Seeking Social Justice: A Teacher Education Faculty’s Self Study

Abstract

As is now well documented, the numbers of children of color, poor children, and children with identified disabilities are on the rise in the United States, and in some places "minority" groups are now the majority of the school population (National Education Goals Panel, 1997). At the same time there is mounting evidence that the present educational system is failing to serve disproportionately large numbers of children who are not part of the mainstream (Christensen & Dorn, 1997; Darling-Hammond, 1995; Kozol, 1991). In response, there have been many calls for reform of public schooling and of teacher education (Banks, 1997; Dilworth, 1998; Rice-Jordan, 1995). A number of scholars have argued that we need teachers (and teacher educators) who enter and remain in the teaching force not to carry on business as usual but to work for social change and social justice (Ayers, Hunt & Quinn, 1998;Cochran-Smith, 1995, 1998;Oakes & Lipton, 1999; Skrtic & Sailor, 1996).