The Work of Multicultural Teacher Education: Reconceptualizing White Teacher Candidates as Learners

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2009 79: 163REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHKaren L. Lowenstein

Teacher Candidates as LearnersThe Work of Multicultural Teacher Education: Reconceptualizing White

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Review of Educational Research Spring 2009, Vol. 79, No. 1, pp. 163–196

DOI: 10.3102/0034654308326161© 2009 AERA. http://rer.aera.net

The Work of Multicultural Teacher Education: Reconceptualizing White

Teacher Candidates as Learners

Karen L. Lowenstein

This article explores and challenges a widely held and often unexamined conception of White teacher candidates as learners about issues of diversity and equity in teacher education. This conception suggests that most White teacher candidates are deficient learners who lack resources for learning about diversity. This review reframes this conception through an examination of three bigger pictures of White teacher candidates, of the lack of research regarding pedagogies for multicultural teacher education, and of insights from those who describe pedagogies that build on what students bring. Ultimately, if teacher educators hope that teacher candidates view their future K–12 students as having resources and capabilities for learning, then teacher educators must critically examine and dialogue about what they model through their own pedagogies.

Keywords: teacher education/development, teacher characteristics, instructional design/development.

Challenging a Prevailing View of White Teacher Candidates

The purpose of this article is to frame a central problem in the work of multi-cultural teacher education. The problem centers on a widely held and often unex-amined conceptualization of White teacher candidates as deficient learners about issues of diversity in multicultural teacher education. In this view, teacher candi-dates are learners who lack resources or who have deficient knowledge or experi-ence from which to build when it comes to learning about these issues. The primary goal of this article is to explore, challenge, and revise this prevailing conception. In addition, the caricature of the White teacher candidate as deficient may be linked with teacher educators’ pedagogical choices; the assumption that preservice teach-ers are deficient may lead to pedagogies that deaden their engagement in teacher education classrooms (Regenspan, 2002). Furthermore, if teacher educators want teacher candidates to embrace and enact a conception of K–12 students as active learners who bring resources to their learning, this article points to the need for a parallel conception of teacher candidates as active learners who bring resources to multicultural teacher education classrooms.

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Multicultural education seems well defined by some policy makers and teacher educators and researchers; many delineate general principles or guidelines for what learning about diversity should include in K–12 classrooms and in higher education (Banks, 1995; Chisholm, 1994; Dilworth, 1992; Gollnick, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1999; Nieto, 1999; Sleeter & Grant, 1994). However, much less is known about the actual practice of teaching and learning about diversity. Furthermore, despite a growing body of research that examines K–12 pedagogical enactments of theoretical contributions (e.g., A. M. A. Allen, 1997; J. Allen, 1999; Comber & Simpson, 2001; Dyson, 1997; Edelsky, 1999; Fecho, 2000b), research in teacher education classrooms remains in need (Cochran-Smith, 1995; Zeichner, 1999).

There has been a promising trend of teacher educators examining their own practices while teaching multicultural courses. However, systematic studies of teacher candidates’ perceptions of their learning about issues of diversity continue to remain largely absent, and there is little dialogue centered on conceptions of White teacher candidates as learners in multicultural teacher education. There is a need to research how learning experiences are interpreted and given meaning by teacher education program participants (Lapp, 1997; Zeichner, 1999). Ultimately, the viewpoints of teacher candidates need to be considered to inform and reform the efforts made by teacher educators to both address issues of diversity in teacher preparation programs and conceptualize teacher candidates as learners. This review helps frame potential conceptions of teacher candidates for future research and for teacher education pedagogies.

A Note on Method: Emergence of Deficit and Homogenizing Lenses

Any review of literature reflects a construction of a field in certain political ways (Lather, 1999). The review that supports this article does not escape this insight. Moreover, the vast field of multicultural education makes any review of literature daunting. This article is not a review of all literature in this vast field but, rather, a close examination of works that are representative of particular categories that I have developed through a focused ERIC database search. This search employed the lens “demographic imperative” because of the seeming prevalence of this concept stated at the beginning of articles in the field of multicultural educa-tion in the past 15 years. This concept refers to a need to address the demographic differences between the teachers and students of our nation’s schools. In a review of representative conceptual frameworks that employ this lens, I examine these works with a focus on teacher education and the majority White preservice teach-ers it serves. The synthesis presented here is based on a process of grouping works according to three constructed, though grounded (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), catego-ries that provide a heuristic to illuminate a potential issue concerning the demo-graphic imperative for teacher educators and researchers. The three categories are teachers’ multicultural competence, the knowledge base for multicultural educa-tion, and conceptions of White preservice teachers as learners. The categories are not mutually exclusive and offer one possibility for approaching literature on pre-service teachers in multicultural teacher education.

The potential issue that emerged from this review concerns homogenized and deficit views of White preservice teachers. These views group all White preservice teachers as deficient or empty containers when it comes to learning about issues of


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diversity. For example, when referring to the current population of teacher candi-dates, Zimpher and Ashburrn (1992) describe a “parochialism that is likely embed-ded in their homogeneity” (p. 40). They define parochialism as “narrowness of range or understanding” (p. 58). It is important to note that this picture of preser-vice teachers is certainly not completely pervasive; this review also highlights work that conceptualizes White preservice teachers as active learners who bring resources to their learning.

This review is divided into five sections that stem from the aforementioned categories. Taken together, the five sections of this article examine how particular characteristics are ascribed to White preservice teachers as a group, situate this characterization in larger contexts, and raise questions about how this picture of preservice teachers runs counter to notions of sound pedagogy. In the first section, “Inspecting the Demographic Imperative More Closely: A Look at Assumptions About Learners and Bigger Pictures,” I describe in detail what the demographic imperative is. I then note how this imperative has been used as a rationale for lump-ing together all teacher candidates as deficient learners, through homogenizing and deficit lenses. I then situate the demographic imperative in three larger pictures: the demographics of teacher educators, institutional contexts of education, and larger segregation trends of our society. The current lack of attention to these three pictures helps account for a deficit view of teacher candidates.

In the second section, “Multicultural Education: What Is It and What Has Been Examined?” I foreground conceptions and instantiations of multicultural educa-tion to highlight both the absence of teacher candidates’ experiences and the paral-lel absence of debate about pedagogy in teacher education around issues of diversity. In the third section, “The Role of the Teacher Educator: Rescuing Teacher Candidates,” the caricature of teacher candidates and the heroic plot of multicul-tural teacher education are described and situated within a larger picture of peda-gogy.

To mobilize insights for a dialogue around creating a multicultural teacher edu-cation, in the fourth section, “Mobilizing Pedagogical Insights for Conceptualizing White Teacher Candidates as Learners,” I turn briefly to theoretical work that con-ceptualizes students as having resources as well as the practice of teachers and teacher educators who pedagogically embrace this idea. To conclude this article, in “Teacher Candidates as Learners With Resources: A Parallel Practice in Teacher Education,” I suggest that just as we want teacher candidates to view their K–12 students as bringing resources to their learning, teacher educators must also view teacher candidates as bringing resources to teacher preparation. This article con-cludes with examples of promising ways of thinking about and enacting a parallel teacher preparation practice. Ultimately, the five sections of this article highlight the need for dialogue, debate, and scholarship regarding conceptualizations of White teacher candidates as learners and point to pedagogical possibilities for multicultural teacher education.

Inspecting the Demographic Imperative More Closely: A Look at Assumptions About Learners and Bigger Pictures

In this section, I first present what is often referred to as the demographic imper-ative. Although teacher candidates can be considered a relatively homogeneous


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group, describing the demographic imperative sets the stage for a critical examina-tion of how it often is associated with the conception of teacher candidates as a deficient group of learners. Finally, I situate the demographic imperative in three bigger pictures. This helps question the legitimacy of using the demographic imperative to consider teacher candidates as deficient learners.

Teacher Candidates and K–12 Students: What Is the Demographic Imperative?

