Becoming teachers: Pre-service teachers' and a teacher educator's perceptions of the impacts of race, ethnicity, racism and whiteness

This study examines the perceptions of pre-service teachers and a teacher educators' about diversity, diverse learners, and the idea of the mismatch. It also examines their perceptions of the phenomena of race, ethnicity, racism, and whiteness and their impacts of their learning and future teaching practices. The study draws upon data collected from document analysis, individual interviews, and researcher positionality where participants shared their stories of their experiences in school that illustrated their positionalities with regard to race, ethnicity, racism, and whiteness. Using case study and grounded theory, the following themes emerged that categorized the different ways that participants were making meaning of the phenomena: identity, race and ethnicity, denial, omission, deficit thinking, hegemony and ideology of curriculum, normativity, privilege, domestication, and alienation. The findings give a glimpse of how conceptualizations of diversity and diverse learners are largely influenced by ideology supporting the need for teachers to engage in critical reflective action. The findings point to the need for teachers and teacher education programs to also assist becoming teachers to develop critical dispositions that are conscious of the fact that how we teach can contribute to student's academic difficulties, underachievement, and even dropout. The findings also speak to the importance of developing teacher's political and ideological clarities so that at the very least they can increase the opportunities for educational success for all students. Suggestions based on the findings are that teacher education programs must assist becoming teachers to develop critical reflective teaching practices that engage with race, ethnicity, racism, and whiteness. Such teaching practices would at the very least assist becoming teachers to no longer deficit students, but also can assist them to no longer be complicit with racism and oppression in their teaching practices. The findings related to the socio-cultural context of the Southwestern region of the United States that employed storytelling methodology as a means to offer becoming teachers opportunities to become better prepared to meet the needs of students who must cross the geo-political, U.S./Mexican, border, or the cultural and linguistic border, everyday to attend school. The study's findings also relate to the context in that they can serve to better understand the impacts of race, ethnicity, racism, and whiteness that largely impact particularly Latino/as and Latino/a students in the Southwest and across the nation.