Abstract
In spite of the U.S. corporatized education “reform” movement where the curriculum has been narrowed and teachers are pressured to teach to the test, many educators enact critical pedagogical practices that seek to make school a place that is equitable, democratic, collaborative, just, and humane. Using data from an in-depth qualitative interview study with eight critical P-12 U.S. teachers, the author found that teacher networks play important roles in helping people decide to become critical educators who teach for social justice and in sustaining their critical teaching once they are in the classroom. This article argues that it is imperative for teacher educators to use social justice networks to recruit prospective teachers and to help existing teacher candidates form and connect with networks. These practices may bring new teachers committed to social justice into the field of education and sustain the work of those already teaching for justice.
The idea that this work is too difficult and too important so it needs collaboration, reflection, and help was something we understood from the very beginning.
It is our responsibility to establish ways for teachers to connect to other activists, organizations and networks that will support their social justice work.
P-12 education in the United States has become increasingly corporatized, with conservative and neoliberal think tanks and foundations seeking to radically transform education through market competition, choice, and privatization (Hursh, 2005; Laistch, Shaker, & Heilman, 2002). This corporatization shows up in schools through narrowed curriculum standards (National Center for Education and the Economy, 2007), scripted learning materials, a relentless focus on high-stakes tests (Nichols & Berliner, 2007), punitive uses of test results, and a heightened demonization of public schools and public school teachers, making it challenging for teachers to maintain their emphasis on creative and critical engagements in classrooms, especially for those teachers committed to equity and justice (Kumashiro, 2009). Rather than being a vehicle that leads to a democratic citizenry, fostering community participation and preparing students for rich and rewarding personal lives and high levels of understanding, education has increasingly become more technical and instrumental, with a primary focus on the economic outcomes of education, undergirded by a resolute belief in meritocracy (Michelli & Keiser, 2005). These changes push teacher education away from social justice teacher preparation and toward preparing teachers as technicians to raise students’ standardized test scores (Sleeter, 2009; Zeichner, 2009).
While these alarming trends threaten to reduce opportunities to contest the relentless focus on testing and accountability and the corporate intrusion in schools, they also necessitate such a countermovement, particularly in schools where the greatest potential harm comes to our children. Duncan-Andrade and Morrell (2008) argued that it is imperative for teachers and teacher educators to develop a countermovement to these harmful reform policies, by “discarding the framework of meritocracy and critically embracing the role of the underdog” (p. 10).
Such a countermovement exists in U.S. schools, preschool through 12th grade. In spite of the draconian reforms, many teachers provide opportunities for their students to be problem posers, problem solvers, independent and critical thinkers, creative innovators, democratic collaborators, and politically active citizens.
Teacher education has much to learn from teachers enacting critical pedagogy and social justice education. As Jackie Irvine (2004) argued, the field of teacher education has needs to take seriously its role to prepare teachers as activists and advocates of social justice. Similarly, synthesizing years of research on teacher education for social justice, Marilyn Cochran-Smith (2004) put forth a call to action that included developing “a diversified and rigorous program of empirical research regarding teacher education that rationalizes and operationalizes social justice as an outcome” (p. 157). She suggested a promising way to heed the call to action for research on more social justice teacher education:
We need to know a great deal more about the conditions and contexts that sustain teachers’ efforts to work for social justice as well as the conditions that constrain them. Studies that map backward from successful teaching in diverse settings would begin with successful classroom practice and trace connections back to teacher learning experiences and varying modes of teacher preparation. (Marilyn Cochran-Smith, 2004, p. 164)
By starting with practicing teachers who enact critical teaching, teacher education research can identify the conditions that lead to teachers’ enacting critical pedagogy in their classrooms and beyond.
In light of Cochran-Smith’s call for “backward-mapping” teacher education research, the purpose of this article is to explore experiences that teachers enacting social justice education believe led them to teach critically. I start by offering a critical pedagogical theoretical framework and outlining different kinds of social justice networks. Next, I describe the methodology used in the study. Then I present data from participants on the ways in which networks served as incubators that helped them become teachers and served to sustain their critical practice once they started teaching. Finally, I close with implications for teacher education.
A Freirean Critical Pedagogical Framework
Paulo Freire (2004) argued that “one of the foremost tasks for a radical and liberating critical pedagogy is to clarify the legitimacy of the ethical political dream of overcoming unjust reality” (p. 19). Critical pedagogy operates from a vision of how society could be, simultaneously denouncing oppressive structures and announcing more humane, democratic, and just possibilities. Teachers who enact critical pedagogy listen to their students and build their teaching around learners’ interests and experiences rather than seeing curriculum as something to be “deposited” or “delivered” into their empty heads. They call into question the prescribed curriculum, asking whose perspective it represents: who benefits and who loses from such a perspective?
