I am originally from Brazil, and I speak three languages: Portuguese, Spanish, and English. When I was still working on my teaching degree back in Brazil to teach English and Portuguese languages and literatures, I had a professor who once approached me after class and made a “friendly” recommendation that I drop the English component of my degree. Her argument was that I would never be able to speak English fluently. It is important to explain that I was obtaining my degree from a prestigious private university where the majority of students were upper middle class or rich. I was a low-income student, and I was able to study in that institution only because I received a scholarship. Thus, it was visible in the classroom that my cultural and linguistic backgrounds were very different from my peers.

However, in contrast with my classmates who had a similar experience, I did not give up on my bilingual teaching degree. My professor’s words hurt me, though, challenging my confidence, self-esteem, knowledge, and even my identity. I thank my parents for raising me to be strong and believe in myself; thus, giving up was not an option for me. As I went through this experience, I started having a better understanding of the expression “knowledge is power.” As the professor had more knowledge of English language and literature than I did, she thought she had the right to decide my future for me. This experience opened my eyes to the important role that diversity (e.g., cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic, racial, ethnic) plays in learning and teaching. From this moment on, my research interests expanded from TESOL only to multicultural education, teacher education, and bilingual education. During the course of my PhD study, I have developed a passionate interest in social justice because I often think about my literacy development learning languages and through languages. All these experiences help me think about the teacher I am and the teacher I want to be.

This summer, I taught a course about cultural and linguistic diversity in a pluralistic society; thus, I addressed controversial topics such as White and male privilege, inequality in society, gender and sexual diversity in schools, culturally relevant pedagogy, caring, and stereotype threat. The main goal of the course was to help preservice teachers develop critical thinking regarding issues that they might encounter in their future teaching practices, especially when it comes to teach English learners. The students were preservice teachers from different subject areas, such as math, English, history, sciences, and social studies.

This was the second time I taught this course, but something caught my attention this time. One of the final projects was a 3- to 5-minute digital story explaining why the preservice teachers wanted to be teachers, who influenced their decision, and what kind of teacher they wanted to be. I provided a list with questions to guide them in putting together their presentation. (E.g., What events and individuals in my life have led me to become a teacher? What kind of teacher do I want to be? What goals have I set for myself?) To my surprise, out of 42 students, only about 43% (18 students) mentioned and explained what it means to be a socially just teacher and how they see diversity in the classroom. About 12% (5 students) mentioned only diversity and social justice without further explanation, and 45% (19 students) did not mention diversity and social justice at all. I found these numbers very disturbing, considering the nature of the course and the fact that social justice has been a recurrent theme in teacher education research over the last decade (Cochran-Smith, 2010). After watching all presentations, I came to a conclusion:

• Some students might not see themselves as socially just teachers.

• Some students might not know what means to be a socially just teacher.

• Some students might think that social justice and multicultural education are the same thing, considering that multicultural education was mentioned when social justice was not.

• Some students might see themselves as socially just teachers, but they might not be sure how to incorporate it into their teaching practices.

The preservice teachers gave the presentations at the end of the course after answering questions on an online blog to reflect on the readings, answering questions based on movies we watched in class, and participating in classroom discussions throughout 5 weeks. I thought that I would see, if not all, most of the students addressing social justice, but it did not happen. I wondered why they did not do that. I confess that I left the classroom after the last presentation wondering if we as teacher educators are really preparing preservice teachers to be socially just teachers, or if we are just saying that we do that when in reality it is not happening; there appeared to be a discrepancy between theory and practice. I wanted to help graduate preservice teachers who will address diversity in the classroom differently from the professor I had. I wanted to help preservice teachers develop critical thinking, looking at diversity from a positive perspective and being aware of the social structure in which they live. In this way, these future in-service teachers will be able to develop critical thinking among their own students, expanding their understanding of how members and institutions in society work and impact our lives.

Mills and Ballantyne (2016) analyzed 23 journal articles, focusing on four themes: understandings of social justice and attitudes to diversity, changes in beliefs, field experience and service learning, and innovations and challenges in teacher education. In general, they found that the focus in teacher education has been on assessing preservice teachers’ beliefs and attitudes toward social justice, but, in fact, teacher educators’ beliefs and attitudes toward social justice should also be examined. In my case, it might be that I know what it means to be a socially just teacher, but my pedagogical practices in the classroom have not addressed this theme effectively. It might also be that I succeeded in my class, but, because the preservice teachers had many other professors who did not address social justice at all, or did so superficially, only a 5-week course was not enough to help preservice teachers connect their own experiences to the concept of social justice.

We cannot understand fully why almost 50% of the preservice teachers did not say they wanted to be socially just teachers. It would be necessary to investigate other variables, such as their previous knowledge on social justice and how they acquired it. Tatto (1996) found that preservice teachers tend to develop views that are consistent with those adopted by teacher educators around professional norms. This means that just mentioning social justice in the classroom is not enough. We, as teacher educators, need to evaluate our own understanding of social justice, our positionality toward it, and the pedagogical approach we will adopt to address this topic.

References

Cochran-Smith, M. (2010). Toward a theory of teacher education for social justice. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), Second international handbook of educational change (pp. 445–458). New York, NY: Springer.

Mills, C., & Ballantyne, J. (2016). Social justice and teacher education: A systematic review of empirical work in the field. Journal of Teacher Education, 67(4), 263–276.

Tatto, M. T. (1996). Examining values and beliefs about teaching diverse students: Understanding the challenges for teacher education. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 18(2), 155–180.

Daniela Silva is an ABD in the Culture, Literacy, and Language Program at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She holds a master’s degree in TESOL and another one in Spanish from the University of Mississippi.