“Those who can’t hear must feel”: Confronting racism, privilege, and self with pre-service teachers

ABSTRACT

Teacher education courses on multicultural education, social justice, and international cross-cultural experiences have been used to increase pre-service teachers’ (PST) cross-cultural skills and awareness. Critical researchers have shown that without intentional facilitation and program design, PSTs hold onto (if not become more entrenched in) biases and stereotypes. Building on that literature, this article shares the author’s practices designed to help PSTs go “outside of [their] bubble” to actively engage with racism, privilege, and the self while participating in international programs. These practices emphasize the importance of emotional and uncomfortable experiences. The article shares the importance of learning about racism and privilege at home before travel, using multi-modal reflections and dialogue, and teacher educators and program leaders similarly engaging in critical self-reflection. Specific activities and stances are shared to encourage their implementation in other programs, as well as areas to improve how international programs engage PSTs in critical self-reflection.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional Resources

1. Kincaid, J. (1988). A small place. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Kincaid’s short but compelling A small place satirically takes on the perspective of a tourist to her homeland in the West Indies. Rather than discussing the island’s beauty or tourist locations, she pointedly unveils the tourist’s ignorance of the country’s social and political history. This book can be used to engage in critical reflection with pre-service teachers about the host country before and during travel

2. Kushner, J. (2016, March 22). The voluntourist’s dilemma. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/magazine/the-voluntourists-dilemma.html

This article recounts Kushner’s experiences of seeing swarms of “voluntourists,” or vacationers who add local volunteering to their itinerary while traveling, while working as a reporter in Haiti. The article asks questions of the long-term sustainability of short-term volunteering projects that do not include capacity building or a recognition of actual needs in the local community. This article can be used to ask questions about service-learning or other types of volunteering done during international teacher education field experiences.

3. Sharma, S., Phillion, J., Rahatzad, J., & Sasser, H. L. (2014). Internationalizing teacher education for social justice: Theory, research, and practice. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

This edited volume provides theoretical and empirical discussions of how internationalization efforts have manifested in teacher education programs mostly in Western contexts. Collectively, the chapters in this volume stress the importance of a process-orientation in considering the impact of internationalization efforts in the USA and abroad. The chapters also share critically and globally minded pedagogical practices that can be integrated throughout teacher education programs and courses.