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Developing Culturally Responsive Anti-racist Activists

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Reconceptualizing Social Justice in Teacher Education

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Abstract

How do educators collectively engage in critical community building and solidarity work to disrupt traditional systems that perpetuate inequities by using their voices to build curriculum to inform and empower students? The pursuit of epistemic justice requires new practices in classrooms and new commitments and practices at the system level if we are to build and sustain communities of hope within teacher education. A necessary first step requires committing to learning, to a life of the mind that is a counter-hegemonic act, resisting white racist colonization, and enacting a revolutionary pedagogy of resistance (Hooks, Teaching to transgress: Education as the practices of freedom. Routledge, 1994). In this chapter, we share our stories as social justice advocates: our reimagining of the Urban Teacher Academy (UTA), a self-selected certificate program designed to prepare candidates from a predominantly white institution (PWI) to teach in urban classrooms. The structure of this program centers on activist pedagogical practices, culturally responsive pedagogy, abolitionist, and anti-racist teaching integrated into clinical experiences that strengthen and empower teacher candidates. As a means of highlighting new possibilities for revolutionary pedagogical practices of justice, this chapter offers theoretical and methodological resources with which to interrogate education preparation program’s entanglements in colonized systems of reinforced racism. Picower (2021) noted that “rather than using education as a vehicle to create a more equitable and just society, teachers whose understanding of race are unexamined either purposely or unconsciously, use their curriculum to indoctrinate the next generation with the same racist belief” (p. 4). Bollin and Finkel (1995) have concluded that preservice teachers are unwilling to teach in an educational setting that is culturally unfamiliar or that could possibly cause them discomfort because of their inability to relate to the students and their families.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, USA

    Novea McIntosh & Rochonda L. Nenonene

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  1. Novea McIntosh
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  2. Rochonda L. Nenonene
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Correspondence to Novea McIntosh .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Education, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA

    Susan Browne

  2. College of Education, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA

    Gaëtane Jean-Marie

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McIntosh, N., Nenonene, R.L. (2022). Developing Culturally Responsive Anti-racist Activists. In: Browne, S., Jean-Marie, G. (eds) Reconceptualizing Social Justice in Teacher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16644-0_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16644-0_11

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-16644-0

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