1 Social Justice Standards in Teacher Education, Lecture notes of Pedagogy

Download 1 Social Justice Standards in Teacher Education and more Lecture notes Pedagogy in PDF only on Docsity! 1 Social Justice Standards in Teacher Education: Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Successes, Struggles, and Futures William S. Davis University of Oklahoma Tonya D. Jeffery Stephen F. Austin State University Teacher education has increasingly situated social justice as a critical outcome in their programs. One resource, the Social Justice Standards (SJS), has been identified as a guiding tool for supporting pre-service teachers (PSTs) to plan for and enact social justice-oriented practices in their teaching. Situated in the context of a rural teacher education program at a predominately White institution (PWI) in Texas, this qualitative study explored the perceived successes, struggles, and future considerations of five pre-service and in-service teachers in using the SJS. Findings illustrate students’ varied conceptualizations of social justice and their mixed feelings of confidence, anxiety, fear, and unpreparedness to actualize it in their future teaching. Introduction Social justice has become an increasingly important focus of teacher education programs and the field of teacher education in the United States over the past 5 to 10 years (Cochran-Smith, 2010; Cochran-Smith et al., 2009; Mills & Ballantyne, 2016). Objectives related to social justice, cultural competence, equity, and diversity are becoming more salient in standards for teacher education, such as those provided by the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) and Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). More recently, there has been an increase in racial and socio-political tension in the United States and a reckoning for anti- oppressive and anti-bias practices in education. In these unprecedented times, universities and colleges of education have adopted social justice phrasing into their mission statements, course descriptions, and recruitment materials (Allee-Herndon et al., 2021; Cochran-Smith, 2010). Despite these shifts and intentions, teacher education programs face some difficulties in actualizing these outcomes. Pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) racial, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic identifiers do not match those of the students in their future classrooms and schools, and teachers remain largely White and monolingual, while Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) and emergent bilingual children now make up the majority K-12 public school students (Taie & Goldring, 2020). This mismatch of identities and background experiences between public school students and their teachers can generate inequitable school experiences for historically marginalized student groups. Research has shown that White teachers are prone to adopt deficit perspectives, have lower academic expectations, and enact disproportionately more frequent and harsher disciplinary actions toward Black children (see Iruka et al., 2020; Sleeter, 2017). In addition, not all K-12 public school teachers have had the professional training needed to advocate for social justice in their classrooms and schools. A recent NCES (Taie & Goldring, 2020) survey found that only 64.5% of public school teachers had reported taking university coursework related to supporting students from diverse economic backgrounds and only 40.5% reported receiving training for supporting emergent bilinguals. 2 One path for supporting social justice in teacher education is the curricular inclusion of the Social Justice Standards (SJS) offered by Learning for Justice (2016). The SJS contribute grade-level outcomes for fostering identity, diversity, justice, and action in schools and can act as a guide for planning and school decision-making. The standards “provide a common language and organizational structure educators can use to guide curriculum development and make schools more just and equitable” (Learning for Justice, 2016, p. 2). While some research has explored the use of SJS in teacher education and teacher development (Allee- Herndon et al., 2021; Spitzman & Balconi, 2019), little is known about how PSTs perceive or use the SJS in their coursework and when entering their own future classrooms. This qualitative interview study (deMarrais, 2004) sought to better understand pre-service and in-service teachers’ (ISTs) beliefs, struggles, and future considerations in using the SJS during their planning and teaching. We, the authors, are two teacher educators in a rural context who work primarily with elementary and secondary level PSTs and ISTs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The current research is a product of a collaborative project undertaken to reflect on our practice as teacher educators who prioritize social justice in our teacher preparation and research. Literature Review The following sections explore how social justice is conceptualized and actualized in U.S. teacher education. Further, we introduce the Social Justice Standards (SJS) and synthesize the findings of two studies which explore how PSTs and ISTs integrate the standards into their teaching and coursework. Social Justice in Teacher Education Despite the ubiquity of the term, social justice as a concept often lacks clear definitions in education scholarship (Chapman, 2013; Cochran-Smith, 2010). Social justice is often likened to peripheral terms such as diversity, equality, respect, and fairness (Sensory & DiAngelo, 2017), leaving the concept relatively open to individual interpretation (Mills & Ballantyne, 2016). For instance, the frequently referenced definition of social justice applied to education offered by Nieto and Bode (2017) as “a philosophy, an approach, and actions that embody treating all people with fairness, respect, dignity, and generosity” (p. 8) may be interpreted by some less experienced PSTs as a justification for colorblindness and equality, especially when comparing it to the authors’ explanation of social justice on a societal level: This means affording each person the real—not simply a state or codified—opportunity to achieve to her or his potential and full participation in a democratic society by giving each person access to the goods, services, and social and cultural capital of a society, while also affirming the culture and talents of each individual and the group or group with which she or he identifies (Nieto & Bode, 2017, p. 8). Thus, social justice requires a critical component (Chapman, 2013; Philip et al., 2019). In teacher education, social justice must be conceptualized and enacted in ways that reflect its foundations of structural critique (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017) and the recognition of dominant identity privileges and inequity of all forms (Chapman, 2013) while moving beyond notions of equality and tolerance and towards action. Social justice 5 state content standards when designing culturally responsive, authentic assessments. After learning of each other’s work with the SJS in our courses, we began a collaboration in order to assess students’ perceptions of the value and applicability of the SJS to better inform our immediate practice. Participants Five teacher education students participated in this study: Anna, Evan, Irene, Thomas, and Trinity (pseudonyms used). Two of the students (Anna and Evan) were enrolled in the undergraduate course while Trinity, Irene, and Thomas were enrolled in the graduate section. Thomas and Irene were high school teachers at the time of data collection. The students’ content areas included art (Trinity), English language arts (ELA) (Anna and Evan), and music (Irene and Thomas). All participants identified as White. Data Collection and Analysis Data were collected through semi- structured interviews facilitated by the first author. All students enrolled in the two sections of the course were invited by their course instructor (Author 1) to participate voluntarily in a research study beginning in the last week of the semester. The researchers designed a semi-structured interview protocol to guide the conversations (Appendix A). Due to a technical issue, one student (Anna) submitted written responses to the interview questions. To make sense of the data, we conducted a thematic analysis to identify themes and patterns in the interview data (Bhattacharya, 2017). The initial stage of analysis involved the raw interview data being coded in reference to the study’s research question. In this stage, the participants’ responses associated with their perceptions of the SJS and teaching for social justice were coded as theoretically relevant. Next, we employed an inductive approach to cluster these previously coded data excerpts into meaningful categories representing participants’ perceptions and experiences with the SJS. Further rounds of inductive coding, informed by the literature within social justice in teacher education, ensured a continuously refining and iterative process from which salient themes and subthemes were identified and confirmed (Bhattacharya, 2017). Results Two overarching themes were identified reflecting teacher education students’ perceptions toward the Social Justice Standards (SJS): Conceptualizations of Social Justice and Feelings Towards Future Practice (Table 1). Within these two themes we identified six subthemes. The three subthemes under Conceptualizations of Social Justice include (A) Social Justice as Cultural Understanding, (B) Social Justice as Critique, and (C) Social Justice as Collective Action. The three subthemes related to Feelings Towards the Future were (A) Initial Failure, Growth, and Self- Efficacy, (B) Unpreparedness, and (C) Fear of Reprisal. It is important to note that, although the interview protocol explored participants’ perceptions of the SJS as a planning resource, conversations and further analyses turned significantly toward social justice as a concept and an approach to pedagogy. 6 Before examining these themes, three foundational beliefs were shared by all five teacher education students. First, all of them explained how they valued social justice personally and professionally and that advocating for social justice was part of their personal and professional identities. Similarly, each felt that the SJS were a strong fit for their respective subject areas, although their definitions of what social justice looks like in those areas varied. Finally, all students described feelings of competence and success regarding their ability to plan for social justice-oriented practices through the integration of the SJS with traditional state content standards. Conceptualizations of Social Justice Although the study involved interviews with only five participants, the students’ perceptions of what the SJS and, by extension, social justice looked like in education varied greatly in scope, depth, and accuracy. Three sub-themes were identified representing how participants conceptualized social justice: as cultural understanding, as critique, and as collective action. Social Justice as Cultural Understanding Some students, such as Trinity and Evan, considered social justice nearly exclusively in terms of celebrating, recognizing, and sharing diverse cultures and perspectives in the curriculum. Evan, a prospective English teacher, explained that “English is kind of like the study of ideas … we can choose what we want to have our students read, and having them constantly read British literature is not very beneficial to their learning. It’s more important to show a diverse range of cultures.” Trinity, an aspiring art teacher, described, “I think I have a pretty well-versed understanding of a lot of different cultures, but not all of them, obviously.” For these students, their personal understandings of social justice hedged between the celebration and representation of diverse cultures or perspectives but did not substantially reflect engagement in social action or critical understandings of power. Social Justice as Critique Two students—Thomas and Irene— presented