Enacting Critical Cosmopolitanism in Suburban Preservice Teacher Education through Crafting a Pedagogical Third-Space of Ethics

Abstract

This paper explores critical cosmopolitan literacies as a framework to engage teacher preparation program candidates in re-conceptualizing about their work as active thinkers, ethical decision makers, and agentive global actors. The purpose of the study is to elucidate how preservice teachers, in a secondary literacy teacher education program, respond to ethics-oriented education in addressing complex and controversial sociopolitical issues, such as the dialectics of freedom, human rights, and growing racism in the neoliberal globalized context. The third space theory of ethics is used to interpret participant student teachers’ intellectual epistemology based on their engagement with literary and nonliterary works, as well as multicultural media products. Data consist of observations, discussions, focus-group interviews, reflective journals, and course evaluations. This study contributes to our understanding of how critical cosmopolitan literacies is situated in the intercultural dialogue pertaining to ethical and equitable decision-making as a promising professional enterprise in the preparation of literacy educators as global advocates for equity and social justice.