Prisms of Whiteness: A Critical Analysis of the Multicultural Competence of Pre-Service Teachers
Keywords:
white fragility, cultural competency, multicultural education, critical whitenessAbstract
This study endeavored to assess the cultural competency of
pre-service teachers in a region of the United States with limited ethnic
or linguistic diversity. To do this, the prior work of D’Andrea, Daniels,
and Noonan (2003) was used to develop an updated survey instrument.
Students at a small university in the Midwest were surveyed at multiple
intervals during the course of their teacher education program, and their
total responses (n=190) are analyzed here. Findings for reliability and
validity of the instrument are discussed, as well as general trends when
comparing students by course enrollment, major, and degree status.
Further discussion centers on the potential discovery of a partial
measure of white fragility and how the results of the study may be
enhanced by applying a lens of critical whiteness. Finally, implications
are presented regarding how white fragility might be directly and
deliberately incorporated into future efforts to measure and develop
cultural competency in pre-service teachers.
https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.4.8
References
Banks, J. A. (1995). Multicultural Education: Historical Development, Dimensions, and Practice. In J. A. Banks & C. M. Banks (Eds.). Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (pp. 3-24). New York: Macmillan. doi.: 10.2307/1167339
Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. (2018). Report to the Nation: Hate Crimes Rise in U.S. Cities and Counties in Time of Division and Foreign Interference. Retrieved from https://csbs.csusb.edu/sites/csusb_csbs/files/2018%20Hate%20Final%20Report%205-14.pdf
D’Andrea, M., & Daniels, J. (1999). Exploring the psychology of white racism through naturalistic inquiry. Journal of Counseling and Development, 77, 93-101. doi.: 10.1002/j.1556-6676.1999.tb02426.x
D’Andrea, M., Daniels, J., & Heck, R. (1991). Evaluating the impact of multicultural counseling training. Journal of Counseling & Development, 70, 143–150. doi: 10.1002/j.1556-6676.1991.tb01576.x
D’Andrea, M., Daniels, J., & Noonan, M. J. (2003). New developments in the assessment of multicultural competence: The Multicultural Awareness-Knowledge-Skills Survey-Teachers Form. In D. B. Pope-Davis, H. L. K. Coleman, W. M. Liu, & R. L. Toporek (Eds.), Handbook of competencies in counseling and psychology (p. 154-167). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781452231693.n10
DiAngelo, R. (2018). White fragility. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
DiAngelo, R. (2012). Nothing to add: A challenge to white silence in racial discussions. Understanding & Dismantling Privilege, 2(1), 2-17.
DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3), 54-70.
Frankenberg, E. (2008). The segregation of American teachers. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 17(1), 1-44. doi: 10.14507/epaa.v17n1.2009
Hall, J. C., & Theriot, M. T. (2016). Developing multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills: Diversity training makes a difference? Multicultural Perspectives, 18(1), 35-41. doi: 10.1080/15210960.2016.1125742
Iverson, S. V. (2012). Multicultural competence for doing social justice: Expanding our awareness, knowledge, and skills. Journal of Critical Thoughts and Praxis, 1(1), 62-87. doi: 10.31274/jctp-180810-14
Jones, J., & Walker, S. L. (2016). The development of the multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills survey: An instrument for assessing the cultural competency of pre-service teachers. Diversity, Social Justice, and the Educational Leader, 1(2), 40-54.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful teaching for African-American students. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. doi:10.3726/978-1-4539-1735-0/39
National Center for Educational Statistics. (2017). Racial/Ethnic Enrollment in Public Schools. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cge.pdf
National Center for Education Statistics [NCES]. (2015). Characteristics of postsecondary faculty. In The Condition of Education 2015 (pp. 226-229). Washington, DC: Department of Education. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2015/2015144.pdf
Orozco, R., & Diaz, J. J. (2016). “Suited to their needsâ€: White innocence as a vestige of segregation. Multicultural Perspectives, 18(3), 127-133. doi: 10.1080/15210960.2016.1185610
Prieto, L. R. (2012). Initial factor analysis and cross-validation of the Multicultural Teaching Competencies Inventory. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 5(1), 50-62. doi: 10.1037/a0026199
Sensoy, O., & DiAngelo, R. (2017). “We are all for diversity, but…†How faculty hiring committees reproduce whiteness and practical suggestions for how they can change. Harvard Educational Review, 87(4), 557-580. doi: 10.17763/1943-5045-87.4.557
Southern Poverty Law Center. (2019, Spring). Intelligence Report. Retrieved from https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/intelligence_report_166.pdf
Spanierman, L. B., Oh, E., Heppner, R. P., Neville, H. A., Mobley, M., Wright, C. V., Dillon, F. R., & Navarro, R. (2011). The multicultural teaching scale: Development and initial validation. Urban Education, 46(3), 440-464. doi: 10.1177/0042085910377442
Warring, D. F. (2005). Assessing student multicultural attitudes, knowledge, and skills in teacher education. Journal of Thought, 40(3), 107-119.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Joshua B. L. Tolbert
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
All articles published by IJLTER are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives 4.0 International License (CCBY-NC-ND4.0).
