Developing cultural critical consciousness and self-reflection in preservice teacher education

In this article, the authors argue that developing personal and professional critical consciousness about racial, cultural, and ethnic diversity should be a major component of preservice teacher education. They discuss some maneuvers teacher education students use to avoid engaging with racial issues in education, and suggest some strategies for counteracting them. The resistance strategies include silence, diversion, guilt, and benevolent liberalism. Techniques to offset these and develop critical cultural consciousness and self reflection include creating learning expectations of criticalness, modeling, providing opportunities to practice critical consciousness, and translating conceptual multicultural education into K-12 instructional possibilities. Woven throughout the specific suggestions is the general directive that critical consciousness learning experiences should take place within the context of guided practice, authentic examples, and realistic situations.

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WE BELIEVE THAT CULTURALLY responsive teaching (CRT) for ethnically diverse students should be a fundamental feature of teacher preparation and classroom practice. CRT involves using the cultures, experiences, and perspectives of African, Native, Latino, and Asian American students as filters through which to teach them academic knowledge and skills. Other critical elements of culturally responsive teaching are unpacking unequal distributions of power and privilege, and teaching students of color cultural competence about themselves and each other.

Our beliefs about the necessity of CRT are based on the premises that (a) multicultural education and educational equity and excellence are deeply interconnected; (b) teacher accountability involves being more self-conscious, critical, and analytical of one's own teaching beliefs and behaviors; and (c) teachers need to develop deeper knowledge and consciousness about what is to be taught, how, and to whom. These premises are supported by scholars such as Danielewicz (2001), Gay (2000), Ladson-Billings (2001), Palmer (1998), Schon (1983), Valli (1992), and Zeichner and Liston (1996). They explain that teachers knowing who they are as people, understanding the contexts in which they teach, and questioning their knowledge and assumptionsare as important as the mastery of techniques for instructional effectiveness. Critical racial and cultural consciousness should be coupled with self-reflection in both preservice teacher education and in-service staff development. In this article we explain some of the challenges to developing cultural critical consciousness, techniques we use, and insights we have gained in helping preservice teachers develop these skills.

The demographics of our students reflect those of the national profile of teacher candidates. They are overwhelmingly European American, middle-class, monolingual, White females who have had little sustained and substantive interactions with people of color. We believe the principles of our proposals for developing cultural critical consciousness and self-reflection in teacher education apply to other populations as well. However, how they are operationalized in practice should be contextually specific.

Challenges to Developing Cultural Critical Consciousness and Self-Reflection

Self-reflection and cultural critical consciousness are imperative to improving the educational opportunities and outcomes for students of color. They involve thoroughly analyzing and carefully monitoring both personal beliefs and instructional behaviors about the value of cultural diversity, and the best ways to teach ethnically different students for maximum positive effects. Corresponding behaviors have to be changed to incorporate more positive knowledge and perceptions of cultural diversity. To engage in these continuous critiques and efforts to make teaching more relevant to diverse students, teachers need to have a thorough understanding of their own cultures and the cultures of different ethnic groups, as well as how this affects teaching and learning behaviors.

Developing cultural critical consciousness and self-reflection is challenging to teacher education students, but it can be accomplished. A natural place to begin the learning process is by being aware of the obstacles that can interfere with the process. Some of these have to do with challenges of self-reflection in general that prospective teachers face; othersare specific to ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity.

General obstacles

General difficulties stem from several sources. Some derive from the fact that many prospective teachers do not clearly understand what constitutes self-reflection, of how to do it. They confuse reflection with describing issues, ideas, and events; stating philosophical beliefs; or summarizing statements made by scholars. They miss the analytical introspection, continuous reconstruction of knowledge, and the recurring transformation of beliefs and skills that are essential elements of self-reflection (Stronge, 2002). Even teacher education programs that emphasize reflection frequently do not incorporate issues of race, ethnic diversity, and social justice in classroom practices (Vavrus, 2002).