Creating safe and productive environments with a diverse student population requires more than the strategies recommended in the original classroom-management literature. Drawing from the literature on culturally responsive classroom management, psychologically supportive classroom environments, and building resilience, the authors describe the practices used by three effective novice teachers in urban elementary classrooms during the first 2 hours of the first day of school. The study was based on videotape and interview data that were qualitatively analyzed using an inductive approach. The novice teachers focused on developing relationships and establishing expectations through the use of “insistence” and a culturally responsive communication style. The study provides clear pictures of the ways in which teachers teach and insist on respectful behavior and establish a caring, task-focused community. As such, it demonstrates how teachers create environments of success and resilience for students who have historically floundered in school.
In this review of the literature, we draw on critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, and critical pedagogy to examine teacher educators’ race-visible efforts in preservice teacher education and inservice teacher professional development. Our review specifically centers on race and racism in teacher education because race is often silenced or largely unaddressed in teacher education programs and teacher professional learning. Through a systematic search of electronic databases and a hand search of journals in this research area, we located 39 peer-reviewed articles published at the intersection of race, white teachers, and teacher education. Findings reveal the kinds of race-visible instructional practices used by teacher educators to scaffold race consciousness as well as larger themes teacher educators and education researchers encounter in their work related to race with preservice and inservice educators. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and offer future directions for continued research and practice.
This paper draws on the literature on effective African American teachers of African American students to investigate the enactments of culturally relevant critical teacher care (CRCTC) in two fifth-grade teachers' classrooms in a large, urban school district. Using interview and observation data, the findings illustrate the teachers' knowledge of the constraints upon their students' futures. This knowledge catalyzed their enactment of a particular kind of care designed to prepare their students with the dispositions, knowledge, and skills to achieve flourishing lives. The teachers' practices illustrate classroom spaces ripe for high quality teaching, learning and liberation of students of color. The study reveals the transformative potential of teacher care explicitly linked to a larger social justice agenda.
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