The Role of Teacher Education Programs in Developing Teacher Candidates’ Antiracist Stance on Teaching

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents an argument that although teacher education programs may aim to prepare teachers to be antiracist agents of change, they often fall short of doing so and that investigations of why can provide essential insights for teacher education. The authors use the critique of liberalism tenet of critical race theory to analyze three teacher candidates’ experiences learning to teach across three different types of teacher preparation programs and discuss the implications for preparing teachers to be antiracist agents of change. The authors then propose guiding principles for developing teacher candidates’ antiracist stance on teaching by situating race and justice in relation to the task of teaching, offering sufficient opportunities to learn about schools and communities as socio-historical and cultural settings, and leveraging pre-teacher education identities for antiracist teaching.