Toward a Healthy Racial Climate in Teacher Education: Centering the Well-Being of Teacher Candidates of Color
Article authored by faculty from a number of institutions, including UCLA Teacher Education Program
For decades, research has shown the pervasive racism of teacher education and its harmful impact on teacher candidates of Color. In this conceptual article, we argue that teacher education programs must interrogate how racism is embedded structurally through policies and practices that guide the various facets of the institution. We build from higher education scholarship on racial climate and “health” and teacher education research on race and racism to explore how multiple dimensions of a teacher education program (historical, organizational, compositional, behavioral, and psychological) accumulate and shape the experiences and well-being of teacher candidates of Color. We offer a model to assist teacher education scholars, administrators, and practitioners to reflect upon their current structures as they strive for a healthy racial climate responsive to the experiences and needs of a diverse teaching force.
The UCLA Field-Based Methods website was designed by a group of teacher educators, who teach field-based methods courses in elementary literacy and mathematics. This site shares the work that they do as they partner their courses with elementary school classrooms. They discuss and provide examples of how they structure their courses, the underlying principles guiding their work, and their ongoing learning as a group of teacher educators who continue to reflect upon and refine their own practice. They also share insights from novice teachers as they engage in this process of learning how to teach literacy and math.
How Can Pre-service STEM Teachers Enact Project-Based Learning for Authentic Community Engagement?
By: Jaime Park, Ph.D., Education Faculty, UCLA and Imelda Nava, Ph.D., Education Faculty, UCLA
Published in ARISE
Preparing Community Teachers
A “Community Teacher” is a conceptual framework for preparing exemplary urban teachers (Murrell, 2000) and highlights the “multicultural competence” teachers need to have. A significant part of this work entails teachers’ reflections on their own identities with the aim of centering the students’ culture and practices in teaching and learning. We began with these questions…