Becoming Critical Teacher Educators

Narratives of Disruption, Possibility, and Praxis

Julie Ellison Justice, F. Blake Tenore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315400921
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Literacy
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The personal and professional are woven together in this collection of scholarly narratives by teacher educators who share their early critical experiences and model teaching practices to support continued resistance and possibilities in teacher education. Representing myriad contexts where teacher education takes place, the range of scholars included represent diverse racial, gendered, linguistic, economic, and ethnic intersectional perspectives. Each chapter suggests practical tools and encourages readers to reflect on their own journeys of becoming transformational teacher educators. This book adds an important dimension to the field with a new and generative approach to the introduction of critical literacies and pedagogies, and offers a potentially powerful way to explore theory, methodology, and social issues. Readers will enjoy the compelling storytelling of these powerful and vulnerable memoirs.

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INTRODUCTION

F. Blake Tenore and Julie Ellison Justice

Critical Pedagogy for Teacher Education

As teacher educators, we work with and for multiple audiences. PreK-12 learners will benefit from the work we do to prepare their teachers to be effective classroom instructors. The authors of this volume, though, have illustrated critical pedagogies whose target audience is teacher candidates, as learners, so they may learn to use the tools and habits of mind of a critical orientation in their own lives. Teacher candidates are future classroom teachers, but first they are young adults learning to see, think, and act in the world in ways that will shape their interactions in and out of classrooms. They are citizens. They are leaders. We should prepare critical teachers, but to do that we also need to prepare critical people.

Conceptual Framework

We feel compelled to “come clean” from the outset and be clear that this book and its conceptual framework have co-created each other. Through conversation, collaboration, writing and re-writing with contributing authors, reviewing literature, and reflecting critically on our own experiences as educators and people, the conceptual framework we offer here has come to life. It is dynamic, and as we (editors, authors, and readers) grow, our conceptualizations of this work may change. We share the present iteration here, because it has been a valuable guide to us in our mission to think critically and act intentionally in our work in teacher education and the production of this text. We hope it is a valuable guide that helps readers think about and use the narrative chapters that follow.

To frame and guide our thinking as we composed this book, we have drawn on work in three areas of scholarship:

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• Critical theoretical orientations in education,

• Critical pedagogy,

• Critical autobiography.

The framework mirrors Freire’s cycle of praxis (1970) in which we, as educators and authors, have acknowledged that our lives and work are informed by theories that describe and prescribe particular ways of seeing and being in the world. Critical pedagogy speaks to the actions we take in classrooms to enact our theoretical commitments; autobiographical narrative is the tool we have used to engage deeply in reflection about our trajectories in and out of school that have influenced the actions we take in teacher education.

Critical Theoretical Orientations in Education

We have attempted to honor and reflect the heterogeneity of critical theoretical orientations (Darder, Baltodano, & Torres, 2009). However, critical race theory in education (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), feminist theory (hooks, 1994), and critical literacy theory (Freire, 1970; Janks, 2009, Luke, 2000; Morrell, 2007), which values multiple perspectives and speaking back (and truth) to representations of power through language, have played particularly significant roles in shaping our thinking about teaching and learning to teach. Each tradition has a singular focus on a construct (i.e., race, gender, language), but several tenets appear across them that have been useful to us. These tenets: counter-storytelling, narrative, and naming one’s own reality; decentering power; consciousness raising; and activism and advocacy—are outlined in the following.

Counter-storytelling, Narrative, and Naming One’s Own Reality

Counter-storytelling is at the heart of the conceptual foundation of this text. From a critical race theory perspective, Delgado (1989, 1993) argues that counter-stories serve a creative, constructive function for authors to voice the experiences of those at the margins and challenge the majoritarian stories of those in power. They can also serve a destructive function by “show[ing] that what we believe is ridiculous, self-serving, or cruel. . . . They are the other half—the destructive half—of the creative dialectic” (Delgado, 1989, pp. 2414–2415). We have included creative and constructive counter-stories by scholars from marginalized groups who present perspectives and experiences often left out of scholarly discourse in education. Stories by privileged authors explore their coming to awareness of privilege and their efforts to leverage privilege to help teacher candidates develop as critical thinkers and actors. In this volume, stories and counter-stories are alongside one another—naming the authors’ own realities—to speak back and to each other, through which readers may reflect on their own experiences from multiple perspectives.

