Undoing Whiteness to Diversify Teacher Education and the Teaching Force

Context 

Various initiatives are underway in Minnesota and around the country to promote racial consciousness in K-12 teaching (R4615). Some of these show great promise for helping to realize goals related to racial equity and social justice articulated by key professional organizations guiding teacher education and educational research nationwide (AACTE; AERA; AESA). 

While enrollment statistics point to incremental gains being made toward diversifying the teaching force in Minnesota and nationwide, this pace lags behind the growth in diversity of the K-12 student population. At the same time, Minnesota’s teaching force remains over 90% white (MDE, 2020). Considering what research shows about curriculum and teaching practices reflecting the majority group’s interests (Sleeter, 2017), it is no coincidence that the state has produced some of the nation’s highest racial disparities in academic achievement (Shockman, 2019).

This brief is offered as a call to complement recruiting efforts with a dismantling of existing white systems and practices that work to exclude or “filter” non-white teacher candidates out of teacher-preparatory programs and the teaching profession. As the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) claimed in its 2022 call for conference proposals, “simply recruiting teachers from diverse backgrounds is insufficient. Efforts that sustain and affirm these teachers are necessary to the goal of diversifying the educator workforce.” In teacher preparation, this will entail undoing traditionally white practices known to alienate and drive teacher candidates of color away from teaching (Carter Andrews et al., 2019; Johnson & Lehner, 2020).

Listening Sessions

Last year, two listening sessions were held with groups of teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and others from around Minnesota and three other states to address the question, “How can we get more teachers of color into our (teacher-preparation) classrooms?” Supporting questions included:

1.  What are the filters that keep students of color from entering teacher preparation programs?

2.  What are the filters that keep students of color from completing teacher preparation programs? 

These sessions confirmed findings identified in the literature on whiteness as an alienating force in the teacher-education system (Jupp et al., 2016), specifically its practices of economic exclusion, standardized testing, and definitions of teacher quality (Han & Laughter, 2019). Additional factors identified by informants included the prevalence of institutional gate-keeping mechanisms (e.g., double application processes to professional education programs, high GPA requirements, edTPA) that pose consistent barriers to program completion.

Recommendations

1. Work to eliminate college entrance exams and teacher-certification tests which have little predictive value and are shown to reinforce white dominance in education (see Rogers-Ard et al. 2013 and Nettles et al. 2011 cited in Sleeter, 2017).

2. Dramatically revise or discontinue existing professional frameworks and evaluation tools (e.g., edTPA, Danielson) that are shown to reproduce whiteness in education to the detriment of non-white students.2

3. Develop teacher-preparation curricula and teaching methods that reflect the diversity of public schools nationwide which are now and have been majority students of color since at least 2018.

4. Actively work to disrupt and resist dominant white economic and political structures that continue to “reform” teacher education ways that are detrimental to equity, democracy, and the common good (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018).

Actionable Items

The following were generated from the listening sessions: 

1.  Partner with schools serving diverse populations to develop flexible online post-baccalaureate teacher preparation programs.

2.  Create a collaborative partnership with other universities to offer a shared, online post-baccalaureate teacher preparation program.

3.  Design flexible, creative alternatives to field experiences and student teaching.

4.  Make teacher preparation curriculum and programs more inclusive and culturally sustaining. 

5.  Use culturally responsive teaching in teacher education programs. 

6.  Incorporate valid and culturally relevant methods for preservice and in-service teacher evaluation. 

7.  Provide resources for rigorous professional development for teachers and professors that includes critical race theory and culturally responsive teaching. 

8.  Create alternatives to the double application process (college and teacher education program). 

9.  Eliminate GPAs as the primary determinant of entry into teacher education programs. 

10. Create culturally responsive alternatives to college entrance exam requirements. 

11. Include instruction related to curriculum design in all teacher preparation programs.

12. Actively recruit, develop, and hire professors, TOSAs, and mentor teachers who reflect the students we are trying to get into our teacher preparation programs. 

13. Advocate strongly for higher teacher wages, better working conditions, and rigorous and continued professional development for teachers. 

Final Thoughts

Colleges and universities have long recognized the need to get more teachers of color into their teacher preparation programs, matriculated, and out into the classroom. However, the approach has always been to try to make the students fit the system. The 13 actionable items are an initial attempt to make the system better fit the student.

References

Anderson, L. (2019). Private interests in a public profession: Teacher education and racial capitalism. Teachers College Record, 121(6), 1-38.

Behizadeh, N., & Neely, A. (2018). Testing injustice: Examining the consequential validity of edTPA. Equity & Excellence in Education, 51(3-4), 242-264.

