Critical Pedagogy and Teacher Education: Radicalizing Prospective Teachers

TLDR

Abstract

The task of successfully preparing teachers in the United State to effectively work with an ever-increasing culturally and linguistically diverse student body represents a pressing challenge for teacher educators. Unfortunately, much of this practice of equipping prospective teachers for working with learners from different backgrounds revolves around exposing these future educators to what are perceived as the best practical strategies to ensure the academic and linguistic development of their students. Gaining access to and actively creating methods and materials for the classroom is certainly an important step towards effective teaching. However, this practical focus far too often occurs without examining teachers' own assump tions, values, and beliefs and how this ideological posture informs, often uncon sciously, their perceptions and actions when working with linguistic-minority and other politically, socially, and economically subordinated students. Ideology is used here to refer to the framework of thought constructed and held by members of a society to justify or rationalize ■■■■■■■■■■■■■ an existing social order. As Antonia Darder, Rodolfo Lilia I. Bartolome is an Torres and Marta Baltodano (2002) point out, what associate professor in is important is