Transgressing Teacher Education

This book is a series of original strategies that teacher educators, teacher candidates and practicing teachers can use to think critically about issues of equity, diversity, opportunity, and social justice in urban education. As the demographic of students in America is quickly becoming a “majority minority” we need teachers more than ever who can teach to diverse student populations, can utilize culturally relevant pedagogy, and have critically reflected on their own biases and stereotypes. We also need to empower teachers who are committed to social justice to navigate through school systems that are rife with structural inequities. This book will help ensure that teacher candidates are getting this preparation and able to continue to reflect on these issues in their practice. The book is designed as a “textbook” or more accurately “workbook” with original strategies and critical reflection and discussion questions included in each chapter. The strategies can be done sequentially or in any order. In addition, they will be able to read counternarratives from their peers, which should encourage them to persist in the profession even when things get rough

How can teacher educators prepare teachers to be the change agents in schools? In the Preface to Transgressing Teacher Education, Ginsberg lays the problem bare: the fear on the part of many teachers, who desire to teach for social justice and change that "they will be swallowed up by the status quo and become part of the very problem they set out to solve." In a timely book, Alice Ginsberg tackles this perennial problem: providing teacher candidates the experiences in their programs that will enable them to understand and cope with the realities of urban schools while striving to be effective and enact pedagogical practices for social change when working with pupils. Across several chapters, combining critical reflection and linking it to strategic actions, Ginsburg offers an array of activities teacher educators can use with teacher candidates.--Michele Foster, Transgressing Teacher Education should be assigned reading for all of those interested in preparing the next generation of America's teachers.--Travis J. Bristol, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, Ginsberg provides us with a bold challenge to radically rethink teacher education. This book centers ideology, culture, reflection, identities, language and power at the center of how we must prepare teachers. Transgressing Teacher Education is essential reading for anyone who wants to radically reimagine teacher education. This is the book that we need at this time.--Tyrone C. Howard Ph.D, Director of UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families, If we are to achieve social justice and equitable education, Transgressing Teacher Education is an excellent resource to bridge theory with practice. Too often in teacher education, while we may engage in dialogic discourse to advance social justice and equitable education, often we do not provide our candidates with exemplars of how to deconstruct their identities, positionalities, as well as how to challenge their own thinking and policies that maintain the status quo. Throughout the various chapters, Alice E. Ginsberg provides a plethora of authentic strategies and activities to assist teacher educators in transforming teacher education.--Belinda Bustos Flores, PhD, Associate Dean of Professional Preparation & Partnerships; Professor, Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies, University of Texas at San Antonio, Transgressing Teacher Education is an immediately impactful book. The book transgresses false narratives of Whiteness, meritocracy, and assimilation that too often anchor or define teacher education coursework and pedagogy. The book is what teacher education needs now in the current historical moment. In this important book Ginsberg shares strategies that can be adapted and used in traditional or alternative teacher education programs, as well as for the professional development and continuous growth of practicing teachers.--Nicholas D. Hartlep, PhD, Robert Charles Billings Endowed Chair in Education, Berea College

Alice E. Ginsberg is a teacher educator, researcher, and writer whose work focuses on issues of educational equity, urban education, and culturally relevant pedagogy. Her previous books include: Gender in Urban Education, The Evolution of American Women’s Studies and Embracing Risk in Urban Education, among many others.