becoming culturally responsive: self‐critical inquiry in preservice teacher education

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This article was downloaded by: [Colorado College] On: 31 October 2014, At: 13:17 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Irish Educational Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ries20 Becoming culturally responsive: Selfcritical inquiry in preservice teacher education James G. Deegan a & Martha AllexsahtSnider b a Lecturer in Education , Mary Immaculate College , Limerick b Associate Professor at the College of Education , The University of Georgia , Athens Published online: 18 Jul 2008. To cite this article: James G. Deegan & Martha AllexsahtSnider (1999) Becoming culturally responsive: Selfcritical inquiry in preservice teacher education, Irish Educational Studies, 18:1, 155-164, DOI: 10.1080/0332331990180116 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0332331990180116 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/ terms-and-conditions

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Page 1: Becoming culturally responsive: Self‐critical inquiry in preservice teacher education

This article was downloaded by: [Colorado College]On: 31 October 2014, At: 13:17Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Irish Educational StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ries20

Becoming culturally responsive: Self‐critical inquiry inpreservice teacher educationJames G. Deegan a & Martha Allexsaht‐Snider b

a Lecturer in Education , Mary Immaculate College , Limerickb Associate Professor at the College of Education , The University of Georgia , AthensPublished online: 18 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: James G. Deegan & Martha Allexsaht‐Snider (1999) Becoming culturally responsive: Self‐critical inquiry inpreservice teacher education, Irish Educational Studies, 18:1, 155-164, DOI: 10.1080/0332331990180116

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0332331990180116

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in thepublications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representationsor warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should beindependently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses,actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoevercaused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyoneis expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Becoming culturally responsive: Self‐critical inquiry in preservice teacher education

Irish Educational Studies, Vol.18, Spring 1999 155

BECOMING CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE: SELF-CRITICALINQUIRY IN PRESERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION

James G. Deegan and Martha Allexsaht-Snider

Introduction

The pursuit of critical inquiry embraces key social and intellectualideas in classrooms and schools in America today (Noffke,Stevenson, Flores & Granger, 1995). In his writings on reflectionand experience, Dewey (1916) wrote that acquiring knowledge isalways secondary and instrumental to the processes of inquiry. Inthis paper we investigate the starting points and pathways undertakenby preservice teachers in accomplishing meaningful and usefulinquiry into the day-to-day life of culturally diverse classrooms,schools, and communities in the southeastern United States.

Teacher educators and researchers have proposed teacherresearch, action research, and preservice teacher education as ways ofaddressing critical inquiry in teaching and learning processes (Cochran-Smith, 1995). Being critical has been defined in terms of "being ableto understand, analyse, pose questions, and affect the sociopoliticaland economic realities of preservice teachers' lives" (Leistyna,Woodrum, & Sherblom, 1995, p.334). We suggest that elaborated,abstract, and outcome notions of being critical often fail to challengethe fact that developing a self-critical stance is not always a naturallyoccurring phenomenon in preservice teachers' lives.

Developing a self-critical stance

We argue that self-critical inquiry is a sociopolitical process rooted inteacher education students' past and present knowledge. We viewself-critical inquiry as a culturally relevant phenomenon embedded inthe interactive outcomes of race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, and

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community, and, for that matter, any other variable of social analysis.We do not dismiss the importance of educating socially andpolitically active teachers for the future, however, we draw attentionto the ways in which preservice teachers often define thinking andacting socially and politically in different ways from the perspectivesof teacher educators in universities and colleges. The challenge, aswe see it, lies in facilitating individual preservice teachers' "loss ofinnocence about the inequalities and injustices in society" (Zeichner& Gore, 1995, p.22) through conversation-building and reflectivetechniques. In a similar vein to Noffke (1994), we attempt tofacilitate the preservice teachers' unpacking of "everyday things"(p.4) for their historical and ideological significance.

We argue that critical strands in the discourse on educationalaction research, broadly, do not foster a useful sensitising frameworkfor all novice inquirers in preservice teacher education programmes.We believe that the salient disadvantage lies in the strict and invariantsequence of cycles of action research in applied settings (Carr &Kemmis, 1986). We suggest a particular spiralling approach thatattempts to extend and elaborate "emancipatory intent" (Gore &Zeichner, 1990, p.87) from a sound base of preservice teachers' owncritically reflective practices in the direction of social critique.

