teaching social justice

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.

Jane grew up in Hawaii with a father who uneasily described himself as Chinese and a grandmother who would becon1e the first Asian An1erican teacher in her Michigan school district. In this context, Jane admitted to a sense of angst and inadequacy fostered by her grandmother's stories of racism and her exp­ eriences as a 1nultiracial individual in American society. These feelings n1ade her 1nore sensitive to the needs of her racially diverse students. We met Jane when she worked in a school with students fro1n a wide array of linguistically, culturally, econon1ically, ethnically, and racially divergent backgrounds. However, despite the diversity, she explained that her stu­ dents were "1nostly kids of color, but kids who are not as wealthy as the others in the school." She comn1unicated in her interview her concerns about "the ties of power to wealth" and "the link of race and privilege," and the diversity of her classroom gave her multiple opportunities to reflect on these dynatnics among her students.

Jane's conceptions of teaching for social justice involved intentional efforts to undo unjust hierarchies of power. When Jane was asked how social justice related to her specific classroon1, she expressed her atte1npt to "incorporate multi­ ple perspectives" but followed up with, "Then, you go beyond that, like, how do you change power dynamics so that people who are always on top are sharing their power and every­ one's kind of feeling like they can participate?" For Jane, a 1nore equitable distribution of wealth could lead to this shar­ ing of power. Her interest in "getting kids on the right track" both acade1nically and behaviorally was tied to this social vision. If education is linked to oppo1tunity, she rationalized, then what she does in the classroom to bolster academic skills 1nay alleviate economic discrepancies on a wider societal basis.

Although Jane envisioned her students deliberating over social justice issues such as race and privilege, her preoccu­ pation with a well-managed classroon1 at times inhibited her fro1n actualizing this ideal. To this she declared, "lf I can't have my co1nmunity to run smoothly, if I can't have them treating each other appropriately, then how can I have them

talking about some topic that's maybe going to be really controversial?" Jane saw respect and order as precursors to social justice-oriented dialogue, and she questioned her pre­ vious vision of "jumping in" and immediately provoking discussions about relevant and controversial topics. Jane was also focused on com1nunity building, as it was supported within her school. When asked how aspects of social justice may become folded into school life, she referred to the school wide 4Rs program launched by an organization named Educators for Social Responsibility. With a focus on conflict resolution, the 4Rs program institutes policies for students and teachers around anger 1nanage1nent, advocacy, and con1- munity building. Jane did not think that the administrators of her school would be interested in teaching for social justice (as conceptualized by Jane) beyond these programs as they would not want teachers to introduce "radica l changes or thoughts that might get into families."

Jane acknowledged that her teaching expe1iences prompted visceral shifts in her conceptions of what social justice teach­ ing may actually mean. As she once believed teaching needed to directly raise conversations that pertain to marginalized groups in society, she ad1nitted that social justice for her had now shifted toward "con11nunity and n1anagen1ent" and "how to foster more appropriate treatment" among her stu­ dents. These efforts were in line with visions of teaching for social justice forwarded by the adn1inistration and were in response to her experiences v,iith her students.

Jane also recognized a disconnect between the messages of her teacher education progra1n around teaching for social justice and her practice. She co,nmented that although she graduated from her teacher education progra1n no more than 9 n1onths prior to the interview, what she learned about teaching was most certainly different from actually teaching in the classroom. As she reflected on her years in the program, she critiqued its theory-heavy orientation, co1n1nenting that even as students developed a social studies curriculum, she failed to see its practical value, stating, "It was still just theory for me."

Despite these perceived disconnects, when Jane invited us to observe a lesson addressing anti-imn1igration sentiment in Texas, it see1ned apparent that both her initial and her emergent conceptions were present in her teaching style. Using a 1nethod she called Stand Up, she asked students to stand if they associated themselves with the various groups she na1ned. These groupings ranged from eldest children to racial affiliation. Then she read an article to her students about imn1igration and fostered a discussion about the expe­ riences of in1migrants in An1erica as highlighted by the author. Her efforts to teach respect for marginalized experi­ ences and multiple perspectives were corroborated in a statement she recalled making to her students about histori­ cal accuracy. She recollected, "In class we talked about how we need to hear other voices speaking, so then, in history, we need to hear other voices too."

Agarwal et al. 243

Allison

Before you have a classroom, you think about how you want your classroom to be democratic and you want ... everybody to have a place in it, and to feel safe, and to feel like they can really talk about what they're thinking about.