Burns, L. D. (2015). The Danielson Framework for teaching as an evaluation rubric: One size fits none. In M. Tenam-Zemach & J.E. Flynn (Eds.), Rubric nation: Critical inquiries on the impact of rubrics in education. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.

Carter Andrews, D. J., Castro, E., Cho, C. L., Petchauer, E., Richmond, G., & Floden, R. (2019). Changing the narrative on diversifying the teaching workforce: A look at historical and contemporary factors that inform recruitment and retention of teachers of color. Journal of Teacher Education, 70(1), 6-12.

Cochran-Smith, M., Carney, C., Stinger-Keefe, E. Burton, S., Chang, W.-C., Fernandéz, M. B., Miller, A. F., Sánchez, J. G. & Baker, M. (2018). Reclaiming accountability in teacher education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Dover, A. G., Schultz, B. D., Smith, K., & Duggan, T. J. (2015, March 30). Who’s preparing our candidates? edTPA, localized knowledge and the outsourcing of teacher evaluation. Teachers College Record.

Dover, A. G., & Schultz, B. D. (2016). Troubling the edTPA: Illusions of objectivity and rigor. In The Educational Forum 80(1), 95-106.

Flynn Jr, J. E. (2015). Racing the unconsidered. In M. Tenam-Zemach & J.E. Flynn (Eds.), Rubric nation: Critical inquiries on the impact of rubrics in education (pp. 201-216). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.

Han, T.K., &Laughter, J. (2019). Critical race theory in teacher education: Informing classroom culture and practice. Teachers College Press.

Jupp, J. C., Berry, T. R., & Lensmire, T. J. (2016). Second-wave white teacher identity studies: A review of white teacher identity literatures from 2004 through 2014. Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 1151-1191.

Johnson, T., & Lehner, E. (2020). Understanding the attrition rates of diverse teacher candidates: A Study examining the consequences of social reproduction. In Overcoming current challenges in the P-12 teaching profession (pp. 268-290). IGI Global.

Kohli, R. (2019). Lessons for teacher education: The role of critical professional development in teacher of color retention. Journal of Teacher Education, 70(1), 39-50.

Luna, S. M. (2016). (Re)defining “good teaching”: Teacher performance assessments and critical race theory in early childhood teacher education. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17(4), 442-446.

Lybeck, R., & Colum, K. (2020). “How do you measure that?”: Confronting ideological barriers to socially just teacher education in Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching. Professing Education, 19(1), 26-40.

Madeloni, B. (2015). EdTPA: Doubling down on whiteness in teacher education. In B. Picower & E. Mayorga (Eds.), What’s race got to do with it? How current school reform policy maintains racial and economic inequality (pp. 167–182). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

MDE. (2020). Minnesota Department of Education.

Miller, H. C., & Svrcek, N. S. (2020). Challenging dominant perspectives and textual hierarchies in English and Literacy teacher professional development. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 93(6), 290-297.

Petchauer, E., Bowe, A. G., Wilson, J. (2018). Winter is coming: Forecasting the impact of edTPA on Black teachers and teachers of color. The Urban Review, 50(2), 323–343.

Picower, B., & Kohli, R. (2017). Confronting racism in teacher education. New York: Routledge.

Radhakrishnan, R. (2020). “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”: Recognizing and disrupting hegemonic practices in the edTPA. In A. E. Hawkman & S. B. Shear (Eds.), Marking the invisible: Articulating whiteness in Social Studies education (pp. 191-215). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Salazar, M. D. C. (2018). Interrogating teacher evaluation: Unveiling whiteness as the normative center and moving the margins. Journal of Teacher Education, 69(5), 463-476.

Shockman, E. (2019, October 14). Minnesota ranks among worst achievement-gap states. Minnesota Public Radio. Retrieved from https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/10/14/mn-among-worst-achievementgap-states

Sleeter, C. E. (2017). Critical race theory and the whiteness of teacher education. Urban Education, 52(2), 155-169.

Souto-Manning, M. (2019). “Good teaching” and “good teachers” for whom? Critically troubling standardized and corporatized notions of quality in teacher education. Teachers College Record, 121(10), 1-47.

Tuck, E., & Gorlewski, J. (2016). Racist ordering, settler colonialism, and edTPA: A participatory policy analysis. Educational Policy, 30(1), 197-217.

2 Example analyses of whiteness in edTPA: Anderson, 2019; Behizadeh & Neely, 2018; Dover et al., 2015; Dover & Schultz, 2016; Luna, 2016; Madeloni, 2015; Petchauer et al., 2018; Picower & Kohli, 2017; Radhakrishnan, 2020; Souto-Manning, 2019; Tuck & Gorlewski, 2016. Example analyses of whiteness in Danielson: Burns, 2015; Flynn, 2015; Lybeck & Colum, 2020; Miller & Svrcek, 2020; Salazar, 2018.