One essential rationale cited repeatedly throughout the teacher education litera-ture for why we need some form of multicultural preservice teacher education is what many have called “the demographic data,” “the demographic imperative,” or “the demographic divide” (e.g., Chisholm, 1994; Cochran-Smith, Davis, & Fries, 2004; Colquett, 1999; Dilworth, 1992; Gay & Howard, 2000; Gomez, 1996; Hopper, 1996; Kennedy, 1999; Ladson-Billings, 1999, 2001; Landsman, 2001; Melnick & Zeichner, 1994; Paine, 1990; Zeichner, 1996a). Cockrell, Placier, Cockrell, and Middleton (1999) note that “it has become commonplace to point out that while the U.S. teaching force is increasingly White, middle-class, and female, the nation’s PK–12 student population is growing significantly more diverse” (p. 351). This demographic imperative, familiar to teacher educators and educational researchers, has been defined repeatedly as the disjunction between the sociocultural characteristics and previous experiences of the typical teacher candidate and those of many of our K–12 students, particularly in our nation’s urban schools. The typical teacher candidate is White, female, in her 20s, a mono-lingual speaker of English, and from a lower middle to middle income background. Gay and Howard cite 1999 statistics about the demographic divide from the U.S. Department of Education that 86% of all elementary and secondary teachers are European American. They note that the number of African American teachers has decreased from a high of 12% in 1970 to 7% in 1998; the number of Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander American teachers is increasing slightly, but the percentages (5% and 1%, respectively) are still very small; and Native American teachers com-prise less than 1% of the national teaching force. Feistritzer and Chester (1996) echo these numbers, citing that in 1996, nearly 9 out of 10 public school teachers were White and female (74% were women). Cochran-Smith et al. offer similar numbers, drawing on the work of the educational demographer Hodgkinson.

Generally, these prospective members of the teaching profession progressed through school already familiar with its literacy traditions and practices, and they were successful students (Florio-Ruane, 2001). On the other hand, “not only are [current K–12] students likely to be multiracial or multiethnic but they are also likely to be divided along linguistic, religious, ability, and economic lines that mat-ter in today’s schools” (Ladson-Billings, 2001, p. 14).

Although the demographic data include race, gender, language, and class, edu-cators and researchers typically foreground the disjunction between teacher candi-dates and K–12 students mainly in terms of race. Citing student statistics, Gay and Howard (2000) note that 65% of our nation’s students are European American and the other 35% are distributed among groups of color. Cochran-Smith et al. (2004) estimate that some 40% of the school population is currently from racially and culturally diverse groups. In addition, Gay and Howard describe how student enrollments are growing in the opposite direction racially from teacher statistics.


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These trends are expected to continue as the new century progresses (Gay & Howard, 2000; Gomez, 1996). By 2026, some researchers estimate that we will have the inverse of racial representation in our student body; Hispanic and non-White students will constitute 70% of our K–12 enrolled student body (Garcia, as cited in Ladson-Billings, 1999, p. 91).1

The demographic imperative certainly demands that a much more racially diverse body of K–12 educators is recruited and retained. I highlight both the demographic imperative and the typical focus on race because researchers and teacher educators often foreground this disjunction to urge us to examine how we address issues of diversity in our teacher preparation programs (Chisholm, 1994; Ladson-Billings, 2001; Melnick & Zeichner, 1994; Zeichner, 1996a, 1996b). Although this urgency cannot be understated, I believe it is critical to foreground what usually accompanies this demographic imperative. For the purpose of situat-ing research on multicultural teacher education, the legitimacy of the demographic imperative seems to serve as license to apply a deficit view to all White teacher candidates, a view in which teacher candidates are characterized as deficient learn-ers when it comes to studying issues of diversity.

Preparing Teacher Candidates: What Do We as Teacher Educators Typically Ask? What Might We First Need to Ask?

Given the typical understanding of the demographic imperative, teacher educa-tors usually ask questions such as, How can we prepare teacher candidates to envi-sion how different their students may be from them and how unlike their pupils’ schooling experiences may be from their own? What kinds of assumptions do these teacher candidates have about children who are less economically advantaged, speak a different first language, and come from a different racial background? And, how can we as teacher educators help teacher candidates become more aware of their assumptions?2 Paine (1990) describes a sense of “urgency” regarding these considerations “as schools grow more diverse and our teaching population does not” (p. 2).

Although these questions remain urgent, I believe that we must first consider a critical question. How do we, as teacher educators, conceptualize our teacher can-didates as learners about issues of diversity in our teacher preparation programs? In other words, what conceptualization of our learners is embedded in the work that we do? I believe that making explicit and closely examining these conceptu-alizations are critical steps in envisioning what teacher preparation regarding issues of diversity might look like. This type of work also can frame research that supports the creation of teacher preparation programs.

A View of Teacher Candidates as Learners: Homogenizing and Deficit Lenses

The conceptualization of teacher candidates as learners offered by teacher edu-cators (e.g., Chisholm, 1994; Dilworth, 1992; Gomez, 1996; Zimpher & Ashburn, 1992) seems to be driven by two problematic assumptions. The first is a homoge-nizing lens for applying a particular view to all White teacher candidates. The second assumption is the use of a deficit lens that describes White teacher candi-dates as learners who bring little or nothing to their learning about diversity. Research suggests that variations in teachers’ expectations and standards might


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contribute to differences in student academic success and aspirations and that the actual physical appearance of students (e.g., seeing students’ race) affects how teachers judge their intelligence, knowledge, capacity, and future achievement (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). This has been named as expectancy theory, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in which “it is not the students’ characteristics or behavior that leads to success or failure; it is the expectations that teachers have for students’ behavior that shapes these academic outcomes” (Mehan, Hertweck, & Meihls, 1986, p. 71). Mindful of this research, it is important to consider whether deficit views shared across teacher educators function as a kind of col-lective prophecy of teacher candidates’ lack of performance around issues of diversity.

The first lens, a homogenization of teacher candidates as a monolithic group, reflects a practice that teacher educators want their own teacher candidates to refrain from enacting. Teacher educators are quick to point out the danger of blanket expla-nations when a teacher candidate says, “Peter doesn’t talk much in class, but then Native American students don’t.” Yet at the same time, some teacher educators seem to engage in a process of grouping all teacher candidates into a kind of monolithic category that dissolves their differences; the natural variation that occurs in them, as in any group, is ignored. For example, Gomez (1996) writes, “I depict the per-spectives of U.S. teacher candidates—the majority of whom are White, middle-class, heterosexual, and monolingual in English—on diverse students,” adding that she writes about all “prospective teachers in the United States” for the purpose of describing “who they are” and “what their perspectives” are (p. 110). Rather than describing nuances or differences within the group, she considers “how the current cohort group of U.S. teachers consider and behave toward those whom they teach” (p. 109). Zimpher and Ashburn (1992) explicitly refer to our teacher candidates as a “homogeneous clientele” (p. 40). In the university context in which I teach, I have heard myself and others defend our practice of homogenizing our learners when we describe our own teacher candidates as “even ‘more’ White, female, rural, or sub-urban because of where we are located.” Jenks, Lee, and Kanpol (2001) homogenize White teachers in terms of what they “often believe” and “often assume.”

Thus, the kinds of generalizations teacher educators want our teacher candi-dates to avoid when learning about culture, race, and ethnicity actually are the same kind of framework often used to think about who teacher candidates are as a group. Rather than taking the stance that “all human experience is intercultural and all individuals are intercultural beings” (Gollnick, as cited in Zeichner, 1996a, p. 162) and that “there is often as much variation within cultural groups as there is between groups” (Gollnick, 1992), a homogenization lens masks the complexities of who White teacher candidates are.

This homogenizing lens coincides with a deficit view of diversity. Teacher edu-cators claim that it is critical that teacher candidates do not view their own students from a deficit perspective; instead, we encourage them to view diversity as a strength or resource and to work toward both cultural pluralism and social equality for all students. Our hope is that when they become teachers, they will both honor cultural differences and work toward reducing inequalities in schools and society. In working for these goals, we want our teacher candidates to view learners from all backgrounds as bringing rich and legitimate knowledge to school, a perspective noted and documented in the work of many teachers and researchers (e.g.,


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Christensen, 1995; Cook-Sather, 2002; Duckworth, 1996; Fecho, 2000a; Freire, 1994; Gallas, 1995, Heath, 1983; Labov, 1970; Ladson-Billings, 2001; Nieto, 1996, 1999). However, I now ask whether teacher educators contradict the very same principle we supposedly advocate. If we homogenize our teacher candidates as being without knowledge about diversity, we might impede any consideration that they bring legitimate and diverse ideas to their learning. We do not take seri-ously our own theory about the importance of legitimate prior knowledge. Put simply, our actions exemplify the adage, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Holt-Reynolds (1992) writes,

The principles of professional practice that we as teachers of teachers study, value, and submit to our students have an annoying and unavoidable way of doubling back on us. . . . I ask myself whether I am reflecting accurately the principle I am advocating. . . . Am I practicing what I am teaching? . . . We are, after all, always a teacher and a group of students. Do not the very prin-ciples we are discussing apply to us while we are studying them? (p. 326)

It bears noting that it is not my intention to homogenize teacher education fac-ulty as always subscribing to particular assumptions that homogenize teacher can-didates from a deficit lens. If a first deficit is attributed to K–12 students and a second to teacher candidates, homogenizing teacher educators would represent a third deficit lens. Teacher educators, like other groups, are not a monolithic group, and as a collective, we are marked more by complexities than simple labels can ascribe.