social justice from a more critical perspective throughout their interviews. Thomas, a high school band director, explained how he and his students would discuss the barriers Black jazz musicians faced in relation to the privileges afforded to Table 1 Qualitative themes and subthemes Themes Subthemes 1. Conceptualizations of Social Justice A. Social Justice as Cultural Understanding B. Social Justice as Critique C. Social Justice as Collective Action 2. Feelings Towards Future Practice A. Initial Failure, Growth, and Self-Efficacy B. Unpreparedness C. Fear of Reprisal 7 White jazz musicians. Examining musicians’ backgrounds, in preparation to practicing and performing their music, was a valued process in his classes. Irene, also a high school teacher, echoed this approach in her music classes: “Every one of those composers has a story, which opens up an easier way to make a scenario into social justice, many of them having hard upbringings or ways they were treated.” In other instances, however, Thomas suggested that he felt conflicted about incorporating social justice via the SJS into a traditional or marching band class because the setting was less intimate than a small jazz group. In this way, Thomas’ limited conception of social justice seemed to encompass engaging in dialogue with students only at certain times, but to him did not require promoting social action through music or reorganizing the curriculum or school structure. Social Justice as Collective Action Anna, an English PST enrolled in the graduate course, shared the most consistently accurate and critical conceptualization of social justice, recognizing diversity and identity in terms of power relations among groups and collective action. Although she had not yet had the opportunity to teach as a PST during the COVID-19 pandemic, the examples of her coursework she described in the interview were overwhelmingly centered around collective action for social change. Her proposed student projects integrating the SJS with Texas curriculum standards for English included “writing a letter to a government representative, presenting at a local town hall meeting using argumentative, informative, or persuasive techniques, and writing poetry or drawing artwork that moves people into action.” These proposed applications reflect her conceptualization of social justice in teaching—interrogating “the status quo in order to bring about positive changes in the world using their [the students’] understanding of sociopolitical power dynamics … this is social justice at its core.” Feelings Towards the Future While all of the student participants felt confident in integrating the SJS into the learning plans they created for course assignments, there were noticeable differences in their perceptions toward teaching for social justice and using the SJS in their future teaching with real students. Subthemes representing feelings of self- efficacy and unpreparedness fell along lines of teaching experience, namely ISTs and PSTs, respectively. Additionally, two participants specifically described fear of reprisal from others (e.g., from students, teachers, school and district administration, the community) if they were to engage in social justice work in their future teaching. Initial Failure, Growth, and Self-Efficacy The two students (ISTs) who were currently teaching—Irene and Thomas— referred to feelings of personal growth in their ability to facilitate lessons around social justice themes, but only after initial failures and anxiety. Thomas explained, “I think when I first started trying to bring such things up, it was a lot of tip-toeing even on my part.” Later, he recommended that new teachers “don't be scared to talk about what may seem like a difficult conversation, whether that's injustice or privilege … and don't be scared to try it again if it's not something that they're taking in.” Irene described how she was initially nervous to talk about themes related to social justice that might make students apprehensive about engaging, but that the result was actually the opposite: “It’s funny, fear is because you don’t know, fear of the unknown, but really stepping out and trying to do some of these new things, I would say it made my classroom better and more 10 such as critical family history (Sleeter, 2015) which seek to make race, class, power, and privilege visible (Hambacher & Ginn, 2020), personal (Davis & Mokuria, in press), and emotional (Matias & Mackey, 2016) may be of particular benefit to rural teacher educators. By incorporating the SJS into our courses we hope to raise awareness and a critical consciousness regarding social justice and equity in the K-12 classrooms in east Texas and beyond. Teacher educators must lead the charge to promote transformative spaces for PST and IST learning in their courses by integrating and centering anti-bias and anti- racist teaching practices, pedagogy, ideology, and discourse. PSTs and ISTs should be provided opportunities to share their developing personal and teacher identities while regularly engaging in discourse around race, class, and power. Further, teacher candidates need concurrent, sustained time in the field to practice incorporating social justice practices into their lesson planning in appropriate ways in collaboration with students and school partners. Through collective action of teacher educators who value and realize the importance of social justice, equity, and diversity, teacher education programs will be able to counter the power structures that currently exist and impact the next generation of K-12 learners. References Allee-Herndon, K. A., Kaczmarczyk, A. B., & Buchanan, R. (2021). Is it “just” planning? Exploring the integration of social justice education in an elementary language arts methods course thematic unit. Journal for Multicultural Education, 15(1), 103–116. