Describe Agrawal et al.s? 3 key markers of teaching for social justice.? How is the way they define teaching for social justice similar to or different from how other authors, whose

From Ideal to Practice and Back Again: Beginning Teachers Teaching for Social Justice

Ruchi Agarwal 1, Shira Epstein 2, Rachel Oppenheim 3 , Celia Oyler 3 , and Debbie Sonu4

Abstract

The five authors of this article designed a multicase study to follow recent graduates

Journal of Teacher Education 61(3) 237-2◄ 7 © 20 IO American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0022◄87 I0935 ◄52 I http://jte.sagepub.com

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of an elementary preservice teacher education program into their beginning teach ing placements and exp lore the ways in which they enacted social justice c urricula. The a uthors highlight the stories of three beginning teachers, honoring the plurality o f their conceptions of social justice teaching and the resiliency they exhibited in translating social justice ideals into viable pedagogy. They also discuss the strugg les the teachers faced when enacting socia l justice curricula and the tenuous connection they perceived between thei r conceptions and their practices. The authors emphasize that such struggles are inevitable and end the article with recommendations for ways in wh ich teacher educators can prepare beginning teachers for the uncertain journey of teaching for social justice.

Keyword s

social justice, teacher education, teacher reflection, curriculum

Introduction Many teacher education programs across the United States express co1n1nitments to social justice and accordingly attract prospective teachers who seek to work for social change. These social justice commitments are certainly broad and diffuse but stem in no small part from the structural inequal­ ities in our society that are reflected in- and perpetuated by-our schools. We know, for instance, that students in low-income communities are more likely to receive fewer resources and a qualitatively substandard education compared to their middle-class counterparts (Ferguson, 2000; Kozol, 1991; Rothstein, 2004). So too, students of color are often denied adequate educational resources, are overrepresented within special education contexts, and are subject to harsher forms ofpunish1nent than their White peers (Losen & Orfield, 2002; Mukherjee, 2007; Oakes, Wells, Jones, & Datnow, 1997). Of course, these are not new trends, as U.S. schools have historically failed to adequately serve students outside the White, English-speaking, middle-class, nondisabled, main­ stream culture (Zollers, Albert, & Cochran-Smith, 2000). To combat such inequalities, social justice is emphasized as an integral part of many teacher education curricula.

When seeking to transform inequities inherent in society and expressed so sharply in schools, classroom teachers can be understood as "the 1nost essential element [as] they have the ultin1ate responsibility to navigate the curriculum and instruction with their students" (Lalas, 2007, p. 19). Conse­ quently, we, as teacher educators, feel the charge of this

development

responsibility, both in our university-based curriculum design and in our research on the consequences of our justice-oriented teacher education with preservice teachers. To that end, we developed a 1nulticase study of recent graduates of our ele- 1nenta1y preservice program. We explored with these beginning teachers their classroom enact111ents of social justice-oriented curriculum to investigate ways that our university curricula might better prepare teachers for the realities of teaching for social justice within our current public school system. This article discusses our graduates' conceptions of teaching for social justice , their curricular enactments, and their reflec­ tions. Although we were insistent that our classroom-based data collection with beginning teachers be respectful and none­ valuative, we use our findings to highlight and critically analyze some of the important possibilities and challenges we face in our teacher education work when preparing teachers to advo­ cate for social change through their pedagogy. Our work was inspired by our understanding that a commitment to social

1University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 2City College of New York, NY 3Teachers College, New York, NY

•Hunter College, City University of New York, NY

Co rres po nding Aut ho r: Rachel Oppenheim , Teachers College, 525 W. I 20th St., New York ,

NY 10027 Email: rlo2 I O [email protected]

238 Journal of Teacher Education 61 (3)

justice teacher education 111ust be partnered with a con1111it­ ment to self-study and self-reflection. Thus, this work is born from a position of self-criticism and critique that undergirds various social 111ovements (Hale, 1991 ).

