souto-Manning unveils how the concept of quality cloaks the re-production of racism in and through teacher education. Seeking to address how teacher education is implicated in the re-production of racial inequities, as a teacher educator, Souto-Manning partnered with teachers in the most segregated public school district in the US to transform student teaching. Findings from this study shed light on the power and possibility of Freirean culture circles for transforming teacher education.

Notes

¹ We employ the term “intersectionally minoritized” instead of “minority” because “[a]s a characterization of people, ‘minority’ is stigmatizing and often numerically inaccurate…. ‘Minoritized’ more accurately conveys the power relations and processes by which certain groups are socially, economically, and politically marginalized within the larger society” (McCarty, 2002, p. xv). Combining minoritized with “intersectional” acknowledges “prejudice stemming from the intersections of racist ideas and other forms of bigotry, such as sexism, classism, ethnocentrism, and homophobia” (Kendi, 2016, p. 5).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spencer Foundation (Award 201700096).

Notes on contributors

Mariana Souto-Manning

Mariana Souto-Manning is Professor of Early Childhood Education and Teacher Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Lawrence “Torry” Winn is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in Education in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis.