Uncertain Allies: Understanding the Boundaries of Race and Teaching

Abstract

In this article, Marilyn Cochran-Smith reflects on her experiences as the director of a teacher education program that is attempting to open the unsettling discourse of race in the pre-service curriculum. She suggests that teacher educators need to examine how they and their students construct this discourse and how they interpret its implications for particular schools, communities, and classrooms. Cochran-Smith further offers that teacher educators may convey contradictory messages about the responsibilities of teachers who work with students who are similar to and different from them in race, culture, and ethnicity through the powerful messages implicit in the pedagogy of pre-service education itself. She concludes with the caution that unless teacher educators engage in the unflinching interrogation of pre-service pedagogy and then work to alter their own teaching and programs, it is unlikely that they will be able to effectively help student teachers do the same.