Teacher Education

Transforming teacher education by integrating the funds of knowledge of teachers of Color

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Abstract

For too long, the justification for recruiting teachers of Color (TOCs) has been framed as a demographlc and democratic imperative (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2012). As teacher educators of Color and former elementary and secondary (K-12) teachers, we (the authors) argue that the rationale for increasing TOCs moves beyond diversifying a workforce, but instead to disrupt racial, cultural, and linguistic inequity that center Whiteness and adversely impact students of Color (SOCs) in schools. At large, the teaching profession remains predominantly White (Boser, 2014; Goodwin, 2004; lngersoll, Merrill, Stuckey, & Collins, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 2001), yet, the population of students of Color entering K-12 public schools continues to grow (Boser, 2011, 2014; U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data, 2013). Consequently, inherent bias that favors White cultural norms and values continues to appear in textbooks (Brown & Brown, 2010; Elliott, Nagel, & Woodward, 1985; Loewen, 2007), school spaces, and pedagogies, resulting in a negative impact on student experience and performance (Jacoby-Senghor, Sinclair, & Shelton, 2016). The process of normalizing Whiteness in teacher education and K-12 schools has put the wellbeing and success of students of Color in a precarious situation, which often disregards and makes invisible their cultural identity and wealth of knowledge (King, 1995).

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