Stage-setting and building support for inquiry

The Alternative Early Childhood Teacher Education programme(ATE) in the College of Education at The University of Georgia,Athens was the setting for our study of preservice teacher inquiry.The ATE programme was influenced by the idea of co-reform - anapproach to educational change rooted in Goodlad's (1990)conviction that the "necessary renewal of schools is most likely to beadvanced when renewal efforts are closely linked to the teachereducation and research activities of schools and universities"(p.29).

Three school sites and thirty-five cooperating teachersprovided placements for ninety preservice teachers across fourcohorts from 1992 to 1997. The majority of student teachers rangedin age from twenty-two to twenty-five. The total number of studentteachers included eighty-seven European American females, twoAfrican American females, and one European American male. Two

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of the schools were located in a rural county adjacent to theuniversity and one was located in the same small city as theuniversity. The two rural schools contained predominantly low-to-middle socioeconomic status European American students. The thirdschool contained both African American, Hispanic American, andEuropean American low-to-middle socioeconomic students.

Preservice teachers in the ATE programme participated in aseries of self-inquiry projects in fall, winter, and spring terms withfifty contact hours in professional courses in early childhoodeducation in each term (Allexsaht-Snider, Deegan & White, 1995).The series of inquiries engaged university faculty, cooperatingteachers, and preservice teachers in understanding the mutuallyenforcing dynamics of the programme's core themes of culturallyrelevant teaching (Ladson-Billings, 1992), construedvist learningprinciples (Duckworth, 1987), and self-critical inquiry in contrastingculturally diverse schools and classrooms (Cochran-Smith, 1995).Integral pedagogical strands (for example, learner-centred teaching,integrated curriculum planning, whole language, cooperativelearning) and preservice teachers' own field experiences were alsoexplored. Table 1 shows the strategies used to set the stage and buildsupport for preservice teacher inquiry.

TABLE 1 • Setting the stage and supporting inquiry

Discussion and writing about positive and negative memorablelearning experiences.Participation in small and whole group focused conversationsabout programme themes.Preservice students mentored by graduates working as first yearteachers.Explorations of children's thinking and learning processes.Study of children's friendships.Investigations family involvement in schooling.Construction of community portraits.In-class reflective writing.Field and reading response journals fostering student-facultydialogue.

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The first phase of the inquiry projects concentrated on theidentification of a question to guide inquiry and a review of theliterature on a topic of personal interest for individual students. Thesecond phase included observation, interview, survey, audiotaping,and videotaping data collection procedures. These procedures werefollowed by a form of speculative analysis for "indexing" emergentinsights (Hubbard & Miller Power, 1993). As critical friends, weassisted with widening perspectives, clarifying ideas, and lendingsupport when needed.

The third and final phase focused on creating a forum for newways of sharing inquiry findings through an invited colloquium forpreservice teachers, cooperating teachers, and university faculty. Thecolloquium served, among other things, as an important medium forraising the voices of seasoned and novice researchers on matters ofmutual interest and significance in the school-university partnership.Table 2 shows the three-phase developmental sequence for thepreservice teacher inquiry projects.

Analysis of the inquiry projects revealed four heuristicallyseparate but, in reality, interrelated themes. First, the projects helpedpreservice teachers to bridge time, space, and attitudinal dimensionsin their own personal and professional biographies. Second, theyserved as a potent medium for raising latent questions about positiveand negative memorable learning experiences. Third, they helped tofuel critical understandings of present field experiences and ways forchallenging the status quo. Fourth, they helped to establish and buildinvestment in role and relationship expectations for inquiringpreservice teachers.

An illustrative example of an inquiry project written by apreservice teacher follows. It is culled from a larger body ofaccumulated data that reflects the above themes in a variety of teachingand learning experiences across the three schools in the programme.

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TABLE 2 — Three-phase developmental sequence for inquiryprojects

Phase 1: Identifying questions to guide inquiry and reviewingrelevant literature from recent and relevant primarysources:

• Experiences as a student (e.g., tracking).• Course and program topics (e.g., whole language).• Held experience dilemmas and challenges (e.g. positive

management).• Developing the role of teacher (e.g., fostering decision-

making).

Phase 2: Learning how to design and carry out an inquiryproject, including collecting and analysing data:

• Revising and refining inquiry questions.Describing participants and settings.

• Developing field observation and note-taking skills.• Revising interview and survey protocols.

Negotiating entree and building rapport in the field.• Tracking inquirer biases.• Analysing and interpreting data.• Integrating literature reviewed with inquiry project

findings.

