This paper aims to examine the cultivation of anti-racist practices with pre- and in-service teachers in post-secondary contexts, and the tensions of engaging in this work for equity and justice in urban teacher education.
The paper relies on critical race theory (CRT) and critical whiteness studies (CWS), as well as auto-ethnographic and storytelling methods to examine how black in-service teachers working with a black teacher educator and white pre-service teachers working with a white teacher educator enacted strategies for cultivating anti-racist practices.
Findings indicate that for black and white educators alike, developing critical consciousness and anti-racist pedagogical practices requires naming racism as the central construct of oppression. Moreover, teachers and teacher educators demonstrated the importance of explicitly naming racism and centralizing (rather than de-centralizing) the political project of anti-racism within the current socio-political climate.
In addition to racism, educators’ racialized identities must be centralized to support individual anti-racist pedagogical practices. Storying racism provides a context for this individualized work and provides a framework for disrupting master narratives embedded in educational institutions.
Much has been written about the importance of teachers connecting to students’ out-of-school lives to increase academic achievement and advance educational justice. Strategies for forging those connections include using assets-based practices and linking school curricula to students’ community and cultural identities. While these connections are important, this paper focuses on teachers’ explicit anti-racist practices in urban education.
