Caricature and Hyperbole in Preservice Teacher Professional Development

Authors

Mica Pollock, University of California, San Diego
Candice Bocala, WestEd
Sherry L. Deckman, CUNY Lehman CollegeFollow
Shari Dickstein-Staub, National Center for Teacher Residencies

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

Abstract

Professional development (PD) “for diversity” aims to prepare teachers to support students from varying backgrounds to succeed, often in underresourced contexts. Although many teachers invite such inquiry as part of learning to teach, others resist “diversity” inquiry as extra to teaching, saying they cannot “do it all.” In this article, we discuss how preservice teachers at times caricature the requests of PD for diversity, hearing the task as a call to undertake superhuman tasks and to be people other than who they are. We argue that these caricatures require direct acknowledgment by both preservice teachers and teacher educators working in diverse contexts.

Comments

This article was originally published in Urban Education, available at DOI: 10.1177/0042085915581714.