Preparing White Student Teachers through a Critical Consultative Interaction Model

Abstract

Demographic trends suggest that most Latino and Black schoolchildren attending city schools will have White classroom teachers. Consequently, the potential for cultural mismatches may impede meaningful teaching. In response, many teacher educators mull over approaches to prepare student teachers to effectively instruct all schoolchildren, especially Latino and Black youngsters. While many approaches, particularly methods pertinent to multicultural education, have become commonplace throughout teacher education programs, purposeful consultations between student teachers and schoolchildren about teaching and learning, are rare. This paper presents a “critical consultative interaction” model, comprising “the three r’s” of: (a) regarding Black and Latino schoolchildren as resources, (b) raising the right questions of them, and, (c) reflecting on schoolchildren’s responses, as an additional approach to prepare student teachers for city classrooms. Implementing this model positions future teachers to obtain pedagogical information from schools’ primary constituents—schoolchildren. Doing so exemplifies democratic practice in a political yet public place called school

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