Social justice language teacher education is a response to the acknowledgement that there are social/societal inequities that shape access to learning and educational achievement. In social justice language teacher education, social justice is the driving force and primary organizational device for the teacher education agenda. What does “social justice” mean in diverse global locations? What role does English play in promoting or denying equity? How can teachers come to see themselves as advocates for equal educational access and opportunity? This volume begins by articulating a view of social justice teacher education, followed by language teacher educators from 7 countries offering theorized accounts of their situated practices. Authors discuss powerful components of practice, and the challenges and tensions of doing this work within situated societal and institutional power structures.
Social justice language teacher education is a response to the acknowledgement that there are social/societal inequities that shape access to learning and educational achievement. In social justice language teacher education, social justice is the driving force and primary organizational device for the teacher education agenda. What does “social justice” mean in diverse global locations? What role does English play in promoting or denying equity? How can teachers come to see themselves as advocates for equal educational access and opportunity? This volume begins by articulating a view of social justice teacher education, followed by language teacher educators from 7 countries offering theorized accounts of their situated practices. Authors discuss powerful components of practice, and the challenges and tensions of doing this work within situated societal and institutional power structures.
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Overview
Social justice language teacher education is a response to the acknowledgement that there are social/societal inequities that shape access to learning and educational achievement. In social justice language teacher education, social justice is the driving force and primary organizational device for the teacher education agenda. What does “social justice” mean in diverse global locations? What role does English play in promoting or denying equity? How can teachers come to see themselves as advocates for equal educational access and opportunity? This volume begins by articulating a view of social justice teacher education, followed by language teacher educators from 7 countries offering theorized accounts of their situated practices. Authors discuss powerful components of practice, and the challenges and tensions of doing this work within situated societal and institutional power structures.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847694256 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Multilingual Matters Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 10/06/2011 |
| Series: | Bilingual Education & Bilingualism , #84 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 200 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Margaret R. Hawkins is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her primary research interest, foundationally dedicated to promoting equity for all learners, is in languages and literacies in and out of school, including classroom, home, and community-based settings. Her published work examines classroom ecologies, families and schools, and language teacher education. Current projects focus on global digital partnerships for youth, education in Uganda, and non-gateway districts’ responses to new immigrant and refugee populations. She has published widely, and serves as the Chair of the TESOL Research Standing Committee as well as on multiple organizational and editorial boards.
Margaret R. Hawkins is a Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Her work on Global StoryBridges has won awards from the American Educational Research Association and the International Literacy Association.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Teacher Education for Social Justice
KEN ZEICHNER
The focus of this chapter is on an approach to teacher education that has come to be known as teacher education for social justice. Although various labels have been attached to this approach over the years, such as social reconstructionist teacher education, antiracist teacher education, critical teacher education and social reconstructionist multicultural teacher education, social justice teacher education (SJTE) seems to have become the label of choice among college and university teacher educators in recent years (e.g. Cochran-Smith, 1999; McDonald & Zeichner, 2009; Michelli & Keiser, 2005; Solomon et al., 2007; Zeichner, 2009).
SJTE aims to respond to preparing teachers to teach in ways that contribute to a lessening of the inequalities that exist in school systems throughout the world between children of the poor and children of the middle and wealthy classes, and the injustices that exist in societies beyond systems of schooling – in access to shelter, food, healthcare, transportation, access to meaningful work that pays a living wage, and so on. The uncertainty that characterizes the current context is related to the uncertain future this planet faces if these injustices persist. We continue today to see widening gaps in education and income between the haves and have-nots in every society.
In current times, SJTE also aims to prepare teachers to teach in societies where increasingly narrow and punitive forms of accountability have been thrust upon schools and teacher education institutions that are often inconsistent with educators' own views about what they are trying to accomplish (Hamel & Merz, 2005; Johnson et al., 2005; Sirotnik, 2001). Teachers and others who work in schools do not object to being held accountable for their work, but to the narrow forms of accountability that they are required to meet (Ingersoll, 2003). The 'No Child Left Behind' (NCLB) Act in the United States, for example, which has required high stakes testing during many years of schooling, has captured a large share of the insufficient resources that have been given to public education after the military and the corporations have taken their shares. Public education systems throughout the world are underfunded and teachers are underpaid everywhere (UNESCO, 1998). Current accountability mandates often adopt a punitive stance toward schools and blame teachers and school administrators for the problems of the society (Dahlstrom, 2006; Reimers, 1994).