We begin the article by fran1ing our work in relation to the literature on beginning teachers and teaching for social jus­ tice. Next, we describe our 111ethod of study. This is followed by three cases, each of which highlights a different begin­ ning teacher and her conceptions and enactments of social justice education. The cases illustrate son1e of the difficulties beginning teachers face when seeking to enact social justice curricula and teach in a way that reflects their ideals. 1n spite of these struggles, these cases also reveal the potential that many new teachers have to teach toward justice curricula, even as they doubt their own ability to do so. We conclude with a set of recommendations for ourselves and other teacher educators who are dedicated to supporting new teachers in creating socially just curricula.

Framing and Researching Social Justice Teacher Education The phrase social justi ce has proliferated in teacher educa­ tion in recent years and is an u111brellaten11 enco111passing a large range of practices and perspectives (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 2006). These highlight the i111portanceof multiple concepts, including but not limited to: building classroom communities of dialogue across and with difference (Sapon­ Shevin, 1999), critical multicultural and antibias education (Derman-Sparks & Ramsey, 2006; Schniedewind & David­ son, 2006; Sleeter, 2005), culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1994), culturally responsive and compe­ tent teachers (Irvine, 2003), antiracist teaching (Berlak & Moyenda, 200 I), equity pedagogy (Banks & Banks, 1995), anti-oppressive teacher education (Kumashiro, 2004), dis­ ability rights (Linton, I 998), ableism (Hehir, 2002), and access to academics for students with disabilities (Kluth, Straut, & Biklen, 2003). There is an increasing nu111ber of books that are designed specifically for social justice~riented teacher education building on the missions of teaching for social change (Darling-Hammond, French, & Garcia-Lopez, 2002; Oakes & Lipton, 2007), teaching and learning in a diverse world (Nieto, 2005; Ramsey, 2004), and critical, social justice teacher education (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Sleeter, 2005; Soohoo, 2006; Wade, 2007).

Clearly, the idea of teaching for social justice can be related to a range of different practices and values. Although the ope­ nness of this ten11 offers teachers 111any entry points into the endeavor of social justice teaching, it also poses problems for teachers and teacher educators. Teachers can feel over­ vheh11ed by the expectation that they 111ust undo a long list of discriminatory social structures if they are to fully teach for social justice. Teaching for social justice can be seen as an unattainable idea, not linked to particular classroon1-based

practices. Or because it is an un1brella tern1, any teacher 111ay be able to claim that she is teaching for social justice after enacting certain elements of the above practices. For exam­ ple, a teacher can explain that she is teaching for social justice if she allows for conversations about cun·ent events, noting that she is enacting culturally relevant pedagogy.

Given these proble111s, we want to be clear about what we see as the key markers of teaching for social justice. Educa­ tors who teach for social justice (a) enact curricula that integrate 1nultiple perspectives, question do111inant Western narratives, and are inclusive of the racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity in No11h A111erica; (b) support students to develop a critical consciousness of the injustices that characterize our society; and (c) scaffold opportunities for students to be active partici­ pants in a democracy, skilled in fon11s of civic engagement and deliberative discussion. These practices 111ay challenge and alter an educational system that is not adequately serving large numbers of children, particularly poor children, chil­ dren of color, and children with disabilities.

This vision of social justice teaching reflects an understa­ nding that teachers can work to address and ameliorate systemic inequities with their students. We draw from the knowledge that "individual experience n1ay be shaped by issues of oppression" (McDonald, 2007, p. 2076), placing the lives of students into a sociohistorical educational landscape charac­ terized by trends of inequity. Moving beyond teaching tolerance or appreciating diversity, we want teachers to grad­ uate from our teacher education program with not only knowledge about how racism, sexism, ableism, heterosex­ ism, nationalis111, and linguistic privilege operate in schools and society but also the skills for interrogating how these fon11s of oppression are commonly expressed in school prac­ tices and in the curriculum. This perspective assun1es that classroorns are too often sites of cultural and social repro­ duction and that they must be examined carefully for the ways that they produce and perpetuate injustice. Ultimately, we resonate with a social reconstructionist multicultural approach to schooling (Sleeter, I 993). From this approach, teachers work to situate pedagogical practices within analyses of structural inequality and prepare their students to underst­ and injustice on this level.