To further understand how the demographic imperative is often used, it is help-ful to situate the demographics in larger frames or pictures. This stepping back serves as a foundation for helping teacher educators review their conceptions of teacher candidates as learners.

The Big(ger) Picture(s): Situating the Demographic Imperative

Situating the typical conception of teacher candidates within three larger pic-tures helps illuminate a larger frame for understanding teacher candidates and all of us as learners. The first picture locates the demographic imperative within the demographics of teacher educators. The second places teacher candidates within institutional portraits of education. And a third picture takes into account the segregation of our communities.

Teacher EducatorsThe racial and other demographics of teacher education faculties parallel the

profile of teacher candidates (Gay, 1997; Ladson-Billings, 1999, 2001). MacDonald, Colville-Hall, and Smolen (2003) note that faculty in colleges of education share race and other features with the preservice teachers they teach, noting that 80% of education faculty are White, and 63% have grown up in communities where they had “little or no contact with people they would later identify as ethnically or racially ‘different’” (p. 11). In addition, “fewer than a third have traveled exten-sively outside their own country” and “their [pre-K–12] classroom teaching . . . was seldom in urban settings with diverse student populations” (p. 11). Similarly, Ladson-Billings (1995) points out that a very small percentage of professors in colleges of education have experience teaching in our nation’s urban schools.


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Fullan (1993) notes, “One of the best-kept secrets in education is the fact that the typical education professor has fewer than five years of experience in the ‘real world’ of K–12 education” (p. 14). Zeichner (1996a) adds, “Most of the education faculty who must be counted on to improve the preparation of teachers for diversity are as lacking in interracial and intercultural experiences as their students” (p. 138). Melnick and Zeichner (1994) write,

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, efforts to reform U.S. teacher education to address cultural diversity are severely hampered by the cultural insularity of most of the education professoriate and by the lack of commitment to cultural diversity in teacher education institutions. (p. 13)

These demographic data of teacher educators point to some key questions, such as, “Can they [teacher educators] do the job?” and “What do they need to do it?” and including what it might mean to create “a sense of collective ownership of this enterprise” (MacDonald, Colville-Hall, & Smolen, 2003, p. 11). These questions suggest the need for multicultural skills and training given that there are very few professors of education “who have the prerequisite skills in multicultural educa-tion needed to translate the theory of infusion into the practice of curriculum devel-opment and classroom instruction” (Gay, 1997, p. 158). Ladson-Billings (1995) questions, “How can teacher educators teach what they themselves do not know?” (p. 747), and Gay and Howard (2000) acknowledge the need for professors of teacher education to have space for “multicultural education training similar to that which we have proposed for their students” (p. 15). Wallace (2000) accompanies her call for teacher educators to engage in the work of creating multicultural teacher education with a series of concrete questions that can engage faculty in immediate dialogue about the construction of multicultural training in schools of education. Thus, a more complete portrait of the demographic imperative or teacher preparation depicts a majority of White, lower-middle-class professors who mostly lack urban teaching experiences preparing White, lower-middle-class female stu-dents to be teachers.

Sleeter (2000–2001) notes, “As institutions, predominantly White universities generally reflect the same attitudes and experiences of predominantly White stu-dents, and it is as hard to change these universities as it is to change the people in them” (p. 239). This points to an institutional picture of our teacher candidates.

Institutional Portrait(s)Recognizing the demographics of teacher educators illumines a second, bigger

picture for situating teacher candidates as learners in teacher education programs, in larger national standards for accreditation, and in K–12 schooling experiences. In their examination of teacher education programs, Melnick and Zeichner (1994) describe what is usually called “the segmented, single course approach” to issues of diversity as the most common arrangement for learning about diversity. In this approach, rather than integrating issues of diversity throughout courses in a teacher education program, diversity issues are consigned to a single course. Educators and researchers explicitly note that this single-course approach is not sufficient (Gomez, 1996; Zimpher & Ashburn, 1992) and that there is a dire need for integrat-ing multicultural competencies in all aspects of a teacher education program (Fox & Gay, 1995; Gay, 1997; Gay & Howard, 2000; G. P. Smith, 1998). Gollnick


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(1995) notes that the application of multicultural requirements in schools and teacher education has often been handled by “adding a course on multicultural education or inserting units in existing courses” rather than using “cultural diver-sity and equity as the lens through which all reform occurs” (p. 62). Marshall (1999) writes that although the single course typifies the multicultural experience for most teacher education students, scholars have “long called for substantive incorporation of multicultural education throughout the programmatic structure of teacher educa-tion” (p. 57). Looking at available empirical work, Zeichner (1996a) notes that research has demonstrated the limited long-term impact of the segregated approach on the attitudes, beliefs, and teaching practices of teacher education students.

In addition to critiquing the single-course approach to multicultural education that teacher candidates usually experience, educators also problematize the insti-tutional norms of teacher education programs. Florio-Ruane (1989) notes that the university preparation programs that supposedly afford preservice teachers oppor-tunities as students to reflect on school norms also seem to be “under the spell of the institutional norms that regulate life in classrooms” (p. 4). She writes that

contrary to popular belief, the university and schools [are] not in competition for the hearts and minds of students; instead they [collaborate] closely with one another to create a powerful conservative force for defending existing institutional arrangements from close scrutiny and challenge. (p. 3)

Similarly, Ladson-Billings (1999) notes that teacher education programs con-tinue to prepare teachers as if they will be teaching in homogeneous, White, mid-dle-income schools. Grant and Wieczorek (2000) have critiqued the prevailing conception of teacher knowledge in teacher preparation programs, characterizing knowledge as lacking inherent and fundamental ties to social, cultural, historical, and political characteristics.

To address some of these challenges, there are policies for the inclusion of multicultural education in programs that prepare educators. These policies reflect standards for the national accreditation and guidelines of professional associations and are the only national policies to which colleges and universities may be held accountable. However, adherence to these policies is a voluntary process (Gay, 1997; Gollnick, 1992). Furthermore, in spite of the fact that the National Accreditation of Teacher Education has required that multicultural education be incorporated into professional education programs since 1980, through the issu-ance of Standards for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, which Banks (1995) has described as “one of the most influential developments during the early emer-gence of multicultural education” (p. 11) and Cochran-Smith et al. (2004) have described as “the good news,” nearly half of the institutions in our country have not responded (Gay, 1997; Gollnick, 1992).

In a similar vein, other service-minded professions, including counseling (Ponterotto, Casas, Suzuki, & Alexander, 1995) and physical therapy (Leavitt, 2003), have struggled with the inclusion of multicultural training in professional preparation. Wallace (2000) notes that the call for multicultural training needs to expand to the fields of administration and psychology and to professionals in health-related fields. Thus, one more complete picture of the demographic imper-ative situates teacher education in a larger educational system that does not value integration of issues of diversity throughout professional preparation.


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Finally, it bears noting that teacher candidates can be situated in an institutional portrait of K–12 education. O’Donnell (1998) notes that most students enter col-lege courses with a long history of educational practice that has asked them to be silent participants in their education. School knowledge is usually distant from the students’ lived experiences, and the curriculum encountered in most of our stu-dents’ elementary and secondary experiences lacks a multicultural perspective, including textbooks that still describe a main storyline of White, male achievement (Bigelow, 1996; Landsman, 2001; O’Donnell, 1998).

Segregation of Our CommunitiesA third critical piece often missing in descriptions of the demographic impera-

tive situates the demographics of teacher candidates in the larger picture of our country’s segregated communities. However, a few scholars and educators do describe this picture (Cochran-Smith et al., 2004; Gay, 1997; Gay & Howard, 2000; Nieto, 2005). Gay and Howard address the segregation of students of color and European students in school systems, noting that large numbers of European American students do not go to school with students of color. They note that geo-graphic locations often translate into the racial separation of students, with stu-dents of color heavily clustered in large cities or urban centers. Thus, “many teachers do not share residential backgrounds with students they teach and ethni-cally diverse students are not necessarily in the same classrooms” (p. 3). Cochran-Smith et al. also write about the segregation of our country and describe implications for teacher education. They discuss this disjunction in terms of important dispari-ties (regarding access to resources, opportunities, etc.) and begin to suggest how growing up in a White homogeneous community affects preservice teachers’ dis-positions toward and knowledge about constructing curriculum and instruction for students who are not White.3 The disjunction between teacher candidates (along with teacher educators) and K–12 students indicates the possibility of pronounced differences between their experiences and worldviews. Acknowledging a larger picture of geographic segregation shows how all citizens, including teachers, are affected by larger national trends.