During the time of this study, Allison was a fifth-grade teacher and self-proclaimed "classroom 1nanager." Working in a racially diverse classroo1n in a co1nmunity she described as "very liberal, very artsy, with very artsy, open kind of parents," Allison was drawn to ideals that highlight fain1ess, inclusion, voice, and participation. Moved by readings fron1 her teacher education program, particularly those that examined language use and student silencing, Allison ad1nitted to an overly cautious desire to develop safe learning spaces where 1nultiple perspectives and diversity were valued. Describing herself growing up, Allison explained that even as a White, middle-class girl from the suburbs, she always felt as if she did not belong. Calling this the root of her social justice con­ ception, it n1ay be clear to see how her childhood experiences burgeoned into a need to create safe classroom spaces.

Allison struggled to detern1ine how she could develop a safe space-which she believed was a key 1narker of social justice education-while raising in1portant topics of social concern. On one hand, she seen1ed co1nmitted to pro1noting open conversations despite the potential for conflict, stating, "Isn't it okay for a kid to have so1ne strong opinion about another race, or something that I personally would get really upset to hear?" On the other hand, this conflict and discord deterred her from stn1cturing such dialogue. When speaking about controversy in the classroom, she remarked, "What do you say? What do you not say?" and continued to explain her confusion as to how to address issues of class, race, and the achieve,nent gap.

In addition, although Allison wanted her students to believe in a democracy where all voices are heard, she questioned how this could be done in an elementary school classroom. She said, "I don't think a classroom can be a co1nplete den1- ocracy because you-as the experienced adult, educator, teacher, person responsible- need to be a figurehead, so then the question is, Hovv n1uch power do you design to give them?" In her atternpts to elicit divergent thinking among her students, her concern for teacher voice and authority at times silenced her from openly sharing her opinions. Allison's apprehension around teacher power and control surfaced throughout her interview. At one point she noted, "I i1npose certain values on 1ny class; 1'111 confident that those are val­ ues that I want to impose," then four turns of talk later, she said, "There's still that question of how much do you really impose or not. If you really want your students to be thinking for themselves then do you really need to tell then1 what you

should think?" Allison recalled that the professors in her teacher education program modeled a value-laden cunicu­ lun1 through which they aired their opinions. She seemed appreciative that they displayed ways in which authority fig­ ures can openly express their ideals. However, she continued to wo1Ty about how this ,nay contradict tenets of participa­ tion and open-1nindedness.

Other school-oriented factors posed obstacles to Allison as she sought to create a safe learning space for her students. First, Allison described the mandated curriculum required by her school as a ve1y real detriment to exploring content around social justice issues. She proclaimed, "You really do have to follow the standards and what unit you 're supposed to be on." Second, she explained that the lack of supplemen­ tal resources had become even more problematic. For example, as Allison attempted to teach Westward expansion through 1nultiple perspectives, she struggled to locate materials that spoke to the positionalities of more marginalized groups such as Mexicans, Asians, and women.

Maneuvering around school mandates, Allison adhered to adn1inistrative demands while working to foster safe, open dialogue vvith her students. When she invited us into her classroom, there was a notable fervor and energy in the air. The students were work ing in small groups , discussing how their lives would have been affected if they had lived during the ti1ne of the civil war. This fit her i1nage ofa lesson for social justice. She explained, "The kids' voices should be in there. There should be conversation back and forth. It's not the kind of lesson where I feel the teacher \.Vould be giving a lecture or something." When discussions becan1e hea­ ted during her lesson about the civil war, she insisted that her students move past their own opinions and build off each other rather than refuse to listen.

As is evident in each of the cases described above, begin­ ning teachers demonstrate an i1npressive ability to reflect on their practices, to measure conceptions of social justice agai­ nst the realities of classroo1n teaching, and to name their struggles. In the next section, we reflect on the beginning teachers' stories and elucidate common themes from which i1nplications may be drawn.

Reading Across the Cases

In studying the teachers' reflections on their work to teach for social justice , we are able to explore the beginning teach­ ers' conceptions of teaching for social justice along with their perceptions of their practices. Their conceptions revealed that the teachers were 1notivated by ideals of open, deliberative dialogue and a realignment of problematic social hierarchies. Their practices, as observed in their classrooms, often reflected aspects of their visions. Yet the teachers all a11iculated differ­ ent disconnections they felt between their ideals and their practices. This suggests that beginning teachers enter a

244 Journal of Teacher Education 61 (3)

complex enterprise wrought with tensions, conflicts, and contradictions when they ai1n to translate their conceptions into viable pedagogy. Many of the hindrances they described are attributable to the complexity of everyday teaching, which is intensified for beginning teachers, yet they reflect the even greater ambiguity around teaching for social justice. Given this, we celebrate the teachers' efforts to embrace and grap­ ple with the conflicts at work in their practices, all while enacting curricula that displayed markers of teaching for social justice. We question how and if they may have joined in our celebration, as they seemed more likely to frame their efforts as inco1nplete. In this section, we first review Lucy's, Jane's, and Allison's experiences, highlighting their perceived stn1ggles, and then review the overarching implications of their stories.

