Rethinking assumptions of demographic privilege: Diversity among White preservice teachers

Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 43e50

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Rethinking assumptions of demographic privilege: Diversity among White preservice teachers Judson C. Laughter* University of Tennessee, Theory and Practice of Teacher Education, A418 Bailey Education Complex, 1126 Volunteer Boulevard, Knoxville, TN 37996-3442, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 26 March 2010 Received in revised form 30 June 2010 Accepted 3 July 2010

In this study, White preservice teachers engaged in a dialogue circle around issues of race and racism in the classroom. Evidence indicated a need to reevaluate and diversify the ways in which each participant embodied and enacted Whiteness. The participants are compared to generalizations of White preservice teachers found in the literature. Findings are presented in the form of racial development biographies cowritten with the participants. Implications include being more specific and individual in the preparation of White preservice teachers and rethinking assumptions in the field of Multicultural Teacher Education. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Multicultural Teacher Education Race Whiteness Narrative

1. Introduction In 1993, Howard asked, “How does an ethnic group that has historically been dominant in its society adjust to a more modest and balanced role?” (Howard, 1993, p. 36), a question sitting at the center of Multicultural Teacher Education (MTE). The relationship of oppressed and oppressor in societies is often mirrored in a society’s schools, leading theorists as politically diverse as Freire (1970) and Bakhtin (2004) to examine how privilege plays out in the classroom. One instrument for examining the classroom is the demographic divide. While originating as a measure of population growth, particularly comparing rich and poor countries (Kent & Haub, 2005), the demographic divide has been adopted by educational researchers to examine the differences between students and teachers, most notably in the work of Banks (1993, 1995, 2003). For example, in the United States, 83.1% of teachers are identified as White while 39.7% of students are identified as Minority (that is, Not White: Strizek, Pittsonberger, Riordan, Lyter, & Orlofsky, 2006). While some present the demographic divide as a problem in and of itself, I see it as a site for examining systems of privilege.

Abbreviations: CRT: Critical Race Theory; MTE: Multicultural Teacher Education; PRJ: Personal Reflection Journal; RDA: racial development autobiography; WPT: White preservice teacher. * Tel.: þ1 865 974 8385; fax: þ1 865 974 6302. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0742-051X/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.07.001

While MTE in the United States often addresses the White/ Not-White demographic divide, divides in other countries may reflect a similar situation where a privileged demographic is most likely to be standing at the front of a classroom. These divides may include demographics of religion, class, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, aboriginal or tribal affiliations, or any relationship in which society privileges one demographic over another. Likewise, demographics shift over time; in the early 20th century Italian immigrants were often not allowed to attend White schools in the United States but today Italian-Americans are considered White. Several divides may even work in concert as each individual represents a multitude of demographic identities. In my context as a teacher educator in the United States, there are two decades of research surrounding MTE and the preparation of White preservice teachers (WPTs) for diverse classrooms; this was the context for the present study and from which I draw implications. Grant and Secada (1990) established the precedent for more than a decade of reviewing MTE research along positivist criteria for inclusion. However, in 2001, Sleeter heralded a new direction for MTE, opening her review to qualitative methodologies, narrative inquiry, and small-scale case studies. This lead has been followed every few years, most notably by Cochran-Smith (Cochran-Smith, Davis, & Fries, 2004), by Hollins and Guzman (2005), again by Sleeter (2008), and most recently by Castro (2010). Each of these reviews framed the need for MTE around the demographic divide between teachers from privileged demographics and a growing number of students from not-privileged

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demographics. As the findings of each of these reviews are similar, I primarily rely on the most recent work of Sleeter (2008) as a concise statement of the central issues in MTE research. I believe Sleeter’s (2008) work is representative of much MTE research I wish to problematize (e.g. Castro, 2010; Cochran-Smith et al., 2004; Dixson & Dingus, 2007; Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Leeman & Ledoux, 2003; Pewewardy, 2005; Quartz, 2003). When seeking to broaden the multicultural knowledge of WPTs, Sleeter (2001) found their experiences lacking: “Students of color tend to bring richer experiences and perspectives to multicultural teaching than do most White students” (p. 94). In her most recent review, Sleeter (2008) more specifically defined four interrelated problems in the development of WPTs:  WPTs are often “dysconscious” (King, 1991) of how racism works;  WPTs often have lower expectations for students of color;  WPTs often have little experience with communities of color;  WPTs often do not understand themselves as racial beings. When reading this generalization, those engaged in teacher preparation might assume that all teachers from a privileged demographic are the same (e.g. Castro, 2010; Hollins & Guzman, 2005), that Sleeter’s overwhelming Whiteness means all WPTs are a generalized White. However, there is a strong body of research that wrestles with questions of privilege and what it means to be White, drawing on broader schools of thought like Critical Race Theory (e.g. Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Milner, 2008) and Critical White Studies (e.g. Delgado & Stefancic, 1997). For example, in a study of WPTs, Marx and Pennington (2003) described their own definition of Whiteness as a “highly privileged social construction, rather than a neutral racial category” (p. 91). They went on to define what a positive White identity might look like, establishing a goal toward which they hoped they and the participants would move over time. Likewise, researchers from around the world see MTE as a field wrestling with issues of privilege. Aveling (2004, 2006) found in a case study of Aboriginal education that boundaries of ethnicity and power make the functions of Whiteness visible. Au and Blake (2003), in their case study of not-White Hawaiian preservice teachers, examined their own identities as having an impact on the study’s context. Dooly (2006) examined 160 preservice teachers in six countries and described how varied demographics built a context in which education happened. Mansfield and Kehoe (1994) sought reasons why Canadian policies of anti-racist education failed, determining that such work must be politicized to be effective. Spalding, Savage, and Garcias (2007) examined the effects of a field experience in Poland where preservice teachers investigated the Holocaust. I believe the field of MTE only benefits from critical approaches to privilege and the act of demographic dominance. It is in this spirit that the study described here was conducted. I believe that in examining individual definitions of identity, we hack away at hegemonic systems of privilege by revealing ways in which demographic definitions are neither monolithic nor natural. By bringing the “White” voices of WPTs into dialogue, I might disrupt the evolving collection of characteristics under girding the Whiteness of teacher education. Likewise, by examining the demographic divide in my own context, I might provide methodological support or implications for others. The findings reported here developed from a yearlong study of WPTs engaged in a dialogue circle around issues of race in education. Evidence indicated the need to rethink ways in which participants embodied and enacted Whiteness. I first present

definitions for terms that developed over the course of the study. I describe the methodology by which the study was designed and data were analyzed. I then present findings from this study in the form of two racial development biographies, each of which problematizes assumptions about WPTs. I conclude with four implications of these biographies for MTE and the preparation of preservice teachers for increasingly diverse classrooms. 1.1. Key definitions In this study, I purposefully restricted the definition of MTE to the preparation of teachers for diverse classrooms. That is, I am interested in the ways preservice teachers are prepared for classrooms that include students’ diverse both amongst their peers and within themselves along multiple markers of culture, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, language, ability, and socioeconomic status. For the purposes of this study, I focus primarily on race as a demographic marker of privilege because this is a primary demographic in my own context. While MTE includes the preparation of teachers of color, it is not that literature on which I build. The definition of race presented in this study collates several sources but is problematic; that is, my definition of race synthesizes information and histories from sources that are often conflicting (Ignatiev, 1997; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Montagu, 1997; Omi & Winant, 1994; Sunderland, 1975). People notice biological differences in each other e different skin tones, facial features, and hair textures. However, race is something different, the product of European Enlightenment mythology, as described by Montagu (1997): The myth of race refers not to the fact that physically distinguishable populations of humans exist, but rather to the belief that races are populations or peoples whose physical differences are innately linked with significant differences in mental capacities, and that these innate hierarchical differences are measurable by the cultural achievements of such populations. (p. 44) Race includes definitions and relationships of privilege, not biological markers. Race might be an appropriate term for defining more than just people in the United States with lighter or darker skin; the term race might reflect any relationship where privilege defines a demographic divide. I use Black and White (both capitalized) to indicate races. I do not use, for example, African-American and Black interchangeably. I would define African-American as an ethnicity, a collection of explicit and implicit common cultural traditions. The difference between ethnicity and race is privilege; that is, race attaches to ethnicity assumptions about mental capacity and achievement as defined by those in power (Montagu, 1997) and thus privileges one over another. In addressing issues of race and racism in the United States, a definition of Whiteness emerged over the course of the study. I define Whiteness as an evolving, socially constructed system of conscious/unconscious, intentional/accidental, explicit/implicit privilege associated with those who manifest certain characteristics labeled White, characteristics that evolve within a racialized society. Among the privileges of Whiteness are the privilege to exclude and the privilege to define, possess, and own property. I believe that by replacing the words “White” and “Whiteness” with other demographic indicators, I might describe any number of privileged demographics. For example, if examining a religious demographic, the words “Christian” and “Christian-ness” might replace “White” and “Whiteness” in the above definition. In either case, what is at play in this definition, and this study, is a system of demographic power from unearned but assumed privileges.