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Whether appearing as stories or counter-stories, the chapters that follow are indisputably narrative—“privileged and troubled” as narratives must be (Bruner, 1987). There is a substantial tradition in teacher education of using narrative and storytelling to help teacher candidates both deconstruct and construct their histories and identities as educators (Clandinin, 1992; Florio-Ruane, 2001; Huber, Caine, Huber, & Steeves, 2013; Page & Curran, 2013; Ritchie & Wilson, 2000). In this tradition, we have eschewed empiricism and rationalism to invite authors to share their memories and subjective constructions of the development of their critical consciousness. Our hope is that in the verisimilitude of each narrative, readers will find connection, reflection, and inspiration for drawing on their own histories to develop pedagogies of disruption in their teacher education courses.

In addition to valuing narrative storytelling as a way of knowing and constructing lived experience, narratives also contribute to the legitimacy of experiential knowing valued in critical race theory and feminist pedagogy (Delgado, 1989; hooks, 1994; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001). The privileging of an individual’s making, remaking, and sharing her reality through story is integral to the work authors have accomplished in this volume. We acknowledge, however, that unexamined experiential knowing is problematic. Ritchie and Wilson (2000) argued, “The problem is not that experience—either in the accidental apprenticeship or the deliberate apprenticeship in teacher education (or in one’s personal life)—is too personal or local, and therefore invalid. The problem is that experience is often left untheorized” (p. 15). We have charged authors in these chapters with the explicit task of narrating their experiences through specific theoretical lenses in an attempt to use theory to expose, disrupt, and explain the circumstances of their lives. While still neither neutral nor uncontestable, the chapters herein demonstrate the value and possibility of deep, purposeful, theoretical reflection on a life, and help us unpack the influences that shape the instructional choices and commitments we make on a day-to-day basis.

Raising Consciousness, Decentering Power, and Activism and Advocacy

A desirable consequence of critical engagement is that participants will experience a raised consciousness of structures, institutions, and cultural practices and hierarchies that support domination and oppression (Freire, 1970; Gay & Kirkland, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Murray & Milner, 2015). Chapter authors have reflected upon key moments of experience and interactions with family, students, texts, and mentors that have served as levers to raise their awareness of social and economic oppression. Combinations of such moments have proven transformative for us, and they continue to echo in the decisions we make about content and pedagogy in teacher education.

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A raised critical consciousness can help educators and learners become aware of power relationships in society and the mechanisms by which power circulates (Foucault, 1980). Critical educators strive to help learners see cultures of power (Delpit, 1988) and work to disrupt its centralization and concentration in ways that may inhibit or deny individuals’ agency. For example, decentralizing power in language, cultural practices, norms, and expectations of behavior in classrooms is a goal of culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2013; Lee, 2000). Feminist theorists, too, work against power centered in patriarchy and masculinity (e.g., Mallozzi, this volume). Disrupting traditional conceptions of power as located in particular bodies, languages, practices, and ideologies is a recurring project throughout the chapters of this book. Decentering power creates opportunities for all classroom participants to resist hierarchies, dichotomies, and relationships that benefit some over others.

Finally, each contributor values activism and advocacy for students and communities. Teacher educators and teacher education researchers have long advocated for positioning teachers as activists on behalf of marginalized and underserved students (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Kumashiro, 2015; Sleeter, 1996), and the spirit of action and advocacy has propelled the composition of this volume. As stated in the opening, we have framed this work in a cycle of praxis that includes theorization and reflection, but it hinges on our willingness and courage to act in and out of our classrooms where we can model actions grounded in critical hope (Duncan-Andrade, 2009) that stand a chance of improving conditions for learning and living in our world.

Critical Pedagogy

In constructing this text, we have drawn on the critical pedagogy tradition begun in the late 20th century focused on emancipating oppressed and marginalized peoples from the hegemony of capitalist, patriarchal, racist, homophobic, and xenophobic structures that define(d) and confine(d) teaching and learning in preK-16 schools. Comprised of a vast body of scholarship and action in the US and around the world, this theoretical tradition is characterized by the scholarship and pedagogical activism of Freire, Giroux, McLaren, hooks, Macedo, Greene, Kincheloe, Shor, Fine, Ladson-Billings, Delpit, Apple, Nieto, Morrell, Shannon, and many, many more.