Lucy felt unsure about her ability to challenge systemic injustice through school curricula. Although she was faithful to her beliefs that institutional racism and ableism posed dif­ ficulties for her deaf students, Lucy felt that what she was doing in her classroom was just "not enough." Comparatively, we were struck by her sense of urgency and her willingness to push the core curriculum aside to make room for discussions about social inequity and injustice. These conversations show her commitment to redistribution of power in society, reflect­ ing a social reconstructionist approach to curriculum (Sleeter, 1993).We also see reason to praise The Robin Hood Project in its expectation that students act as activists and advocate for the common good. Despite these strengths of her pedagogy, at this point in her teaching career, Lucy showed concern about her inability to be the teacher activist that she wanted to be, that she felt her students needed her to be, and that her preservice teacher education program promoted.

Jane's goals changed as she developed more teaching expe­ rience. She entered the classroom with a belief that social justice teaching should raise awareness of particular issues of injustice and foster dialogue that welcomed multiple perspectives. Concerned about classroom management, she deliberately placed an emphasis on community building and collaboration so as to make these kinds of conversations pos­ sible. She distanced her present pedagogy from her ideals and from those communicated in her teacher education pro­ gram. However, despite her perceived disconnect, the Stand Up lesson reflected her dedication and possible success in teaching students to engage in rich dialogue about relevant topics as she enabled students to think about immigration from different points of view.

Allison's case raised issues of authority and voice in de1n­ ocratic classrooms. She articulated a commitment to ideals of sharing authority (Oyler, 1996)and promoting open dia­ logue, illustrating her dedication to student voice and relevant, yet potentially controversial, issues. Allison reflectively delib­ erated about the power dynamics present in her classroom and became concerned that she was imposing her own voice and "privileging" her opinions (Hess, 2005). Her thoughtfulness about these issues was notable and showed a sophisticated

level of reflection. She did not praise herself in this way, however, and was bothered by the possibility that she might be alienating students and using her power in problematic ways. Overall, she ad1nitted doubts about how her vision of shared authority and open dialogue could be applied to a classroom setting.

The teachers' reflections on their conceptions and prac­ tices show their desire to advocate for social change through classroom pedagogy, build cooperative classroom communi­ ties, and monitor their authority to allow for the expression of student voice. Clearly, they set standards for their ideal classrooms. We believe that teachers are theory builders who establish connections between their conceptions and prac­ tices (Schoonmaker & Ryan, 1996). Our experiences with Lucy, Jane, and Allison illustrate their abilities to engage in this work. The beginning teachers analyzed their practices in reference to their conceptions of teaching for social justice. As their classroom practices reflected markers of their par­ ticular ideals, it is clear that all the teachers studied were engaged in a journey toward teaching for social justice.

Furthermore, as these educators raised questions about social justice pedagogy, their reflections suggest potential next steps for themselves in their practices. Lucy's next step involved enacting a curricular unit revolving around an essential ques­ tion that highlights a form of systemic inequity. Jane wished to continue developing new strategies to help her students build community, listen, and ultimately advocate for each other. Allison may establish an open dialogue with her stu­ dents on a controversial topic and experiment with different models of teacher disclosure to feel more security about what she can and cannot say in the classroon,. The limitations that they identified in their teaching are illustrative of their forthcoming development as teachers.

Their analyses of their practices are particularly praise­ worthy given the well-researched obstacles facing beginning teachers who are committed to social justice in today's schools. Most salient is the current context of standards and account­ ability in schools, where teachers face pressures of mandated curricula, inflexible daily schedules, and i1nposed test prepa­ ration. Moreover, beginning teachers are at a particularly challenging stage of their professional development. They are experimenting, possibly for the first time, with the tenu­ ous connections between their conceptions and their practices, and as a result, there are unexpected challenges. In the face of these hindrances, Lucy, Jane, and Allison saw a place for socially transforrnative pedagogy. They took steps and iden­ tified how their practices could be improved. They were not willing to be derailed by the i1npact of imposed systems of curricular regulation or overly consumed by their status as beginning teachers.

However, the teachers did not always praise their struggles in this way. Conversely, they more often seemed to dismiss their important work as not good enough or potentially problematic. Rather than seeing their doubts as opening moments for learning or self-growth, they looked down on aspects of their

Agarwal et al. 245

teaching that were different from or did not yet reach their ideals. They did not necessarily see their questions as push­ ing then1 forward toward greater disruption of the stah1s quo.