J.C. Laughter / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 43e50

Following this definition of Whiteness is the practice of Being White. I define being White (with a capital W) as embodying and enacting a system of Whiteness. I do not define being White as possession of a certain skin color and associated phenotypic characteristics but the conscious/unconscious, intentional/accidental, explicit/implicit use of privilege. Again, by replacing the word “Whiteness” in this definition, I might describe the enacting of any number of other hegemonic systems of privilege. 2. Differentiating being White Over the course of this study, several definitions of being White became apparent as the participants explored their own racial development. In this section, I briefly describe the participants and the methodology of data development and analysis. I then present two narratives co-written with the participants to demonstrate definitions of being White that differ wildly from each other and from those that might be assumed by teacher educators (e.g. Sleeter, 2008). I believe that in recognizing the different ways in which WPTs enact being White, teacher educators might see more success in preparing preservice teachers from privileged demographics for diverse classrooms. This study was a qualitative study using multiple methods of data capture, including written artifacts, audio- and video-recordings of interviews and group meetings, multiple rubrics addressing dialogic and racial development, and consistent member checking of ongoing constant comparative data analysis. A qualitative approach allowed me to move beyond generalizations of WPTs. By focusing on a small number of participants, I was able to know them as individuals and uncover where their developments matched or deviated from such assumptions. 2.1. Participants I enrolled participants in this project from preservice teachers (those currently in the act of student teaching) at a medium-sized tier-one research private university located in a medium-sized Southern city. These participants were purposively selected for indicating a desire for a deeper exploration of their preparation for diverse classrooms. Focusing on two participants allowed me to explore the complexities of working toward communal dialogue while also thickly describing each participant as an individual. I chose to work with WPTs for several reasons. As cited above, 83.1% of teachers in the United States are White; it might be assumed that WPTs represent a majority of preservice teachers. As described above, those preparing WPTs might assume WPTs are less able or less willing to teach in a diverse classroom (Castro, 2010; Cochran-Smith et al., 2004; Sleeter, 2008). However, as they represent a majority of preservice teachers, they represent the most likely demographic to become teachers in the future. To continue to teach WPTs with methods that assume deficiency while seeking to increase the number of teachers of color both misses the opportunity to engage issues of Whiteness now and, I believe, falsely relies on an ontology that an increase in diversity leads inevitably to better teachers in diverse classrooms. 2.2. Data development The project began with an initial interview with each participant. I then engaged the participants in a series of meetings designed to develop a dialogue circle around issues of race and racism. I then observed the participants in their student-teaching classrooms. Finally, I conducted a second interview with each participant. I expand here on the initial interview and the first two

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dialogue circle meetings as these provided the data from which we then wrote the bulk of the following narratives. 2.2.1. Interview I My first encounter with each participant was an individual qualitative interview (Rubin & Rubin, 1995) to record the participant’s working understandings of race, racism, and dialogue, data useful in designing the subsequent meetings and in demonstrating growth. I interviewed the participants individually so as to begin to develop an understanding of their contexts in terms of ideologies, attitudes toward diversity, and goals for the project. 2.2.2. Dialogue circle meetings The main body of this study was a series of group meetings building on the dialogue circle methodology of Everyday Democracy (Abdullah & McCormack, 2008) a methodology intended specifically to address issues of racism. In the first meeting, I introduced the project and presented the participants with a definition of dialogic pedagogy, with information on methods of dialogic pedagogy, and with a presentation of my personal racial development autobiography (RDA). The RDA was a way to create an identity artifact, a way to make implicit understandings of race explicit so that they might be shared in a dialogic community (Clark & Medina, 2000; Milner, 2007; Xu, 2000). I chose to present my own RDA first to build trust amongst the participants. Between Meeting I and Meeting II, I asked each participant to write her own RDA. In Meeting II, I asked each participant to share her RDA. Investigating an individual understanding of race and how it has made a participant who she is, and then offering that information to another person, might be a dangerous space to enter. It was my responsibility as a facilitator to create an environment in which this happened safely, which is not the same thing as comfortably. The sharing of individual RDAs served as a foundation for our dialogue circle, a place where each individual was shaped and taught through interaction with the other. At the end of Meeting II, I presented the Personal Reflection Journal (PRJ) as a way to reflect on what happened during subsequent meetings. These journals took the form of an electronic document passed via email; I began the process with an entry about where I saw each participant as a teacher and they responded. Such journaling proved valuable in prompting guided reflection (Garmon, 1998; Milner, 2003; Pewewardy, 2005). 2.3. Data sources and analysis The data from which the following narratives were written developed from several sources: All (1) meetings and (2) interviews were audio- and video-recorded for transcription and analysis. Other data sources included written artifacts like (3) racial development autobiographies, (4) Personal Reflection Journals, and (5) project rubrics filled out at the conclusion of each meeting. All of these data sources were analyzed using the constant comparative method. In lieu of describing the general process of data analysis for the entire project, I have chosen to present here a detailed description of how I analyzed data developed during the initial interviews as a representative example; this level of depth may provide a more complete picture than would a shallower survey of the entire process. When each initial interview was complete, I produced rough transcripts from digitized video. On the first viewing, I captured general ideas and the flow of the interview. With successive viewing, I added more detail and some word-for-word transcribing. These transcripts repeatedly were subjected to the constant comparative method of data analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). I read

