Exploring Culturally Relevant/Responsive Pedagogy as Praxis in Teacher Education

For more than 30 years, education scholars have examined teaching practices and developed theories that center the cultural ways of being and knowing for historically marginalized youth (Au & Mason, 1983; Gay, 2000; Irvine, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2009; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). Collectively, these practices and theories are known as asset-based pedagogies in which students’ cultural frames of reference and funds of knowledge are viewed as strengths and drawn upon in the learning process. Unlike traditional teaching and schooling practices grounded in the history of assimilation (Williamson, Rhodes, & Dunson, 2007), asset-based pedagogies allow for deliberate efforts toward cultural understandings, critiques of social injustices, and liberatory action.

Teachers and teacher educators have been inspired by what it means to make teaching and learning relevant and responsive to the languages, literacies, and cultural practices of culturally and linguistically diverse students (Milner, 2011; Paris, 2012). Although meeting the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students has been a large focus of contemporary teacher education research (Villegas & Irvine, 2010; Zeichner, 2003), culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy (CRP) has been marginalized primarily due to curricula and pedagogical efforts that stem from neoliberal business models of school reform (Sleeter, 2012). Teacher education programs would benefit from a substantive examination of cumulative hegemonic reinforcements that are inherent in their policies and practices. Close examination of many teacher education programs reveals that the focus on issues of equity and CRP is typically superficial and not supported by practices, instruction, curriculum, policies, and dispositions of teacher educators (Boutte, 2012; Darling-Hammond, 2000). Like promising efforts in P–12 schools, teacher education programs need to be systemic in their implementation of CRP as well. Planning well-thought-out field experiences for preservice teachers (coupled with coursework that provides adequate information, strategies, and understandings of individual and structural inequities) is essential for helping prospective teachers learn to negotiate and succeed in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms (Bakari, 2003; Boutte, 2012; Kidd, Sanchez, & Thorp, 2008).

This special issue illuminates and chronicles teacher education efforts that center culturally relevant/responsive pedagogical practices for preservice and inservice educators. It also explicates successes, model programs (Boutte), and promising practices (Jackson & Bryson; Nash) as well as tensions (Miller & Starker-Glass; Howard) and future directions. We framed the research and new insights included in this special issue around Freire’s (1970/2000) notion of praxis defined as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (p. 51). In reflecting on the world of teacher education we questioned, In what ways are programs and teacher educators transforming the world and field by using CRP as a transformative means? What kinds of actions have been established to explore the complexities of using CRP in various settings?

Collectively, the articles in this special issue advocate for teacher educators to take an action-oriented stance and consider praxis that leads to transformation in the lives of students.

Insights from preservice and practicing teachers continue to show how racially and culturally unaware they are about the student populations they (will) teach. One misconception is that, because today’s preservice teachers are living in an era in which they can be virtually connected to any population across the globe, that opportunity for access somehow situates them within a postracial teaching framework. This is not typically the case. Hence, it is incumbent that teacher education programs and teacher educators consistently provide preservice and practicing teachers (both white and of color) with opportunities to interrogate their racial and cultural identities juxtaposed with the racial and cultural identities of the students they will teach. This needs to be done in ways that do not position the PK–12 students as “abnormal specimens,” to be feared or admired from afar. Rather, they should be seen as human beings with agency who are connected to families and communities contextualized within sociopolitical and sociohistorical spaces that impact their life and academic outcomes.

In the first article, Gloria Boutte explores the complexities involved in teaching equity-focused courses. The basis of her analysis is seven years of reflection on a required foundational course on CRP. She offers insight into how to navigate the development and sustainability of such a course in the context of a predominantly white institution (PWI) and in the field of early childhood. An important consideration of her work is the preparation, dispositions, and support of teacher educators who teach such courses.

In the second article, Tambra Jackson and Brandy Bryson offer an example of a project rich in potential for literally moving preservice teachers beyond their neighborhoods. They write about the influence of a community mapping project on preservice teachers’ development of the pedagogical tenets of CRP (conceptions of self and others, social relations, and conceptions of knowledge). The authors caution that it should not be viewed as a panacea but, rather, as a tool to assist preservice teachers in their journey toward becoming culturally relevant.

Next, Erin Miller and Tehia Starker-Glass argue that there is much to learn from white preservice teachers about the nature of whiteness in teacher education. Their analysis asks us to move beyond characterizing white students as resistant and angry, and to consider the ontology of students who do not demonstrate proficiency with course content in diversity courses. Their findings pose important considerations about why cognitive dissonance does not materialize for some white students when diversity/race is the center of instruction.

The fourth article, by Kindel Nash, demonstrates the importance and influence of centering CRP and race in teacher education coursework. The developing understandings around culture, dispositions, and racial discourse from the participants in her study offer specific areas to build on in teacher education coursework and professional development.

Finally, Joy Howard’s article reminds us that teaching about the genocide of Africans enslaved in the United States and across the diaspora requires a pedagogical stance in which teachers themselves must not only be knowledgeable about the topic but also empathetic, wrapped in an ethos of love.

Overall, this issue emphasizes that praxis/reflective action in teacher education with CRP at the center requires a commitment to social justice and to people affected by injustice. One cannot assume that, because of the geographical location of a university or school sites used for clinical placements, preservice teachers are interested and invested in learning to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students. We have to remember that the urban centers in which universities are located attract people from diverse cultural backgrounds; and even those who are from urban centers often live their lives in racially segregated spaces unable (an perhaps unwilling) to connect to and be transformed by the diversity of urban centers. Therefore, in addition to being in a teacher education program with a focus on urban education, the very location can further trouble and sometimes reify hegemony, structural racism, and white supremacy. Even when there is progress toward a culturally relevant stance in teacher education program and in P–12 schools, it remains a continuous journey. Teacher educators have to inform preservice teachers that there is no such thing as a finished product when engaging in this work—or in teaching in general. The minute we think we have arrived or have it figured out is the very minute when we think, say, or do something that has harmful, sometimes devastating implications on children of color or other minoritized groups that often remain unknown to us because we think we have it all figured out. For example, if teachers cannot see the connection between the African Holocaust (enslavement) and the present Black Lives Matter movement, then preservice teachers will not be positioned to teach from a culturally relevant/responsive stance but rather a “What’s wrong with you people? That happened 200 years ago. Get over it.” stance. This stance is assumed (often unintentionally) by educators who are seeking to be “progressive.” We hope that teacher educators find inspiration as well as programmatic and systemic strategies in this issue to engage in the kind of praxis needed to transform the world, P–12 schools, and teacher education programs.