Faculty of Color and Collective Memory Work: An Examination of Intersectionality, Privilege, and Marginalization

As a means of highlighting new possibilities for interrupting White privilege, and supporting and honoring critical community building among faculty of Color in teacher education programs, this paper offers the theoretical and methodological resources of collective memory work as a tool for interrogating teacher education\u27s entanglements in the complex, yet normalized, processes of White privilege. This paper, written by three faculty members of Color, aims to provide hope for an escape from the construction of hierarchies, taxonomies, and White/non-White binaries that establish and enforce arbitrary boundaries that prevent people from different racialized groups from working together to disrupt White privilege and oppression

In This Spirit: Helping Preservice Teachers Thrive During the Pandemic Through Adaptation and Change

“New times demand new methods”, William Joseph Chaminade. These words reflect the lived experiences of two faculty women of color, identified as Afro Caribbean and African American scholar practitioners in education at a Marianist university. We share our different narratives of the experience from the dual lens of social emotional learning and culturally responsive pedagogy with our classes and students as they thrived during a pandemic. Included in these narratives will be a discussion of the continued community building process, exploration of efforts to learn more about the teaching profession, social justice and advocacy as we learn about others, and challenges encountered in creating virtual learning environments, as spaces to express themselves and dig deeply into their experiences as preservice teachers. This essay gives voice to the work of two faculty of color who found their work more valuable and accessible to students during these tough times

Attending to conditions that facilitate intercultural competence: A reciprocal service-learning approach

Although service-learning can support the development of intercultural competence, it has also maintained power differentials, reinforced privileged perspectives, and strengthened deficit thinking. Recent research has investigated the conditions within service-learning associated with positive change in diversity-related attitudes. We extend that work, conceptualizing a reciprocal service-learning (RSL) approach that integrates conditions posited by contact theory and the process model of intercultural competence into service-learning’s core features of reflection and reciprocity. In an RSL approach, transformational reciprocity at the participant level supports cultural awareness, interdependence, and parity between participant groups. We created an RSL experience and measured change in three attitudes fundamental to the development of intercultural competence with quantitative pre- and post-surveys. Results indicate that both participant groups—native English-speaking undergraduate students and international English language learners—experienced significant growth. This study responds to calls for quantitative pre- and post-research methods and the assessment of outcomes for all service-learning participants

Expanding World Views and Supporting Intercultural Competence: A Model for Understanding, Assessment and Growth for Teacher Educators

Intentional efforts for teacher education candidates to expand their worldview throughout their program of study can lead to growth in their intercultural development as measured by the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) (Hammer & Bennett, 1998). This study examines the impact of utilizing the Inter-Cultural Action Plan (ICAP), a results-guided self-designed action plan, on the developmental orientation (Bennett, 2011) of the candidate’s intercultural development as measured by the IDI. Significant impact on a candidate’s developmental orientation is identified when candidates take ownership of their experiences in the form of an action plan that includes coursework and out of class opportunities

Developing Culturally Responsive Anti-racist Activists

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.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/books/1119/thumbnail.jp

Disrupting and Transgressing the Canon: Including BIPOC Voices

BIPOC perspectives are often scarce in scholarly academic venues and curriculum. This edited book is a curated collection of interdisciplinary, underrepresented voices, and lived experiences through critical methodologies for empowerment (Reilly & Lippard, 2018). Gloria Anzaldua’s (2015) autohistoria-teoría is a lens for decolonizing and theorizing of one’s own experiences, historical contexts, knowledge, and performances through creative acts, curriculum, and writing. Gloria Anzaldua coined, autohistoria-teoría, a feminist writing practice of testimonio as a way to create self-knowledge, belonging, and to bridge collaborative spaces through self-empowerment. Anzaldua encouraged us to focus towards social change through our testimonios and art, “[t]he healing images and narratives we imagine will eventually materialize” (Anzaldua & Keating, 2009, p. 247).For this collection, we use lived experience or testimonios as an approach, a method, to conduct research and to bear witness to learners and one’s own experiences (Reyes & Rodríguez, 2012).https://ecommons.udayton.edu/books/1118/thumbnail.jp