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and reread, and re-listened and re-watched, each interview several times, looking and listening for themes and important concepts. When I thought I had found an important theme or concept, I developed codes to define those themes and concepts. The development of codes allowed the beginning of comparative analysis. That is, coding allowed me to compare and contrast similar themes and concepts from multiple interviews. When sufficient codes were developed in this first step of open coding, the codes themselves became important, and I began the process of microanalysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The process of microanalysis allowed me to group the coded concepts and themes under more abstract, higher order terms; this is often called axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) because the themes and concepts are organized around the axis of a category. From the beginning of open coding, I laid out the properties of the categories I used to group important themes and concepts. This led me to identify the interactions and conditions associated with these categories. For instance, by relating a larger category to subcategories, I began to explore the relationships among the concepts and themes. This led me to look for ways in which major categories related to each other. This process of analysis attempted to make connections between structure and process, between contextual circumstances and the events and activities of those circumstances. 3. The racial development biographies of two WPTs I now present the findings of this study as two racial development biographies. These findings demonstrate the diversity that can be found within and between White preservice teachers. I believe that teacher educators who can differentiate among their preservice teachers will be more effective in developing teachers who see the classroom as a site for social change and who have the tools to accomplish social change. I co-wrote these racial development biographies with each participant after collecting and analyzing transcripts from the individual interview, transcripts from the group meetings, comments from the project rubrics, PRJs, and the RDAs written and shared by each participant; constant member checking through co-writing brought an authenticity (Erlandson, Harris, Skipper, & Allen, 1993) that might be missing if I attempted to speak for my participants. The narratives presented here, under pseudonyms, were approved by the participants as accurate representations of how they viewed their own racial development. 3.1. Rachel’s story at age 24: the doctor’s kids Rachel grew up “the oldest of four. My dad is an oncologist and my mom is a nurse. I pretty much have lived, um, second grade on in the same place” (Interview I, 4:05). She attended suburban public elementary schools before matriculating to a “private Catholic high school” (Interview I, 3:35). She recognized early on her love of reading and writing. She attended a large mid-western university “because all my friends were going there” (Interview I, 3:50), only deciding in her senior year that she no longer wanted to pursue journalism. She preferred creative writing to reporting and so entered the field of education because she felt that teaching English would leave enough time to pursue her own writing projects. From the outside, Rachel seemed to be a WPT who reflected her teacher educators’ generalizations. However, there was something particular about her upbringing that made Rachel different. Despite having two parents in the medical field, she was not brought up with many of the privileges associated with that station:

[My community growing up was] Affluent, White, suburban, you know, middle class to upper-middle class. [I am] A product of that but, um, we, my mom made sure that we grew up not as doctor’s kids. Um, as, um just grateful human beings, I guess, you know. I’ve had a job since I was 14. My parents to all of us have been, “No job, no car.” I had my college education and my graduate education paid for but other than that, everything’s all on me. So, I consider myself very fortunate because I never wanted for anything but I don’t believe I have this spoiled attitude that I am entitled to a privileged life because I grew up that way. (Interview I, 4:50) Throughout her life, Rachel’s parents were quick to make her work, training her to be grateful for all that she had. Living with privileges but being taught that they were privileges created in Rachel a critical spirit taking little for granted. She liked to surround herself with similar people and was actively conscious of oppressive social systems. Growing up with parents who took particular care to create the critical space around privilege heavily influenced Rachel’s desire to teach. She wanted to teach so that she could build in her students an awareness of the outside world. She wanted to create in her students “well-rounded knowledge to, I don’t know, help you fulfill a purpose in life” (Interview I, 7:50). She actively rejected lower expectations for any of her students, instead desiring to develop within each the critical spirit developed by her parents. Rachel thought this upbringing had to do with earlier generations of her family, which she explored in her RDA. Her grandparents were the children of Irish immigrants who had to work hard in the “New World.” Her family maintained strong connections to their Irish roots, which provided a space for Rachel to interact with others. Again, unlike Sleeter’s (2008) expectations, Rachel was very aware of herself as a racial being: Background and identity are huge entities to me and while I cannot identify with the struggles of other races, I feel that I certainly can appreciate a sense of belonging to something greater than myself. To me, that is what racial development is all about; realizing that I am a part of something that I was born into, something greater than myself, and with this knowledge I can either feel bad or sorry for myself that I did not have a different childhood, or I can be proactive and work to use this awareness against the White sense of entitlement and privilege. (From Rachel’s RDA) Herein lay Rachel’s call to be a teacher, to reach students who grew up like she did and reveal to them that privileges they enjoyed were not entitlements. She rejected the idea that being raised to question privilege caused her to have a lesser childhood than her friends and chose instead to use this critical awareness as a tool to fight a system that creates and allots such privileges. Rachel used the events of the Obama campaign as a frame for her own story. Her mother’s excitement that the country was finally looking beyond race did not sit well with Rachel; in fact, the idea of her mother being colorblind was one to which Rachel often returned throughout the group meetings. Rachel understood how believing in a colorblind world did a “disservice to an entire race and culture of people who have been belittled for generations” (From Rachel’s RDA). She took it upon herself to be a voice that recognized and celebrated difference, a voice that was color-conscious rather than colorblind, in the classroom rather than trying to ignore it. Again, Rachel was neither dysconscious of how racism works nor developing lower expectations for students of color. In pursuing the channels of teacher education, Rachel did not feel she had received the tools necessary to make fighting racism a part of her regular practice