Summary

Understanding the demographic imperative with each of these three frames, or pictures, shows that teacher educators continually make choices about what or who “the demographic imperative” describes in teacher education. Typically, the description does not include the three pictures outlined here. Neglecting the demo-graphics of teacher educators, a description of the institutions within which teacher candidates learn, and an acknowledgement of broader societal segregation, may foster a deficit view of teacher candidates. Broadening and deepening our under-standing of the demographic imperative lays the groundwork for reconceptualizing teacher candidates as learners who are not deficient.

It is my hope to provide opportunities to reflect individually and collectively about our views of our learners, pedagogies, roles, and goals in light of the critical need to integrate issues of diversity throughout our teacher candidates’ profes-sional preparation. To explore this possibility, I provide a brief overview of some of the central work of multicultural education. I do this for two main purposes.


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First, this allows for some sense of the knowledge base of the field. Second, this sense of the knowledge base highlights the absence of scholarship and debate regarding issues of pedagogy in teacher education. This absence reflects a need to further explore conceptualizations of White teacher candidates as learners who are not deficient and who bring with them resources when it comes to learning about issues of diversity.

Multicultural Education: What Is It and What Has Been Examined?

Much important work has been done in the field of multicultural education.4 This scholarship includes multiple conceptualizations of multicultural education, theoretical work on race and racial identity, conceptions of K–12 pedagogy and teacher competence, and research that includes teacher educators’ self-studies. I briefly describe each of these to show that across this body of work, there remains a critical gap in research on teacher candidates’ experiences of learning about issues of diversity. Without this research, teacher educators may fall back on a view of teacher candidates as homogeneous and without resources for learning. Focusing on teacher candidates’ perspectives is one critical path toward documenting what teacher candidates bring to their learning.

Definitions

Although there is a major consensus that the demographic imperative indeed exists, there are many ways teacher educators and researchers have supported addressing it through multicultural education. The term multicultural education is often used as an umbrella concept for educational practices that deal explicitly with race, class, and gender; sometimes, disability, sexual orientation, and lan-guage are considered (Sleeter & Grant, 1994). Some proponents of multicultural education, including those who argue for a focus on race, also foreground the need to recognize that there are “growing tensions . . . between and among various groups that gather under the umbrella of multiculturalism” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 61). Multiculturalism as a term is used more and more frequently to detail all types of difference (racial, gender, socioeconomic, linguistic, ability, sexual orientation, etc.), and some scholars argue for a rejection of a paradigm that “attempts to be everything to everyone and consequently becomes nothing for anyone” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 62). Some teacher educators and researchers align themselves with an activism and philosophy around race as the focal issue (Feagin, 2000; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Martinez, 2000). McLaren and Farahmandpur (2001) state that their intention is not to marginalize antiracist struggles but to focus on both class and race and highlight the ways in which the exploitative relations in a capitalist system oppress people of color in dispropor-tionate ways. Wallace (2000) emphasizes the need in multicultural education for greater emphases on linguistic diversity, immigrant issues, gay/lesbian parenting and sexual orientation issues, disability studies, and spirituality. Langman (2000) and Schaffer (2003) argue for the inclusion of Jewish perspectives, foregrounding the goal of working against anti-Semitism in schools. The presence of debate seems critical because it indicates dialogue in the field about what multicultural education is. Nonetheless, what remains noticeably absent is dialogue about how to engage teacher candidates pedagogically in these ideas.


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Visions and Frameworks

There is no shortage of general principles or guidelines for what learning about diversity should include in K–12 classrooms and in higher education (Banks, 1995; Chisholm, 1994; Dilworth, 1992; Gollnick, 1992, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1999; Nieto, 1999; Obidah, 2000; Sleeter & Grant, 1994; G. P. Smith, 1998). Teacher educators and education researchers have noted that conceptions of multicultural education vary in terms of how each names and enacts schoolwide and societal goals, who the target students are, and what curricular practices and instruction look like (Banks, 1995; Gollnick, 1995; Sleeter & Grant, 1994). Banks notes that there may be an emerging consensus about the aims and scope of multicultural education but that the array of typologies in the field “reflects its emergent status and the fact that complete agreement about its aims and boundaries has not been attained” (p. 3). Here, I briefly describe several frameworks for the purpose of showing how much of the multicultural educational literature remains largely “propositional” and concerned with K–12 teaching and learning goals and out-comes rather than with issues of pedagogy in teacher education classrooms (Lesko & Bloom, 1998, p. 378).

Several educators offer frameworks for what a multicultural education ideally includes. Banks (1995) offers a typology of five dimensions: (a) integrating a vari-ety of cultures and groups into subject matter content; (b) demonstrating how knowledge is constructed from cultural assumptions, biases, and racial, ethnic, and social class positions; (c) developing strategies for prejudice reduction in class-rooms; (d) building pedagogies that enact equity or school achievement for stu-dents from diverse groups; and (e) restructuring school culture and social structures so that students from diverse racial, ethnic, and social class groups will feel empow-ered. Bennett (2001) offers four broad principles of multicultural education: (a) the theory of cultural pluralism; (b) ideas of social justice and the end of racism, sex-ism, and other forms of discrimination; (c) affirmations of culture in the teaching and learning process; and (d) visions of educational equity and excellence leading to high levels of academic learning for all children. Similarly, Cochran-Smith et al. (2004) suggest that multicultural teacher education can be viewed through the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education’s three key assertions: (a) Cultural diversity is a valuable resource, (b) multicultural education maintains and expands the resource of cultural diversity (as opposed to toleration or assimilation goals), and (c) a commitment to cultural pluralism should permeate all aspects of teacher preparation programs.

G. P. Smith’s (1998) Common Sense About Uncommon Knowledge: The Knowledge Bases for Diversity, a publication of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, calls for critical examination of the absence of multicultural teacher education and works toward delineating the content of a mul-ticultural teacher education curriculum. In an impressive and extensive attempt to cull what many scholars have said regarding what should be the knowledge bases for diversity in teacher education, this work seeks to help uninformed teacher educators locate both theory and research that support each knowledge base. The knowledge bases that she outlines describe the inextricable links between culture and human growth, psychological development, language development, and learn-ing theory. As part of the knowledge bases, she also names principles of culturally


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responsive teaching and curriculum development as well as the effects of policy on the practice of teaching diverse learners and effective strategies for teaching diverse learners.

Both Cochran-Smith et al. (2004) and Sleeter and Grant (1994) write about the multiple meanings for multiculturalism and, therefore, multiple instantiations of what multicultural teacher education actually is. Cochran-Smith et al. offer a frame-work of eight questions as a way to examine particular approaches to teacher educa-tion, noting that any approach acts either implicitly or explicitly with answers to these questions. The questions are as follows: the diversity question, the ideology question, the knowledge question, the teacher learning question, the practice ques-tion, the outcomes question, the recruitment/selection question, and the coherence question. These questions examine, for example, the construction of any program through its construction of diversity, ideas about public education, what knowledge is considered important for teaching diverse populations, assumptions about learn-ing to teach, competencies teachers need to teach in culturally responsive ways, how outcomes of teacher preparation are measured, how teacher candidates are recruited and chosen, and the degree to which the program functions like an integrated whole. Sleeter and Grant characterize five general approaches to multicultural education, organized from the weakest approach to the ideal. The broad goals of the five approaches range from teaching those who are different how to succeed in main-stream society, teaching tolerance for all groups, and studying a single ethnic group, to reforming the entire educational process to support diversity and foregrounding social justice issues and social change in order to reconstruct society and schools.

Because much of the recent conceptual work in multicultural teacher education places an emphasis on race (Cochran-Smith et al., 2004), this area merits closer consideration.

Race: A Logical and Necessary Theoretical Focus

Given the teacher candidate and student demographics of race and the larger picture of geographic segregation, the focus on preservice teacher learning about race is not only logical but fundamental and necessary.5 Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) strongly assert the need to theorize race, especially within the paradigm of multicultural education, and they offer several reasons for this. First, they articu-late the belief that inequalities are a logical consequence of a racialized society. Second, they note that discussions about race and racism continue to be on the periphery of education. And third, multicultural reforms continue to be absorbed back into the logic of our racist system. Duesterberg (1999) also foregrounds the need to theorize race, in seeking to understand how assumptions about race affect our actions and decisions in the practices of teacher education. In a similar vein, Ponterotto et al. (1995) and Carter (2000) theorize race within the field of counsel-ing psychology, and Carter writes about the implications for educating both coun-selors and teachers.

