In teacher education, critical civic education and anti-racist education are often disconnected in practice, despite increasing overlap in theorizing and goals: to resist and dismantle the settler colonial realities of education, to promote working for social justice, and to challenge racist and White supremacist structures. This comparative case study examined how White teacher candidates’ civic, social justice, and anti-racist knowledge development during Bachelor of Education foundations courses affected their pedagogical growth. Through surveys, co- researcher observations, and focus groups conducted at research sites in Saskatchewan and Ontario, the study examined how teacher candidates understood their positionalities within societal structures, and how their understandings of structural injustice affected their pedagogical choices. Building from a postcolonial global citizenship education conceptual framework, the study engaged with Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies in order to situate the findings in White settler colonial contexts. Findings indicate that the degree to which teacher candidates were aware of their own positionality influenced their understandings of structural injustice, and their confidence (or not) with anti-racist pedagogy. In the areas of civic engagement, racism, and Whiteness, the re-inscription of individualistic discourses and rejection of structural discourses was pervasive, and teacher candidates resisted self-implication in historical and ongoing settler colonialism and White supremacy. However, access to alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding the social construction of identities and structural determinism were somewhat effective at tackling meritocratic discourses. The study affirms the need for scaffolded anti-racist/anti-oppressive education in teacher education programs and discusses the necessity for teacher candidates to understand their own positionalities in context.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/41443 |
| Date | 13 November 2020 |
| Creators | Bergen, Jennifer |
| Contributors | Cook, Sharon |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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