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You know, I’m standing up in front of the classroom and I am a White 23, 24 year old by that time, student getting a master’s degree from [UNIVERSITY]. And not that they [students] need to know all that, but, I mean, it would be totally wrong for me on the first day to be like, “Let me tell you about life in the projects.” Because I don’t know that. You know what I mean? So, I can talk about diversity from my point of view but I think that it will be more powerful if, like, I e and I’m not trying to lessen my own story in any way, but I mean I think a certain way and my students think a certain way so I think that’s where just different texts and people’s voices that aren’t my own will really come into play and just illustrate diversity in the way that I teach them and the way that I honor my students’ interpretations of them because, I mean, I can’t do that just through myself. (Interview I, 26:00) Herein Rachel does fit one of Sleeter’s (2008) demographics: she had little experience with communities of color. However, this was a failing she readily admitted and she looked forward to developing those experiences once she was in the classroom. Throughout our dialogue circle meeting, Rachel recalled times in the classroom when she would respond to a student exactly as the teacher education rulebook would dictate, all the while questioning the impact of what she said, if her students were taking her words as being from a teacher or a White teacher, if she were actually creating a space for social change. Demographically, many teacher educators at her university assumed Rachel fit all of their demographic assumptions. However, Rachel differed from the assumed WPT because she was raised with an explicitly critical spirit, both for privilege and for herself: I feel that you can never, this is going to sound really cheesy, but learn enough or there’s always room to improve and I am just, like, I’m really hungry for feedback, I’m really hungry for new approaches to take, both in my teaching and my learning because, I don’t know, I think English is more than getting bogged down in the canon. (Interview I, 2:40) Despite a profile that often gets associated with unwillingness to explore issues of race and racism, Rachel was eager to dialogue about these issues. The first concern she voiced to the group was how to talk to her mother about colorblindness. Rachel portrayed a well developed and maturing anti-racist identity before the start of this study, disconfirming the generalizations that might be attached to her from the outside. 3.2. Francis’s story at age 23: what is poor? When Francis spoke, she was different from the other preservice teachers at her university; in fact, Francis’s version of English was one of many things by which she distinguished herself. She talked fast, her clothes were more about comfort than following trends, and she did not shy away from controversy. Francis was from Southern California and she embodied her own brand of Los Angeles. However, that was an adopted persona; her life began further north and much deeper in the country. Francis was born in California to a paternal family steeped in the traditions of working class White sharecroppers from Tennessee; “My dad was from Lauderdale County [Tennessee], which is like the poorest county in the state, I believe” (Interview I, 14:10). At two years old, Francis and her family moved to western Tennessee to be closer to her father’s family; this lasted until Francis was almost seven. Her mother “grew up in California; her family had agriculture there” (Interview I, 14:00). The family moved back to escape the overly religious atmosphere she found in rural Tennessee; “my mother could not handle the Bible Belt any longer” (Interview I,

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15:20). They settled in “Steinbeck country” (Interview I, 8:10), in a county that was “largely agricultural, dairy and produce and beef” (Interview I, 8:25). The rural town in which she lived had a White population of “four or five basic [White] families that make up the backbone of the good old boys in the town, my family being one of those” (Interview I, 9:40). These White families “grew produce and the beef and the Portuguese have dairy. It’s kind of funny how that plays into all of that e my understandings about different races” (Interview I, 8:35). In providing revisions, Francis pointed out that the Portuguese population was actually located one town away. Everyone else worked in the fields. These physical and vocational divisions delineated early on for Francis a variety of communities, with each of which she had some experience. High school for Francis was a “union school” (Interview I, 9:00) for which several other rural community elementary schools were feeders: This school was between, at any given time, eighty-five to ninety-fiver percent Mexican, largely immigrant. Not necessarily immigrant; some of them were there for many generations. Very small White population and a lot of the White kids were half-Mexican or quarter-Mexican. (Interview I, 9:10) Francis did not attend a middle-class suburban high school but was faced with multiple racial realities and communities early on. She had attended a “small, little religious private school for a couple years between fourth and seventh grade because my mom was afraid of gangs” (Interview I, 10:15). However, Francis pointed out that she believed her mother’s fears were unfounded. Francis was bored by seventh grade “and, contrary to belief, all private schools are not that good” (Interview I, 10:25). Francis returned to the public system for more scholastic challenge, where she “got tracked into the honors classes” (Interview I, 11:00). Francis recounted how early on she saw herself standing out from among her peers: I never realized how early on an anomaly I was because, yeah, I was smart in the private school but, like, all the kids were kind of good kids and they did their work even if they weren’t really super smart. And public school was completely different. Like, they were, like, all my teachers were so excited to have someone finish their work on time and I was like, “What? This is what you’re supposed to do.” (Interview I, 11:00) She turned in her work on time and enjoyed reading; she even accidentally demoralized a middle school friend who once admitted to not liking A Wrinkle in Time. Francis’s mom did not feel the need to be very involved in Francis’s academics, assuming that Francis always did her homework. Her mom did get involved during Francis’s senior year when there was “a big hoopla over how they were going to count GPA for the valedictorian” (Interview I, 12:35). Francis was chosen as valedictorian and matriculated to a tier-one state school in Los Angeles, not because of the academic reputation (“Again, I had no idea how important these schools were” [Interview I, 13:45]) but because no one from her high school would follow her. In college, Francis learned a new slate of reasons why she was not like many other college students her age. The personal conflicts that arose after her matriculation would not be assumed by Sleeter’s (2008) generalization as Francis wrestled with her own racial identity: When I went to [UNIVERSITY] I had, I don’t want to say a nervous breakdown, because I had never been around so many White people. I had when I was very young but I didn’t remember it. And I remember I immediately gravitated towards people that were not White to be friends with. However, after