The recent move in U.S. education toward viewing teaching as “training” or a series of technical procedures such as preparing students for high-stakes test is an incarnation of what Freire (1970/2005) considered a banking/transmission/delivery approach. In spite of this trend, the serious critical educator must, in addition to teaching her or his discipline well, challenge learners to think critically through the social, historical, and political reality within which they exist (Freire, 2004). For students to “read the word” (i.e., literacy or content matter), they must first learn to “read the world” (their socio-historical-political context; Freire & Macedo, 1987).
In this article, I define critical pedagogy and teaching for social justice to mean educational practices that critique societal structures perpetuating injustice and place students and teachers in agentic positions to effect change. When I refer to a progressive educator, I mean one who seeks sociopolitical explanations (e.g., poverty, racism) for problems rather than individual attributes (e.g., laziness). Following Freire (1970/2005, 1997, 1998, 2004) and Freire and Macedo (1987), I understand that “[t]he progressive educator . . . never accepts that the teaching of any discipline whatsoever could take place divorced from a critical analysis of how society works” (Freire, 2004, p. 20), that we need to situate students’ worlds and inequities within a systemic sociopolitical analysis (Bartolomé, 2004; North, 2009). This sociopolitical analysis sets critical pedagogy and social justice education apart from other forms of multicultural education, particularly those whose focus is to celebrate diversity and focus on individual prejudice without attempting to transform inequities by engaging in efforts toward systemic social change (Howard & Aleman, 2008; McDonald & Zeichner, 2009; Sleeter & Delgado Bernal, 2004).
Through the use of critical pedagogy and social justice education, students read their world by analyzing the social, cultural, historical, and political context of their lives. By engaging students in a critical awareness of their world, critical pedagogy “challenges us to recognize, engage, and critique (so as to transform) any existing undemocratic social practices and institutional structures that produce and sustain inequalities and oppressive social identities and relations” (Leistyna & Woodrum, 1996, p. 2). The critical educator must take care not merely to engage in a critique and stop there, for doing so leads to despair, hopelessness, and a deterministic sense that things cannot be changed (Bigelow, 2002; Freire, 1970/2005). Therefore, critical educators resist undemocratic and inequitable practices and structures through “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (Freire, 1970/2005, p. 51). Critical teachers place their students in agentic positions, through in-class simulations, role-plays, and taking action to address school and community issues.
The teachers in this study were all invited to participate because they had published articles, book chapters, and books about how they enact critical pedagogy and social justice education. One of the things that most influenced these teachers to become teachers and to teach from a critical perspective was networks of like-minded others who supported their work.
Networking for Social Justice
Social justice networks in the United States take several different forms, from a gathering of a few teachers in the hallway or progressive friends at a shared meal to structured inquiry groups that follow strict protocols for their work together. These groups exist wherever people get together to collaborate and support each other around their critical teaching practice or activism for social justice. In this section, we will look at two types of networks: justice-oriented teacher networks and social justice networks outside education.
Justice-Oriented Teacher Networks
Informal teacher networks exist within many P-12 schools in the United States, where teachers collaborate with one another to prevent isolation, offer emotional support, and share teaching ideas around social justice themes. This commonly takes place between classes, at lunch, and before or after school as teachers gather to check in with one another and share resources. These networks are informal in that they are not on a fixed time line, do not have regularly scheduled meetings, and are composed solely of teachers without the presence of a university researcher.
Many researchers have written about teacher inquiry groups (Duncan-Andrade, 2004, 2005; Luna et al., 2004; Nieto, 2003; Quartz, Olsen, & Duncan-Andrade, 2004; Van Sluys, Lewison, & Flint, 2006), teacher research groups (Aaron et al., 2006; Long et al., 2006; National Writing Project, 2005; Oakes, Rogers, & Lipton, 2006), study groups (Allen, 1999; Carter, Mota-Altman, & Peitzman, 2009; North, 2009), culture circles (Souto-Manning, 2009), and professional development networks (Thomas, 2007), in which the collaborative work is conducted around issues of equity, culturally relevant pedagogy, and social justice. Some of these groups (Fecho, 2000; Picower, 2007, 2011) have been designed to support preservice teachers as they transition into their first year as teachers. These kinds of groups are often based at a school site or across multiple schools in the same city or geographic area and may or may not include both teachers and a university researcher who facilitates the group. They come together for a finite time period, often determined by a grant or research agenda around a specific line or lines of inquiry. Some groups, such as Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), Teacher Learning Communities (TLCs), and Critical Friends Groups (CFGs; Cooper, Allen, & Bettez, 2009; Dunne, Nave, & Lewis, 2000; Niesz, 2010), are led by teachers without the presence of a university researcher and may continue indefinitely.