Teacher educators can e1nphasize the i111portance of social reconstructionist approaches to social justice education and assist preservice teachers in enacting related teaching prac­ tices in their own classrooms. Our program begins with critical autobiographical analysis, which asks preservice teachers to reflect on their identities and social locations to critique the implicit values, long-held assumptions, and biases that under­ lie their ways of understanding children, con1munities, and knowledge (Genor & Goodwin, 2005). Along with this self­ reflection, our teacher education program includes coursework, literature, and assignments designed to explore issues of power, oppression, equity, and social change. Finally, our preservice teachers are asked to design curricula and lesson plans that

Agarwal et al. 239

integrate marginalized knowledge, allow for civic participa­ tion, and provoke students to question discriminatory social norms. Such teaching is, of course, never neutral, and profes­ sors and instructors in the progran1 do not shy away fron1 sharing perspectives with their students, actively disagreeing publicly with each other and also encouraging students to constantly explore the possible effects of their own beliefs on their classroom pedagogy.

Once preservice teachers leave their university programs and enter their own classrooms, their co1nmit111ents some­ times collide with the realities of being novice teachers in a harrowing and unforgiving school system. Authors reveal a range of dilenunas these novices may confront in their day­ to-day practices, describing challenges in areas such as curriculurn, lesson planning, assessn1ent, n1anage1nent, tin1e, and school culture (Feiman-Nernser, 2003; Oakes & Lipton, 2007). The current age of standardization and accountability significantly increases the demands and pressures for teachers in the classroom. Given these obstacles, teaching for social justice can in particular be a daunting and cornplex endeavor for new educators. To teach for social justice requires one not only to manage the steep learning curve that all new teachers rnust face but to be able to navigate through a school context laden with hindrances such as instructional pacing, test prep­ aration, and rnandated curriculum, rnany of which work directly against a social justice agenda.

Our Study-Assumptions and Method We, the five authors of this article, met in the fall of 2005 to discuss our university's master's preservice elementary inclu­ sive education program (three ofus were involved in running that program) and to design a study that would investigate whether and how recent graduates of the progra1n were emp­ hasizing social justice in their curricula. Although we were confident that some beginning teachers graduated from our prograrn with a commitment to social justice, we knew little about how these teachers translated their conceptions and co1n1nitn1ents into actual classroon1 practices. Few research­ ers have conducted follow-up studies of teacher education graduates to explore how social justice is integrated into instruc­ tion and the day-to-day activities of teachers and students in schools. Therefore, we identified such a study as irnportant to pursue.

We launched a n1ulticase study by asking, for beginning teachers who are cornrnitted to teaching for social justice, how does this comrnitment affect their lesson plans and their classroom instruction? We view these lessons and instruc­ tional moves as a part of the curricular enactn1ents in their ele1nentary classrooms. Curriculum enactrnent is defined as not just the delivery of information or adaptation of curricu­ lum but rather as the interactions between and a1nong students and teachers as they interpret and construct meaning through classroom content and pedagogy (Snyder, Bolin, & Zumwalt,

1992). Rather than viewing curriculum as information that is transrnitted fron1 teacher to student, we perceive it as "the edu­ cational experiences jointly created by student and teacher" (Snyder et al., 1992, p. 418). This broader conception of cur­ riculurn allows us to recognize the ways in which social justice curricula can be regularly enacted, even when they are not part of a prerneditated lesson.

