Making Justice Peripheral by Constructing Practice as “Core”: How the Increasing Prominence of Core Practices Challenges Teacher Education

TLDR

Teacher preparation is shifting toward practice‑based approaches that emphasize core practices, a trend linked to broader economic forces and market‑oriented education reforms. The article argues that centering core practices in teacher education risks marginalizing equity and justice. The authors analyze the core practices movement by connecting it to market‑based education reforms and examining how its concepts of practice, improvisation, and equity commitments are adopted in scholarship and practice. They find that while core practices scholarship may marginalize equity, it also offers a platform for collective efforts toward greater equity and justice in schools and society.

Abstract

Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparation, with particular emphasis on identifying and centering core practices. In this article, we argue that organizing teacher education around core practices brings its own risks, including the risk of peripheralizing equity and justice. Situating our argument within the broad economic trends affecting labor and higher education in the 21st century, we begin by examining the linkages between the core practices movement and organizations that advocate market-based solutions to education. We then explore how constructs of practice and improvisation and commitments to equity and justice are taken up, and with what implications and consequences, in core practices scholarship and its applications. In conclusion, we consider how work being done around core practices might contribute to a collective struggle for greater equity and justice in schools and in society.