In addition to informal networks and teacher inquiry groups, other teacher networks include teacher activist groups (TAG) or inquiry-to-action groups (Au, Bigelow, Burant, & Salas, 2005; Childs, 2004; Doster, 2008; Mangual & Picower, 2007; Nagaoka et al., 2011; Rogers, Mosley, & Kramer, & The Literacy for Social Justice Teacher Research Group, 2009; Tucker, 2007) where members engage in inquiry that leads to action, usually in response to educational policy that negatively impacts children and teachers. These groups often include members from multiple schools in the same city or geographic region, which is particularly helpful to teachers who do not feel their school-based colleagues share their commitment to social justice. Several TAG organizations have joined together in a national coalition (see http://teacheractivistgroups.org/).
National and international networks (Au et al., 2005; Jehlen, 2004; Kasprisin, 2009; Kincheloe, 2008; Lieberman & Wood, 2003; National Education Association, 2006) and special interest groups of national and international education organizations (Andrzejewski, 2005) offer opportunities for individuals and members of local networks to collaborate, offer support, and share ideas about critical pedagogy and teaching for social justice across geographic boundaries. Although members meet less frequently than in smaller networks, national and international networks help teachers see themselves as part of larger social movements for change.
Finally, like national and international networks, online networks and learning communities provide support for teachers interested in justice issues across geographic borders. Listservs, Facebook groups, blogs, webinar groups, and other e-mail or Internet-based networks bring teachers together to share ideas and resources when it may not be practical to meet face to face.
Social Justice Networks Outside Education
In addition to being members of networks composed mostly of teachers, many critical educators are also involved with activist groups composed of people from a variety of careers that address issues besides education. Like the teacher groups described above, these networks range from small, informal groups to larger, more formal ones and address a multiplicity of issues, including economic issues, human rights, peace, environmental justice, and other concerns. As we will see, like teacher networks, these networks play an important role in incubating new teachers as well as sustaining current teachers. They offer teachers who see education as one vehicle among many for social change to connect to others doing social justice work, locating education within a broad movement that seeks to make society more democratic, equitable, just, and humane.
Method
In this qualitative in-depth interview study, I asked eight critical P-12 educators across the United States to describe their critical teaching practice and experiences that they felt influenced them to teach critically. This article focuses on finding out in what way, if any, did these critical educators’ initial preparation or ongoing teacher education influence them to teach critically?
Participant Selection
To help prepare current and future educators teach for social justice, I wanted to start with teachers already enacting critical teaching and learn from them. I used the following selection criteria for study participants: (a) a description of the teacher’s work has been published in book(s) or journal article(s) in the past 10 years; (b) the teacher has been identified, either by self or other, as successfully enacting critical pedagogy or teaching for social justice; and (c) the teacher is a currently practicing educator in a P-12 classroom. In addition to these primary criteria, I made further refinements based on demographic diversity in terms of age, years teaching, gender, race/ethnicity, region of United States, urban/suburban/rural teaching environment to ensure a wide variation of sample. Using a combination of purposeful and snowball sampling strategies (Patton, 2002), I identified participants through published works in journals (Rethinking Schools, Radical Teacher, Teaching Tolerance) and edited books (Making Justice Our Project; Teaching for Social Justice; No Deposit, No Return; Controversies in the Classroom; Rethinking Our Classrooms) as well as existing networks of critical educators such as National Writing Project and Rethinking Schools, looking for teachers who were still teaching in P-12 classrooms. This was not an easy task, as many potential participants had left the classroom since being published. Most who of those who were still teaching seemed to be in urban and suburban areas rather than rural areas and small towns.
A total of eight teachers participated, and all have given permission to use their real names and other identifiers (see Table 1). Although Bill Bigelow had recently left the classroom before the study started, I included him because of his substantial contributions to the field of critical pedagogy.
Participants’ Demographic Information
Data Collection
Not wanting to fall prey to the objectivism and realism of much research (Gitlin & Russell, 1994), I sought a research methodology that fit with my Freirean dialogic theoretical framework. Seidman’s (2006) interview series offered a structure that enabled backward mapping while allowing a dialogue between researcher and participants whose intent was “not to discover absolutes, or ‘the truth,’ but to scrutinize normative ‘truths’ that are embedded in a specific historical and cultural context” (Gitlin & Russell, 1994, p. 185). I conducted a series of three semistructured in-depth life history interviews with each participant for about 90 minutes per interview. For Interviews 1 and 2, I traveled to participants’ classrooms, homes, and nearby cafés so we could talk in person, and the third was conducted by telephone. The first interview focused on current teaching practices. The second interview addressed life history and other experiences leading teachers to teach critically. The third interview consisted of a member check (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) in which participants reflected on transcripts and preliminary analysis of previous interviews, which had been sent to them prior to the interview (Ritchie, 2010). The data reported here relate to the second interview on influential experiences leading these teachers to teach for social justice.