The conceptual work around race has included a focus on self-examination or reflecting on one’s own ethnicity and understanding oneself as a racial and cultural being as a prerequisite to teaching for social justice (Carter, 2000; Florio-Ruane, 2001; Freire 1973, 1994; Gay & Howard, 2000; Howard, 1999; Marshall, 1999; O’Donnell, 1998; Rosenberg, 1997). Gay and Howard delineate particular


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strategies or “techniques” for developing White students’ ethnic and cultural self-awareness, including Spindler and Spindler’s (1993) “cultural therapy” work and Howard’s (1999) use of personal reflections on the process of White ethnic identity development. Gay also addresses the use of cultural therapy and skills that teachers can acquire for being what Giroux (1993) calls “cultural workers” and Gentemann and Whitehead (1983) call “cultural brokers” (Gay, 1997, p. 157). A foundation for entering these roles as teachers is the “development of one’s racial identity” because racial identity “is a critical component of self-understanding that can help educators to understand the meaning of learning and teaching in their own devel-opment” (Carter, 2000, p. 888). The difficulty of engaging White teachers in con-versations about race because they do not see themselves as members of a racial group has also been foregrounded. White teachers’ awareness of the impact of rac-ism on their own and others’ development has been described as minimal (Carter, 2000; Tatum, 1997, 2000). Although White teachers may find it challenging to see their own racial identities and racial privilege, some have written narratives about their own racial consciousness and how issues of race, racial identity, and racism play out in their classrooms (Howard, 1999; Landsman, 2001; Paley, 1989).

K–12 Pedagogy and Teacher Competence

Conceptions of multicultural education have also taken the form of K–12 peda-gogical guidelines as well as of frameworks for describing teacher competence. Some have detailed a culturally relevant pedagogy or a pedagogy for the success of ethnic and language minority students in K–12 schools (Ladson-Billings, 2001; Nieto, 1999; Zeichner, 1996a). Generally, these scholars stress that successful teaching for students of color involves high teacher expectations, or maintaining and enacting a belief that all students can succeed. In addition, these scholars note that a teacher’s ability to bridge the cultures of school and home, allowing cultural elements that are relevant to students to enter the classroom in a pluralist or addi-tive approach, is critical to fostering academic excellence and cultural integrity or to maintaining the cultures and languages of students. In her theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, Ladson-Billings describes what it means for teachers to know the larger sociopolitical contexts (e.g., school, community, nation, world) in which students operate. Others note that explicit teaching of the codes and customs of the school and larger society so that students will be able to participate fully is central to good pedagogy (Delpit, 1995; Heath, 1983).

Educators also offer frameworks that describe culturally competent teachers (Chisholm, 1994; Cochran-Smith, 2002; Gay, 1997; Gay & Howard, 2000; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). Although these frameworks provide important conceptual work for understanding culturally competent K–12 teachers, less is known about sup-porting teacher candidates to achieve or enact these models of competence. Moreover, the need to examine how these models might offer a parallel pedagogy for teacher education remains largely unexplored. In the final part of this section, I consider what we know from some of the research on multicultural competence and teacher education.

Research on Multicultural Competence and Teacher Education

Bennett (2001) notes that there is “a long line of research on the impact of teacher preparation programs on the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of preservice


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and in-service teachers” regarding issues of multicultural competence (p. 172). Generally, this research indicates that changing teachers’ perspectives is a long, labor-intensive process (Gomez & Tabachnick, 1992; Noordhoff & Kleinfeld, 1993). Research on individual courses has raised questions about teacher educa-tors’ efforts to challenge and change the perspectives of preservice teachers in the space of one course; some teacher educators think that they have achieved limited success (Ahlquist, 1992; Beyer, 1991; Ladson-Billings, 2001). One-shot profes-sional development seminars have not been characterized as helpful but, rather, as hurtful in perpetuating inservice teachers’ stereotypes (McDiarmid & Price, 1990).

Sleeter (2000–2001) notes that samples of predominantly White preservice teachers have been surveyed for years to examine their attitudes about teaching different racial and ethnic groups (p. 211). This survey research has indicated that White preservice teachers might anticipate working with children of another cul-tural background but that these teachers bring little cross-cultural knowledge or experience. Sleeter also finds that surveys report that White preservice teachers bring little awareness of understanding of discrimination, especially racism.

McDiarmid and Price (1990) found “the greatest paradox” in examining the results of a particular intervention designed to provide teachers from the dominant White culture with the knowledge and skills to work with students of diverse cul-tural backgrounds with the goal of helping the teachers view cultural diversity as a positive influence on learning and to improve their perceptions of expectations for students from culturally diverse backgrounds. They found that teachers exposed to increasing amounts of information about children who are culturally different from themselves do not subsequently recognize and reject stereotypes more often than those who do not have that information; rather, the presentation of information may have actually encouraged the teachers to generalize and prejudge students. In her seminal study of 233 preservice teachers’ orientation toward diversity at the begin-ning of their involvement in teacher education, Paine (1990) describes “the limited background of prospective teachers” for talking about issues of diversity.

Cochran-Smith et al. (2004) offer a comprehensive look at the empirical work done between 1992 and 2001, indicating that much of the research in multicultural teacher education has been teacher educators’ self-studies. For example, Duesterberg (1999) uses her own practice as a teacher educator to theorize about the role of race in teacher education, and several teacher educators offer reflections on their pedagogy (Lesko & Bloom, 1998; Obidah, 2000; Sleeter, 1996). Yet, what continue to remain absent are systematic studies of teacher candidates’ reflections on their learning about issues of diversity. There remains a need to research how learning experiences are interpreted and given meaning by teacher education pro-gram participants (Zeichner, 1999). Cochran-Smith (1995) writes, “I know little . . . about how student teachers really make sense of their year in our preservice pro-gram” (p. 545). Similarly, Melnick and Zeichner (1994) explain that little is known “about how teacher candidates interpret and give meaning to attempts to influence them in particular ways” (p. 18).

Summary

It is not my intention to deny the importance of debate and scholarship regarding what issues should play a central role in creating multicultural teacher


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preparation programs, nor to deny the important contributions of each of the key pieces briefly described in this article. My intention is to acknowledge that although much important theoretical work has been done in multicultural educa-tion, especially around the issues of race and racial identity, the actual practice of teaching and learning about issues of diversity in teacher education is more nebulous. Despite a growing body of research that examines K–12 pedagogical enactments of these theoretical contributions (e.g., A. M. A. Allen, 1997; J. Allen, 1999; Comber & Simpson, 2001; Dyson, 1997; Edelsky, 1999; Fecho, 2000a), research in teacher education classrooms remains in need (Cochran-Smith, 1995; Zeichner, 1999). In the next section, I want to draw attention to how the available scholarship seems to foster a kind of “business as usual” narrative about the roles of and the relationship between teacher candidates and teacher educators. The absence of debate about pedagogy may actually encourage a kind of caricature of both teacher candidates and teacher educators.

The Role of the Teacher Educator: Rescuing Teacher Candidates

A narrative that depicts White teacher candidates as deficient learners who lack resources to engage in learning about issues of diversity seems to permeate descrip-tions of multicultural teacher education. In addition, often accompanying this cari-cature of teacher candidates is a conception of teacher educator as “hero to the rescue.” I believe it is necessary to critically examine this narrative and resee the relationship between pedagogy and teacher candidates. This entails turning to sev-eral teachers and teacher educators who help frame critical questions that can foster dialogue and debate about conceptualizing White teacher candidates as learners.

Business as Usual: A Caricature of Teacher Candidates and the Subtext of a Heroic Plot

Often, what seems to accompany the demographic imperative are pictures that suggest that teacher candidates have little to no knowledge and experience (or the wrong knowledge and experience) for bridging the divide between their own understandings and those of their future students. Therefore, teacher educators face the task of somehow rescuing teacher candidates from their lack of knowledge or from their misconceptions. The scholarship that does focus on actual teachers and teaching typically concludes that changing teachers’ perspectives is a long, labor-intensive process and notes the problems encountered in teaching multicul-turalism. These problems often involve describing the limited backgrounds of White teacher candidates (Paine, 1990), “the resistance of European-American students,” and “the multiple forms that discomfort takes (e.g., anger, disengage-ment, or passivity) in the classroom” (Lesko & Bloom, 1998, p. 378). A kind of caricature emerges, perhaps best exemplified by Gomez’s (1996) statement:

As a teacher educator engaged in challenging—and attempting to change—the perspectives on “Others” of young, White, monolingual-in-English, het-erosexual females from suburbia, I am keenly aware of the difficulties and ironies of the tasks I and my colleagues have set for ourselves. I recognize that it is unlikely that a few semesters in a teacher education program can turn racists or homophobes into teachers who carefully and joyfully educate the children of “Others.” (p. 126)


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In the teacher educator act of “attempting to change” our students who are “rac-ists or homophobes,” pictures of teacher candidates as resistant, angry, defensive, passive, or disengaged ensue (Goodman, 1998; G. P. Smith, 1998; Zimpher & Ashburn, 1992). Many educators have written about these reactions from teacher candidates (Ahlquist, 1992; Chavez Chavez & O’Donnell, 1998; Gay & Howard, 2000; Gollnick, 1992). Allsup (1995) calls the multicultural teacher education classroom a “stormy environment,” especially if the teacher is a person of color or a White female. Based on a conception of teacher candidates as deficient, passive, and disengaged or hostile learners, teaching in multicultural education seems to be grounded in the teacher educator’s solitary and heroic act. Multicultural teacher educators enter the classroom to save their students from their lack of awareness, transforming them into social justice educators. Lesko and Bloom (1998) refer to this as the “realism, rationalism, and the heroic plot in multicultural teacher educa-tion” (p. 379). In some teacher educators’ accounts, the hero plot actually turns into combat between teacher educators and teacher candidates. Teacher educators must fight against the “provincial perspectives” of all teacher candidates, and teacher candidates’ “parochialism” must be “overcome” (Dilworth, 1992, p. 13). Dilworth writes, “The battle must be engaged” (p. 13).