This distance between the strengths of Lucy's, Jane's , and Allison's pedagogy and their own perceptions of their teach­ ing raises a number of questions for teacher educators. How can teachers be encouraged to see their work as constitutive of a larger ideal without dismissing it through an overly criti­ cal evaluation process? Do grand notions of social justice teaching and phrasing such as teaching to change the world force idealistic goals on teachers that thwart their efforts to reflect on and honor their lived experiences and their steps toward an ideal? To address these questions, teacher educa­ tors could work to help teachers identify the context-specific connections between their conceptions and their practice and to value their own commitments to social justice as they exist within any one classroom experience. Given the plurality of teacher experiences, student identities, and classroo1n dynam­ ics, it should be expected that teachers teach for social justice differently at different moments in their careers. Teachers can value a social reconstructionist approach and work with the goals of systemic change in mind without uniformly fitting into any one model of teaching for social justice at all times. If Lucy, Jane, and Allison were co1nfortable with this idea, they may have been able to value their own context­ specific iterations of teaching for social justice and recognize the connections between their conceptions of teaching for social justice and their pedagogy.

We acknowledge that our participants' outlooks about social justice curricula and their perceptions of their own abilities as educators most likely changed significantly as they entered their 2nd and 3rd years of teaching. Indeed, a teacher's I st year of teaching is a time that is comn1only identified as trying, if not painful. Focusing on this group points to a pos­ sible limitation of this research, as readers may ask how I st-year teachers in particular could teach in accordance with their ideals. However, we chose to observe beginning teach­ ers because we noted that there was a paucity of studies following up with recent graduates of teacher education pro­ grains and exploring the ways in which they have integrated social justice into their curricula. We felt that it was impor­ tant to capture these crucial moments in their development as educators to pinpoint ways that preservice programs can sup­ port nascent teachers and encourage them to enact social justice curricula even in their first classrooms. Lucy's, Jane's, and Allison's stories illustrate the potentially powerful work of beginning teachers and can offer helpful feedback for tea­ cher education progra1ns.

Recommendations

As a research team and as a group of teacher educators com­ mitted to supporting curricula that emphasize social justice, we hope to support beginning teachers and teacher educators to create avenues for classrooms that challenge racist, sexist,

classist, ableist, and heterosexist nonns. We also seek to help beginning teachers understand that such goals are both fea­ sible and realistic, even within the harrowing I st years of teaching. To reinforce these goals, we argue that preservice teacher educators consider the following recom111endations as we prepare beginning teachers.

Elucidate the inevitable struggles around teaching for social justice.Preservice graduates should be armed with the knowl­ edge that their conceptions of justice-oriented teaching will change in accordance with their struggles around and reflec­ tions on their pedagogy, students, and school contexts. We suggest that teacher education progra111s carve out space for discussions that help teachers to see teaching for social jus­ tice as a journey, not a finished product. This will help beginning teachers understand or even deflect their frustra­ tions when they face the hindrances that will get in the way of their visions. Teaching- it must be understood- is no dif­ ferent from any other human endeavor: Our efforts can be guided and sustained by our greater vision, but our daily behaviors often fall short of our lofty ambitions.

Often, preservice programs present remarkable, experi­ enced teachers as the ideal to which their students should aspire and fail to explain that such teaching does not come easily and that nearly all new educators stn1ggle during their I st years in the field. Instead, teacher education progra1ns might present the stories of beginning teachers, such as those of Lucy, Jane, and Allison, to demonstrate both the possibili­ ties and the challenges of enacting social justice curricula in the 1st years of teaching. These programs might also invite a panel of recent graduates to speak candidly with students about both their trials and their successes. Preparing teachers to see teaching for social justice as an uncertain and tumultu­ ous process n1ay aid them to overco1ne, acknowledge, and cope with the myriad constraints they may face as they work to enact social justice curricula. Rather than be disappointed because they continue to struggle with their practices, we wish to cultivate an expectation for struggle and even an appetite for such struggle. Indeed, it is only through collec­ tive struggle that major social moven1ents exercise their power and change the course of human events.

Scaffold opportunities for student teachers to practice re~ective­ thinkingskills.This research confirms once again the importance of preparing teachers to be reflective about their practices. We see much hope in the beginning teachers' abilities to name and grapple with aspects of their own autobiographies and the questions facing them in their first classrootn teaching positions. Yet although Lucy, Jane, and Allison demonstrated practices that reflected a social justice orientation and vision, all three had trouble recognizing this and instead expressed that their visions were presently incongruous with their practice. Thus, they were able to reflect on their practices, but they often did so in a disappointed way, criticizing their own efforts as fall­ ing short of their greater visions.