In some cases, such as in large urban school districts in the United States and in many classrooms throughout the developing world, the press for high stakes testing has been combined with efforts to minimize opportunities for teachers to exercise their judgment in their classrooms as curriculum is scripted and prescribed (Robertson, 2008; Samoff, 1999; Sleeter, 2008; Tatto, 2006; Torres, 2000).
In the United States, for example, a high government official in the federal education department spoke in a meeting of teacher educators and foundation staff about the need to prepare 'good enough teachers', just good enough to follow a scripted curriculum and be trained in prescribed teaching practices that are allegedly based on research. He and others in the Bush administration claimed that tightly monitoring teachers' actions, scripting the curriculum and intensifying standardized testing with serious consequences for schools and teachers related to examination results will lead to rising levels of educational quality and a narrowing of the achievement gaps between different groups. The argument has been made that many children in US public schools, particularly poor children and children of color, have less access to fully qualified teachers who have completed a teacher education program and that these 'good enough teachers' who are trained to follow directions but not to think and exercise their judgment are better than teachers who are just pulled in off the street with no preparation at all.
This same argument has been made in many developing countries that also struggle to give all students access to teachers who have completed a teacher education program at the postsecondary level. With increased access to basic education and in some countries to secondary education, and with the implementation of neoliberal economic policies that have resulted in drastic reductions in public expenditures in many countries (e.g. Carnoy, 1995; Klees, 2002), it has become increasingly difficult to provide qualified teachers for every child (Villegas Reimers & Reimers, 1996). Some say that providing a fully qualified teacher to all learners around the world is an unrealistic goal unless we move to a more cost-effective training of teacher technicians. Consequently, many nations have moved toward establishing 'fast track' programs that get people into the classroom as quickly as possible, oftentimes with little prior preparation (e.g. Baines, 2006; Hinchey & Cadiero-Kaplan, 2005).
I find it interesting that many of these government officials who advocate 'good enough teachers' apparently do not find these teachers good enough for their own children whom they often send to private schools. There is a clear gap in many countries between children who have access to fully qualified teachers and those who do not, which is connected to social class and immigrant status (e.g. Peske & Haycock, 2006). Dewey (1929) asserted that 'what the best and wisest parent wants for his own child that must the community want for all of its children'. Whatever one thinks about the role of teachers and schooling, one should be willing to subject one's own children and grandchildren to what one advocates for other people's children. If this one principle were followed by policymakers around the world, we would probably find a lot smaller gaps in the quality of education experienced by different children.
Despite all of the forces that are seeking to maintain unjust and unequal societies and educational systems, dedicated and talented teachers, administrators and others continue to work against the grain in progressive ways that contribute to greater social justice through public education. One goal of SJTE has been to make this kind of teaching possible for more students.
Teacher Education Reform Agendas
Over the years, I have had a particular interest in trying to make sense of the different purposes and practices associated with calls for reform in teacher education and particularly with what has come to be called SJTE. From the very beginning of my career in education, I saw my efforts as a teacher connected to efforts to bring about greater equity in schooling and society, providing individuals like me who attended a large urban public school system with the same high quality of education that is routinely available to others who come from more economically advantaged backgrounds. I chose to enter teaching in the first place as an alternative to fighting in what many of us thought was an unjust war in Vietnam and all of my public school teaching was done in schools in predominately low-income African American communities (Zeichner, 1995). Much of my research over the years has focused on studying efforts within my own teacher education program and in other programs to prepare teachers who will contribute to a more equal and just world.