Data Analysis
Rather than analyzing data for case studies of individual participants, I wanted to draw out patterns and themes that might help current and future critical teachers and teacher educators. I used an inductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Ezzy, 2002) that started with my becoming familiar with the data by listening to the 16 first and second interview recordings several times. This process also involved my reviewing and re-reviewing notes I had taken from the third interview to get a complete picture of the body of data. Then I transcribed the interview conversations, often listening to the audio recordings several times to ensure the accuracy of my transcription. Once I had a good overall picture of the content of the transcripts, I generated initial codes and applied these codes throughout the data. Because the research questions guiding the first and second interviews were different, I conducted two separate data analyses.
After I systematically applied initial codes to the data set, I grouped these codes into categories that cohered or clustered together, what Braun and Clarke (2006) called “searching for themes” or what grounded theory researchers might call axial coding. I cut apart the entire data set and reorganized it by collating data items into categories.
Next, I developed themes for each interview by collapsing categories and judging for internal and external homogeneity (Patton, 2002). This was accomplished first by checking to see that all coded data excerpts appeared to form a coherent pattern and second by rereading the entire data set and recoding data with the three identified themes to test them for accuracy. Then I cut apart this recoded data set and physically reorganized it by theme and subtheme, which produced a visual thematic map of the entire data set. I reassessed this reworked map to ensure that the themes were not redundant and did not leave gaps.
In analyzing data for the second interview on life and teacher preparation experiences leading participants to teach critically, I identified three themes or key influences on participants: politicizing through global and local events, forming and joining radicalizing social and professional networks, and learning from near and distant mentors. This article focuses on how the second theme, forming and joining networks, helps teachers decide to teach and, once they become teachers, helps them sustain their critical teaching practice and focus on issues of equity and justice. For a discussion of the other themes, including themes from the first interview, see Ritchie (2010, 2011a, 2011b).
In the section that follows, I will examine data that show how for these eight teachers, forming and joining networks played a role in helping them decide to become teachers and in helping them sustain their social justice teaching once they were in the classroom. For some, a social or professional network served as an incubator, helping them develop into a critical P-12 educator. And for all participants, networks played a role in sustaining their critical teaching practice as they came together to share resources and teaching strategies, and take action in the community around social and political issues.
Forming and Joining Radicalizing Networks
These eight critical educators’ participation in social and professional networks was an important influence on their teaching. Because “teaching against the grain” (Simon, 1992) requires courage and access to resources beyond the traditional curriculum, critical educators like the participants in this study ally themselves with others—teachers and people in other professions—as a form of support for the work they do. As we will see, for many of these teachers, networks helped them decide to teach. I use the metaphor of networks as incubators to represent the developmental function that progressive networks played. Similar to biological incubators, these justice-oriented networks helped participants establish a new life as educators, particularly as critical educators.
Networks as Incubators
For some, forming alliances and networks came naturally, even before they decided to teach. In fact, creating and joining networks had a large role in helping these critical educators decide to become teachers in the first place. More than half of these critical educators came into teaching already having earned a bachelor’s degree in something other than education. Like the teachers in Haberman’s (1995, 1996, 2005; Haberman & Post, 1998) research, these teachers became politicized prior to becoming teachers. Their activism and participation in progressive networks served to radicalize them and guide them into teaching. While these participants were involved in many activist organizations and networks, the discussion here relates specifically to those networks reported to be most influential in developing participants as critical educators.
Terry Moore, a third-grade teacher in Tenafly, New Jersey, who majored in sociology as an undergraduate, discussed how in college he networked with other college students and professors to form a progressive activist group. This network would help him choose a career in education:
We formed an organization with the professors called People for Radical Political Action. We did a number of activities on campus, you know, protests, guerilla theater, talks, study groups. Nicely enough, when we graduated, we decided we wanted to stay together as a community because the professors were living in the area and the students wanted to. So we formed this group of 25 people, which surprisingly enough still exists today. The sixties had greatly influenced all of us, so we started choosing occupations that would—not to seem haughty about it—improve the world. So that’s why I started to go into teaching.
In this case, Terry’s network, influenced by the social and political climate of the time period, served as an incubator for various careers like teaching that shared a vision of social change.
