Conra D. Gist

Teaching Racial Literacy in Secondary Humanities Classrooms: Challenging Adolescents' of Color Concepts of Race and Racism.

This article examines how three culturally relevant teachers in New York City public schools challenged the concepts of race and racism which low-income adolescents of color brought to the study of history and contemporary society. Framed by concepts of culturally relevant teaching and racial literacy, the study illustrated how the teachers used sustained and strategic instruction about race (Skerrett 2011) to complicate and challenge students’ ideas of race and racism. The authors conclude by examining the implications for teaching racial literacy in humanities classrooms with low-income students of color. They also explore how the teachers’ ‘alternate models of pedagogy’ (Ladson-Billings 1995) builds upon and extends the theory of culturally relevant pedagogy as it is commonly conceptualized.

Voices of Aspiring Teachers of Color Unraveling the Double Bind in Teacher Education

This article centers and investigates the voices of teacher candidates of color to examine how double binds influence their teaching and learning experiences in teacher education programs. Interview and focus group data from teacher candidates of color at two teacher education programs are analyzed to unpack the types of personal and systemic ties they experience as well as the strategies they utilize to escape them. Implications for eliminating the double bind in teacher education programs through the tailoring of transformative and critical preparation experiences for teacher candidates of color are explored.

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for Teachers of Color

ABSTRACT This study utilizes the conceptual framework of culturally responsive pedagogy and theoretical suppositions about the culturally responsive teacher educator to examine the learning experiences of teacher candidates of color. Findings from the case study of a teacher educator’s and teacher candidates’ of color teaching and learning experiences in a semester-long course revealed the following: (a) The teacher educator’s culturally responsive content was characterized by resistance, revelation, and support and (b) culturally responsive teacher educator pedagogy involved instructional approaches of modeling change and building community. Implications for culturally responsive pedagogies in the teacher education classroom and professional development are explored.

Addressing Teacher Diversity in Theory and Practice

This chapter synthesizes comparative findings across participant groups of faculty and teacher candidates of color, and explores the challenges and promises inherent in the design of culturally responsive teacher education programs. Typologies of the critically conscious, critically blind, and critically emergent teacher educators are developed to highlight key pedagogical distinctions between teacher educators, and the relationship between these pedagogical practices and teacher candidates’ of color views of racial/ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity. The possibilities for developing culturally responsive teacher education models are explored by considering theoretical, pedagogical, and research implications for addressing the preparation needs of teacher candidates of color in the future.

Placing Teacher Diversity at the Center

This chapter provides a literature review on diversity in teacher education programs, the specifics of curriculum and instruction offered within these programs, and an exploration of how candidates of color experience curriculum and instruction in these programs. While there is a clear pattern in teacher education literature to address the diversity of students in P-12 schools, there is not much research exploring the value of culturally responsive pedagogy in the preparation of teacher candidates of color, and what we do know is based primarily on research in individual teacher education courses and limited studies of field experiences.

Finding the Path to Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

This chapter employs the genre of testimony to explain the researcher’s teaching learning, and teacher preparation experiences, all of which informed the design of the comparative case study that is the focus of the book. The reader is taken on a journey through the researcher’s pedagogical development in public school and teacher education classrooms in Brooklyn, NY, which eventually leads to a research interest in critical perspectives of teaching and learning in the field of teacher education. An explanation of how culturally responsive pedagogy emerged as a conceptual framework for investigating teacher educators’ instructional practices is also provided.

The Case Study Design and Implementation

Grounded in a need to explore the role of culturally responsive pedagogy in the program design and preparation experiences of teacher candidates of color, this chapter outlines the research questions driving this study and describes the methodological process taken to investigate these queries. The study rationale, including the choice of a comparative case study approach, the selection criteria, data collection and analysis, and validity criteria are explained to provide a methodological foundation for the narrative case studies that are presented in the book.

Mountain Range Teacher Education Program Case Study

Chapter 5 presents findings from the Mountain Range Teacher Education Program case study site. A description of the program and the efforts of administrative leaders to support the preparation experiences of teacher candidates are explored. Individual cases of teacher educators and their teacher candidates of color in the program are also included to examine the role culturally responsive pedagogy played in the teacher education classroom. The chapter ends with a case analysis of the teacher education program that makes connections between organizational features, structures, and program practices, and faculty pedagogical practices and the learning experiences of teacher candidates of color.

Sunnyside Teacher Education Program Case Study

Chapter 4 presents findings from the Sunnyside Teacher Education Program case study site. A description of the program and the efforts of administrative leaders to support the preparation experiences of teacher candidates are explored. Individual cases of teacher educators and their teacher candidates of color in the program are also included to examine the role culturally responsive pedagogy played in the teacher education classroom. The chapter ends with a case analysis of the teacher education program that makes connections between organizational features, structures, and programs practices, and faculty pedagogical practices and the learning experiences of teacher candidates of color.