Moving Through Discomfort: Communities of Practice Supporting Early Career Teacher Educators’ Culturally Responsive Teaching Practice

Abstract

Early-career teacher educators (TEs) navigate dual roles as learners and facilitators of teacher learning (Stamatis et al., 2019). In this chapter we, a group of pretenure TEs working at an urban university serving mostly white preservice teachers (PSTs), explore how our attempts at using video as a vehicle for PST reflection around culturally responsive teaching (CRT; e.g., Gay, 2000; Ladson Billings, 1995) led interrogation of our own practice. We draw from the work of Boler and Zembylas (2003) on pedagogics of discomfort as we unpack our efforts to help PSTs grapple with their developing understanding of CRT. Engaging in a collaborative inquiry process led us as early-career TEs to identify and move through cycles of discomfort to question and disrupt our current practices and approaches to CRT.