The teachers' tendency to critique led us to reconsider how we teach the process of reflection. As almost all teacher

246 Journal of Teacher Education 61 (3)

education progra1ns require student teachers to keep a daily or weekly journal, we want to recommend that student teach­ ers' reflections be scaffolded with an eye toward the specific consequences and outcomes for learners when teachers n1ake pedagogical decisions. That is, rather than focusing on how the teacher's performance falls short of his or her vision, we would like teachers to be able to take careful stock of what the students learned and accomplished. We want teachers who can carefully assess the outcomes of their pedagogical decisions rather than rely on any external conceptions of cor­ rect social justice pedagogy that they may have picked up in their teacher education program. When teachers reflect in this way, they 1nore often 1nay be able to celebrate their suc­ cesses and abilities to teach for social justice.

Explore resources in teacher education classrooms to plan social reconstructionist curriculaenactments.Teacher educators should make space in their syllabi for texts, materials, and speakers that either detail a social justice curricular vision in action or can be used to create such plans. We are hopeful about the power of texts to offer specific images of social justice-oriented pedagogy from inside individual classrooms. We use books such as Black Ants and Buddhists (Cowhey, 2007) and Writing in Rhy thm (Fisher, 2007) and those by the Rethinking Schools collective, all of which detail curricula that question injustice and scaffold opportunities for st11dents to envision and advocate for a better world. Although 1nany of the practices illustrated should be questioned and tailored to different classrooms, they can foster conversations about the possibilities and li1nitations of social justice curriculun1 enactments in schools today. These types of books can be used as examples for curriculum planning as a precursor to group curriculum planning starting with local artifacts and experiences. For instance, teacher educators can arrange field trips (to museums, cultural events, or the offices of a com­ munity-based organization) and then come back to campus and engage in writing instructional plans making the link between a variety of social justice-o riented goals and state learning standards. In this way, student teachers' social justice­ oriented curricular planning can be coached and supported through peer interaction. Furthermore, teacher educators can demonstrate that the same materials and lean1ing experiences can be used to reach a range of differing socia l justice goals, which ultimately rnay help student teachers consider the relationship between their own ideological orientations, the pedagogical choices they 1nake, and the subsequent possible learning outcomes for children.

When teacher educators embrace these steps, their gradu­ ates may be prepared for the journeys they will face as they 1nove with their social justice commitments into the world of public schooling. Each year, thousands of teachers depart fron, their preservice programs, certificates in hand, eager to use the skills that they have learned to effect change and interrupt the racial and social norms that have long plagued our school systen, and our society. During the course of this research study, we found that educators with fervent

co1nmitments to social reconstructionist education can ques­ tion their abilities to teach in accordance with their values. Yet we also found that these new teachers are more than capable of enacting social justice curricula in significant ways. As teacher educators, we must take concrete steps to support our students' dedication to social justice and to pre­ e1nptively prepare the1n for their self-doubts and help them celebrate their successes. Our own con1mitments to social jus­ tice should impel us to equip our preservice students with the curricular, theoretical, and psychological tools to pursue their justice-oriented ideals in their classroo1ns.

Declaration of Conflict ing Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interests \Vith respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Financial Disclosure / Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

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About the Authors

Ruchi Agarwal is an assistant researcher and lecturer at the Uni­ versity of California, Santa Cruz, in the Departn1ent of Education. Her research interests include issues re lated to social justice, teacher education, and curriculu1n design.

Shira Epstein is an assistant professor at the City College of New York in the Departrnent of Secondary Education. Her research agenda focuses on citizenship education and what happens when adolescents and teachers work together to advocate for social change during the school day.

Rachel Oppenheim is a doctoral candidate in the Departn,cnt of Curriculu111 & Teaching at Teachers College, Colun1bia University. Her current research focuses on the educational lives of incarcer­ ated \VOmen. Other areas of interests include d isability studies, inclusive education, and fen,inist poststructuralisrn.

Celia Oyler is an associate professor in the Depart1nent of Curricu­ lun1& Teaching at Teachers College, Colun1bia University. Her work focuses on supporting teachers, researchers, and activists engaged in inclusive education; critical rnulticultural education; and social action projects.

Debbie Sonu is an assistant professor in the Departn1ent ofCurriculu1n and Teaching at Hunter College (City College of New York). Her research interests include justice and ethics in urban schools, poststruc­ tural thought, and critical theory. She is currently working on a piece about friendship and ethical decision 1naking in the classroom and has recently published on institutionalizing activisn1 in public schools.