Phase 3: Colloquium sharing of inquiry projects:• Conversation-building about the unfinished challenges and

ongoing processes of inquiry.• Opportunity for preservice teachers to serve as catalysts for

change in teaching and teacher education in the school-university partnerships.

Example of a preservice teacher inquiry project

Elizabeth, a confident and intellectually curious European Americanstudent from the northeastern United States, grounded her inquiryproject in young children's perceptions about race and race-relatedphenomena in two of the programme schools; one rural, the otherurban. She wrote in the preamble to her final project paper that her

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interests in children's perceptions of race had "long been building."The spark that fused her thinking lay in a series of questions that sheposed for herself following the group's discussion of Paley's book,White Teacher (1989), during the inaugural three-day orientation tothe programme.

I recall reading White Teacher by Vivian Paley andreacting to her as a paranoid teacher. She was overlyconcerned with race and I kept thinking, "Are children thisconcerned about race? Does Paley's concern about raceonly add to her students' concern and paranoia about it."

Elizabeth's perspectives about teachers who raised discussionsabout race as "overly concerned" and "paranoid" was typical of manypreservice teachers who explained in class conversations and quick-write interludes that race was, generally, a carefully circumscribedtopic of conversation around the dinner table when they weregrowing up in the seventies and eighties. Her inquiry experiencesrepresented a significant leap in what were new meanings of race andhow race-related variables of social analysis might become embeddedin her personal and professional biography.

Elizabeth's research design included a series of interviews withtwo different groups of children in two field settings. She describedthe first school as small, located in a university town, and culturallydiverse. It was a school where the children of medical doctors,university professors, musicians, naval officers, and factory workerscould experience the butterfly gardens in the front of the school andclassrooms with "bookshelves full of novels and multiculturalliterature." She described the second school as small and rural;"where every face is white." It was a school where the children ofstruggling fanners told "stories of four-wheelin', feeding the cows,and riding horses bareback" during sharing time. Utilising Ramsey's(1987) sensitising questions for facilitating discussion aboutcharacters and friends in Adoffs book, Black is brown is tan (1973)and Hoffman's book, Amazing Grace (1991), she discovered that sheneeded to move in synchrony with the children's perceptions of race,if she wanted to truly "get inside" their everyday thinking processes.

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Elizabeth quickly began to wrestle with the underlyingconceptual structures used by the children to describe aspects of racein their everyday lives. In the following excerpt, she described acritical moment in her inquiry when she realised that the children'sown meanings of race did not rest in a single or essentialist cause butin the interactive outcomes of language, friendships, and poweracross school, home, and community settings.

As I directed the conversation to the interracial unions [inthe story] one student made an interesting comment. Hehad just been talking about one of his friends and calledhim a... "Well, you know, a negro." At that point, Irealised that the students normally referred to AfricanAmericans in a socially unacceptable way by calling themniggers. I told the group they could use the word nigger, ifthey wanted to, in our conversation. I didn't hear the wordblack for the rest of the discussion.

Reflecting on the interview protocol suggested by one of theauthors and derived from Pattern's (1990) interview-guide approachthat she used, Elizabeth wrote of her "shock and worry" about thechildren's highly-charged language during her discussions about thecharacters in the selected books by Adoff and Hoffman. Particularlysignificant for her was what she had learned; the children's"snickering and rolling eyes in response to the characters in thestories helped her to get beyond her.own initial naivetd aboutchildren's perceptions of race."

Elizabeth discussed the ways in which the media blitzsurrounding the OJ. Simpson trial at that time sparked conversationsbetween the children about the idea of interracial unions as sociallyunacceptable. In attempting to make sense of the teaching andlearning implications in her inquiry project, she wrote about thepersonal and professional significance of how far she had journeyedin "overcoming obstacles" in her own thinking about children'sperceptions of race. The following excerpt indicates her emergentperspectives on flawed comparisons between culturally diverse andhomogenous schools but, also, the importance of matching researchfindings to implications for future policy imperatives.

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Originally, I made the prediction that students in a culturallydiverse school are more likely to portray racial conflict.This prediction was absolutely wrong. The opposite end ofthe spectrum is where efforts needed to be placed. The "allwhite" community cannot socialise itself to the realities ofthe world that surrounds it unless it breaks free from themedia and becomes part of the world around iL

Elizabeth's inquiry project was a joumey into a twilight zonethat thrust her from what she perceived as situations created byteachers who needlessly exacerbate the significance of race inclassrooms to the counter-realisation that the everyday "realities" ofrace are a common struggle for all in the present culture ofclassroom, schools, and communities in contemporary Americansociety. Her dramatic shift was a realisation that race matters as animmediate, relevant, and critical challenge, especially for all thoseworking with young children. Like other preservice teachers in theprogramme who addressed topics such as tracking, inclusion, andhome-school-community dynamics, she exemplified a significantleap in the direction of the broader social concerns and issues ofjustice, caring, and equity.

