Chapter 11: Preparing Early Childhood Teachers to Enact Social Justice Pedagogies

Educating early childhood teachers to be able to individualize instruction and respond to their students in ways that are equitable and culturally relevant is essential to good practice. National standards for initial licensure put forth by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (Hyson, 2003) assert that teachers must be able to link children’s language and culture to the curriculum. Similarly, the Early Childhood/Generalist standards produced by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards state that “accomplished early childhood teachers model and teach behaviors appropriate in a diverse society” (Hyson, 2003, p. 156). Yet, national studies of 2- and 4-year early childhood certification programs consistently find that most programs offer little coursework in diversity content of any kind (Early & Winton, 2001; Maxwell, Lim, & Early, 2006; Ray, Bowman, & Robbins, 2006). Thus, despite the fact that we are residing in a global world, it would seem that early childhood teacher education has made little progress toward providing teachers with the knowledge they need to be able to work adequately with the multiple cultures, languages, and abilities, of the children they serve.

This chapter reviews research on diversity and early childhood teacher preparation with the dual aims of both (1) trying to understand why teacher educators have not updated their programs to reflect the changing demands of the workplace, and (2) as a way of rethinking how to prepare teachers to enact social justice or more equity-oriented pedagogies. We begin by drawing on work in the K–12 sector to tease out the differences between terms used to describe what has often been labeled multicultural (Ramsey, 2006), with the aim of reasoning through shifts in the field from “beyond heroes and holidays” to more equity-focused pedagogies. We then review the empirical research that examines the preparation of preservice and inservice teachers to address issues of diversity. This chapter concludes with an argument for the development of a strategic research agenda that will lead to the reinvention of content and pedagogical approaches in early childhood teacher preparation. Our aim in asserting this research agenda is to ensure that diversity, difference, and social justice are viewed as foundational for every early childhood educator, no matter where they work and who they teach.