Equity is More Than a #Hashtag: Re-Thinking Teacher Education by Andrea Layton & Holly Klock

Over the past 12 months, we have witnessed countless equity performances. Organizations have called for the formation of Anti-racism committees. Educational conferences boast “Equity at the Forefront” themes. And individuals have artfully crafted #inittogether social media posts featuring Black Lives Matter protest selfies. We are not the first, nor will we be the last, to tell you that these performances fall flat when they are not paired with internal and structural transformation.

It has been established that educational inequity is engrained in the social fabric of American education. Students’ academic achievement, attendance, access to challenging coursework, engagement, participation in extracurricular activities, behavior, and their likelihood of committing suicide have all been tied to dimensions of their social identities (Dover, 2009). Therefore, one’s social media post boasting a stack of Anti-racist books is a seemingly barren performance if it is an isolated act.

Colleges of education are not immune to this hashtag approach[1] to educational equity. These performances have been taking place for decades. Within the limited empirical work addressing social justice in teacher education programs (TEPs), Mills and Ballantyne (2016) found that teaching about social justice occurs in the periphery of programs’ core curriculum. Departments are excited to announce the addition of “urban experiences” to student teaching options but rarely have these institutions taken actions to interrupt their inequitable practices and disrupt deficit perspectives that their teachers will then place upon P-12 students. 

We assert that being a socially-just educator is, simultaneously, a process and product that includes the restructuring of how one understands the world and one’s place within it and understands the responsibility for creating change (Curry-Stevens, 2007). To foster the development of socially-just educators in our TEPs, we must simultaneously consider internal educator transformations and external TEP transformations. In community, we must unlearn, dismantle, and restructure norms that create and sustain inequities.

In this piece, we wish to call you into reimagining TEPs that center socially-just teaching. We do so by first addressing what we call the foundations of TEPs. Using humanizing pedagogy as a conceptual framework, we argue that individuals anchored to TEPs must study their positioning in relation to centuries-old oppression. We then address our collective responsibility for creating change. We call for a change of structures and practices found within TEPs that simultaneously withhold programmatic access from marginalized individuals and privilege Eurocentric ideologies. This work moves beyond performance and demands that TEPs and the individuals within them critically question their understanding of the world, their place in it, and their responsibility for creating change. 

Foundations of Teacher Education Programs: The People 

Administrators, teacher educators, pre-service teachers (PSTs), and cooperating teachers alike must explore the social structures that have privileged white, able-bodied, heteropatriarchal identities in our education systems. We have witnessed TEPs attempt to perform “difficult conversations” that skirt around two or three dimensions of identity, such as gender, race, and (dis)ability. Multiple dimensions of identity, and the intersections of these dimensions are ignored in these attempts and allow students to settle into their homogenous norms and lived experiences. Additionally, typically few and far apart, these conversations happen on the periphery of the core curriculum and do not address systemic racism. We contend that to study one’s positioning in relation to the centuries-old oppression in our education systems, TEPs must engage in pedagogies that affirm and sustain humanity and raise critical consciousness about societal injustices. In doing so, siloed “difficult conversations” are transformed through a pedagogical shift that requires constant, ongoing criticality[2]. One such pedagogy is humanizing pedagogy.  

Humanizing pedagogy is a process of becoming that simultaneously engulfs teachers and students. This pedagogy recognizes inequitable structures and calls to action individual and collective efforts to raise critical consciousness (Carter Andrews & Castillo, 2016; del Carmen Salazar, 2013). Bartolomé (1994) initially conceptualized humanizing pedagogy in response to research that found learning from and valuing student language and experiences occurred more often when students spoke a language and possessed cultural capital that more closely matched mainstream. Research continues to uncover layers of deficit orientations our systems of education and the teachers within them (un)consciously hold against marginalized students (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Hertzog, 2011).

Humanizing pedagogy confronts the historical and present existence of inequality while providing educators with the tools needed to counter deficit mindsets and behaviors that maintain the status quo. In their 2019 piece, Carter Andrews, Brown, Castillo, Jackson, and Vellanki present three core tenets of humanizing pedagogy with which TEPs must engage. These include: (1) engaging in sustained critical self-reflection; (2) resisting binaries; and (3) enacting ontological and epistemological plurality. We see these foundational tenets as vital components needed for the exploration of social structures that in turn, will serve as the groundwork upon which action is taken. 

Framed in Freire’s (1970) definition of critical consciousness, critical self-reflection entails “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions” and taking action against these “oppressive elements of reality” (p.17). While engaging in this sustained critical self-reflection, it is vital that teacher educators model the resistance of a hegemonic binarism and embrace divergent and interconnected narratives. A common binary sustained in TEPs, and P-12 education alike is that of past/present. Instead of engaging in the study of systemic racism, racism is reinforced as a thing of the past. We argue that teacher educators must disrupt this frame of reference by expanding what knowledge, ideas, and ways of being are valued within learning spaces. Thus, an epistemological and ontological shift must occur. 

We hold that one’s personal and professional self are intertwined in one’s being. When educators use critical reflection as a necessary tool, they can resist traditional binaries and live in multiple truths in and outside of the classroom. TEPs using humanizing pedagogies lay the groundwork upon which action may take place. Thus, we cannot stop here. We must also accept responsibility for creating change that will demand equity for all students.