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about a year, my closest friends, I realized, were White, so it was like my peripheral friends that were not White. Which was interesting. And the friends that I had that (sic) were not, that did not consider themselves White seemed White and that seemed weird because growing up I had always felt more comfortable around people of like other ethnicities. (Interview I, 17:35) In her hometown, White was a numerical minority and Francis never understood why so many people hated her for being White; she did not see herself as having a numerical advantage at that point in her life. However, in college, she came to understand White as privilege despite actual numbers, and also began to question why her closest friends tended to be White. While Francis was quick to define herself according to race, ethnicity, and gender, when asked about class, she responded “That’s complicated” (Interview I, 19:40). In moving from high school to college, Francis learned that class was a relative term: Like I said, when I was growing up, in a very poor area, my family was consideredenot well off but we were doing okay. We had food, clothes. I had a house to live in even though it wasn’t very nice. I realize now the reason we had those things was ’cause my grandfather supported my family. (Interview I, 19:50). She learned that her definition of poor, twenty people living in one house, was not widespread. In college, she found out that she was poor, that “growing up in a trailer was not normal” (Interview I, 20:25), that teaching, which she held to be a solidly middle-class profession, was more often seen as a missionary calling. During her years as an undergraduate and graduate student, Francis had several professors’ talk about issues of poverty and found them to be mostly disingenuous and uninformed, having never lived in poverty as she had. Francis’s own experience as a high school “TA for what was considered a remedial class” (Interview I, 23:05) served as the basis for her current desire to be a teacher. In this remedial class, the teacher “just sat there and yelled and told me ‘these kids aren’t going to do anything so why should I even try to teach them?’” (Interview I, 23:15). However, in being able to connect with the students because they were her age, she came to understand that they were not dumb kids; they were just all the gang members. “These kids aren’t dumb. They know how to survive obviously” (Interview I, 24:05). Her frustration at the situation only intensified when she learned that the classroom dictionary was too old to include the word astronaut; “So the remedial kids are supposed to learn from a dictionary that’s prior to 1959, or whenever it was” (Interview I, 23:35). Francis wanted to teach because when growing up she did not have the support she felt every student deserved: “The basic thing I saw that was wrong with my school was organization and goals. and I thought, ‘Well, if the basic problem’s organization then I could teach these kids’” (Interview I, 24:25). This particular drive to teach directly contradicted Sleeter’s (2008) belief that WPTs have lower expectations for students of color and little experience with communities of color. Francis grew up, and still saw herself as, poor. It was from her experience of being poor that Francis drew most of her understandings about diversity. She discussed at length how she realized she was poor when she went to college; coming to a Southern private university for graduate school made the distinction stronger. However, her own education problematized her understanding of class, forcing her to be explicitly conscious of how an oppressive system works. She distinguished between class as an economic measure and as a social measure, noting that in coming to graduate school she was moving up in class; however, “I can only go up so many steps” (Interview I, 22:30).

Throughout her life, Francis saw herself as a numerical minority, ethnically as a child and economically as an adult: Growing up as a minority and not realizing I was a minority definitely had an impact because, at eighteen, realizing that I was not in the minority, that I was actually in the majority and that’s why people were so mad at me my whole life. Or the Hispanic community, the Latino community that I was at was always making comments about White people and I could not figure it out, because I was one of the few. I think it definitely helped me to, I don’t want to say empathize but maybe it is empathy. Because most people looking at me would not realize I’ve been a minority my whole life. They would say, “Oh, you’re White.” (Interview I, 45:10) Throughout high school, Francis often confronted this confusion about numerical populations and the privilege associated with those populations. It was not until she moved away that she was able to gain the distance necessary to see “Majority” and “Minority” as more than just a matter of numbers. Francis always felt like she was from the outside, trying to fit in with more mainstream White identities she encountered as an undergraduate and graduate student. The contradiction between being White and being poor was constant in her life. However, her life specifically led Francis to address each of the development problems assumed by Sleeter (2008). 4. Implications for how MTE views being White To derive implications for teacher education from Rachel and Francis, I return to Sleeter’s (2008) four interrelated problems as a method of organization. While Sleeter presents these “problems” explicitly, much MTE research maintains similar assumptions implicitly when working with WPTs. Perhaps such tacit assumptions about WPTs limit success in the preparation of WPTs for diverse classrooms. Perhaps MTE researchers assume they understand their WPT participants without having to more deeply define individuals. In much MTE research, it seems every WPT grew up in a comfortably middle-class background and has always wanted to be a teacher. She is female and sees herself returning to teach in a school similar to those in which she was taught. She has had little personal experience with issues of racism, and may even hold the belief that she is not racist because she sees her students through colorblind eyes. In developing the narratives of two WPTs, the dangers of such assumptions became apparent. In the experience of both participants, teacher educators made assumptions and wound up losing the attention and respect of Rachel and Francis because they felt treated as naïve and inexperienced. Teacher educators made little attempt to get to know Rachel and Francis as individuals or tailor instruction to their racial development. Over the course of this study, I got to know Rachel and Francis as individuals through an engaged and prolonged dialogue circle. As such, I saw ways in which they both matched as well as severely problematized the general assumptions about WPTs. 4.1. WPTs as dysconscious of racism As defined in the work of Joyce King (1991), to be dysconscious of racism means to have “limited and distorted understandings. about inequity and cultural diversity” (p. 134). Privileged systems of Whiteness both “justify the racial status quo and devalue cultural diversity” (p. 134). As applied in teacher education, WPTs are assumed to be cognizant of diversity but only through systems of Whiteness that treat diversity as a problem to be solved.