Bill Bigelow, a high school social studies teacher in Portland, Oregon, discussed a similar story where he and other students of Antioch College professor Norm Diamond formed an organization called Praxis. Like Terry’s network, Bill’s group also met and discussed “what we were going to do and where we were going to go.” Members of Praxis wanted to make collective decisions as much as possible to effect the most social change and stay together as a group. Bill graduated with a degree in political science and had not yet decided to become a teacher. His undergraduate experiences teaching in an alternative high school as well as experiences teaching a slideshow he and his colleagues had developed, called “A People’s History of Dayton” (which predated Zinn, 1980), had given him a taste of what teaching was like. At the same time, Bill grew frustrated with the short-term, one-shot nature of presenting slideshows to different audiences. Bill’s partner at the time, Millie Thayer, helped him decide to go back to school to become certified as a public school teacher. Collaboratively, the two of them went through the thought process of how best they could contribute to their vision of social justice. Bill recounted the thought process that led them to teaching:
You know, what were we good for? We wanted something that connected to our social justice passions, where we could feel some efficacy. A lot of our friends were going off to work in factories to try and do union organizing and various things like that. We actually toyed with that idea for a while. But it seemed like teaching was the clearest alternative, that you could do good social justice work with other teachers, with students, with parents, within teacher unions. So it seemed like it offered a lot of different possibilities.
Praxis offered Bill a glimpse of what teaching for social justice could look like, saying that “in terms of having models of critical teaching that was more significant than anything I had in my own elementary or high school education.” As was the case with Terry, Bill networked with other activists and through the network decided to become a teacher because teaching fit his vision of social justice.
Like Terry and Bill, high school social studies teacher Hyung Nam in Portland, Oregon, had a bachelor’s degree in something other than education—philosophy—from Reed College. Working as an educational assistant in an alternative high school for girls who had mental health issues or who were adjudicated—found by a judge to be juvenile delinquents—Hyung got to see what teaching was like. He became involved with the Portland Area Rethinking Schools (PARS) network after a colleague at the high school returned from a workshop with Bill Bigelow on Rethinking Columbus. At the time, PARS was just starting a group around the topic of sweatshops, which later turned into a globalization group that Hyung joined.
Hyung explained how he had been toying around with the idea of “unschooling” after reading John Taylor Gatto’s (1992) work. Gatto, a former New York City and New York State Teacher of the Year, argued that education has been reduced to schooling, an authoritarian form of social engineering, and that parents and students should opt out of this institution. Hyung came to see such a view as problematic because it serves the individual while ignoring the common good. He discussed how his participation in PARS led him to become a certified teacher in a public school:
After I was part of that group for a year, reading Rethinking Schools’ materials and meeting all these teachers, that’s when I decided I really want to be a teacher, and I want to be a public school teacher, and I want to go back and get teacher education.
Rethinking Schools served not only as an incubator for teaching but also steered Hyung away from the alluring unschooling movement: “I think the biggest thing has been Rethinking Schools. Without that, I wouldn’t have become a teacher. I kind of battled with it, and I would have been stuck with the whole John Taylor Gatto kind of thing.” This network of critical educators allowed Hyung to see “the big picture, beyond just thinking about whether the individual child is oppressed with authoritarianism,” which Hyung argued was a “very liberal critique of education as opposed to looking at it much more structurally and on a societal level.”
The PARS network also played an important role in incubating into teaching third-grade teacher Mark Hansen, who majored in anthropology and sociology in college. Like Hyung, Mark became a teaching assistant at the advice of a friend and was placed in an elementary special education classroom. After transferring to Franklin High School in Portland, Mark found out about Rethinking Schools. He found out about a trip to the World Trade Organization in Seattle that Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen were making with other teachers and became interested in the organization. Mark explained how he “caught wind of this whole progressive, radical social justice teaching community that was going in Portland,” a network that influenced him to go back to school to become certified.
Each of these teachers named progressive social and political organizations and networks as primary influences on their becoming teachers. Two other teachers with bachelor’s degrees in fields outside education, Maria Sweeney and Ann Pelo, were primarily influenced by radical mentors and events (Ritchie, 2011a) but also named networks as influences in their becoming critical educators.
Ann Pelo, a preschool teacher and teacher mentor in Seattle, Washington, who was an English major and activist in high school and college, networked informally with child care workers who were interested in antibias teaching and social justice. She decided she wanted to get more education to teach children, so she went to graduate school in child development and family studies.
Maria Sweeney, an undergraduate French major and current Title I and Reading Recovery teacher in Ridgewood, New Jersey, engaged in activism opposed to U.S. support of right wing military governments in Central America. Her membership in Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and other organizations led her to critically interrogate issues in a way that would influence her to pursue graduate school in education and later teach for social justice.
These teachers had engaged in radicalizing networks prior to becoming teachers. Terry’s and Bill’s participation in broad social justice networks around a variety of issues helped them decide that teaching was an effective vehicle for social change. Hyung and Mark became teachers through their participation in a network of critical educators. Ann and Maria decided that working with young children would be most efficacious in changing the world, so they went back to school to pursue this goal. For these teachers, networks served an incubating role, in helping them become teachers and in helping them become critical teachers. However, the role that networks played in supporting them did not stop there. After they became teachers, the networks to which they belonged continued to sustain their social justice teaching.
