Teaching for Liberation: Critical Reflections in Teacher Education

In this article the author shares a critical reflection of his work as a teacher educator over the last five years teaching in both public and private universities in the U.S. Midwest. The author reflects on his work in a class called “Diversity in Education” over the course of two semesters as a way to trace the genealogy of a course that has emancipatory intent. The implications (tensions and contradictions) for this type of course in teacher education are discussed as are why critical pedagogical approaches and liberatory ways of thinking and knowing are fundamentally essential to and ethically necessary in teacher preparation. The author concludes by offering a pedagogy of resilience and radical hope that is fundamentally premised on the idea that intellectual work is meant to be liberationist, and the desire to connect teacher education to a larger political struggle.     

Examining the World Around Us: Critical Media Literacy in Teacher Education

This article presents findings from action research conducted in a graduate level course with practicing K–12 educators. In this article, I consider the usefulness of critical media literacy in the graduate classroom as I engaged students in discussions about multicultural issues including race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Through an examination of student presentations and field notes collected over the course of the semester, I found the graduate student participants were typically quite savvy at evaluating the messages they receive from media. Further, I found the incorporation of popular media into the classroom helped students grapple with typically foreign and often theoretically dense concepts like unconscious racism and heteronormativity, as well as theories like critical race theory, intersectionality, and queer theory. The graduate student participants were able to see deep connections between text/theory and media and often used various media to illustrate theory in quite complex ways. Lastly, engaging with texts of everyday life and using visual representations helped students interrogate the concepts explored in the course and provided students access to theory otherwise regarded as inaccessible.     

Locating Transgender Within the Language of Queer in Teacher Education

Queer is difficult to pin down conceptually; it is willfully disruptive, intentionally destabilizing everything from identity to knowledge to politics to power. The intent of this article is to illuminate some of the ways teacher educators are conceptually connecting queer to transgender identities and experiences in their classroom curriculum and pedagogical strategies. The data discussed in this article refers to three courses designed for pre-service teachers and include transgender content. A syllabus analysis and interviews illuminated the various ways queer is being conceptualized in different ways by each teacher educator. Trans identities and experiences were affirmed to various degrees through the participants’ conceptualizations of queer as an identity, queer as an embodiment/expression, queer as an analytical approach, and queer as a political project. Fundamental to the instructors’ understanding of queer was an intentional subversiveness, an affinity for non-conformity and disruption, and a commitment to anti-assimilationist practices. Furthermore, the participants saw trans and queer connecting through a common gender socialization experience and social positioning outside gender norms, and through a mutual vulnerability to heteronormativity as a system of oppression—particularly those who are both trans and queer.     

Diversity and the Modeling of Multicultural Principles of Education in a Teacher Education Program

In this study, we examined preservice teacher perception on the modeling of principles of multicultural education at a university of predominantly White students. Preservice teachers (N = 79) at the end of a multicultural education course responded to a survey based on the principles of multiculturalism. The students conducted an 8-week evaluation of the modeling or integration of multiculturalism in their teacher education classes. Statistical analysis indicated that 95.4% of preservice teachers perceived an integration of instructional principles of multicultural education, whereas 69% perceived integration of curricular principles of multicultural education. Findings suggested that diversity is a critical element of multiculturalism in the teacher education program needing attention.     

The Global and the Multicultural: Opportunities,Challenges, and Suggestions for Teacher Education

Most teacher education programs today include at least a minimal component of multicultural education. Higher educational institutions are also engaging more broadly in global education in a variety of forms. Though there is significant overlap in the aims of these two fields, they are often not used in complementary ways, or may even be seen as competing fields of study. This article outlines ways in which global perspectives can inform several multicultural concepts used in teacher education. It then explicates the challenges and limitations to this approach, which are not trivial. Finally, it suggests a number of ways in which teacher education programs and institutions can minimize the challenges of a global approach to multicultural education, while simultaneously moving toward institutionally transformative goals of multicultural education.     

The Teacher From the Black Lagoon: Revenge of the Bad Teacher

School teachers have been used as heroic characters in movies for a long time. Their heroism compensates for the failures of social life in our society by treating problems in the classroom, not the real world, and by acting as the mediators between diverse sub-cultures and the larger society. They are the agents of rationality, scholarship, and inclusiveness in addressing great social issues. In recent years, many movies about bad workers have appeared, including comedies and melodramas. Bad Teacher is a new kind of movie that treats the usually heroic teacher as a kind of bad worker. The critique of the teacher comes at a time when school teachers are being demonized in political discourse, and it makes use of disparaging stereotypes for dramatic effect.     

Moving Beyond Test-Prep Pedagogy: Dialoguing With Multicultural Preservice Teachers for a Quality Education

In a “post-NCLB era,” the schooling experiences of mostly low-income students of color continue to be consumed by a test-prep pedagogy—narrowed curriculum, low expectations, and ignored relationships. In this article the author describes a pedagogical approach using educational dialogues to engage preservice teachers to critically define a quality education.     