We created a weekly research seminar to engage a srnall group of doctoral students in our research efforts. The five authors of this article were the seminar's teaching team, and 12 students joined us as coresearchers. We knew that within the scope of one semester, we would not be able to complete the study fully and chose to emphasize the processes of data collection and data analysis within the seminar. Therefore, before the semester began, we determined that the study would be centered on multiple cases of beginning teachers and that each doctoral student would learn about the practices of one beginning teacher through observations and interviews.

This research design grew fron1 our assumption of the uniqueness and storied nature of teachers' experiences (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). In particular, political under­ standings are the result of one's life story and socia l location; therefore, we knew that the teachers .vould articulate a wide range of personal, evolving, and time-bound beliefs about social justice. We expected that these differences would be exacerbated by the different teaching contexts in which the teachers were working. Although they were mainly in urban settings, the graduates ,ve studied were working in schools with differing levels of racial and socioeconomic diversity. Only one participant taught in a suburban school. We chose to collect and analyze case st11dies so that the "local particu­ lars" of each teacher's experiences could be studied (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, p. 3).

To recruit beginning teachers to participate in the study, we sent an invitation to all graduates of the previous 2 years of our program for whom we had current ernails and who were teaching in the geographical area of our teacher educa­ tion program (11= approximately 50). We explained in our invitation that we were interested in looking at how begin­ ning teachers who had graduated from our teacher education program enacted social justice cun·icula in their classrooms. Frorn our perspective, a response to the invitation indicating desire to participate in the study suggested that these teach­ ers had an acknowledged co,nmitment to teach for social justice. Twelve teachers ultimately committed to the study, and each was paired with a graduate student researcher.

Before the doctoral student researchers rnet the beginning teachers, they engaged with relevant academic readings, includ­ ing rnethodological texts and literature related to teaching for social justice within the context of the seminar. The teaching team and the doctoral students also collaboratively devel­ oped observation protocols as well as interview protocols. The first interview was designed to help researchers farnil­ iarize the1nselves with their participating teachers and get a

240 journalofTeacher Education 61 (3)

sense of their backgrounds and their conceptions of social justice. Although the researchers worked with a set of focus questions, the questions were seen as tentative, and as a class, we discussed the importance of keeping our attention on the issues that the participants raised (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). Ultimately, the interviews were active, enabling each teacher to refer to personal, and potentially alternative, knowledge and perspectives (Holstein & Gubriun1, 1995). After the inter­ view, each participating teacher identified examples of social justice teaching for the researcher to observe. The researcher then conducted from one to three observations in the teacher's classroom, aiming to collect "unobtrusive data" (Hatch, 1995, p. 214). The observations were followed by informal interviews in which the researcher asked the teacher to describe the lesson and explain how the lesson was an exa1nple of social justice teaching. The entire field-based research experience was then concluded with an exit inter­ view in which the teacher explained how her lessons reflected her conceptions of social justice and the hindrances that she experienced when doing this work.

We recognized that by asking teachers to de1nonstrate spe­ cific instances of social justice teaching, we would be narrowing the types of curricular enactments that we would be able to see. In addition, we may have put a binary in place by sug­ gesting that some lessons reflect ideals of social justice and some do not. This does not reflect our belief, and we see the potential drawbacks of this decision. Furthermore, as we explained above, curricular enactments are the interactions and joint experiences between teachers and students (Snyder et al., 1992)and include educational interactions beyond the enactment of classroom-based lessons. That said, each rese­ archer had a limited amount of time in her participant's classroom, and we agreed that asking teachers to identify their own examples of social justice teaching would be the most efficient way to view these enactments in action. In addition, this methodological decision illustrates our dedica­ tion to " insider" rather than "outsider" knowledge (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995, p. 30) in that the beginning teachers directed us to particular aspects of their work. We studied the curricular enactn1ents they flagged as reflecting their con­ ceptions of teaching for social justice rather than analyzing lessons based on our conceptions.

