Appropriating the Discourse of Social Justice in Teacher Education

In recent years there have been strong movements of reforms in teacher education. The most common are intended to adjust teacher preparation to the standardization demands of NCLB, Race to the Top, and CAEP to make teacher education more accountable. These reforms—carried out in the name of excellence, accountability, diversity, and inclusion—constitute subliminal efforts to appropriate the possibilities for real transformation in teacher education. However, in spite of the pervasive rhetoric to identify diversity and social justice with the accountability and standardization movement, there are endeavors to create transformations in teacher preparation that are authentic. These deliberate changes seek to counteract the neoliberal vision of school reform and strive to reclaim the original goals of public education represented in a vision of rigorous content knowledge, democratic schooling, and social justice. Appropriating the Discourse of Social Justice in Teacher Education is a testimony to that kind of authentic reform. It documents the transformational efforts of a teacher education program that infused the preparation of its teachers with a vision of education as a public good. This book validates the claim that the process of reproduction of social inequalities in teacher education is not a perfect, static process, but on the contrary, the real “seeds of transformation” within teacher education departments are abundant.

Marta P. Baltodano is a professor in the Department of Specialized Programs in Urban Education at Loyola Marymount University. Her research focuses on the corporatization of schools of education, teachers’ beliefs on social justice, and interracial conflicts in Los Angeles. Her teaching includes issues of critical educational theory, political economy, globalization, social justice, and qualitative research.