Equity and justice for all: The politics of cultivating anti-racist practices in urban teacher education

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the cultivation of anti-racist practices with pre- and in-service teachers in post-secondary contexts, and the tensions of engaging in this work for equity and justice in urban teacher education.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper relies on critical race theory (CRT) and critical whiteness studies (CWS), as well as auto-ethnographic and storytelling methods to examine how black in-service teachers working with a black teacher educator and white pre-service teachers working with a white teacher educator enacted strategies for cultivating anti-racist practices.

Findings

Findings indicate that for black and white educators alike, developing critical consciousness and anti-racist pedagogical practices requires naming racism as the central construct of oppression. Moreover, teachers and teacher educators demonstrated the importance of explicitly naming racism and centralizing (rather than de-centralizing) the political project of anti-racism within the current socio-political climate.

Research limitations/implications

In addition to racism, educators’ racialized identities must be centralized to support individual anti-racist pedagogical practices. Storying racism provides a context for this individualized work and provides a framework for disrupting master narratives embedded in educational institutions.

Originality/value

Much has been written about the importance of teachers connecting to students’ out-of-school lives to increase academic achievement and advance educational justice. Strategies for forging those connections include using assets-based practices and linking school curricula to students’ community and cultural identities. While these connections are important, this paper focuses on teachers’ explicit anti-racist practices in urban education.

Citation

Kinloch, V. and Dixon, K. (2017), "Equity and justice for all: The politics of cultivating anti-racist practices in urban teacher education", English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 331-346. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-05-2017-0074