The Trouble with Niceness: How a Preference for Pleasantry Sabotages Culturally Responsive Teacher Preparation
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Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 12 Issue 2—Fall 2016 The Trouble with Niceness: How a Preference for Pleasantry Sabotages Culturally Responsive Teacher Preparation Jeanne Dyches Bissonnette Abstract: Because few teacher education programs are truly rooted in the philosophical aims of multicultural and social justice education (Asher, 2007; Banks, 2008; Hayes & Juarez, 2012; Miller, 2014), many pre-service teachers (PSTs) remain unpracticed—and unable—to teach in culturally responsive ways (Sleeter, 2012). But what structures and forces bear the culpability for the long documented shortcomings of this preparation? And how can literacy teacher educators honor their commitment to preparing practitioners capable of teaching all children? Here, the author postulates the ways in which teacher education programs’ preference for niceness functions as an iteration of Whiteness that obstructs attempts to actualize culturally responsive teacher preparation, tending specifically to the complicity of audit culture, pre-service teachers, teacher educators, and curricula and instruction. In an effort to disrupt and ultimately dismantle the culture of niceness, the author offers successful approaches to training PSTs for teaching in culturally responsive ways, including displaying sociocultural vulnerability, modeling and creating opportunities for critical reflection, and collaborating alongside PSTs to craft a transformative curriculum. Keywords: culturally responsive pedagogy, teacher preparation Jeanne Dyches Bissonnette is an assistant professor of literacy education at Iowa State University where she researches secondary teacher education and social justice. Formerly a secondary English teacher and literacy coach, Dr. Bissonnette’s work focuses on promoting culturally responsive literacy instruction. Her recent and forthcoming publications include articles in Journal of Teacher Education, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, The ALAN Review, and Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (English). 9 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 12 Issue 2—Fall 2016 n order to be quality teacher education—that female, and monolingual (Boser, 2014). If the teacher is, preparation that stimulates a sort of education process is failing to prepare its PSTs to I pedagogical dexterity that sees pre-service teach in culturally responsive ways during their teachers (PSTs) leaving their teacher education multicultural classes and experiences, we must ask: programs capable of synergistically delivering their why? And, perhaps more pointedly, how do we fix it? content in rigorous, differentiated, and multicultural ways—teacher education programs must commit to Perhaps the greatest obstruction to preparing literacy practitioners to teach in culturally developing their students’ culturally responsive 1 responsive ways lies in the challenge of disrupting pedagogical skills. But are PSTs truly engaging in an authentically multicultural education—one that the culture of niceness that imperceptibly osmoses many teacher education programs. Thelin (1978) prepares them for their role as culturally responsive wrote that “‘Niceness’…has been institutionalized, pedagogues so that they can, in turn, provide equitable educative experiences for their future especially in schools of education” (p. 322). This construct allows PSTs to offer “nice”, liberal- students? To this query, Ladson-Billings (2006) oriented insights without truly engaging in the issued a blistering “no,” charging that “teacher preparation plays a large role in maintaining the complex, and arduous, self-reflection processes culturally responsive teaching requires. But PSTs are status quo” (p. 42) as teachers enter the work force not the only culpable party: reticent to engage (still) largely unprepared to meet the nuanced needs of their students belonging to historically students in these often times difficult conversations, stakeholders in literacy education often shy away marginalized populations. In a similar critique, from exploring matters related to access, equity, and Hayes and Juarez (2012) contended that, “U.S. teacher education programs have never been set up social justice (Glazier, 2003; Haviland, 2008), preferring instead to stick to traditional, and safer, to prepare future teachers for social justice in territory—such as lesson planning (Ginsburg, as education or culturally responsive teaching" (p. 6). Some English PSTs lament that their teacher cited in Britzman, 2003). These silences make teacher education programs complicit with an preparation did little to help them with the day-to- ideology that never truly prompts PSTs—or teacher day challenges of enacting social justice in their classrooms (Cook & Amatucci, 2006). Still other educators—to rethink, and reshape, their approach to teaching. Ultimately, a preference for niceness PSTs—even those who engaged in a rigorous, critical often functions as superficial farce “that does little to teacher education program focused on social justice—experience great difficulty when it comes shake the patriarchal foundations [of teacher education]…much less dismantle them” (Asher, time to enact culturally responsive pedagogies in 2007, p. 65). their classrooms (Davila, 2011). These findings are ominous given that K-12 students continue to reflect In order to acknowledge and interrupt the forces an increasingly vibrant array of cultural and that perpetuate the culture of niceness in teacher linguistic diversity (Hussar & Bailey, 2013) while the U.S. teaching force remains predominantly White, education programs, stakeholders must first develop 1 I acknowledge that there is a gender spectrum and that individuals who identify as gender-neutral. I have myriad pronouns exist that I can use when referring to selected these pronouns because I believe they are more individuals in my writing. Throughout this article I will familiar for a diverse audience of readers. use “he” to refer to individuals who identify as male, “she” to refer to individuals who identify as female, and “ze” for 10 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 12 Issue 2—Fall 2016 an understanding of the forces most culpable for its enjoying greater access to high quality educative ubiquity. As such, this paper calls attention to the experiences and resources (e.g., Kozol, 2012). These culture of niceness in teacher education programs, tenets, taken collectively, sought to identify and call investigates the structures and forces that fuel the attention to the ways in which schools, much like phenomenon, and offers teacher educators the legal system, perpetuate systemic and culturally responsive pedagogical possibilities that institutional injustices at the expense of students of resist and reject educative niceness. color. Theoretical Frameworks Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Critical Race Theory The theory of culturally responsive teaching provided a way to realize the aims of critical race In the 1990s, the theory of culturally responsive theory, which challenged stakeholders to take action pedagogy established itself in the field of teacher against widespread, if often unacknowledged, education as a means to mediate the frictions educational inequities. It rejected the genetic between traditional schooling practices and deficiency (Terman, 1916) and cultural deprivation students’ sociocultural identities. Culturally (Bloom, Davis, & Hess, 1965) paradigms of teaching, responsive pedagogy has roots in critical race theory, both of which applied deficit-framing to explicate which first emerged in the field of legal studies and the long-documented underperformance of students offered a perspective through which to understand of color in U.S. schools (e.g., African American Male the disproportionate rate of incarceration of people Task Force, 1990; Ogbu, 1981), which continues of color (e.g., Bell, 1995). The movement was today, with Latino, African American, and Native supported by scholars and other activists who American students dropping out at nearly twice the believed that the “color-blind” mentality (that is, the rate of White and Asian American students (U.S. insistence of “not seeing” a person’s race/ethnicity) Department of Education, 2012). Though a that was often central to civil rights work did not, commitment to disrupting inequities pulses despite its good intentions, properly address the throughout the theory, various stakeholders in the systemic and institutional elements that led to and field conceptualize the notion of cultural perpetuated widespread, endemic racism. In their responsiveness differently. Five strands characterize foundational text “Toward a Theory of Critical Race Gay’s (2002) theory of culturally responsive Theory,” Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) introduced pedagogy: developing a cultural diversity knowledge critical race theory to the field of education, offering base; designing culturally relevant curricula; three maxims to describe its scope: that race demonstrating cultural caring and building a continues to be a factor that perpetuates inequity in learning community; developing a sensitivity of the U.S.; that the U.S. is based on property rights cross-cultural communications; and demonstrating rather than human rights; and that understanding a commitment to cultural congruity offered the intersection of education and property rights culturally relevant teaching as instruction that provides an analytical lens through which to fosters students’ authentic learning, enhances their understand