Networks as Sustainers
All eight of these critical educators discussed the importance of being a part of social and professional networks after they started to teach. These networks helped sustain their work as teachers, especially considering how for many teachers, critical work can become lonely or isolating.
Jennifer Aaron, a first-grade teacher in New York City, had gone through bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in education without discovering the importance of teaching students to engage in a sociopolitical analysis of their world to change it. It was not until she enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Georgia that she found a network to support critical ideas. She talked about the influential role of a critical inquiry group she formed with professor Bob Fecho and other students, saying “I think that’s where I tend to do the best, when I can bounce ideas off other people.”
For Jennifer, this network of other progressive educators helped her engage in academic service learning projects with her upper elementary students. Having colleagues from the critical inquiry group visit her school and give her feedback proved beneficial: “Having that [group] was as valuable as having the literature and the new ideas and philosophies. Anybody can read a book, but to be able to then play it out was what ended up being most important for me.” As I visited Jennifer’s Hamilton Heights classroom, the influence of this network became readily apparent. On the walls, posters depicted students’ work analyzing television commercials for gender and racial bias, and charts showed the results of students’ inventory of family and community assets. In this case, Jennifer had been teaching prior to joining a justice-oriented network, but having the network enabled and sustained her critical teaching practice.
Like Jennifer, after becoming a teacher, Lisa Espinosa, a seventh-grade science and language arts teacher in Chicago, Illinois, got involved with teacher networks: the Teachers for Social Justice teacher activist group and Rethinking Schools. These networks supported Lisa as she put into practice the social justice strategies she learned as an education major at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She described these alliances with other critical educators as a source of sustenance for her:
All of that really helped me a lot to give me support or nourishment. Most of the time you’re just alone in the classroom. But just having somewhere outside of the classroom that was supporting me in that way, too, was really important.
While there was an eighth-grade teacher at Lisa’s middle school who also taught from a critical perspective, most of her colleagues did not share her philosophy. She remarked,
For a while, if teachers got some lesson plan on peace or social justice, they would give it to me, like I’m the only person that would use it . . . They meant well, but it just totally showed me they didn’t get it, that they think it’s my thing, I do this, but it’s not something that should be part of our curriculum.
In this context, networking with other critical teachers outside the school became necessary to maintain a teaching practice devoted to social justice.
Maria also benefited from being a member of a network, one that she helped form. She remembers how during her first year of teaching, she read Jesse Goodman’s book, Democratic Teaching in Elementary Schools, and wanted to build a network with other social justice–oriented educators.
At that time, I couldn’t find anybody who was trying to teach for social justice. I was always making phone calls: “Do you know anyone who’s doing this? Do you know anyone who’s doing this?” So somehow I found Bob Peterson. We knew each other through a few phone calls, and he helped me get out to this founding conference in St. Louis. And then we stayed good friends for a long time, really good friends. He was a big influence on me; he was a huge influence.
In this case, Maria formed a reciprocal relationship with one of the founders of Rethinking Schools in 1983, someone with whom she would later form another organization, National Coalition of Education Activists in 1988. Maria talked about how through these two organizations she met influential educators like Rita Tenorio, Bill Bigelow, Linda Christensen, and Teaching for Change founder Deborah Menkhart, and reached beyond the confines of her own school and district. She remarked how “that was a very big impression on me” and how “I am very thankful to them that they took me seriously,” as she was in her mid-20s at the time. Because of the support of these networks, Maria was able to engage her students in social justice work year after year, including producing a Broadway play about Nike and Disney sweatshops (see Sweeney, 2002).
Ann remarked about how networking with Rethinking Schools and being a part of that group sustained her, saying “I feel like Rethinking Schools really nurtured me along.” She discussed how Bill Bigelow, an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine, read her book That’s Not Fair! A Teacher’s Guide to Activism With Young Children and contacted her shortly after 9/11 asking her to contribute to a special issue of the magazine. Ann talked about how “[i]t was just pure luck that they didn’t have any early childhood people they were aware of back then.” She acknowledged that she benefited from this network because, she argued, early childhood education and anti-bias work within early childhood education have been “so ghettoized.” These fields are “so dominated by a handful of voices,” as well as “a pretty stale script of putting out brown Play Doh and having multiracial dolls for the children to play with,” rather than having the rich variety of critical practices that is available to teachers who work with older children. This network of “people who are such smart thinkers and who are lifetime activists, educational activists, and community organizers and people who are walking the walk so much” has affirmed and challenged Ann’s thinking and has helped push early childhood education to a new level.
