Sustaining Social Justice Learning: What Teacher Educators Can Do

Abstract

<p>As public schools become more diverse in terms of student population, the US teaching force remains relatively stable. For this reason, teacher education programs need to provide and sustain social justice learning to ensure pre-service teachers enter classrooms prepared to teach <em>all </em>students. This article examines how pre-service teachers took up identities as social justice educators and sustained social justice learning during lapses in teacher education curricula. Analysis reveals that teacher educators can incorporate methods into course curriculum to ensure social justice learning is sustained in teacher education. Implications for teacher educators include strategies to provide social justice pedagogy scaffolding and offer plausible suggestions to incorporate and sustain social justice education for pre-service teachers when absent in future teacher education curricula.</p>