The ‘I’ in identity: a white future teacher confronts race in an urban school

ABSTRACT

A central issue teacher education programmes face is adequately preparing a majority White teacher population to address issues of race and diversity while meeting the varying academic needs of racially/ethnically diverse students. In examining the preparation of future educators, teacher education research confirms the importance of racial identity development; however, literature often omits the methods and strategies used to build racial consciousness and racial identities among preservice teachers. Considering this gap, this case study explores the identity development of a White future teacher participating in an educational initiative for underserved students of Colour. Through the lenses of teacher identity development and racial identity development theory, we found that in studying interviews and journal reflections our future educator showed increased racial awareness, influencing her pedagogical interactions with her Black students.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• White teacher
• identity development
• urban school

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. ‘Deep-seated attitudes that operate outside conscious awareness – that may even be in direct conflict with a person’s stated beliefs and values’ (Carter et al. 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta [64,000].