Early Childhood Teacher Certification as a Site for the Re-Production of Racial and Cultural Injustice

Tensions as opportunities for transformation: Applying DisCrit Resistance to early childhood teacher education programs

“…standardized examinations and teaching portfolios that are scored using standardized rubrics). Yet such assessments reinforce narrow views of development that reify racism and ableism (Drame et al, 2022;Souto-Manning et al, 2019). Second, the education field is increasingly recognizing the need to recruit, retain, and support teachers of color and disabled teachers (e.g.…”

“…Such reflections do not have to be writing-heavy exercises. Souto-Manning et al (2019) demonstrate how pre-service teachers of color employed poems to process and express their identities and experiences. In this way, it is important that teacher educators counter narrow views of development and learning in their own practice as well by providing opportunities for pre-service teachers to show their knowledge in accessible and culturally affirming ways (Annamma and Morrison, 2018).…”

“…Although standardized teaching assessments are increasingly required in the USA, it can constrain the teacher education curriculum, minimize opportunities for pre-service teachers to develop equitable approaches, and exclude teachers of color and disabled teachers from the field (e.g. Baldwin, 2007; Dover and Schultz, 2016; Han et al, 2017; Souto-Manning et al, 2019). Consequently, calls to reconceptualize the teacher education curriculum to counteract developmentalism and foster critical perspectives on teaching and learning (e.g.…”

“…Such spaces include field experiences where supervising in-service teachers (who are predominately white and ablebodied) may undermine marginalized pre-service teachers' sense of belonging in the field because of widely held traditional views of child development (e.g. Cheruvu et al, 2015;Souto-Manning et al, 2019). Third, there is a tension between building teachers' knowledge, professional identity, and self-efficacy while needing to challenge what counts as professional knowledge and expanding the wisdom that should shape practice given the pervasiveness of whiteness and normative notions of ability embedded within hegemonic developmentalism (Luna, 2016;Ryan and Grieshaber, 2005;Souto-Manning, 2019a).…”

Righting the Literacy Teacher Education Debt: A Matter of Justice

“…Literacy teacher education positions the language practices and literacies of Black teachers and of other teachers of Color as liabilities, constructing them pathologically. Black teachers and other teachers of Color are more likely to encounter obstacles to enter the profession-for example, having to pass certification exams that center white linguistic proxemics and being evaluated and retained as a "quality" teacher (Souto-Manning, 2019;Souto-Manning et al, 2020). Economically, literacy education and literacy teacher education have been constructed and perpetuated as white property (Mosley, 2010;Prendergast, 2002;Rogers, 2018), being entangled with the racial composition of the literacy teacher profession (Milner, 2017).…”