This is not to suggest that these responses do not occur. McIntosh’s (1988) work in feminist theory helps us understand how Whites often take their cultural, politi-cal, and economic skin color privileges for granted. Furthermore, White teacher candidates have reacted to discussion of White privilege with resistance, anger, or defensiveness (Case & Hemmings, 2005; Sleeter, 1993). Case and Hemmings describe specific strategies that White women candidates use to distance them-selves from racism, including silence in classroom talk as a response to perceptions that they are being viewed as racist or responsible for racism. Sleeter provides evidence for White teacher candidates’ resistance to examining institutional racism and the ways in which White privilege operates in daily life, noting that White candidates hold on to conceptions of the American social system as open and that individual mobility can be attained through hard work. It is important to acknowl-edge that these responses on the part of White teacher candidates may be a natural part of their consciousness work and racial identity development.

Reseeing the Relationship Between Pedagogy and Student Engagement

While acknowledging these responses on the part of White teacher candidates, it is important to consider that these reactions may also occur in part as a response to the ways in which teacher educators construct teacher candidates as learners and to the ways in which roles, courses, and programs are constructed in teacher educa-tion. Cuban (1973) calls teachers’ beliefs that students are “unknowing, unthink-ing, and unaware” as “patronizing” (p. 105). Britzman (1991) describes the general orientation to multicultural education in terms of teacher educators preoccupied with supplying students with “accurate” and “authentic” representations, offering “good realism” as a remedy to the bad stereotypes that teacher candidates have. She problematizes how teacher educators believe in the power of “the real” to transform, pledging allegiance to the notion that teacher candidates’ “heads are full of false ideas which can, however, be totally dispersed when [they] throw [them]selves open to ‘the real’ as a moment of absolute authentication” (p. 231).


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The caricature of teacher candidates as deficient is inextricably linked with our pedagogical choices as teacher educators; the assumption that our students are deficient may lead to pedagogies that impede their engagement. The power of this self-fulfilling prophecy seems to elude us. We rarely consider that it is possible that our students disengage in the classroom because we use methods that assume they are disengaged. Giroux (2001) writes,

Unless the pedagogical conditions exist to connect forms of knowledge to the lived experiences, histories, and cultures of the students we engage, such knowledge is reified or “deposited” in the Freirian sense, through transmis-sion models that ignore the context in which knowledge is produced and simultaneously functions often to silence as much as deaden student interest. (p. 7)

Cuban (1973) argues that “white instruction” destroys the life and potential of “ethnic content.” He describes White instruction as a shorthand way for naming traditional methods of telling, explaining, and clarifying that have been the main-stay of classrooms for the last thousand years, with a view of the learner as pas-sively absorbing information and the belief that mastery of all the facts must precede analysis. Cuban foregrounds “the belief that racism can be eliminated by filling up kids with information” as a central error in educational thinking (p. 103). Similarly, Palmer (1998) writes about this phenomenon, noting,

Whatever tidbits of truth these student stereotypes contain, they grossly dis-tort reality and they widen the disconnection between students and their teachers. Not only do these caricatures make our lives look noble in com-parison to the barbaric young, but they also place the courses of our students’ problems far upstream from the place where our lives converge with theirs. . . . These stereotypes conveniently relieve us of any responsibility for our students’ problems—or their resolution. (p. 41)

Some educators specifically write about pedagogy in the context of higher edu-cation (J. Allen & Labbo, 2001; Cochran-Smith, 2000; Cockrell, et al., 1999; Florio-Ruane, 2001; Holt-Reynolds, 1992; O’Donnell, 1998). Elbow (1986) describes his frustration with the lack of attention in higher education to the pro-cesses of learning and the belief that ideas can be directly conveyed from one person to another. Florio-Ruane (2001) writes that “teacher education remains hamstrung by a transmission-oriented pedagogy” (p. 14). In the specific context of multicultural teacher education, Zimpher and Ashburn (1992) ask,

What are we teaching by how we do teacher education, beyond the content itself? If our teacher education programs are not caring and collaborative learning communities that foster continuous discourse about the pedagogical implications of diversity, how can we expect our white middle-class students to believe or act differently from the ways in which they were taught? (pp. 57–58)

A Learning Question for Multicultural Teacher Education

The “learning question” that Cochran-Smith et al. (2004) name focuses on pedagogical choices for teaching multicultural curriculum to teacher candidates. They use this term to refer to “how in general teachers learn to teach for diversity


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and what, in particular, are the pedagogies of teacher preparation (e.g., coursework assignments, readings, discussion) that make this learning possible” (pp. 39–40). They cite Cochran-Smith and Lytle, who argue that “inquiry-based teacher prepa-ration, rather than the ‘training’ or transmission models that prevail in many places, are the most promising approaches for preparing teachers to be lifelong learners who can work effectively in diverse settings” (p. 40). Obidah (2000) explains, “For some of us who teach multicultural education, we approach our classrooms far more confident about what we want to teach, than about how we will teach it” (p. 1035). Gay (1997) similarly describes the idea of infusing multiculturalism throughout preservice teacher preparation as “a very powerful idea pedagogically and a very challenging one operationally” (p. 159). Gay describes how the prevail-ing pedagogical norms of college teaching contribute to the difficulty of infusing multicultural education in preservice teacher preparation (p. 159). She writes that anything that deviates from lecturing is more an anomaly than the norm; yet, the “inherent nature and intent of multicultural education require more engaging and varied instructional strategies” (p. 159). The existing scholarship offers “only an afterthought to the teachers and teaching strategies used” (Cuban, as cited in Ladson-Billings, 1992, p. 106). Britzman (1991) writes about a concern about the “pacification of knowers and what is to be known. When knowledge is reduced to right directives that demand little else from the knower than acquiescence, both the knower and knowledge are repressed. Knowledge is expressed as static and immu-table,” and novices are viewed as empty receptacles (p. 29).

This points to a key question: What would it mean to enact a pedagogy in mul-ticultural teacher education that fits with our understandings about how students learn more generally? To consider how teacher educators might begin to construct a pedagogy of multicultural education, I turn to the practice of teachers and teacher educators who view students as active learners who bring valuable resources to their learning.

Mobilizing Pedagogical Insights for Conceptualizing White Teacher Candidates as Learners

Conceptualizing Students as Active Learners Who Bring Resources to Their Learning

Florio-Ruane (2001) notes that there have been strong calls in teacher educa-tion, paralleling the movement in educational theory and practice, for a move from a paradigm of knowledge transmission to one of knowledge construction (p. 57). Constructivist learning theory is a body of developmental and cognitive research that has led to a growing consensus about how students learn well; it has led teach-ers to conceptualize students as active builders and testers of knowledge. These perspectives, which call for the collapse of what is usually seen as the gap between students’ experiences and disciplinary knowledge, are not new (Phillips, 2000). Although it is not the intention of this article to review constructivist learning theories, it is important to mention that the rich history of these ideas informs a conception of teacher candidates as learners who bring assets to their education.

In one attempt to distill key tenets of this rich body of work, Howe and Berv (2000) describe the two basic premises of constructivist learning theory: Learning takes as its starting point the knowledge, attitudes, and interests students bring to


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the learning situation, and learning results from the interaction between these char-acteristics and experience in such a way that learners construct their own under-standing. Howe and Berv also describe two premises of constructivist pedagogy that parallel the two of constructivist learning theory: Instruction must take as its starting point the knowledge, attitudes, and interests students bring to the situation, and instruction must be designed so as to provide experiences that effectively inter-act with these characteristics of students so that they may construct their own understanding.

This “new” consensus on learning recapitulates ideas developed by John Dewey. More than 100 years ago, Dewey (1902) challenged prevailing views of learning by suggesting that education is a process in which the learner uses prior knowledge and experience to shape meaning and construct new knowledge. Dewey’s work (1902, 1904/1965, 1938) reflected a continuing struggle to understand how students learn and how teachers and schools can foster their learning. In naming the central ques-tion as how to erase the notion that there is some kind of gap between the child’s experience and subject matter, Dewey did not position himself on either end of this dichotomy, where one side privileges the transmission of formulated subject matter and the other side follows children’s interests. He argued that we must hold an integrated and dynamic view of the curriculum and the child, seeing the discipline within the experiences of the child. Thus, what concerns a teacher are the ways in which a subject can become a part of students’ experience.

