Mapping Student Teachers Dispositions to Diversity and Inequalty

What is it about?

This article shares a study conducted in a large Initial Teacher Education program concerned with the reproduction of inequality through teacher education. We mapped student teachers' dispositions to engaging with diversity and inequality in both stated commitments and educational practice. Inspired by critical theory and decolonial priorities we consider the ways student teachers relate to broader systems of power in their priorities and in their work as educators. We share our own priorities, methods, methodological/theoretical framing, data analysis and findings. Our findings identify a significant gap between the priorities of social equity to which student teachers state they commit and the educational practices that would affirm those commitments.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

We identified particular mechanisms that reproduce inequality through teacher education by student teachers: 1) a disposition to avoid and deny discussions of race and the experience of privilege 2) a disposition to naturalize forms of societal inequity that are currently operating in society; and 3) a disposition to engage in deficit discourses/perspectives to non Euro-Western ways of knowing. Understanding student teachers' dispositions that promote inequalities can inform course work and practicum experiences in teacher education.

Perspectives