How teacher educators created a course curriculum to challenge and enhance preservice teachers' thinking and experience with diversity

Abstract

Recognizing that students of color often do not achieve as well as their White counterparts, the authors of this article acknowledged the need for preservice teachers to study racial and cultural issues as they relate to teaching in diverse classrooms. For four months prior to the beginning of the course that the authors would co-teach, they systematically read multiple articles and book chapters about racial and cultural issues in schools and met weekly to discuss, from their own perspectives and experiences, their reactions to the readings. Simultaneously, they considered emerging possibilities for a course curriculum where preservice teachers would explore issues important to what they called creating culturally celebratory pedagogy and classrooms. The authors, a Black faculty member and a White faculty member in a teacher education program, share key questions that emerged from their readings and discussions, describe four major components they integrated into the course curriculum, and present assignments that may reduce preservice teachers' deficit knowledge and thinking about racial and cultural issues in classrooms and schools. The authors also consider students' initial reactions to the course content and what the students' reactions might mean for the structure and restructure of the course.