Challenges in facilitating self-critical inquiry

The processes of "emancipatory intent," as earlier described by Gore& Zeichner (1990), raise fundamental challenges for those attemptingto facilitate the accomplishment of self-critical inquiry in preserviceteacher education. Three particular challenges are raised here.

An initial challenge rests in the fact that preservice teachers areinquiring in "other people's classrooms." They need support indeveloping collaborative approaches with teachers that can overcometeachers' associations of inquiry being evaluative, in a negative sense,of their teaching. The stage-setting of inquiry projects needs to bedesigned to help preservice teachers develop skills in negotiatingaccess, time, and opportunity for conducting critical inquiry in a waythat complements teachers' perspectives on day-to-day life inclassrooms. Teachers already engaged in inquiry projects canpotentially serve as valuable models and supporters, but not allcooperating teachers are interested in conducting inquiry themselvesor in collaboration with preservice teachers.

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A second challenge relates to the need for building a culture ofinquiry over time and across courses and across school and universitysettings in a preservice teacher education programme. Preserviceteachers need multiple opportunities for reflecting on their ownexperiences and observations with a critical eye and also for generatingquestions for inquiry and following up with data collection andanalysis. University faculty, cooperating teachers, and preserviceteachers also need multiple opportunities for dialogue generatedthrough critical inquiry. Such inquiries need to focus not only onpreservice teachers' experiences but should additionally considerschool and university teaching practices from a reform perspective.

Finally, a third challenge involves helping preservice teachers toraise issues and concerns about preservice teacher education that onlythey are uniquely positioned to address. The challenge is one ofbalancing the desire of preservice teachers to be the best teachers thatthey can be while helping them to continually tap the wellspring oftheir own meanings of learning and teaching and how these meaningsbecome embedded in the everyday realities of classrooms and schools.

REFERENCES

Adoff, A. (1992)Black is tan is brown. New York: Harper Trophy.

Allexsaht-Snider, M., Deegan, J. and White, C. (1995)"Educational renewal in an alternative teacher educationprogramme: Evolution of a school-university partnership," inTeaching and Teacher Education, 11, 519-530.

Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986)Becoming critical: Education, Knowledge and Action, London:

The Falmer Press.Cochran-Smith, M. (1995)

"Colour blindness and basket making are not the answers:Confronting the dilemmas of race, culture, and languagediversity in teacher education," in American EducationalResearch Journal, 32, 493-522.

Dewey, J. (1916)Democracy and Education: An introduction to the philosophy

of education. New York: Macmillan.

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Duckworth, E. (1987)The having of wonderful ideas and other essays on teaching andlearning, New York: Teachers College Press.

Goodlad, J. (1990)Teachers for our nation's schools, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Gore, J. and Zeichner, K. (1990)Action research and reflective teaching in preservice teachereducation: A case study from the United States, in Stevenson,R. and Noffke, S. (eds) Action research and teacher education:International perspectives, Buffalo, NY: Buffalo ResearchInstitute on Education for Teaching, 51-99.

Hoffman, M. (1991)Amazing Grace, New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.

Hubbard, R. and Miller Power, B. (1991)The art of classroom inquiry: A handbook for teacher-researchers, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1992)Reading between the lines and beyond the pages: A culturallyrelevant approach to literacy reading, in Theory into Practice,31, 312-320.

Leistyna, P., Woodrum, A. and Sherblom, A. (eds) (1996)Breaking free: The transformative power of critical pedagogy,Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review.

Noffke, S. (1994)"Action research: Towards the next generation," in EducationalAction Research, 2, 9-21.

Noffke, S. and Stevenson, R. (eds) (1995)Educational action research: Becoming practically critical,New York: Teachers College Press.

Paley, V. (1989)White Teacher, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Patton, M. (1990)Qualitative evaluation research, Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Ramsey, P. (1987)Teaching and learning in a diverse world, New York: Teachers

College Press.Zeichner, K. and Gore, J. (1995)

Using action research as a vehicle for student teacher reflection,in Noffke, S. and Stevenson, R. (eds) Educational actionresearch: Becoming practically critical, New York: TeachersCollege Press, 13-30.

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