Special issue of TEJ: what is to be done with curriculum and educational foundations’ critical knowledges? New qualitative research on conscientizing preservice and in-service teachers

ABSTRACT

In this essay, we provide a brief introductory statement to the special issue of Teaching Education titled What is To Be Done with Curriculum and Educational Foundations’ Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers. In our introductory statement, we describe the specific aim and broad purposes of the special issue and characterize its contents. Our specific aim with the special issue is to advance the conscientization of preservice and in-service teachers via critical pedagogies and race-based epistemologies. Our broad purposes are to (a) resist the ascendant, whitened, and Eurocentric fascism via our collective pedagogical labor in teacher education and (b) reorient curriculum and educational foundations' critical knowledges toward institutional praxis. We conclude our introductory statement by characterizing the contents of the special issue for teacher educators and teacher education researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical pedagogy
• race-based epistemologies
• teacher education
• professional development
• curriculum studies
• educational foundations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We think our work here squarely adds to Dr Kridel’s reading of curriculum archives, especially his analysis of Bergamo Curriculum Conference programs of the mid 1970s through the year 2000 which, for Dr. Kridel (1999), evidenced more than anything else, an infusion of critical theory into teacher education practices. We hope this special issue extends Dr Kridel’s concerns with an historicized vision of curriculum and his concerns for teaching education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James C. Jupp

James C. Jupp, a White, middle-class male, spent 18 years teaching and learning in de facto segregated schools in the Southwest experimenting with culturally relevant and critical pedagogies before moving on to preparing teachers in the South and in Texas. He is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, the largest Hispanic Serving Institution in the continental US.

Ann Mogush Mason

Ann Mogush Mason is a white, upper-middle class cis woman from the Midwest whose early studies in sociology and her teaching background in elementary and early childhood education contribute to her current work preparing elementary school teachers who are sociopolitically conscious and who understand teaching as a political act. She currently serves as Program Director of Elementary Education at the University of Minnesota.

Theodorea Regina Berry

Amanda Morales is a biracial Latina from the rural mid-West whose research and practice builds on her prior work in teacher preparation, recruitment and retention, and diversity leadership affiliated with the Center for Intercultural, Multilingual Advocacy at Kansas State University. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Multicultural Education at University of Nebraska.

Amanda Morales

Theodorea Regina Berry, a Black American middle-class woman of Caribbean and Cherokee heritage, spent nearly 20 years researching, teaching, and learning in socially, politically, and culturally diverse communities in the US and Germany. She currently serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies at San José State University in the California State University System.