Pre-service teachers engage young children in equity work

ABSTRACT

All too often pre-service teachers are not well prepared to discuss issues of racism, oppression and bias with their future students. Teacher educators can prepare their students for this work by developing projects that focus on addressing equity and racial justice. This article describes one such project in which a group of twenty early childhood education students in a social studies methods course along with first and second grade children worked together on a project designed to help them engage with issues of racial inequity. In this semester long exploration of the life of racial justice activist Modjeska Simkins the pre-service teachers utilized justice-orientated teaching to build, integrate, and enact curriculum around issues of social justice. The pre-service teachers reported gaining confidence in using this pedagogy to engender an understanding of equity, address issues of societal inequities, and work with their future students in confronting these issues. The article contains a description of the teaching model and its application to guide teacher educators to become familiar with justice-orientated teaching and embark on efforts to engage in such practices in their own courses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.