To Let Learn or Not to Let Learn: Negotiating Tensions in Preservice Teacher Education

Abstract

The changing demographics of America's schools and the disproportionate achievement levels of students of color, as compared to their White counterparts, have contributed to a growing consensus among educational scholars that the preparation of teachers for diverse groups of students is critical to the future of an American democracy. As a teacher educator teaching a stand-alone diversity course to secondary education students in an undergraduate teacher education program, I asked myself, what does it mean to teach for diversity and social justice? What characterizes social justice pedagogy, and in what ways might such pedagogy be articulated in classroom practice? In this article, I discuss and analyze the tensions that I experienced as I negotiated what it meant to teach for social justice using dialogical methods, as opposed to didactic ones, and the ways in which these negotiations influenced curriculum, pedagogy, classroom practice, and student learning.