The doctoral students and the teaching team engaged in a series of postdata collection activities. First, each of the audio-recorded interviews was transcribed. Second, the doc­ toral students created lesson plans and narrative vignettes, or storied accounts of the classroom experiences, based on their field notes from the lesson observations. We saw these docu­ ments as "interim texts" that are positioned between the field texts and the researched texts (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 133).Creating these texts helped us deepen our familiarity with the beginning teachers' experiences. Finally, in the last month of the se1ninar, we conducted preliminary and rudi­ mentary data analysis across the cases, focused on generating themes through a process of open coding. We identified codes

to describe the supports and hindrances the teachers experi­ enced in schools, their personal backgrounds, and their views of justice-oriented pedagogy and content. Some themes of special interest were vvhat we identified at the time as consis­ tencies, contradictions, and uncertainties in the participants' conceptions and enactments of social justice teaching. Many of the participating teachers reported shifts in their views of teaching for social justice as they entered the classroom, and some see,ned unclear about how they were teaching for social justice. We shared all data and the emergent codes by posting all documents on the university's class Web system.

Fro1n the start of the project, we felt that it was important that our research be of immediate benefit to the research par­ ticipants. Specifically, we hoped that our participants would gain "self-understanding and, ideally, self-detennination," add­ ing to the validity of our study (Lather, 1986, p. 67). Accordingly, at the end of the semester, we organized a dinner for the par­ ticipants, performed a readers' theater comprising interview quotes, and presented them with a book of vignettes and lesson plans from their teaching. We hoped that this book would help them further develop their knowledge of teach­ ing and ability to teach for social justice.

Although the course officially ended with the se,nester, we, as the teaching team, systematically dove back into all transcripts and vignettes. We focused on the teachers' varying and evolving conceptions and enact1nents without co1nparing them to theoretical frames so as to stay close to their "phe­ nomena of experience" (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 128). First, we worked to identify the different conceptions of social justice that the beginning teachers held. Then, we looked to how those conceptions transfom1ed in their classroom expe­ riences and related to the ways that they created and enacted social justice curricula. We continued to read the data in a relatively "open" way, yet we began a process of "selective open coding" (Emerson et al., 1995, p. 155) in which we looked to trace the translation of the teachers' conceptions into practice. We center this finding in this article, discussing the ways their visions shifted in the context of their begin­ ning teaching placements.

The Teachers' Cases

In this section, we highlight 3 beginning teachers: Lucy, Jane, and Allison. These cases were chosen from the original 12 because of the teachers' clear articulations of the tensions between the ideals of teaching for social justice and class­ room practices. Each teacher experienced different struggles when working to enact a curriculum based on her conception of social justice. Also, these 3 teachers worked with different student populations and in varying school settings. There­ fore, in spotlighting their work, we illustrate how teaching for social justice can unfold in divergent social locations. Yet despite their varying teaching contexts and struggles to teach for social justice , Lucy, Jane, and Allison all engaged in deli­ berate attempts to explore social differences and injustices in

Agarwal et al. 24 1

their elementary classrooms. We surface the teachers' con­ ceptions of social justice and the 1nanifestation of their social justice ideals in their practices- in reference to both their own social locations and those of their students. These cases highlight a number of opportunities and struggles that begin­ ning teachers may encounter when translating conceptions into pedagogy.

Lucy

I want them to realize that it's a hard world out there. Especially because you're deaf. … I try not to sugar­ coat anything in the class. I let them know about 1ny experiences being Black, and then I let then, know that they're going to face the same things because they're deaf. … I want them to know that they do have rights and everybody should be equal, but- it's not that way. It's not.

When asked to elaborate on her conceptions of social justice, Lucy, a coteacher in an English-American Sign Language bilingual public elementary school, explicitly connected social justice to the concerns that she has about the stratification and marginalization that exists within society. At the time of this study, Lucy was teaching in a dual language (A1nerican Sign Language-spoken English), fifth-grade classroo1n con1posed of deaf and hard-of-hearing students, hearing students with deaf fan1ily members, and hearing students with no previous affiliation with the deaf community. Lucy's commitment to creating an inclusive and critically aware environment in her classroom is therefore closely rel­ ated to the unique context in which she teaches. Troubled by social hierarchies and normative ideals, Lucy spoke with passion about fighting the repercussions of both racism and ableism in the lives of her students. She was motivated to address the1nes of rights, responsibility, and respect-key components of her conceptions of social justice- to prepare her students for the injustices they wi II face in their daily lives. Despite the pressures of accountability, Lucy, in collaboration with her deaf coteacher, argued that issues of discrimination are too pressing in the I ives of their students to ignore.