Like these critical educators, other participants also discussed the role of networks in sustaining their social justice teaching. Mark codirects and serves as technology liaison for Oregon Writing Project, an organization which, alongside PARS sustains his critical teaching practice. Likewise, Hyung benefits from the support of PARS and the national office of Rethinking Schools magazine, where he serves on the editorial board. Terry still participates in People for Radical Political Action as well as Blue Wave New Jersey and New Jersey Peace Action. Bill was sustained by National Coalition of Education Activists before it disbanded and still actively participates in PARS and the national organization of Rethinking Schools, where he serves as book editor and curriculum editor for the magazine.
Radicalizing networks sustain critical educators’ teaching practice by offering support when teachers feel isolated, giving teachers models and resources for innovative teaching strategies, and providing venues for sharing and publishing about one’s practice. Whether serving as incubators or sustainers, social justice networks played an influential role in developing these teachers’ critical practice. Teacher educators hoping to develop new teachers who engage in social justice education can learn from these teachers’ experiences with networks.
Implications: Using Networks to Develop Social Justice Educators
Social justice networks are important in the recruitment and retention of critical educators. In what follows, I make the argument that to develop more teachers committed to critical pedagogy and teaching for social justice, as teacher educators we need to tap into networks as sites of recruitment on one hand and teach the teachers with whom we already work to form and join progressive networks on the other.
Networks as Vehicles for Recruiting Critical Teachers
Starting with teachers who have demonstrated a commitment to teaching for social justice, this study traced support for their critical teaching to the social justice networks of which they were members. Most of these participants became teachers because of their involvement in such networks. This finding has implications for the recruitment of critical educators. It is essential for teacher education programs to reach out to activist and justice-oriented networks to identify potential candidates rather than admitting only those students who typically seek careers in education—White candidates who usually hold deficit views toward children of color and who have not interrogated their own privilege (King, 1991; Sleeter, 2008).
Haberman’s (1995, 1996, 2005; Haberman & Post, 1998) research has shown that effective teachers in racially and socioeconomically diverse schools share many of the characteristics of the teachers interviewed here: They majored in something other than education as an undergraduate; are between the ages of 30 and 50 years old; are aware of their own racism, sexism, classism, and other prejudices; live in the city or would have no objection to moving into the city; and expect to visit the homes of the children she or he teaches. While others (e.g., Irvine, 2003; McDonald & Zeichner, 2009; Sleeter, 2009) have called for recruiting more teachers of color to address the need for more teachers who “bring a commitment and sense of urgency to multicultural teaching, social justice, and providing children of color with an academically challenging curriculum” (Sleeter, 2009, p. 617), what gets overlooked is the importance of tapping into social justice networks as a source of new teacher candidates.
If we want more teachers who see education as a vehicle for social change, who, rather than bringing a paternalistic zeal to “save” the children (Popkewitz, 1998), choose teaching because it is a path toward greater justice for all members of society, then as teacher educators we need to connect with social justice networks. We can start locally: What social change organizations exist in our area? How can we link up with them so that education is connected to other movements? Perhaps there is a statewide coalition devoted to labor, health care, immigration, or other issues that we may join. By participating in these networks, we are likely to meet people who have already developed a commitment to equity and justice but who have not yet settled on a career path that will allow them to do important justice work. As we share our passion for our work and vision for education as a means of effecting social change, we may influence others to become teachers. In this reciprocal relationship, we may also build bridges between education and other movements for justice so that our work is mutually beneficial to all involved.
Teaching Teachers to Network for Justice
In addition to participating in social justice networks, it is the responsibility of teacher educators, in preservice teacher education and in ongoing professional learning, to teach prospective teachers to form their own networks and to establish ways for them to connect to existing networks that will support their social justice work (Montaño & Burstein, 2006).
When these critical educators felt isolated, they formed support networks. Maria, Bill, Ann, and Terry worked with others to create groups that would help sustain their work toward social justice. As Bill (Bigelow, 2004) has written, it is important for teachers not to be “The Lone Ranger” but instead to create a network, however informal, with other teachers who share a common vision of teaching. One way for teacher educators to do this is to tap into our teachers’ and teacher candidates’ prior histories with networks. How can we learn about the groups in which they have been involved? How can we find out how they have effectively worked for things they believe in as a way to help them see the benefits of networking to support critical teaching? Perhaps our teacher candidates have been involved in student leadership organizations, clubs and associations, sports teams, church and religious groups, or other formal and informal networks. It is our role to learn about teachers’ prior histories with supportive networks so we can use this information to support them as they build their own critical networks, whether at their school in the form of study groups or inquiry groups, or on a larger scale. In a climate where 40% to 50% of all teachers leave the profession within the first 5 years (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003) and where few teachers engage their students in critical pedagogy, it is especially incumbent on us to help teachers develop their own networks.
