Learning to teach: Reproducing a pedagogy of oppression

Informed by theories of social and cultural reproduction this dissertation research examines how society reproduces the beliefs of the dominant groups through the main actors of the schooling process--teachers, the ideological agents of the establishment. This study documents the process by which teachers learn those values and transform them into a pedagogy of oppression that keeps specific social groups subordinated. Particularly, this ethnographic research examines the role of teacher preparation programs in this process of cultural production and why, in spite of the apparently-serious and articulated attempts to legitimate oppressed social groups through multicultural education and the new CLAD/BCLAD credential in California, there has been no substantial changes in teacher attitudes toward cultural diversity.;This research, based on a critical ethnography of a teacher education program, suggests that the machinery of social reproduction does not initiate at schools, but rathers at teacher training programs where teachers learn how to become the "pawns of the ruling class" under the disguised role of caretakers and managers. This research suggests that this efficient machinery conspires against an authentic transformation of the teaching profession, as any attempt to break this hegemonic cycle undermines the foundation of the ideological system of this society. Under this logic of reproduction, an authentic discussion of multicultural education was not permissible. What once was a radical, counter-hegemonic attempt to transform the system of beliefs of this society became a politically-correct policy that was stripped of its revolutionary meaning. Multicultural education became a technique, a lesson plan, and a method that was disassociated from the teaching practices that keep culturally-diverse students surmerged in a cycle of failure. However, this research suggests that the reproduction of the dominant society ideology is not perfect and static process, but rather a dialectical and contested cycle and that teacher preparation programs are viable terrains to break historical patterns of domination.