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Rachel and Francis were likely dysconscious of several aspects of racism. However, through prolonged engagement with multiple definitions of race and through an exploration of their own racial identity developments, they came to think about racism at a much deeper level. In fact, each of their previous experiences included some move in this direction before the start of this study. Francis came to question her identity as a numerical minority identified with the privileged majority. Rachel challenged her mother’s colorblindness as an unworthy goal. Despite different levels of privilege growing up, they struggled with issues of unearned privilege, unwilling to believe that the privileges they either had (Rachel) or were denied (Francis) were the natural consequences of a meritocratic system. As such, evidence from this study suggests that when WPTs are dysconscious of racism, it may be in very different ways; thus, WPTs may require different approaches in order to become conscious of systems of privilege. In addressing dysconscious racism in MTE, a significant disconnect between theory and practice emerges here on the part of teacher educators and MTE researchers. While defining dysconscious racism, King (1991) condemned the neoconservative ideological interpretation of diversity as a problem. She explained how the positioning of diversity as a problem moved to solutions that maintain systems of White privilege. However, it is this same word problem that Sleeter (2008) and others use to address the development of WPTs. Perhaps casting WPTs as problems also reinforces dysconscious systems that see WPTs as unable to be part of a solution. 4.2. WPTs and expectations for students During the course of this study, Rachel and Francis were student teaching, so it would not be appropriate to comment on how they will develop expectations in their own classrooms. However, there were clues both from our dialogue circles and in my observations in their student-teaching classrooms. For example, Francis struggled with the assignment of students to remedial high school classes for reasons other than academic. In fact, it was this rejection of lowered expectations that drove Francis into teaching. During her studentteaching experience, Francis worked to develop expectations that were academically challenging while appropriate and equitable for all of her students. I was most impressed by Rachel’s student-teaching experience. She found herself teaching in a wealthy private religious high school where all of her students except one were White. Instead of lowering her expectations and assuming that diversity was not an issue in this context, she pushed her students to recognize their own Whiteness and problematized the privileges they took for granted. Her literature lessons engaged the students with characters both like and unlike themselves in an effort to disrupt notions of White as normal. Evidence from this study suggests that WPTs do not necessarily have lower expectations but can work to challenge students as individuals; that is, it would be just as inappropriate to confuse generalizing academic standards with high expectations for all students. In reviewing literature from the field of MTE, a disconnect between theory and practice emerges in the expectations teacher educators have for their WPTs. Hollins and Guzman (2005) found many examples of coursework designed to prepare WPTs for diverse classrooms. However, when WPTs did not, in the instructor’s eyes, get it, the WPTs were blamed for this perceived failure. Instead of being willing to question their own assumptions, teacher educators often attributed failure to the WPTs. In this move, it was the teacher educators who had lower expectations, not the WPTs. MTE instructors and coursework might benefit from problematizing the homogeneity assumed with terms like WPT.

