Keffrelyn D. Brown

Teaching in color: a critical race theory in education analysis of the literature on preservice teachers of color and teacher education in the US

In this article I take seriously the call for recruiting and retaining more preservice teachers of color by critically considering some of the pressing challenges they might encounter in teacher preparation programs. I draw from critical race theory (CRT) in education to review the extant literature on preservice teachers of color and teacher education in the US. I excavate how the dominant, (dis)embodied and normalized culture of Whiteness, White privilege and White hegemony pervades contemporary teacher education, and presents a formidable challenge to the goal of preparing teachers (of color) to teach in a manner that is relevant, critical and humanizing while also socially and individually transformative. I conclude by envisioning how teacher education programs might address these challenges in such a way that more effectively meets the needs of preservice teachers.

Silenced memories: An examination of the sociocultural knowledge on race and racial violence in official school curriculum

Drawing from the theoretical lenses of cultural memory and critical race theory, we examined how elementary level and middle school level social studies textbooks represent the history of racial violence directed toward African Americans and resistance to this violence in the U.S. Using a literary analysis method, we found that textbooks often presented vivid accounts; however, these narratives often presented these acts as detached from the larger structural and institutional ties that supported and subsequently benefited from these actions. We contend that this limited representation of racial violence has an adverse effect on the larger sociocultural memory and sociocultural knowledge available to students, thus limiting the extent to which students can fully understand the legacy of racism and racial inequity in the U.S.

When You've Only Got One Class, One Chance: Acquiring Sociocultural Knowledge Using Eclectic Case Pedagogy.

In this paper we describe the creation of an eclectic case pedagogy based on case‐based methods, sociocultural learning theory and visual studies successfully used in a university teacher education course designed to help students acquire sociocultural knowledge about schooling and teaching. Using qualitative data collected across three semesters and four offerings of the course, we outline the types of cases that made up the eclectic case pedagogy, as well as how students recognized the efficacy and significance of this pedagogic method for their learning. Students highlight three specific kinds of learning opportunities afforded to them when engaging with the eclectic case pedagogy including: guided participation, dismantling and building connections and close in(tro)spection of schooling and society. The benefits students attribute to this approach suggest the eclectic case pedagogy may especially befit courses that aim to expand preservice teachers’ knowledge base around issues of historical inequalities in schools, institutional barriers to equity, and teaching within and about difference.

Student Misapplication of a Gas-Like Model to Explain Particle Movement in Heated Solids: Implications for Curriculum and Instruction towards Students' Creation and Revision of Accurate Explanatory Models.

Understanding the particulate nature of matter (PNM) is vital for participating in many areas of science. We assessed 11 students’ atomic/molecular‐level explanations of real‐world phenomena after their participation in a modelling‐based PNM unit. All 11 students offered a scientifically acceptable model regarding atomic/molecular behaviour in non‐heated solids. Yet, 10 of 11 students expressed the view that, in response to added heat energy, atoms/molecules in a solid increase in movement to a degree beyond what is scientifically accepted. These students attributed a gas‐like model of atomic/molecular movement to situations involving a heated solid. Of the students who held two conflicting models of atomic/molecular movement in solids, almost all provided justification for doing so, indicating their holding of the conflicting models was unproblematic. These findings can be interpreted to mean that students may drop constraints of certain scientific representations and apply, assess, or revise models when explaining unfamiliar phenomena. In fact, we believe students may develop conflicting causal models as a result of misperceptions they acquire, in part, during classroom instruction regarding atomic/molecular movement. However, our findings may also be interpreted as an incidence of student model development that may later aid their understanding of a more complex model, one that involves substantial sub‐atomic electron movement to account for heat transfer in solids. Whether or not this is the case remains to be seen. Implications for student learning and instruction are discussed.

Awakening Teachers’ Capacities for Social Justice With/In Arts-Based Inquiries

Social justice-oriented teacher education can guide preservice teachers toward greater critical sociocultural knowledge, analytic skills, social responsibility, and commitment to act in the interest of providing all students with high quality educational experiences. This qualitative case study examines how arts-based inquiries in social justice-oriented teacher education can provide the necessary generative spaces for developing preservice teachers’ critical sociocultural knowledge. Data were drawn from student interviews and reflective papers across four sections of a course employing collaborative, arts-based inquiry. Findings highlight the cumulative knowledge, pleasure, anxiety, confrontation with material and symbolic bodies, and self-transformations that can develop from art practices and help to awaken preservice teachers’ critical consciousness for teaching for social justice.