Dewey characterized the teacher’s act of viewing and using subject matter in relationship with the experience of the child as “psychologizing” subject matter. Teaching becomes a matter of “seeing how his [the child’s] experience already contains within itself elements—facts and truths—of just the same sort of those entering into the formulated study” (Dewey, 1902, pp. 15–16). Thus, teachers must “abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child’s experience [and] cease thinking of the child’s experience as also something hard and fast,” and use their own knowledge of the subject matter to help interpret a child’s needs and growth (p. 16). Learners build powerful maps of the world only by starting from and adding to or revising their existing maps (Dewey, 1902). Students therefore need opportunities to formulate, test, and revise their concepts about phenomena in the world. Brunner and Tally (1999) note that this formulation of ideas occurs best in a social context of discussion, debate, and comparison of one’s own maps with those of others.

Bridging multicultural educational theory and these ideas about learning requires a recognition that pedagogy assists students’ construction of knowledge. Mathison and Young (1995) note the potential for merging constructivism and multicultural education. They believe that learners structure information and ideas in ways that are personally meaningful to them and that this process must be used in creating a multicultural education. So, what would it mean to enact a pedagogy where White teacher candidates’ experiences are legitimized as integral to teaching and learning? How might this kind of pedagogy foster more engagement of White teacher candidates in a teacher education classroom? To explore this possibility, I turn to the work of some teachers and teacher educators.


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Exploring the Practice of Teachers and Teacher Educators

A long line of teachers has sought to draw upon Dewey’s ideas by mobilizing students’ experiences and ways of understanding so that students can gain access to disciplinary knowledge. For example, Duckworth (1996) writes from the prem-ise that often learners’ ways of understanding are often left unrecognized by teach-ers, teacher educators, curricula, and assessments. To improve students’ learning, she explains that teachers need to probe students’ thinking and ways of understand-ing and get inside of students’ explanations to make connections between students’ ways of knowing and teachers’ ways of knowing a discipline. Similarly, in her work as an elementary school science teacher–researcher, Gallas (1995) describes what she characterizes as the language that children use naturally in science dis-cussions, noting that students might not be able to “use the appropriate terminol-ogy or factual references about a scientific phenomenon, but they were all in full possession of a natural ability to question, wonder, and theorize about every aspect of the natural and physical world” (p. 3). Rosenberg (1997), a teacher educator in the field of multicultural education, argues that teacher educators must “show how experience can illuminate and enhance our understanding of academic material” (p. 82). This raises the question: How can particular kinds of pedagogies that build on students’ strengths and resources be used with White teacher candidates in multicultural teacher education?

In the field of multicultural teacher education, some teacher educators have used self-studies to begin to address the critical shift away from a homogenization and deficit view of teacher candidates to a view of them as learners who bring experiences and resources to their studies of diversity (J. Allen & Labbo, 2001; Chavez Chavez & O’Donnell, 1998; Cochran-Smith, 1995, 2000; Cockrell et al., 1999; Lesko & Bloom, 1998; Obidah, 2000; Rosenberg, 1997; Sleeter, 1996). One group of teacher educators, Cockrell et al., discovered that they had not adhered to one of the values that they espoused in the course: Know your students. This group describes how “labeling [their students] as a sea of ‘predominantly White, middle class females’ was simplistic and denied hidden forms of diversity and differences of opinion among them” (p. 353). In addition, they note that “describing the stu-dents as ‘racist’ or at least ‘ignorant’ probably occurred to [them], but this blame-the-students position was also contradictory” to their espoused values. Moreover, they were concerned that “in some cases, initial negativity about diversity may have actually hardened” as a result of their course (p. 353). Similarly, Allen and Labbo describe what they call a shift from a “you should” pedagogical stance to a “Who are you?” starting point when creating culturally engaged teaching with their preservice teachers. Allen and Labbo describe their own learning through interrogat-ing the stereotypes and homogenizing assumptions that they held of their students as “sorority girls.” They describe their goal “to look beyond their [students’] surface homogeneity as young, privileged, white females” to find “their remarkable strength in interrogating some of their tacit cultural influences” (p. 50).

Across the teacher educators who have conducted self-studies, the beliefs and lived experiences of teacher candidates are viewed as coherent, legitimate, and necessary premises from which teacher candidates enter their formal, professional studies. These teacher educators have sought ways in which the diversity of expe-riences and beliefs of their students can enter the classroom, and this diversity


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provides insights regarding the ways in which schools and other institutions have asked them to make sense of their experiences. In accordance with this view of learners, the pedagogical approaches of these teacher educators for helping pro-spective teachers make sense of their own experiences seem to require a radically different approach to teacher preparation. This approach relies less on receiving knowledge than on knowledge that teacher candidates actively construct. Perhaps as teacher educators respect and pedagogically use the differences among their teacher candidates as learners, they model ways for teacher candidates to enter into relationships with their own future (K–12) students who may differ even more from them. Perhaps “new expectancies” for teacher candidates as learners “can lead to their learning more than had been believed possible” (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968, pp. 181–182).

Teacher Candidates as Learners With Resources: A Parallel Practice in Teacher Education

This article raises questions about how we conceive of the ability and potential of our White teacher candidates in studying issues of diversity. Regenspan (2002) describes this with her belief that teacher educators “need a concerted effort to contradict the inappropriate expectations that have prevailed in the field” (p. 75). She is referring to the need for teacher educators to combat the belief that preser-vice teachers are unable to think in complex ways about social issues. In addition, Reganspan situates this need in what she calls the parallel practice implications for teacher education: Just as teacher educators want teacher candidates to expect that the children in public school classrooms with whom they will work bring resources to their learning, teacher educators also need to expect that the teacher candidates in university classrooms with whom they work bring resources to their learning. The final section of this article foregrounds practices and ideas for conceptualizing such a parallel practice in teacher education. This section also points to the need for further research on such a parallel practice.

I now review three possibilities for creating this parallel practice in teacher education. The first possibility involves the use of field-based experiences for teacher candidates. The second foregrounds reflection as a central goal in the prac-tice of all teacher educators and, by extension, in the practice of K–12 teachers. These possibilities are not new calls for teacher education reform. They are reviewed here because they offer a response to a deficit conception of preservice teachers. They do this by recognizing that both teacher educators and preservice teachers can engage deeply as active learners about issues of diversity. The third possibility highlights the work of a few teacher educators who respond to the demographic imperative with a conception of White preservice teachers as bring-ing resources to their learning about diversity. These teacher educators are few in number because there are few examples from teacher educators’ practices that directly address homogenizing and deficit conceptions of preservice teachers or what might count as the resources preservice teachers bring to their learning. The ideas and pedagogies of the teacher educators reviewed here help illuminate direc-tions for future research.


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Field-Based Experiences

Some teacher educators call for more field-based experiences in teacher educa-tion programs as a way for teacher candidates to construct meaningful learning (Larke, Wiseman, & Bradley, 1990; Leland & Harste, 2005; Mahan, 1982; C. A. Smith, Strand, & Bunting, 2002). Simmons (1995) describes the kind of learning from these experiences not as learning that teacher educators impart to students but, rather, as learning constructed by the learner from experience and reflection on that experience. This mode of learning may help teacher educators view preser-vice teachers as active participants in knowing, rather than as empty containers waiting to be filled with knowledge.

Moreover, some teacher educators have described field experiences that place preservice teachers in situations where they became the “other” and were simulta-neously engaged in seminars or other ongoing conversations that guided their self-inquiry and reflection (Larke et al., 1990; Mahan, 1982). Others have discussed the ways in which service learning opportunities, including the need for processing and dialogue about these opportunities, can function as an innovative way to teach course concepts and acknowledge the sense-making of teacher candidates (Cleary, 1998; Jakubowski, 2003; King, 2004; LaMaster, 2001). Some discuss the ways in which service learning experiences can foster students’ engagement with issues of race, class, and gender (Warren, 1998); students’ sense of civic responsibility (Peters & Stearns, 2003; Waldstein, 2001); and students’ consciousness and artic-ulation of their beliefs (Maher, 2003). Warren explains that service learning “com-bines theory and practice in academics and in the community,” and when explored with guided reflection and application, these projects can construct curricula that allow teacher candidates to examine issues of diversity and equity. Carlson and McKenna (2000) describe the potential of using adventure-based experiential learning programs with teacher candidates, defining these programs as a kind of learning by doing, primarily outdoors. The authors stress that through processing experiences in these kinds of programs, teacher candidates are guided in reflecting on the personal and professional meanings of these experiences. These experiences may allow teacher educators to witness the active meaning-making of teacher can-didates and thus move away from a conception of teacher candidates as empty slates without resources.