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4.3. WPTs and experience with communities of color Rachel grew up in a White community that was, by many measures, the place of privilege assumed by many MTE researchers. However, her parents were the children of Irish immigrants, who were often not considered White upon arrival in the United States. From this genealogy, Rachel was raised to be aware of the privileges of her community and not to see them as natural or deserved. While she did not have much experience with communities of color, that did not mean that Rachel thought of her community as being elevated above others she might experience later. Francis grew up in an area where definite privileges were attached to being White despite being poor, but there were several other communities that overlapped throughout her school experience; she still thinks of beef cattle being owned by White ranchers while dairy cattle owned by Portuguese ranchers. When she finally encountered herself as a numerical and privilege majority upon matriculation to university, Francis recalled having a mental break down as she had to come to terms with herself as White. Evidence from this study suggests that WPTs may have broad experiences with communities other than their own or may even have been taught to question their own communities. A disconnect between theory and practice emerges here in two forms. Firstly, teacher educators may assume that all White communities are the same when placed in opposition to communities of color. Rachel and Francis are both White but their communities were not similar. When teacher educators assumed they came from similar backgrounds, they lost the attention of both Rachel and Francis, who felt neither of their needs were being met. Secondly, there is an assumption that experience with communities of color somehow automatically translates into dispositions desired by MTE. I would much prefer a student teacher like Rachel who questions her own privilege than a WPT who has been on multiple international mission trips and sees herself as a savior from outside. Teacher education is unable to offer experiences with every community a teacher might encounter; perhaps MTE would be more efficacious to develop methods for engaging communities in ways that are mutually beneficial, which would require significant examination of a WPT’s own identity and community. 4.4. WPTs as racial beings When reviewing MTE literature, WPTs were often portrayed as a universal demographic who benefited from Whiteness in teacher education (Dixson & Dingus, 2007) and for whom being White meant the same thing (Hollins & Guzman, 2005). I problematized such beliefs by investigating the ways in which WPTs who seem similar from the outside are not necessarily similar. Examining the complexities inherent to, and the diversity shaped by, individual WPTs might shed light on ways to differentiate instruction for a seemingly universal demographic. Francis did not think of herself as privileged because of her race until she reached university and then had to confront the contradictions of White privilege from a poor, rural background. Rachel was surrounded by Whiteness throughout her life but had already begun to question her privileged status. Over the course of this study, it was the deep delving into definitions of race that the participants reported finding most useful because they learned vocabulary for ideas they already had. Perhaps part of maintaining dysconscious racism is withholding language to talk about race and racism. Rachel and Francis both demonstrated dramatic leaps in being able to talk about racism once they wrestled with the vocabulary and conflicting definitions of race. Evidence from this study suggests that engaging WPTs in

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deeply theoretical definitions of race and racism is important in analyzing racial development. Critical reflection of being White is not something that happens everyday in the United States and MTE classrooms are a place where that should happen successfully. A disconnect between theory and practice arises here by what is most often left out of MTE research. In much of the research reviewed, the researchers themselves did not critically examine or define their own racial development. In this study, I was the first to write and present a racial development autobiography to the group. This served the double purpose of both opening myself to the group and providing me with a space to come to know myself as a racialized being. Were there space here, I could provide and critique my own racial development narrative alongside those of Rachel and Francis. If researchers and teacher educators want to engage participants and students in issues around race and racism, then evidence from this study suggests they must critically evaluate their own understandings first. 4.5. Conclusion Many teacher educators engaged in the preparation of WPTs for diverse classrooms may rely on generalized assumptions that will inevitably lead to failure. Instead, teacher educators might recognize each student teacher as diverse both within and across multiple communities. In taking time to understand the story of each participant in this study, I found Rachel conscious of oppressive systems and struggling with personal issues of race. I found Francis to have broad experiences in a number of non-White communities. I found both willing to reach out to students of color because the Whiteness of teacher education had often failed them as well. No matter the system of privilege at work, teacher educators should not rely on assumptions lest they fail to know their student teachers as individuals and fail to prepare them adequately for diverse classrooms. Acknowledgment The author would like to acknowledge Dr. Rich Milner of Vanderbilt University for his comments on early drafts of this article. References Abdullah, C. M., & McCormack. (2008). Facing racism in a diverse nation: A guide for public dialogue and problem solving. East Hartford, CT: Everyday Democracy. Au, K. H., & Blake, K. M. (2003). Cultural identity and learning to teach in a diverse community. Journal of Teacher Education, 54, 192e205. Aveling, N. (2004). Critical Whiteness studies and the challenges of learning to be a ‘White ally’. Borderlands, 3(2). [Online serial]. Available online at. www. borderlandsjournal.adelaide.edu.au/issues/vol3no2.html. Aveling, N. (2006). ‘Hacking at our very roots’: rearticulating White racial identity within the context of teacher education. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 9, 261e274. Bakhtin, M. (2004). Dialogic origin and dialogic pedagogy of grammar: stylistics in teaching Russian language in secondary school. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42(6), 12e49. Banks, J. A. (1993). Multicultural education: development, dimensions, and challenges. The Phi Delta Kappan, 75, 22e28. Banks, J. A. (1995). Multicultural education. In J. A. Banks, & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 3e24). Old Tappan, NJ: Macmillan. Banks, J. A. (2003). Multicultural education: characteristics and goals. In J. A. Banks, & C. A. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (pp. 3e30). New York: Wiley. Castro, A. J. (2010). Themes in the research on preservice teachers’ view of cultural diversity: implications for researching millennial preservice teachers. Educational Researcher, 39, 198e210. Clark, C., & Medina, C. (2000). How reading and writing literacy narratives affect preservice teachers’ understandings of literacy, pedagogy, and multiculturalism. Journal of Teacher Education, 51, 63e76. Cochran-Smith, M., Davis, D., & Fries, K. (2004). Multicultural teacher education: research, practice, and policy. In J. A. Banks, & C. M. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 931e975). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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