Besides creating new networks, it is also our responsibility to help teachers connect to existing social justice networks. All eight of these critical educators participated in social and political networks outside their schools that led them to and supported their critical teaching practices. As we have seen, some of these networks (Bill’s Praxis group, Mark’s Oregon Writing Project site, and Jennifer’s Critical Inquiry Pedagogy group) were affiliated with universities, whereas others (Rethinking Schools, Teachers for Social Justice, People for Radical Political Action, National Coalition of Education Activists) were not. Much of what happens in initial and ongoing teacher education is teaching teachers content knowledge, habits of mind, and pedagogical strategies. What is missing is giving teachers the tool of networking to sustain their critical practice. Some ways we might help teacher networks are to sponsor writing groups or start critical inquiry groups with teachers, invite teachers to join the networks in which we participate (another reason we ourselves should participate in supportive networks), and help teachers connect to teacher activist groups, National Writing Project sites, teacher unions, and international networks that offer alternatives to the top-down corporatized education “reform” movement in the United States. We can also work with teacher mentor programs to ensure that mentor teachers know how to help their mentees connect with progressive networks. Teacher education programs that fail to give teachers the tool of networking for social justice only go halfway toward developing critical educators. In the context of high-stakes testing and accountability, teacher attrition, and the cultural divide between teachers and students, it is crucial for us to give teachers this tool to help them sustain education for social justice.
Participant Publications
Aaron, J., Bauer, E. B., Commeyras, M., Cox, S. D., Daniell, B., Elrick, E., . . . Vaughn, H. (2006). “No deposit, no return”: Enriching literacy teaching and learning through critical inquiry pedagogy. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Bigelow, B. (2006). The line between us: Teaching about the border and Mexican immigration. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Bigelow, B. (2008). A people’s history for the classroom. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Bigelow, B., & Diamond, N. (1988). The power in our hands: A curriculum on the history of work and workers in the United States. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.
Bigelow, B., & Peterson, B. (Eds.). (1998). Rethinking Columbus: The next 500 years. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Bigelow, B., & Peterson, B. (Eds.). (2002). Rethinking globalization: Teaching for justice in an unjust world. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Bigelow, W. (1985). Strangers in their own country: A curriculum guide on South Africa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
Espinosa, L. (2003). Seventh graders and sexism. Rethinking Schools, 17(3), 1-9.
Espinosa, L. (2005). Workshop 8: Social justice and action. In Annenberg Learner (Producer), Teaching multicultural literature: A workshop for the middle grades. Retrieved from http://www.learner.org/workshops/tml/workshop8/index.html
Espinosa, L. (2008). Everything flowers. In W. Ayers, G. Ladson-Billings, G. Michie, & P. Noguera (Eds.), City kids, city schools: More reports from the front row (pp. 104-112). New York, NY: The New Press.
Espinosa, L. (2009). Exploring race relations. In W. Au (Ed.), Rethinking multicultural education: Teaching for racial and cultural justice (pp. 279-286). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Hansen, M. (2005a). Exploring genres with whole-class lessons. In Annenberg Learner (Producer), Inside Writing Communities: Grades 3-5. Retrieved from http://www.learner.org/workshops/writing35/session4/sec2p2.html
Hansen, M. (2005b). Exploring our urban wilderness. Rethinking Schools, 19(3), 36-38.
Hansen, M. (2005c). Modeling a “writerly” life. In Annenberg Learner (Producer), Inside Writing Communities: Grades 3-5. Retrieved from http://www.learner.org/workshops/writing35/session2/sec2p2.html
Moore, T. (2004). Beyond the bake sale. Rethinking Schools, 18(4), 22-25.
Nam, H. (2006). The United States and Iraq: Choices and predictions. In Whose wars? Teaching about the Iraq War and the War on Terrorism (pp. 13-22). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Pelo, A. (2007). The language of art: Inquiry-based studio practices in early childhood settings. St. Paul, MN: Red Leaf Press.
Pelo, A. (Ed.). (2008). Rethinking early childhood education. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Pelo, A. & Davidson, F. (2000). That’s not fair! A teacher’s guide to activism with young children. St. Paul, MN: Red Leaf Press.
Sweeney, M. (1999). Critical literacy in a fourth-grade classroom. In C. Edelsky (Ed.), Making justice our project: Teachers working toward critical whole language practice (pp. 96-114). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Sweeney, M. (2002). Sweating the small stuff. In B. Bigelow & B. Peterson (Eds.), Rethinking globalization: Teaching for justice in an unjust world (pp. 171-176). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Footnotes
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.