| This dissertation investigates the ways that one facet of identity, whiteness, influences teachers' understanding of their roles in the schools and informs their decision making within their practice. The study focuses on representing and analyzing the life histories of five white prospective teachers in an Elementary Education Program with the aim of understanding how life experiences shape one's emerging teacher identity. Situated within a Bakhtinian framework of the development of the self as well as an historical view of white privilege, I show how the life stories which individuals deem as important events in their lives influence how they come to understand what it means to be a socially just educator. The study challenges the status quo of Teacher Education Programs which often reinforce resistance to socially just pedagogies from white pre-service teachers. |
