Toward Shared Commitments for Teacher Education: Transformative Justice as an Ethical Imperative

Abstract

In this article, we assert that it is our responsibility as teacher educators to commit to fostering justice and equity in and through teacher education as an imperative. To document ingrained injustices across time and space, we engaged in critically reading the landscape of teacher education in the US, guided by the questions: What are the responsibilities and commitments of teacher education as a field? and How can teacher education become answerable to the communities it serves? Seeking to redress how justice and answerability have been peripherally positioned in and by teacher education, we propose shared commitments grounded in transformative justice to ensure that teacher education commits to interrupting its role in the re-production of inequities. We thus argue that such shared commitments have the potential to forge a path toward equity.