Teacher preparation for hard times

We are grateful for the opportunity to dream along with Carol Lee about the core components of a school curriculum that can prepare students to tackle the complex challenges facing our pandemic-scarred country with creativity, empathy, and common cause. Yet, our reverie is disrupted as we look around at a system that, despite resolutions made by critical educators and researchers over the past 18 months to reimagine education for a “new normal,” is instead choosing to double-down on old learning models and visions of civic life that were not fit for yesterday, let alone tomorrow. We understand that educators are tired, students are exhausted, and everyone is looking for a sense of normalcy right now. But what might have felt like normal civic instruction doesn’t necessarily equate to good civic instruction. While there are many reasons for the retreat into siloed subject areas and “just vote” paradigms of civic engagement, we think that one culprit is an outdated approach to educator preparation that has left some teachers unprepared to adapt to new learning conditions and needs. So, we ask: What new frameworks of teacher education are needed to prepare tomorrow’s teachers to realize Lee’s curricular vision?

Though there are many ways we might begin to reimagine teacher education today, we want to emphasize two components that are immediately actionable: addressing the historical antecedents of our work and challenging assumptions of what “counts” as civic engagement.

As Lee notes, teachers will be better prepared to foster transformative civic learning across the curriculum when they come to understand the deep historical and sociocultural roots of their content areas. Teacher education programs must ensure that prospective teachers understand the social and political histories of their own subject areas, from the ways in which fields like biology and history professed now-debunked theories about race, to ongoing debates over who belongs in the literary canon. This should help aspiring practitioners see that the choices they make about what and how to teach are inescapably civic in nature and have implications for how their students will come to understand and participate in democratic life.