Critical pedagogy, according to Darder et al. (2009), “loosely evolved out of the yearning to give some shape and coherence to the theoretical landscape of radical principles, beliefs and practices that contributed to an emancipatory ideal of democratic schooling in the United States during the twentieth century” (p. 2). The narratives that follow are authors’ ongoing attempts to not only bring “shape and coherence to the theoretical landscape” but also engage with critical theories in cycles of pedagogical praxis in teacher preparation. Each chapter is an instantiation of Ira Shor’s (2012) description of critical pedagogy:

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Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional cliches, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse. (p. 129)

One of the principal targets of critical pedagogy, beneath surface meaning and first impressions, is hegemony, which Antonio Gramsci (1992) described as social control being carried out and enforced through social mechanisms, including influential individuals and institutions such as teachers and schools. Critical pedagogy, of course, unmasks and dismantles the norms, practices, and expectations in schools that maintain the interests of those in power to the detriment of the most vulnerable students. Specifically, the authors describe their attempts to help post-secondary students, many of whom are or will become teachers, learn to recognize and deconstruct the hegemony perpetuated in classrooms. A significant body of scholarship exists that examines practices aimed at preparing preservice teachers to work in schools hardest hit by oppressive forces.

In the US, teachers are often prepared to work as activists on behalf of children, families, and communities in and out of schools (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Irvine, 2003; Love, 2015; Milner & Laughter, 2015). Teacher education to prepare teachers to work in diverse schools and communities can be characterized by four thematic frames:

1. Teacher education frames preK-12 schools as replications and perpetuations of societal political, economic, racial, and gendered oppression and marginalization (e.g., Anyon, 1981, 2014; Finn, 1999; Macleod, 1987; Weiler, 2009);

2. Critical pedagogy is used to bring to light for teacher candidates the nature of systemic inequities in preK-12 schooling and society (e.g., Kaur, 2012; Lee & Dallman, 2008; Sleeter & McLaren, 1995; Banks, 2015);

3. Critical teacher education as an intervention aimed at overwhelmingly White teacher candidates so that they may recognize and value cultural diversity and use students’ cultures to inform teaching and learning (e.g., Gay, 2013; Irvine, 2003; Milner, Pabon, Woodson, & McGee, 2013; Sleeter, 2008; Villegas & Lucas, 2002);

4. Critical teacher education constructs preK-12 classrooms as battlegrounds for democracy, equity, and emancipat...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Becoming Critical Teacher Educators
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by H. Richard Milner, IV
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Critical Social Theory as Lived Experience: A Media Pedagogue in the Making
• 3 On Becoming a Freirian Educator
• 4 Living Well Where We Are: An Educator’s Evolving Critical Pedagogy of Place
• 5 Learning to Interrogate and Resist the Data Culture in Literacy Education
• 6 Heeding the Unbearable in Teacher Education: Visceral Literacies as Critical Possibility and Praxis
• 7 A Teacher Educator’s Plea to Prepare Preservice Teachers for Family/School Collaboration
• 8 Continuities of Privilege and Marginality across Space and Time: Critical Autobiographical Narrative in Teacher Education
• 9 Pathways to Critical Literacy: A Memoir of History, Geography and Chance
• 10 Becoming an Agent of Change: A Critical Service Pedagogy in Teacher Education
• 11 From Bending to Breaking Rules: Disrupting Teacher Preparation with CRT and Nonviolence
• 12 From Man–Boy Love to Self-Love Pedagogy: Ethical Flirtations with Authority
• 13 Toward Redemption and Reconciliation: Ecologically Minded Teacher Education
• 14 Choosing to Become a Cross-Racial Ally
• 15 Becoming a Critical English Teacher Educator When #Blacklivesmatter
• 16 “Who Are Your Influences?” Interrupting the Tidy Production of Teachers of Reading
• 17 Farewell to Authority: Learning to Disrupt Relationships among Teachers, Learners, and Knowledge
• 18 All About That Bass: Cultivating Socially-Just Literacy Teachers through Multicultural Literature and Multimodality
• 19 My Critical Literacy of Diagnosis: Teaching Reading Assessment in Teacher Education
• 20 Learning to Plan, Planning to Learn: A Co-Narrative about the HTPE toward Disrupting Teacher Education
• 21 Possibility and Praxis in Teacher Education
• Notes on Contributors
• Index