Reconstituting Teacher Education: Toward Wholeness in an Era of Monumental Challenges

Reconstituting Teacher Education Toward Wholeness in an Era of Monumental Challenges Jessica E. Masterson (Washington State University Vancouver), Lauren Gatti (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) Abstract Speaking to the political and social upheaval of our present moment, and drawing on discourses of democratic education, we argue that the U.S.’s racial reckoning propelled by recent events constitutes a sort of “founding” for our democracy and that this founding has important implications for reconfiguring citizenship within institutions and practices of teacher education. In building this argument, we articulate the aims of teacher education in a democracy and expand upon political scientist Danielle Allen’s theoretical concepts of “sacrifice,” “reconstitution,” and “wholeness,” demonstrating their urgent utility within our “thinning” democracy (Hess & McAvoy, 2015). We then draw on relevant literature to examine how teacher education fits into this larger political landscape, and we identify three monumental challenges within the field. Finally, we offer a way forward for teacher education, one grounded in democratic principles and centered on Allen’s conceptualization of wholeness. Submit a response to this article Submit online at democracyeducationjournal.org/home Read responses to this article online http://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/vol30/iss2/1 Our participation in assorted institutions, like our choices about what to read and watch and how to speak about ourselves, shapes our political world. Insofar as a commitment to political friendship might change our institutions and our communal narratives, it would also transform our politics. (Allen, 2004, p. 169) I n the summer of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic upended life across the globe, millions across the United States participated in marches for racial justice, spurred on by the horrific killing of George Floyd at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers. In addition to demanding systemic changes to law enforcement funding and oversight, protesters also democracy & education, vol 30, n-o 2 raised concerns about the legacy of structural racism in the United States, most visibly evident in the countless monuments found throughout the country that glorify enslavers and the Confederacy. As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie (2020) described the widespread efforts to remove these monuments, “Born of grief and anger, they’re an attempt to turn the country off the path to ruin. Jessica E. Masterson is an assistant professor of teaching and learning at Washington State University Vancouver. Lauren Gatti is an associate professor in the department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Feature article 1 And part of this is necessarily a struggle over our symbols and our public space.” As critical teacher educators, we view these events as not separate from, but inherently connected to, the preparation of teachers who serve in public schools. We contend that public education cannot be separated from the circumstances in which it occurs, and, accordingly, neither can teacher education. Indeed, the field of teacher education is awash in “culture wars” that echo the debates we hear within the public sphere: Should education—and our government more broadly—function more or less like a business? Are teachers practical technicians, or does such a focus on replicable technique marginalize the pursuit of justice? (e.g., Philip et al., 2019). And to what extent can public education, as an instrument of a nation-state birthed from white supremacist ideology, break the “bones” of the caste system (Wilkerson, 2020) in which it exists? “Put bluntly,” wrote Juárez & Hayes (2015), “the ‘big house’ of teacher education is on fire and burning brightly” (p. 318). However, amid these flames we observe a unique opportunity for teacher education, one that arises not in spite of sociopolitical upheaval but precisely because of it. In this conceptual article, we weave together the discourses of democratic education and teacher preparation to argue that our pitched political moment demands that we fundamentally refashion the aims and practices of teacher education toward humanizing ends. When imagining what is possible in this profound moment of reckoning and rupture, we draw on political philosopher Danielle Allen’s scholarship. Allen (2004) argued that the United States does not simply have one founding but rather many, including women’s suffrage in the early 20th century and the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Each of these foundings offers a chance for reconstitution, as foundings change the way that we both relate to and imagine each other as citizens. They rearrange old configurations of citizenship, including the ways in which we sacrifice for and develop trust in one another. In this essay, we argue that the country’s racial reckoning propelled by the events of 2020 does not only constitute another founding for this country, but that it also has important implications reconfiguring citizenship—especially as it relates to sacrifice and trust—within institutions and practices of teacher education. In recasting our present moment as one such founding, we turn to teacher education and identify three monumental challenges composed of widespread practices, procedures, and orientations in the field, that serve as barriers to educational justice. These challenges are ones that naturalize and uphold whiteness, exalt a narrow definition of “teacher educator,” reward white, middle-class privileges and sensibilities with unfettered entry into the profession, and preserve the “oneness” of teacher education at the expense of an inclusive, multifaceted “wholeness” (Allen, 2004). In building this argument, we first articulate the aims of public [teacher] education in a democracy, and expand upon Allen’s theoretical concepts of political friendship, sacrifice, reconstitution, and wholeness, demonstrating their urgent utility within our “thinning” democracy (Hess & McAvoy, 2015). We then draw on relevant literature to examine how teacher education fits into this larger political landscape, and we identify monumental democracy & education, vol 30, n-o 2 challenges within teacher education. Finally, we offer a way forward for teacher education, one grounded in democratic principles and centered on Allen’s conceptualization of “wholeness.” In so doing, we aim to pave the way for a reconstitution of teacher education toward democratic ends. Toward a Democratic Ideal in Teacher Education Democracy in the “Tip” Dahl (1998) identified five basic criteria for democracy: effective participation, equality in voting, gaining enlightened understanding, exercising final control over the agenda, and the inclusion of all. Each of these is requisite if a citizen is to have political equality, the cornerstone of democracy. Dahl traced the conception of poli (...truncated)