Lucy drew heavily on her personal experiences as a Black Haitian woman when explaining her conceptions of social justice. When describing the in-depth social justice- related discussions she has with her students, she indicated,

I ask the1n if they have had any experiences not being treated fairly, and I tell them my own experiences. Everything I do, I try to relate it back to something that has happened to me or something I went through.

In addition, she shared how the low expectations communicated to her as a young Black child have pushed her to hold high academic expectations for her deaf students. Developing str­ ength and resiliency against social marginalization, as well as

the capacity to advocate for the rights of others, are subjects so i1nportant to Lucy that she sometimes forgoes mandated curricula to address them when they emerge in the classroom. With respect to those classrooms that do not center stories of discrimination, she speculated that they were led by teachers who had been protected and privileged in their lives: "They haven't been through it. We talk about it a lot because we' ve both been through it." Clearly, Lucy addressed memories from her past in conceptualizing what it n1eans to foster stu­ dents' critical consciousness.

Lucy also praised her teacher education program for fostering honest and emotional class discussions through autobiographical self-reflection. She candidly described the mo1nent in which she first spoke out in class about the perva­ siveness of racism today, an en1otional turning point in her studies that solidified her commitment to social justice and teaching. Lucy explained, "Until people realize what's going on, we can't come up with a solution .. .. We're saying everything's all great now, and just last year somebody called me a nigger." Likewise, her student teaching experiences working with children from a gifted classroon1 forced her to interrogate her own prejudices around privilege and White­ ness, biases she admits she never recognized about herself. Lucy viewed teaching for social justice as a process through which discriminations reproduced by social stratification are urgently addressed.

Despite her personal beliefs about the importance of rais­ ing conversations about discriminatory social hierarchies, the translation of her conceptions into classroom curricula left her feeling ineffectual as a social justice teacher. Admit­ ting that classroom discussions were "not enough" to curtail the travesties of discrimination, Lucy envisioned a long­ term project wherein her deaf students would move toward greater activis1n. Struggling to describe what this social jus­ tice teaching could look like, she continued,

Like, something that … a lesson …. I don't know about one particular lesson … but like you know like, maybe a long-term project. … I want them to do rights for deaf people. And researching that and having some type of project and presenting it to people at the end.

Interestingly, the social justice lesson she chose as an obs­ ervation was the type of long-term project she desired, alth­ ough Lucy did not associate this example within her ideals of social justice teaching.

After missing the nationwide Penny Harvest deadline due to standardized test preparation, Lucy and her students devel­ oped their own fund-raising effort, titled The Robin Hood Project, with hopes of donating all proceeds to the local homeless shelter. Students spent months collecting pennies from other classrooms and writing letters to solicit donations from companies. Despite the potential strengths of this proj­ ect, Lucy was occasionally unsure that she was enacting social justice curricula and, in reference to one of her lessons, asked,

242 Journal of Teacher Education 61 (3)

"Would that be social justice?" The Robin Hood Project 1nay be seen as separate from her expressed conceptions of social justice as it did not address issues of racial and ableist 1nar­ ginalization. However, Lucy did admit to an increased sense of activisn1 among her students due to The Robin Hood Proj­ ect. She said, "This project has helped the students to gain confidence and has taught them important life skills that help them to navigate within a hearing world."

Jane

It's hard to find that balance between n1y own anxieties about how they're treating each other or how they're doing and how I can actually help them and stay true to a social justice-like 1nindset.

Jan

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