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-07-2020- 0071 Bhattacharya, K. (2017). Fundamentals of qualitative research: A practical guide. Routledge. Chapman, T. K. (2013). Origins of and connections to social justice in critical race theory in education. In M. Lynn & A. D. Dixon (Eds.). Handbook of critical race theory in education (pp. 101–112). Routledge. Cochran-Smith, M. (2010). Toward a theory of teacher education for social justice. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), Second international handbook of educational change (pp. 445–467). Springer. Cochran-Smith, M., Shakman, K., Jong, C., Terrell, D. G., Barnatt, J., & McQuillan, P. (2009). Good and just teaching: The case for social justice in teacher education. American Journal of Education, 115(3), 347–377. https://doi.org/10.1086/597493 Davis, W. S., & Mokuria, V. (in press). The plat and the gavel: Multimodal critical family history in rural teacher education. In K. N. Silvestri, N. Barrett, & T. M. Nyachae (Eds.), Toward critical multimodality: Theory, research, and practice in transformative educational spaces. Information Age Publishing. deMarrais, K. B. (2004). Qualitative interview studies: Learning through experience. In K. deMarrais & S. D. Lapan (Eds.), Foundations for research: Methods of inquiry in education and the social sciences (pp. 51–68). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hambacher, E., & Ginn, K. (2020). Race- visible teacher education: A review of the literature from 2002 to 2018. Journal of Teacher Education, 72(3), 329–341. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224871209480 45 Iruka, I., Curenton, S., Escayg, K-A., & Durden, T. (2020). Don’t look away: 11 Embracing anti-bias classrooms. Gryphon House. Learning for Justice. (2016). Social justice standards: A framework for anti-bias education. https://www.learningforjustice.org/fram eworks/social-justice-standards Matias, C. E., & Mackey, J. (2016). Breakin’ down whiteness in antiracist teaching: Introducing critical whiteness pedagogy. The Urban Review, 48, 32–50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-015- 0344-7 Mills, C., & Ballantyne, J. (2016). Social justice and teacher education: A systematic review of empirical work in the field. Journal of Teacher Education, 67(4), 263–276. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487116660 152 Milner, H. R., & Laughter, J. C. (2015). But good intentions are not enough: Preparing teachers to center race and poverty. The Urban Review, 47, 341–363. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-014- 0295-4 Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (2017). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education (7th ed.). Pearson. Philip, T. M., Souto-Manning, M., Anderson, L, Horn, I., Andrews, D. J. C., Stillman, J., & Varghese, M. (2018). Making justice peripheral by constructing practice as “core”: How the increasing prominence of core practices challenges teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 70(3), 251–264. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224871187983 24 Sensoy, Ö., & DiAngelo, R. (2017). Is everyone really equal? An introduction to key concepts in social justice education (2nd ed.). Teachers College Press. Sleeter, C. (2015). Multicultural curriculum and critical family history. Multicultural Education Review, 7(1–2),1–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2005615X.201 5.1048607 Sleeter, C. (2017). Critical race theory and the whiteness of teacher education. Urban Education, 52(2), 155–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859166689 57 Spitzman, E., & Balconi, A. (2019). Social justice in action: A document analysis of the integration of social justice principles into teaching. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 19(5), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v19i5.250 71 Taie, S., & Goldring, R. G. (2020). Characteristics of public and private elementary and secondary school teachers in the United States: Results from the 2017–18 National Teacher and Principal Survey First Look (NCES 2020-142). National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.a sp?pubid=2020142 Appendix A Semi-Structured Interview Protocol 1. Tell us a little bit about yourself as an educator (or developing educator). 2. How does social justice relate to your identity as a teacher? In what way(s)? Has it always been like this? 3. How do you feel that social justice fits into teaching in your specific subject area? 4. What were your first feelings or impressions when exploring the Social Justice Standards (SJS) in our course? 5. There are four anchors in the SJS: Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Action. Did you notice these different areas? If so, what did you notice? 6. As part of this course you integrated state content standards with the SJS. What was your thought process when going about 12 integrating them in these assignments? What feelings arose during that work? 7. What successes did you experience when integrating the SJS? 8. What struggles did you face when integrating the SJS into the learning plans you created? 9. In which ways do you think that teachers’ integration of the SJS into their teaching could impact their students? 10. What feelings come to mind when you think about using the SJS in your future classroom or teaching? What makes you feel that way? 11. What can teacher education programs and courses like this one do better to prepare new teachers to teach for social justice and use the SJS? 12. Is there anything else you would like to add that would help me better understand your experiences teaching for social justice or using the SJS? William S. Davis is an Assistant Professor of World Languages Education in the Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum at the University of Oklahoma (Norman, Oklahoma). His research interests include language learner autonomy, bilingual teacher agency, and critical pedagogy in teacher education. Tonya D. Jeffery is an Assistant Professor of Science Education in the Department of Education Studies at Stephen F. Austin State University (Nacogdoches, Texas). Her research interests include teaching science through the critical lens of equity and social justice pedagogy.