Research: “They’re just not mature enough sometimes”: Teacher Candidates’ Languaging of Students and Criticality

Abstract

Working in an English education teacher preparation program that emphasizes Muhammad’s (2020, 2023) culturally and historically responsive literacy model, three graduate teaching assistants sought to understand how teacher candidates (TCs) in the program take up the learning pursuit of criticality in their planning and teaching. In this article, the authors discuss findings and implications from a qualitative study examining how four TCs languaged their understandings and enactments of criticality. Findings show that TCs’ definitions of criticality shaped their practice, sometimes limiting it based on the compatibility of TCs’ curriculum or priorities with their understandings of criticality. In addition, TCs’ deficit-framing of their students was a factor in how TCs explained the ways they did or did not take up criticality in their teaching. Implications from the study suggest a need to attend to the ways TCs language their students and conceive of criticality to support uptake of criticality in TCs’ planning and instructional practices.