In the Pursuit of Transformative Justice in the Education of Teacher Educators

While the education of teachers has a longstanding history, only recently have scholars argued the need to educate teacher educators (Cochran-Smith, 2003; Goodwin et al., 2014; Stillman & Anderson, 2014). Building on these calls, in this guest-edited Special Issue of The New Educator entitled, “Rethinking the Preparation of Teacher Educators: Centering Equity and Justice,” we aim to draw attention to the particular framing and focus surrounding the education of teacher educators. We begin from a place of recognition that education is inherently political, and that notions of neutrality and objectivism serve to cloak the interests of those in power and to keep hierarchies of inequity in place (Freire, 2000). Nowhere are these issues of power and hierarchy more prevalent than in teacher education, where the “overwhelming presence of whiteness” (Sleeter, 2001) – in terms of demographics, content, and values (Milner, Pearman, & McGee, 2013) – persists, despite growing awareness of and efforts to disrupt it.

Within this context, we understand that the education of teacher educators can either function “to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it,” or it can become “the practice of freedom” wherein people “deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (Freire, 2000, p. 26). Accordingly, in the education of teacher educators, what is taught (and not taught), the perspectives and values centered (and decentered), the bodies that occupy such programs (and those missing), the tools and materials included (and excluded), and the communities engaged (and those dismissed) are all political choices. Purposefully centering equity and justice in the education of teacher educators, thus, becomes crucial, lest the field perpetuate and reify inequity and injustice.

As Freire (1996) reminds us, education does not necessarily change the world. Education can change human beings – the way they read themselves and their roles in the worlds they inhabit. Only when education affords human beings a critical transformation in their understandings, identities, and actions can they engage in transforming the world. As teacher educators and teacher education researchers, we see our roles as helping to transform the education of equity- and justice-oriented teacher educators. Yet, this depends on the field committing to preparation pathways that privilege teacher educators’ learning about how to engage in equity- and justice-oriented pedagogical approaches. This imperative requires moving beyond breaking the silence regarding the education of teacher educators (Cochran-Smith, 2003; Goodwin et al., 2014; Stillman & Anderson, 2014) and engaging with conceptual and empirical scholarship that helps the field to understand and transform how teacher educators educate teachers who can fashion more hopeful and just tomorrows.

Centering the education of teacher educators, through theoretically rich and methodologically varied scholarship, this special issue of The New Educator addresses the following question: what theories, methods, and approaches might allow teacher education researchers to revision the education of teacher educators in ways that center commitments to equity and justice? The Special Issue is framed by a freedom- and justice-seeking lens; specifically, we employ transformative justice and its four interconnected stances – history matters, race matters, justice matters, and language matters – as a conceptual framework (Winn, 2018).

History matters

The opening article in this special issue foregrounds the first stance in Winn’s (2018) transformative justice framework, which pushes us to grapple with how “histories that make us uncomfortable and force us to look critically at the group-level power dynamics” determine priorities in the education of teacher educators (pp. 32–33). We invited Marilyn Cochran-Smith, who called attention to the education of teacher educators almost two decades ago, to author an article that represented how history matters in the education of teacher educators. Alongside coauthors Lexie Grudnoff, Lily Orland-Barak, and Kari Smith, Cochran-Smith reflects back on her 2003 article and then underscores how, while historically, there has been very little attention to the education of teacher educators, making efforts to learn from “international perspectives on the policies and practices related to the education of teachers and teacher educators” (p. 1) can be instructive. In particular, the article illustrates how international perspectives – in this case, from the US, New Zealand, Israel and Norway – can unveil “how those in power desire to shape the education of those who will shape the lives of society’s future participants” (p. 1). Through their contextually-rich account, the authors additionally draw attention to the historically-informed priorities, assumptions, and values that shape the contexts where teacher educator development unfolds, and suggest that educating teacher educators must entail “interrogating long-held and largely invisible ideas, beliefs, and practices related to race and equity, which are painfully difficult to own and uproot while simultaneously trying to change practice” (p. 2).

