Content provided in partnership with
Developing cultural critical consciousness and self-reflection in preservice teacher education
Theory Into Practice, Summer, 2003 by Geneva Gay, Kipchoge Kirkland
Another general problem is that teacher education students have few high-quality opportunities for guided practice in self-reflection. This should be corrected by instructors in preservice programs using inquiry teaching techniques and helping students develop the habit, skills, and spirit of criticalness as habitual elements of their learning experiences. If these approaches to learning are cultivated and modeled across the general teacher education curriculum, they will set a foundation and precedent for teacher candidates to use in their own classrooms. As Danielewicz (2001) explains:
Reflexivity is an act of self-conscious consideration that can lead people to a deepened understanding of themselves and others, not in the abstract, but in relation to specific social environments ... [and] foster a more profound awareness ... of how social contexts influence who people are and how they behave.... It involves a person's active analysis of past situations, events, and products, with the inherent goals of critique and revision for the explicit purpose of achieving an understanding that can lead to change in thought of behavior. (pp. 155-156)
Other difficulties in developing a general reflective ethos among preservice teachers come from traditional beliefs that teaching is an objectifiable craft. It requires the mastery of technical components that are applicable to all teaching contexts and student populations. These beliefs are captured in statements such as, "Treat all students the same regardless of who they are," and "Good teaching anywhere is good teaching everywhere." It is troublesome for some teacher education students to overcome these orientations, and to accept teaching as a highly contextualized process. In fact, teaching is as much a personal performance, a moral endeavor, and a cultural script, as it is a technical craft (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993; Danielewicz, 2001; Palmer, 1998).
Specific obstacles
Developing skills in self-reflection and critical consciousness specific to racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity among preservice teachers is obstructed by several more deliberate maneuvers. One of the most common is for teacher education students to divert or diffuse attention away from the targeted topic. This is accomplished in several ways. Rather than reflecting critically on the race-related and culturally diverse situations presented, they merely offer descriptions, evaluations, or justifications for actions taken or predicted. For example, in discussing achievement among students of color, many preservice teachers simply repeat the trends, or the conventional reasons for why discrepancies exist, without examining their own personal positions on the issues, questioning traditional explanations, or analyzing how achievement dilemmas are influenced by culture, class, ethnicity, and racism. They seem unable to imagine novel ways of tackling underachievement. When provided with some possibilities, it is difficult for them to see the merits of them because the new proposals conflict with their conceptions of teaching. A case in point is the difficulty prospective teachers have making distinctions between using multiple culturally appropriate means to achieve learning outcomes for diverse students, and lowering academic standards. They think the two ideas are synonymous. Teacher education students also frequently try to shift the focus of analysis from race to class, gender, and individuality. Invariably, when discussions about race and racism in education are raised, someone quickly counters with comments like, "it's more about economic status than race because there are more differences within than among groups"; "in the final analysis it is the individual that counts"; and "promoting high-quality education is for all students."
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Autos
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »