Awakening Teachers’ Capacities for Social Justice With/In Arts-Based Inquiries

Abstract

Social justice-oriented teacher education can guide preservice teachers toward greater critical sociocultural knowledge, analytic skills, social responsibility, and commitment to act in the interest of providing all students with high quality educational experiences. This qualitative case study examines how arts-based inquiries in social justice-oriented teacher education can provide the necessary generative spaces for developing preservice teachers’ critical sociocultural knowledge. Data were drawn from student interviews and reflective papers across four sections of a course employing collaborative, arts-based inquiry. Findings highlight the cumulative knowledge, pleasure, anxiety, confrontation with material and symbolic bodies, and self-transformations that can develop from art practices and help to awaken preservice teachers’ critical consciousness for teaching for social justice.

Acknowledgments

The authors extend a special note of thanks to B. Stephen Carpenter for his thoughtful feedback on an early draft of this article.

Notes

1. Pseudonyms are used throughout this article.