Troubling Practice: Exploring the Relationship Between Whiteness and Practice-Based Teacher Education in Considering a Raciolinguicized Teacher Subjectivity

Abstract

In this essay, we argue that teacher education is increasingly marginalizing the relevance of teacher subjectivity and recentering Whiteness, especially in its uptake of practice-based teacher education. Whereas teacher subjectivity has been pushed to the margins of recent conversations about teacher education—and has therefore narrowed our understanding of the ideological and practical affordances and constraints of practice-based teacher education—we show that it must be centered in teacher education and understood as fundamental to all teachers’ embodied practice. We draw from literature exploring critical Whiteness studies, raciolinguistics, poststructural understandings of teacher subjectivity, the experiences of teachers of Color and practice-based teacher education. By showing how a raciolinguicized teacher subjectivity has been marginalized, we simultaneously argue for the centrality of the role of subjectivity in shaping teaching and, therefore, in defining critical dimensions of what and how novice teachers need to learn.