Chapter 1: Mr. Linard H. Mccloud: Clarifying Excellence in Teacher Education Practice

For over three decades educational researchers and scholars have largely written about teacher effectiveness using quantitative research methodologies (Darling-Hammond, Holtzman, Gatlin, & Heilig, 2005; Ingersoll & Strong, 2011; Wilson & Hallum, 2006). There is a dearth of literature available that defines teacher effectiveness using the reflective voices of former students (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Siddle Walker, 2001, 2005). Debates regarding the qualities, skills, and dispositions of effective teachers and teaching have raged in teacher education for several decades. Ladson-Billings’ (2009) The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children was a pathbreaking work that has become a foundational study that informs the work of culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 2009) and “culturally sustaining” (Paris & Alim, 2017) teaching. In her book The Dreamkeepers, Ladson-Billings describes effective teachers who are able to draw from the cultural wealth of Black communities. These Dreamkeepers ensured that their Black students were academically successful and grew both in terms of their cultural competence and their sociopolitical awareness. In other words, according to Ladson-Billings (2009), these effective teachers possessed both pedagogical and relational dispositions, which leave lifelong impacts on the academic and social lives of their students. As some scholars have noted, what remains missing from the research on culturally-relevant and even culturally-sustaining teachers are “narratives” (read: stories, cuentos, testimonios, etc.) related to how the race of particular K–12 teachers positively impact the lives of their students because they either served as windows or mirrors (Bryan, 2020; Howard, 2001; Irvine & Fenwick, 2011; Milner, 2011). This volume aims to help fill this gap in educational research literature.