White Preservice Teachers and Antiracist Practice: Enabling Trajectories of Learning and Identity in Teacher Preparation

ABSTRACT

Preparing white antiracist teachers is an enduring challenge for teacher education. In this article, I demonstrate that white preservice teachers need ongoing access to a full range of learning and identity resources if they are to develop strong connections with antiracism and develop as antiracist teachers. I present data from an 18-month study that illustrates how white preservice teachers’ trajectories of learning and identity are shaped by their access to and engagement with distinct types of learning and identity resources. I discuss the significance of specific resources and identify factors that seem to influence the availability and uptake of such resources by white preservice teachers. I argue that an explicitly resource-rich orientation to preservice teacher learning can be leveraged by teacher educators to ensure that white preservice teachers have access to and engage with the types of resources needed to form a strong identification with antiracist practice and develop the capacity to enact it in the classroom.

KEYWORDS:

• Preservice teachers
• race
• teacher learning
• antiracist teaching

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

IRB

This study and its protocols were approved by the Social and Educational/Behavioral Science Institutional Review Board of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2019–1436).

Notes

1. I use the terms “students of Color” and “people of Color” to refer to nonwhite individuals and groups who experience a shared imbalance of power relative to white individuals. I use a capital letter to reflect membership in groups that share specific histories, cultures, and kinships (e.g., Black teachers). I do not capitalize white because it does not describe a group of people bound by a set of common experiences outside of acts of oppression.

2. Of the three consented TEs, one is a faculty associate designated as the cohort leader and two are graduate-student field supervisors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kimberly Oamek

Kimberly Oamek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.