Race matters

Informed by history and considering the role of race, racism, and entangled forms of bigotry (Kendi, 2016) in the context of teacher education, the second and third articles of this special issue undertake important questions related to the education of teacher educators. They ask: What role do race and racism play in teaching and teacher education? Where do ideas about race and racism come from? How can we problematize and interrupt them in and through the education of teacher educators in purposeful and intentional ways? How are teacher educators and teachers racialized? How do these racializations shape expectations and perceptions? Why? Critically analyzing the role of racist lenses and ideas, these articles offer participatory, transformative approaches as powerful pedagogical counter-stories to educating teacher educators.

In “From Approximations of Practice to Transformative Possibilities: Using Theatre of the Oppressed as Rehearsals for Facilitating Critical Teacher Education,” John Beltramo, Jamy Stillman, and Kathryn Struthers Ahmed note how currently popular notions of rehearsals and approximations of practice, which privilege the decomposition and replication of pre-identified “high-leverage” practices, risk undermining equity and justice. Then, they show how Boalian notions of rehearsals, coupled with Freirean culture circles, can serve as powerful pathways for facilitating teacher educator learning in relation to the unpredictable, context-specific and not-easily-resolvable dilemmas that justice-oriented teacher educators tend to face. As the article illustrates, these dilemmas often center on racism and intertwined prejudices, and require complex responses from teacher educators – responses that can be rehearsed through Boalian theater, and reflected upon as a community.

In the third article of this special issue, Alison G. Dover, Benikia Kressler, and Maritza Lozano offer critical professional development, explicitly focused on issues pertaining to race and social justice, as a powerful alternative to the dominant forms of teaching and learning typically used to support teacher educator learning. Researching their own learning in a year-long social-justice-oriented faculty learning community, they show how critical professional development can foster powerful networks, cultivate individual and collective professional learning, support the formation of strategic alliances, and increase teacher educators’ self-efficacy as it pertains to social justice.

Justice matters

This stance invites us “to imagine a world where everyone – irrespective of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, or ability – is able to live with dignity and is recognized as belonging” (Winn, 2018, pp. 36–37). This moral compass undergirds the arts-based self-study “Tales of Existing and Resisting as Female Teacher Educators in Neoliberal Times,” written by Melissa C. Mitchem, Gail R. Buffalo, Aura Perez, and Elizabeth R. Rollins. In the article, the authors plot a landscape of injustice marked by a long history of racism and exclusion and reified by neoliberal market pressures, in order to reveal multiple struggles and tensions that animate teacher educators’ work and development. They argue that centering justice in the education of teacher educators requires embracing an expansive justice that demarginalizes the scholarly and practical experiences of “female early-career teacher educator researchers” – experiences that, left unchecked, often fail to “reflect their full humanity” (p. 38).

Language matters

Offering “tangible tools for addressing the complex work of reconciling history, race, and justice,” this stance requires paying careful attention to “how one uses language to speak to and about” intersectionally minoritized individuals, families, and communities (Winn, 2018, pp. 36–37). In “Collaborating Towards Humanizing Pedagogies: Culture Circles in Teacher Educator Preparation,” Quinton Freeman, Rebecca Flores, Daniel Garzón, Deena Gumina, Astrid N. Sambolín Morales, Elizabeth Silva Diaz, and Kristina M. Stamatis – a group of emerging teacher educators who dialogically problematized their own teacher education work as it unfolded within various teacher education contexts – offer an account of how language matters in the development of teacher educators. Reflecting on a dilemma of practice that took hold in the group, these authors share the value of collaboratively and dialogically generating knowledge – a process that supported them to reject dehumanizing labels, and to insist on the recognition of full humanity as a non-negotiable in teaching and teacher education. Through these reflections, they affirm that transforming the education of teacher educators in ways that center equity and justice must center humanization – for teacher educators and teacher candidates alike; they also affirm the power of dialogue in their own learning.

Futures matter

In 2019, Winn added a fifth stance to her framework for transformative justice in education: Futures Matter. This stance frames our invitation to envision more equitable and just futures for the education of teacher educators. As you turn the page and read the powerful articles that make up this special issue, we hope that you envision expansive and transformative future possibilities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.