Utilizing Theatre of the Oppressed Within Teacher Education to Create Emancipatory Teachers

A key focus of teacher preparation should be critical self-reflection, especially given the current context of market-driven school reform, which often leads to school closings, increases school segregation, and devastates local communities. The question, then, becomes how best to guide critical self-reflection for preservice teachers so that they are aware of their biases, privileges, and positions of power, as well as being cognizant of how these school reforms detrimentally impact poor communities of color. More often than not, when such discussions are broached, preservice teachers want to change the topic to practical teaching strategies rather than addressing issues of social justice. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to explore how “Theatre of the Oppressed” can be utilized to help prepare preservice teachers to become highly effective and socially just educators. More importantly, how can “Theatre of the Oppressed” be employed to engage teacher candidates in critical reflection and consciousness, as well as increase their understanding of systemic inequality.     

Predicting adjustment of U.S. college students studying abroad: Beyond the multicultural personality

This longitudinal path analysis tested Yakunina et al.’s (2012) partially mediated model of the relationship between the five multicultural personality factors (MPQ) measured at Time 1 and psychological adjustment measured at Time 2 in 120 U.S. students studying in Costa Rica for a semester. With the addition of other individual and social variables, this model also was tested as a predictor of students’ sociocultural adjustment. Individual (multicultural personality traits, openness to diversity, study abroad goals, language proficiency), social (homestay experience, amount of contact with co-nationals, amount of contact with locals), and structural factors (participation in structured group programs) were considered. Results for psychological adjustment mostly supported Yakunina et al.’s findings except for the relationship between openness to diversity and adjustment, raising the question of whether level of openness to diversity itself changes over the course of the study abroad experience. For sociocultural adjustment, a partially mediated model was the best fit, with social interaction with locals serving as a mediator of students’ MPQ level of open-mindedness and the quality of the homestay experience. Level of language ability at Time 1 was a direct predictor of this type of adjustment. Thus, the two types of adjustment have different predictors, with language proficiency and social interactions with locals being most important for sociocultural adjustment. Implications of the results for study abroad programs and future research are discussed.     

Assessing Performance-Based Outcomes of Multicultural Lesson Plans: A Component Within a Comprehensive Teacher Education Assessment Design

Lesson plans can serve as a rich means of evaluating multicultural/diversity (MCD) learning outcomes for student teachers. However, a structured evaluation procedure is needed to effectively elicit meaningful data for program feedback. This study examines the evolution of a lesson plan evaluation component and presents the lesson plan instrument, rubric, and evaluation data. The lesson plan assessment was one part of a comprehensive, university-wide evaluation project funded by the U.S. Department of Education to assess MCD outcomes. Results indicated only about 50% of teacher education candidates demonstrated at least minimal skills in creating an effective, meaningful MCD lesson plan. Implications for teacher training are discussed.     

穿越历史的渼陂村

渼陂村位于江西省吉安市青原区,属青原区文陂乡,全村面积约一平方公里,始建于南宋初年,距今有800多年历史。古村自然条件优越,芗峰东立,象岭西护,瑶山南耸,富水北流,山抱水环,天然形胜,是一个以明清建筑为基础,融书院文化、祠堂文化、宗教文化和明清雕刻艺术为一体的古村落。据考证,陂村的开基祖为南宋初年梁仕阶,从陕西长安带领族人迁徙至此。如今该村有3000余人口,均姓梁。现存有367幢明清建筑风格民居和20多座古宗祠、古书院建筑群。这里虽历经岁月沧桑,但仍保留众多精美绝伦的门楣石刻、雕塑、雕屏等,蕴藏着丰富的文化底蕴。它以厚重的…     

Beyond the Literal: Microtransformations in a Secondary ESL Classroom

There has been little exploration regarding how Anglo teacher's interactions with Latina/o language learners influence student subjectivities. In this article the author attempts to use a theoretical tool from Critical Race Theory called ?microaggressions” and her theoretical construct ?microtransformations” to explore how a teacher's linguistic engagements with Latina/o language learning students can create and disrupt particular racialized student subjectivities.     

Developing Teaching-Specific Spanish Competencies in Bilingual Teacher Education: Toward a Culturally,Linguistically, and Professionally Relevant Approach

The emergence of K-12 bilingual/dual-language schools¹¹ Although we recognize the distinction between “dynamic” forms of bilingualism characteristic of bilingual education programs and “compartmentalized” forms generally characteristic of “dual-language” programs (García, 2014), in this article we employ the term “bilingual/dual-language education” to include both programmatic approaches and to reclaim the term “bilingual.”View all notes in the United States require bilingual teacher education programs across the nation continue to “build on the language strengths”²² See Zentella (2005).View all notes of bilingual teacher candidates and provide them with ample opportunities to acquire the language competencies needed for teaching content-area knowledge across the bilingual curriculum. Although the need to prepare linguistically qualified bilingual/dual-language teachers is relevant to all language programs comprising the bilingual teacher education field, in this article the authors describe a culturally, linguistically, and professionally relevant approach for developing the teaching-specific Spanish language competencies of future bilingual teachers. Educating the new generation of linguistically qualified bilingual educators calls for an engaged and responsive pedagogy that will prepare teachers to orchestrate K-12 teaching and learning experiences where languages (Spanish, in this particular case) function as multidimensional bodies encompassing and empowering the cultures and funds of knowledge teachers and students bring to the classroom.