Breaking the Cycle of Sisyphus: Social Education and the Acquisition of Critical Sociocultural Knowledge about Race and Racism in the United States

Using Lani Guiniers notion of “racial literacy” and the findings from a study that analyzed how recent K-12 social studies textbooks portray racial violence against African Americans, I argue in this article that students come to teacher education programs possessing a limited understanding of racism as a historically situated, institutionalized practice. I consider the implications this gap has on preservice teacher education and offer suggestions on how social education might assist K-12 students and later preservice teacher candidates develop critical racial literacy.

Trouble on my mind: toward a framework of humanizing critical sociocultural knowledge for teaching and teacher education

Drawing from the work of philosophers Sylvia Wynter and Ian Hacking, in this conceptual article I argue why a humanizing critical approach to sociocultural knowledge is needed for teacher education, particularly in preparing teachers to work effectively with black students. In light of enduring concerns in teacher education with improving the educational experiences of black students – a student population that is routinely discussed in extant education literature, policy and popular discourses – as in trouble, troubling, or troubled – and the failure of teacher education programs to successfully meet this goal, I consider how regardless of their intent, these discourses exist within and help to reinscribe an already limiting notion of human constituted by historically contingent, Western epistemic notions of humanity. Highlighting both the shortcomings and possibilities that tackling dominant sociocultural knowledge might have on teacher candidates and teachers I conclude by offering a vision for how teacher education might more effectively engage in transforming such knowledge towards improving the education of black students in the US.

The Complexities of Teaching the Complex: Examining How Future Educators Construct Understandings of Sociocultural Knowledge and Schooling.

This article examines how students enrolled in a university course focused on sociocultural influences and learning changed in their understanding of the relationship between sociocultural factors, teaching, and schooling over the duration of the semester. In this context, sociocultural factors refer to key social constructs such as race, class, and gender that play an organizing role in how people and societies understand and interact with one another. This article is specifically concerned with how students in the course understood the way sociocultural factors influenced schooling and teaching, and the implication these processes had on educators in meeting the needs of all students. This inquiry is relevant because one of the primary challenges teacher educators face is preparing teacher candidates to work effectively with students from socioculturally diverse backgrounds. Literature in the teacher education field abounds with reports about the difficulty that university teachers have in helping teacher education candidates develop (a) the requisite background and sociocultural knowledge and (b) personal beliefs,

Sociocultural knowledge and visual re(‐)presentations of Black masculinity and community: reading The Wire for critical multicultural teacher education

In this article we consider the implications of using popular visual media as a pedagogic tool for helping teachers acquire critical sociocultural knowledge to work more effectively with students of color, particularly Black males. Drawing from a textual analysis (McKee 2001, 2003; Rose 2001) conducted in the critical visual studies tradition (Barthes 1977; Hall 1993, 1997) and longstanding discourses on Blackness, Black masculinity and critical visual studies, we explore how the critically acclaimed HBO series, The Wire, positions Black males in the local and larger social milieu. While offering a more complex rendering of the Black male, The Wire simultaneously presents a myopic representation of the Black man and his place in the larger Black community. This inquiry highlights the pedagogic limitations of using The Wire, or any other visual media that reinscribes deficit‐oriented knowledge that critical multicultural teacher education seeks to challenge about Blackness and Black people.

The love that takes a toll: exploring race and the pedagogy of fear in researching teachers and teaching

In this paper, I examine how what I call a pedagogy of fear played a role in the sociocultural context of research on teachers and teaching. Drawing from multiple literature on emotions, qualitative research, and race, I examine how a racialized field context framed my subsequent emotional responses and performance as an African-American researcher conducting research with white teacher participants. This examination highlights the ethical challenges researchers of color face when conducting research with white participants that is in the interest of people with whom the researcher identifies.