Abstract
This article reports on an ongoing action research project regarding stories and dialogue that can be used as experiences of difference and diversity, and their impact on the classroom environment/community and the teacher. Over a period of ten years, the researchers have engaged a total of 2400 teacher candidates, through their language and literacy course, in a discussion of what it means to be different and how these values and attitudes impact what happens in the classroom. Using children’s literature as a starting point, teacher candidates are encouraged to make connections between read alouds, reader response, critical literacy, and how this ultimately transforms their knowledge, values, and zones of comfort in both the teacher education classroom and the regular classroom.
Highlights
Teacher candidates enter our classroom with varying levels of comfort with regard to individual difference, diversity, and equity
As are many teacher educators, we are often plagued by the question of “What can we do?” which suggests the vagueness of how we train teachers for diversity, and the wonder of whether this is something that we can do within the context of a single course/program, given the assumptions, predispositions, and experiences of our teacher candidates (Garman, 2004; Pollock, Deckman, Mira, & Shalaby, 2010)
We do not engage our students in diversity training; instead we continually ask our selves: “What can we do?” and “How can we provide experiences for our students that will enable them to explore, examine, and develop the dispositions needed to work with diverse populations?”
Summary
Teacher candidates enter our classroom with varying levels of comfort with regard to individual difference, diversity, and equity. We have found through our many encounters with teacher candidates that experiences of story and literature can stimulate discussion and allow students to examine their predispositions in a non-threatening environment.
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