Responsibility for Creating Change: The Structures

Committing to the development of educators who center issues of race, culture, power, and justice in their teaching requires strategy at the decision-making level within a program regarding access and curriculum. In addition to internally confronting systemic racism, individuals anchored to TEPs must take responsibility for creating change at structural levels. We see a dire need for change in the structures that decide who has access to TEPs and what is taught within the collective learning space.  

Access to TEPs begins in the walls of P-12 classrooms. King (2018) notes that the attainment rate of a high school diploma for Black, Brown, and Indigenous students is notably lower than that of white students. Because of this, potential teacher candidates have been filtered in so that racial-minoritized students have already been excluded from the possibility of teaching (U.S. Dept of Ed, 2016). While nearly 50% of public school students are Students of Color, colleges of education remain one of the least racially diverse colleges on university campuses (King, 2018).  Take note of the cycle at play. TEPs that do not require educators to confront their biases and critically understand systemic racism bring deficit mindsets into classroom spaces. This then works to hinder the achievement of marginalized students, which becomes a barrier to minority representation in TEPs. It is easy to continue Eurocentric curricula and ignore the tenants of humanizing pedagogy because this status-quo has gone on for decades.

Instead, all individuals anchored to TEPs must collectively analyze, question, and dismantle policies and practices that sustain racial injustice. In a recent press conference Daniel Greenstein, the chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), was asked how he can properly address racism on campus without understanding the history of racism in the PASSHE (Martines, 2021). He replied, “That’s a great question. I’m not sure.” We share this example to call-in teacher educators and administrators alike. As a collective unit, TEPs must make the removal of racist structures, policies, and practices that have sustained injustice a priority. 

In addition to engaging in the analysis and transformation of structures that withhold access to TEPs, we must also scrutinize long-held learning theories that are the foundation of colleges of education. The most-studied education theorists in our TEPs are European, white men: Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist; Ivan Pavlov, Soviet psychologist; B.F. Skinner and Abraham Maslow, American psychologists. Instead, TEPs must commit to dismantling educational injustices by restructuring the foundational curriculum in a way that privileges liberation and centers minority voices, experiences, and perspectives (Freire, 1970).

Conclusion

Training aspiring teachers to be critically reflective and critically conscious is an essential step in “liberatory learning that contrasts oppressive policies and practices” (Carter Andrews et al., 2019). We beg the question if TEPs and the individuals within them don’t understand the manifestation of racism and social injustice in education, how will they dismantle the structures that leave so many of our students behind? Equity beyond a #hastag holds new and tenured educators accountable for the state of education in this country. It demands that we dismantle the status quo and reimagine a system of education that prioritizes equity and provides liberatory education to all students.

Author Bios

Andii Layton is a second-year Ph.D. student majoring in Educational Leadership. Andii has been in the field of education in multiple capacities for over a decade and is increasingly interested in researching teacher development in relation to social justice.

Holly Klock is a Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction, currently writing her dissertation. She works with teacher candidates, practicing teachers, and teacher educators to transform educational spaces to be more equitable and inclusive.

References

Bartolomé, L. (1994). Beyond the methods fetish: Toward a humanizing pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 64, 173–194.

Carter Andrews, D. J., & Castillo, B. M. (2016). Humanizing pedagogy for examinations of race and culture in teacher education. In F. Tuitt, C. Haynes, & S. Stewart (Eds.), Race, equity and higher education: The continued search for critical and inclusive pedagogies around the globe (pp. 112–128). Stylus.

Curry-Stevens, A. (2007). New Forms of Transformative Education: Pedagogy for the Privileged. Journal of Transformative Education, 5(1), 33–58.

del Carmen Salazar, M. (2013). A humanizing pedagogy: Reinventing the principles and practice of education as a journey toward liberation. Review of Research in Education, 37(1), 121–148.

Dover, A. G. (2009). Teaching for social justice and K-12 student outcomes: A conceptual framework and research review. Equity & Excellence in Education, 42(4), 507-525.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Seabury.

Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149-171.

Hertzog, L. (2011). Can a successful ESL teacher hold deficit beliefs of her students’ home languages and cultures? Multicultural Perspectives, 13(4), 197-204.

King, J. L. (2018). Colleges of education: A national portrait. National Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Executive report. Retrieved from aacte.org.

Martines, J. (2021). Head of Pa.’s public university system to examine historic roots of racism in state schools. Spotlight Pa. Retrieved from https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2021/01/passhe-coronavirus-chancellor-daniel-greenstein-racism-higher-education-college-campus-integration/

Mills, C., & Ballantyne, J. (2016). Social Justice and Teacher Education: A Systematic Review of Empirical Work in the Field. Journal of Teacher Education, 67(4), 263–276.

Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. New York, NY: Scholastic Inc.

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service, The State of Racial Diversity in the Educator Workforce, Washington, D.C. 2016. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/highered/racial-diversity/state-racial-diversity-workforce.pdf

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[1] The act of adding a hashtag to digital content to identify it as concerning a specific topic, in this case, social justice. This approach to social justice is performative if it is not paired with ongoing critical self-reflection and action.

[2] The capacity to read, write, and think in the context of understanding power, privilege, and oppression (Muhammad, 2020).