On the Mis-Education of Teachers of Color: A Letter to Teacher Educators

Although teacher education researchers have long claimed their commitment to successfully preparing teachers to educate students of Color—a growing majority in U.S. schools—notably absent from their attempts are the voices of teachers of Color. This silence often results in pathological portrayals, positioning teachers of Color as the problem while obscuring the pervasive, problematic, and harmful Whiteness of teaching and teacher education. In this context, inspired by James Baldwin’s letter-essays and centering truthtelling as theoretical framework, eight tenured New York City public school teachers of Color and a teacher educator of Color engaged in collective analysis of a truthtelling exercise focused on what practitioners and institutions of teacher education can and should learn from teachers of Color to develop an antidote to the overwhelming Whiteness of teaching and teacher education, which has been shown to disproportionately disadvantage students of Color. Herein, we offer a composite counter-story—a letter to White teacher educators and, in fact, teacher educators of any racial identification who are in any way aligned with protecting and upholding Whiteness—revisiting our own nuanced memories of becoming and being teachers, unveiling teacher education’s epistemic violence, and issuing a call to action.

Critical White Studies and Curriculum Theory

Critical White studies (CWS) refers to an oppositional and interdisciplinary body of historical, social science, literary, and aesthetic intellectual production that critically examines White people’s individual, collective, social, and historical experiences. CWS reflexively assumes the embeddedness of researcher identities within the research, including the different positionalities of White researchers and researchers of Color within White supremacy writ large as well as whiteness in the social sciences and curriculum theory. As an expression of the historical consciousness shift sparked by anglophone but also francophone African-Atlantic and pan-African intellectuals, CWS emerged within the 20th century’s emancipatory social sciences tied to Global South independence movements and Global North civil rights upheavals. Initiated by cultural studies theorists Stuart Hall and Dick Dyer in the early 80s, CWS has proliferated through two waves. CWS’ first wave (1980–2000) advanced a race-evasive analytical arc with the following ontological and epistemological conceptual-empirical emphases: whiteness as hegemonic normativity, White identity and nation-building, White privilege and property, and White color-blind racism and race evasion. CWS’ second-wave (2000–2020) advanced an anti-essentializing analytical arc with pedagogical conceptual-empirical emphases: White materiality and place, White complexities and relationalities, Whiteness and ethics, and social psychoanalyses in whiteness pedagogies. Always controversial, CWS proliferated as a “hot topic” in social sciences throughout the 90s. Regarding catalytic validity, several CWS concepts entered mass media and popular discussions in 2020 to understand White police violence against Black people—violence of which George Floyd’s murder is emblematic. In curriculum theory, CWS forged two main “in-ways.” In the 1990s, CWS entered the field through Henry Giroux, Joe Kincheloe, Shirley Steinberg, and colleagues who advanced critical whiteness pedagogies. This line of research is differently continued by Tim Lensmire and his colleagues Sam Tanner, Zac Casey, Shannon Macmanimon, Erin Miller, and others. CWS also entered curriculum theory via the field of White teacher identity studies advanced by Sherry Marx and then further synthesized by Jim Jupp, Theodorea Berry, Tim Lensmire, Alisa Leckie, Nolan Cabrera, and Jamie Utt. White teacher identity studies is frequently applied to work on predominantly White teacher education programs. Besides these in-ways, CWS’ conceptual production, especially the notion of “whiteness as hegemonic normativity” or whiteness, disrupted whitened business-as-usual in curriculum theory between 2006 and 2020. Scholars of Color supported by a few White scholars called out curriculum theory’s whiteness and demanded change in a field that centered on race-based epistemologies and indigenous cosmovisions in conferences and journals. CWS might play a role in working through the as-of-yet unresolved conflict over the futurity of curriculum theory as a predominantly White space. A better historicized CWS that takes on questions of coloniality of power, being, and knowledge informed by feminist, decolonial, and psychoanalytic resources provides one possible futurity for CWS in curriculum theory. In this futurity, CWS is relocated as one dimension of a broad array of criticalities within curriculum theory’s critical pedagogies. This relocated CWS might advance psychoanalytically informed whiteness pedagogies that grapple with the overarching question: Can whiteness and White identities be decolonized? This field would include European critical psychoanalytic social sciences along with feminist and decolonial resources to advance a transformative shift in consciousness.

A WHITE PALETTE GATHERING

Storytelling, a tenet of Critical Race Theory, offers a distinct approach for researchers engaging in narrative inquiry. This article models a fiction as research approach for creating a literature synthesis as a pedagogical strategy for teacher educators and pre-service teachers. The white palette refers to a painting palette, a blank slate or canvas, often considered neutral ground. Whiteness, however, is not neutral and this one-act conversation centers on examining whiteness as it impacts my role as a white teacher educator. The production, players, and script developed out of salient literature inclusive of Critical Race Theory, Art Education, and Critical Whiteness Studies. I am both author and a participant in this story. In this capacity, I disclose the impacts of the literature on my white teacher educator identity and reveal how I created arts-based data artifacts to evidence the overall story.

First Person: H_NGM_N: What one says, and doesn’t say, to white educators

Native American author Lois Beardslee discusses how she has experienced the power differentials that arise from the lack of significant racial integration in the field of education. Beardslee describes how a white teacher reacted when she, while serving as a substitute teacher’s aide, suggested finding a substitute for the game hangman, a game reminiscent of the violent lynchings and executions by hanging experienced within communities of color. Beardslee explores how the pervasive whiteness of education and the defensive reactions of white educators when questioned makes it difficult for teachers and children of color to speak out.

Opening the “Can of Worms”: Preparing Teachers to Address Issues Relating to “Race”

This paper reports the findings of a study which involved a critical examination of “race”-related provision on initial teacher education (ITE) programmes in England. It draws upon data collected as part of a national survey of ITE provision which included interviews with providers and students, and case studies of ITE providing institutions. The study utilized aspects of Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies as a theoretical framework with which to analyse the data. The paper explores the nature of provision relating to “race,” suggesting that teacher educators and student teachers are often ill-equipped to address the complexities relating to this area and, as a result, they can fail to recognize the importance and potential impact of their professional practice, and their pedagogical decisions. It suggests that ITE practices are often underpinned by dysconscious racisms and manifestations of Whiteness, leading to a marginalization of “race” input, with opportunities for deeper interrogation missed, or actively avoided. The paper explores some of the constraints impacting on ITE namely a lack of time; a lack of confidence on the part of a predominantly White teacher educator workforce; a lack of recognition of the importance and significance of “race” on the part of White student teachers, and an emphasis of superficial measures of student satisfaction at the expense of deeper interrogation and deconstruction of hegemonic norms. It makes recommendations relating to how practice can be improved within the current challenging global contexts in relation to “race” equality. It calls for teacher education to aspire to produce novice teachers willing and prepared to embrace “race”-related challenges in their teaching careers, and to contribute to curricula which acknowledge and address inequality.

Agnotology and Ideology

During periods of local and national unrest, leaders engage in discussions surrounding the reexamination of old policies and the consideration of new policies. Their changes to policies and procedures may be symbolic to silence objections or performative to feign new awareness, but symbolic and performative changes will not lead to transformative change. So how does a nation fix a problem of which many of its citizens are mostly ignorant? How do organizations redress inequitable hiring practices when they believe America is a meritocracy where everyone has the same chance of succeeding? How do educational institutions restructure teaching practices when the predominately White teacher workforce continues to resist talking about race? Transformative change will require the unexamined power of Eurocentric culture and thought that normalizes the marginalization, oppression, and subordination of Communities of Color and other groups of people based on gender, class, and citizenship to be completely exposed and then abolished.

Experience with Diversity is Not Enough: A Pedagogical Framework for Teacher Candidates that Centers Critical Race Consciousness

Given the overwhelming whiteness of teacher education, we offer a pedagogical approach rooted in critical race theory, and draw on Carter’s (2008) notions of critical race consciousness to: 1) center a critical race perspective in methods-based coursework; and 2) employ critical race theory to analyze the function and role of clinical fieldwork. In this article, we provide examples of how we engage white teacher candidates to preemptively take stock of their own racial journey and biases prior to being responsible for educating students of color. We also focus on the process of selecting clinical placements and assignments. We explicate how current selection criteria for clinical sites and cooperating teachers are undergirded by systems of white supremacy, and problematize the reality of majority white clinical placements. We further provide suggestions for teacher education programs that pay particular attention to the roles and responsibilities of white teacher educators and predominantly white teacher education programs.

‘Neutrality’, Muslimness and the whiteness of RE professionalism

There has been longstanding criticism of the whiteness of the professional discourses in teaching. Bariso (Race Ethn Educ 4(2):167–184, 10.1080/713693054, 2001) writes that where whiteness is constructed as being professional then blackness is constructed as unprofessional, in turn excluding blackness from the construction of the teacher. Similarly, Bhopal (Br J Educ Stud, 63(2):197–211, 10.1080/00071005.2015.1005045, 2015) argues that this presents a clash between embodying blackness and embodying the teacher. With the turn to research surrounding Muslim teachers, attributes of Muslimness have also been shown to be a source of marginalisation within school contexts (Shah in Education, leadership and Islam: theories, discourses and practices from an Islamic perspective, Routledge, London, 2016). Some scholarship has reflected on issues surrounding embodiment and ‘body-works’ of RE teaching’s professional discourses (Bryan and Revell in Br J Educ Stud 59(4):403–419, 10.1080/00071005.2011.602328, 2011; Everington in Br J Religious Educ 36(2):155–173, 10.1080/01416200.2013.820169, 2014; Vince in J Beliefs Values, 10.1080/13617672.2019.1686732019, 2019). Such empirical studies have shown that embodying faith is perceived to be at odds with notions of RE teacher professionalism, particularly around notions of ‘neutrality’ (Everington in Br J Relig Educ, 38(2):177–188, 10.1080/01416200.2016.1139892, 2016). Despite the concept of ‘neutrality’ being increasingly criticised (Franken and Loobuyck in Br J Relig Educ, 39(1):1–6, 10.1080/01416200.2016.1218219, 2017), embodying ‘neutrality’ remains an important commitment. This has clear implications for (hyper)visible religious bodies (Jeldtoft, in: Dessing et al. (eds) Everyday Lived Islam in Europe, Routledge, London, 2016). Accordingly, in this paper I explore how ‘Muslim RE teachers’ manage their identities in relation to ‘being neutral’. For these teachers, ‘becoming neutral’ was the formative part of becoming an RE teacher. However, this was particularly challenging due to the hypervisibility of their Muslimness, particularly for female Muslim teachers. These challenges are then framed as an issue of whiteness, disproportionally affecting those who do not fit the white teacher norm. I end on arguing that there is a pressing need to change how ‘neutrality’ is understood.