From Talking about to Talking with: Integrating Native Youth Voices into Teacher Education via a Repositioning Pedagogy

Abstract

In this article, Robert Petrone and Nicholas Rink propose a repositioning pedagogy framework for teacher education. They maintain that a repositioning pedagogy disrupts power dynamics by bringing secondary-aged youth into teacher education courses as compensated consultants and experts to teach future teachers about learning, classroom management, teaching, and other issues pertinent to schooling and the development of pedagogical practices. A repositioning pedagogy responds to the absence of youth voices in teacher education by centering youth and their perspectives in preservice teacher education. In laying out this framework, Petrone and Rink report the findings of a qualitative study in which Native youth attending an alternative high school on a reservation were hired to teach future English teachers about ways to build relationships and curricula to engender success for Native youth in schools. This research explains both the experiences of the youth consultants, which proved to be “transformative,” as well as the structures of a repositioning pedagogy that facilitated this outcome. The article also addresses several areas for further research and consideration to ensure reciprocity and safeguard against undue harm to youth consultants, particularly those for whom schools have historically been unsafe places.