I have made a number of attempts over the years to try and identify the links between specific proposals for teacher education reform and broader traditions of thought that have existed over time, the most recent of which identified three broad strands of teacher education reform that I think exist in some form or another throughout the world: the professionalization agenda, the deregulation agenda and the social justice agenda (see Zeichner, 2003). I am not going to go into the differences between these three agendas here, other than to say that teacher education programs throughout the world are influenced by all of them simultaneously. The professionalization agenda has led to the conversion of many teacher education programs throughout the world to performance assessment based on a set of teaching standards (Freeman-Moir & Scott, 2007). The deregulation agenda has challenged the monopoly that colleges and universities have had on teacher education and has resulted in the adoption of many fast track certification programs that seek to put teachers in schools in places where it is hard to attract them and keep them there. The deregulators want to subject teacher education to market forces, and according to this neoliberal view, competition will enhance quality (Walsh, 2004; Weiner, 2007).
Social Justice Teacher Education
The third and final reform agenda is the social justice agenda, which incorporates various aspects of what has been referred to as social reconstructionist, multicultural, antiracist, bilingual and inclusive education. Although SJTE draws on aspects of these strands of teacher education, it is distinguished from them by its focus on helping to bring about broad-scale social change in the social, economic, political and educational spheres of society (see Kailin, 2002; McDonald & Zeichner, 2009). I will outline the arguments made by advocates of this agenda, the variety of teacher education practices that have been situated within the broad social justice umbrella and then offer my constructive critique of this line of reform, not as an outsider but as one who is involved in this very work every day.
The Goals of Social Justice Teacher Education
SJTE places the recruiting of a more diverse teaching force and the preparation of all teachers to teach all students at the center of attention. It goes beyond a celebration of diversity to attempt to prepare teachers who are willing and able to work within and outside of their classrooms to change the inequities that exist in both schooling and the wider society (McDonald & Zeichner, 2009). There is an acknowledgment of the social and political dimensions of teaching along with its other dimensions and recognition of teachers' contributions to the life chances of their students.
SJTE is supported by a substantial research literature that identifies the attributes and strategies of what has come to be called culturally responsive teaching. Although work remains to be done to clarify and elaborate the elements of what teachers need to know, be able to do and be like to successfully teach in today's public schools, the work of scholars such as Jackie Jordan Irvine, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Geneva Gay, Ana Maria Villegas, Tamara Lucas, Luis Moll and Sonia Nieto has been remarkably consistent in the elements of good teaching they identify (e.g. Gay, 2000; Irvine & Armento, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Villegas & Lucas, 2002).
Following is one example of the knowledge, skills and commitments that have emerged from this research literature on culturally responsive teaching offered by Villegas and Lucas (2002).
(1) Is socioculturally conscious – recognizes that there are multiple ways of perceiving reality that are influenced by one's location in the social order.
(2) Has affirming view of students from diverse backgrounds, seeing resources in learning in all students rather than viewing differences as problems to overcome. ?? rather than viewing differences as problems to overcomerather than viewing differences as problems to overcomerather than viewing differences as problems to overcomerather than viewing differences as problems to overcome
(3) Sees himself or herself as both responsible for and capable of bringing about educational change that will make schools responsive to all students.
(4) Understands how learners construct knowledge and is capable of promoting learners' knowledge construction.
(5) Knows about the lives of his or her students (including funds of knowledge in their communities).
(6) Uses his or her knowledge about students' lives to design instruction that builds on what they already know while stretching them beyond the familiar.
SJTE is not a new phenomenon. For example, in our 1991 book Teacher Education and the Social Conditions of Schooling, Dan Liston and I outlined a number of efforts in the United States beginning in the 1930s, including New College at Teachers College in New York City from 1932 to 1939 where students were given course credit for participating in political demonstrations. The emergence of social foundations courses in teacher education programs in the 1930s was another early example of SJTE in the United States (Liston & Zeichner, 1991).
These examples and others, such as the Putney Graduate School of Teacher Education from 1950 to 1964 recently studied by Carol Rodgers, consciously sought to apply to teacher education the idea that teachers could be prepared to be leaders of social reconstruction. In addition to preparing teachers to work in classrooms with their students, they sought to connect teachers' education with broader social change movements (Rodgers, 2006).
