Manufacturing Dissent: The New Economy of Power Relations in Multicultural Teacher Education

Abstract

This article challenges conventional understandings of White preservice teacher resistance by contextualizing it within the historically-situated pedagogical relations of the multicultural teacher education classroom. It describes the power effects of a cultural mismatch-driven, “critical” reflection approach to the preparation of the White preservice teacher and offers as an alternative a practice of Loving Subversion. In this approach, critical reflection is used not to reinscribe White racist identity but to develop a purposeful sense of White anti-racism. A practice of Loving Subversion is necessary, it is argued, if we are to build genuine capacity among White preservice teachers for effective work with culturally and linguistically diverse students.