Rather than adding a single field experience, Leland and Harste (2005) argue for situating an entire elementary teacher preparation program in an urban elemen-tary school. They write that this allows teacher educators and teacher candidates to have ongoing conversations about the challenges of teaching and of social issues, in effect surfacing the meaning-making of teacher candidates. They spe-cifically note that situating the work of teaching literacy in elementary classrooms allows teacher educators and teacher candidates to have ongoing conversations about difficult social issues. Similarly, Berry (2006) describes residency-based teacher education as a model for learning how to teach. This model entails year-long residencies for teacher candidates alongside mentors in K–12 classrooms. Perhaps these field-based models allow for continual reflection on the complexi-ties of teaching rather than generalizations about either preservice teachers or K–12 students.


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Reflective Teaching for Teacher Educators and Teacher Candidates

Another promising route toward creating a parallel pedagogy entails placing reflective teaching at the center of teacher education. Zimpher and Ashburn (1992) write that “teacher educators must first examine their own thinking for its parochial nature” (p. 40). Lazar (2004) urges teacher educators to scrutinize their assump-tions and biases and to ask themselves the same questions that they pose to their own teacher candidates. Fullan (1993) maintains that “faculties of Education should not advocate things for teachers or schools that they are not capable of practicing themselves” (p. 17). From his perspective, this must include putting into place “effective institutional mechanisms for [teacher educators to improve] their own teaching” (p. 16), and he offers the University of Toronto as a case in which this kind of work on teaching in teacher education has begun to happen. Villegas and Lucas (2002) outline a vision of culturally responsive teacher educators that they believe can begin conversations within teacher education.

More generally, Nieto (2000) frames the work of teacher education as cultivat-ing an understanding of teaching as a lifelong journey of learning. Along these lines, as an alternative to conventional teacher education programs that aim to give preservice teachers a set of skills that come from a predetermined knowledge base, Zeichner and Liston (1987) describe a teacher education program that sets reflec-tive teaching as a central goal. Furthermore, they situate this kind of goal within a program that continually evolves. Zeichner and Liston write, “There is no more important need for an inquiry-oriented program than to model the processes of self-directed growth and continuing self-renewal that it seeks to engender in its students” (p. 120). Fecho (2000b) extends this work and calls on teacher educators to think outside of traditional structures of teacher education and use critical inquiry in ways that can bridge teacher candidates’ last years of college with their first years of teaching.

Teacher Candidates as Learners With Resources

A third small group of teacher educators directly addresses the need to view teacher candidates as learners with resources. Lazar (2004) writes that teacher educators often assume that education students from affluent communities are culturally insensitive and that education students growing up in urban or culturally diverse neighborhoods are sensitive. He suggests that teacher educators “should, instead, spend some time finding out about the views and attitudes that all of our education students bring to the university” (p. 148). Lazar notes that teacher educa-tors have to ask themselves to name and examine their own assumptions and biases about their own teacher candidates in order to be successful mentors of teachers. This may serve as an important starting point for addressing a conception of teacher candidates as learners with resources.

Adding to this work, Reyes, Capella-Santa, and Khisty (1998) suggest that teacher educators need to support candidates’ seeing multicultural education as something emanating from their lives. These instructors believe that enacting a pedagogy that recognizes the lived realities of all teacher candidates allows for students to influence and create the curriculum. Reyes et al. write,

Just as caution is needed to avoid generalizing about minority students, we discovered that the same caution is needed with regards to all groups,


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including European Americans. This realization came about because our own assumptions of European American teachers were challenged. At first glance, the class seemed typical of prospective teachers in its homogeneity. It is inter-esting that by shifting from a pedagogy that emphasized passiveness and listening to one that actively engaged students and drew on their experiences, we discovered the rich medley of student lives that actually existed. (p. 123)

They offer examples of the diverse family structures, linguistic backgrounds, income brackets, and neighborhoods of their teacher candidates, and how these differences became resources for candidates’ learning about issues of diversity and equity.

Rosaen (2003) offers one specific instantiation of a parallel pedagogy in teacher education. She describes how she allows her White teacher candidates to explore their own cultural identities through poetry. She reflects on the promising aspects of this practice, situated in a framework that allows preservice teachers to bring their knowledge into the teacher education classroom and make use of it as an important way of knowing. She also highlights the need for continued opportunities that sup-port preservice teachers to surface, explore, and question their frames of reference that shape their perceptions. Her pedagogy views teacher candidates as bringing life histories that can be used as assets in the teacher education classroom.

Conclusion: Reframing Teacher Candidates as Learners

Simmons (1995) writes that “teacher preparation should be grounded in the same practices, principles, and purposes as the education teachers will eventually provide for their students” (p. 122). To examine this grounding, this article began by exploring various facets of multicultural education. From general guidelines, visions, and frameworks, to enactments in K–12 and teacher education classrooms, these facets underscore the critical need to consider the resources that preservice teachers bring to their learning. I argue that this need involves broadening and deepening our understanding of the demographic imperative. I offered three addi-tional frames to show how teacher candidates are not the problem; rather, candi-dates become what can be considered “a display board for the problems of the system” (McDermott & Varenne, 1995, p. 341). I also demonstrated that although multiculturalism has become more of an established field in education, with a body of knowledge, texts, and curricula, less is known about the actual teaching of pre-service multicultural teacher education. I then showed how the current conceptu-alization of learners may even discourage debate about pedagogy around issues of diversity because teacher educators get to be “heroes to the rescue.”

I believe that it is necessary to reframe the structure of debate about preservice teachers learning about diversity. This hinges on replacing a conceptualization of teacher candidates as a monolithic and deficient group of learners with a concep-tualization of teacher candidates as competent learners who bring rich resources to their learning. This idea comes with a rich history, including links to a host of educational progressives who have advocated that students bring experiences and understandings to new learning situations (e.g., Dewey, 1902, 1904/1965, 1938; Duckworth, 1996; Freire, 1994; Freire & Macedo, 1987). More scholarship and debate on understanding what this might look like in the context of teacher educa-tion is certainly warranted. This will allow for further dialogue about the resources


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teacher candidates bring to their learning and the ways teacher educators can use these resources, crafting the future of teacher education.

Notes1It is important to note that both urban and rural districts face the need for high-

quality teachers (Brooke, 2003). Given this need, it may also be helpful to consider the implications of teacher demographics and conceptions of teacher candidates as learners in relationship to students in high-poverty schools (Ingersoll, 2004).

2Although an analysis of practicing teachers’ professional development regarding issues of diversity (which may include continuing coursework in colleges of education) remains a critical extension of preservice preparation, especially given a conception of teachers as lifelong learners (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Little, 1993) about diversity (Florio-Ruane, 2001), this article focuses on the preparation of teacher candidates.

3Several teacher educators have written about what it might mean to engage in mul-ticultural teacher education in communities of predominantly White K–12 students and White teachers (Liu & Meadows, 2003; Noel, 1995). Liu and Meadows note that the demographics of our nation mask the high concentrations of White students with White teachers (e.g., in the United States, 50 states have a White population of 80% or above) and wrestle with the question, What does it mean to “do” multiculturalism in geo-graphically homogeneous communities? They indicate that multicultural education focuses on preparing (mostly White) teachers to work with diverse populations (e.g., Howard, 1999; Landsman, 2001), and on one slide of their 2003 American Educational Research Association presentation, they wrote, “Very little information exists to help guide white professionals who work in environments that have little or no diversity.”

4It is not my intention to offer a comprehensive historical account of the development of the practices and dimensions of multicultural education. Others have taken up this formidable task (Banks, 1995; Cochran-Smith, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1999; Payne & Welsh, 2000). Some have written comprehensive reviews of institutional attempts to prepare teachers for diversity (Gollnick, 1992; Grant & Secada, 1990; Ladson-Billings, 1995), and others more fully describe national and state initiatives for multicultural education (Gollnick, 1995).

5The theoretical work on race can be traced through a rich history of scholarship done by African American scholars, the early ethnic studies movement, and the Black studies movement (Banks, 1995).

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AuthorKAREN L. LOWENSTEIN serves as codirector of the Boettcher Teachers Program, an

urban teacher education program, at the Public Education & Business Coalition, 1244 Grant Street, Denver, CO 80203; e-mail [email protected]. Her main research inter-ests center on pedagogies for multicultural teacher education and novice teacher learning about issues of diversity and equity.


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Documents

The Work of Multicultural Teacher Education: Reconceptualizing White Teacher Candidates as Learners