For example, the Putney program included students living together in mixed-race groups and studying and meeting with leading voices in the US Civil Rights movement. As part of their studies, students traveled together in vans for periods of several weeks at a time and reflected upon these experiences. These study tours were journeys usually to areas of the south where struggles for social justice were going on. The goal, according to Rodgers, was to insert their multiracial groups of teacher education students into the midst of social problems such as racism and strip mining and to introduce them to responses to these problems such as the Highlander School, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, citizenship schools and cooperative communities. Although these programs and others have been part of North American teacher education since the 1930s, they have always been marginal to the mainstream of teacher education.
From the beginning of SJTE efforts the goal has been to educate teachers who would assume leadership roles in the reconstruction of society toward greater equity in opportunities and outcomes among the different groups that make up the society. Educating teachers to be leaders in social reconstruction would then lead to teachers educating their students to become active in bringing about social change. A paper in the journal Social Frontier in 1938 nicely captures the logic here:
The duty of the teachers colleges is clear. They must furnish over a period of years a staff of workers for the public schools who thoroughly understand the social, economic, and political problems with which this country is faced, who are zealous in the improvement of present conditions and who are capable of educating citizens disposed to study social problems earnestly, think critically about them and act in accord with their noblest impulses. (Brown, 1938: 328)
Tensions in Social Justice Teacher Education
There have been a number of tensions that have been part of SJTE programs since their inception. For example, there was a vigorous debate among SJTE advocates that continues today about whether the goal, as Counts (1932) had argued in 'Dare the Schools Build a New SocialOrder', should be to indoctrinate future teachers in the principles of a new society or whether it should be to educate teachers in the skills and habits of critical analysis without proposing a specific alternative vision of society.
There has also been a tension between the goals of SJTE educators who want to prepare teachers to be leaders of social change and the goals of at least some future teachers who do not want to assume this role. Finally, there has also been a tension between the academic discourse about teaching for social change and the connection of this discourse to the communities where the work is to be carried out. Basically, ceding college and university academics the preferential right of interpretation about what counts as SJTE is inconsistent with the basic tenets of social justice education, where teachers and community members whose children attend the public schools would participate in significant ways in the process of shaping and then educating teachers. Some, including myself, have argued that teacher education needs to be situated not in colleges or universities or schools but in a hybrid culture where the preferential right of interpretation is more democratically shared (Gorodetsky & Barak, 2008; Zeichner, in press).
Dimensions of Variation in Social Justice Teacher Education
There are various ways to distinguish the work that has gone on for some years under the labels of social reconstructionist, antiracist, multicultural and SJTE. For example, some programs attempt to infuse a social justice perspective throughout the entire teacher education curriculum, and one can see in these programs how a general set of standards and goals with a social justice focus are elaborated and defined within the various components of the program.
Although this infusion approach has been the preferred approach in the literature on SJTE for many years, it is still very common and is probably the dominant approach to isolate attention to SJ issues in one or a few courses that are often taught by the 'multicultural faculty' who are often faculty of color (e.g. Moule, 2005).
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Introduction - Margaret R. Hawkins
Ch. 1 Teacher Education for Social Justice - Ken Zeichner
Ch. 2 Multimodality, Social Justice and Becoming a ‘Really South African’ Democracy: Case Studies from Language Classrooms - Denise Newfield
Ch. 3 Does Intercultural Bilingual Education Open Spaces for Inclusion at Higher Education? - Mahia Maurial & Moises Suxo
Ch. 4 Education and Social Justice in Neoliberal Times: Historical and Pedagogical Perspectives from Two Postcolonial Contexts - Matthew Clarke & Brian Morgan
Ch. 5 Enfranchising the Teacher of English through Action Research: Perspectives on English Language Teacher Education in Uganda - Robinah Kyeyune
Ch. 6 Dialogic Determination: Constructing a Social Justice Discourse in Language Teacher Education - Margaret R. Hawkins
Ch. 7 Creating a School Programme to Cater for Learner Diversity: A Dialog between a School Administrator and an Academic - Franky Poon & Angel Lin
Ch. 8 Working for Social Justice in a Collaborative Action Research Group - Kelleen Toohey & Bonnie Waterstone