Harvard Education PR Toward Anti-Oppressive Teaching: Designing and Using Simulated Encounters

Toward Anti-Oppressive Teaching introduces an innovative approach for using live-actor simulations to prepare preservice teachers for diverse classroom settings. Based on the SHIFT Project at Vanderbilt University, the book highlights the promise of these encounters to empower preservice teachers to become more culturally responsive. Despite widespread recognition of the need to educate novice teachers in the theory and practice of culturally responsive pedagogy, few teaching candidates have the opportunity to try out, reflect upon, and internalize these lessons prior to taking their first job. As a result, new teachers are often unprepared to respond effectively to real-life dilemmas of difference and inequity in K-12 schools. The book shows how carefully crafted encounters-when incorporated as part of a well-designed cycle of instructional tasks-can build on traditional approaches to educating future teachers about culture, power, and systems of oppression. The book is ambitious in scope, laying out the rationale and theory behind the use of this new approach and shows how teacher educators are using, adapting, and designing simulations to fit the context of a teaching program. The authors include sample simulation materials and offer advice for addressing common logistical and programmatic challenges for adopting this new practice including how to hire, train, and care for actors. Filled with engaging examples and testimony from students who have participated in the program, Toward Anti-Oppressive Teaching provides guiding principles and practical suggestions, and offers a point of entry for those interested in a new approach to addressing a long-standing challenge in teacher education. From the Back Cover Toward Anti-Oppressive Teaching introduces an innovative approach for using live-actor simulations to prepare preservice teachers for diverse classroom settings. Based on the SHIFT Project at Vanderbilt University, the book highlights the promise of these encounters to empower preservice teachers to become more culturally responsive. Filled with engaging examples and testimony from preservice teachers, the book provides guiding principles and practical suggestions, and offers a point of entry for those interested in a new approach to addressing a long-standing challenge in teacher education. "Self and Stengel skillfully bring together practice-based teacher education with anti-oppressive teaching to provide practitioners with concrete and actionable ways to incorporate simulations across the teacher preparation curriculum. The result is a terrific springboard for conversations about how we can use simulations more ethically and in service of equitable outcomes for students." --Julie Cohen, associate professor, University of Virginia Curry School of Education and Human Development "The authors demonstrate how their work uniquely progresses teacher candidates' capacities to recognize and reflect on the legacy of white supremacy as it lives--and is defied--through human interactions. Balancing pragmatism and possibility, this book is both roadmap and inspiration in preparing future teachers." --Tesha Sengupta-Irving, assistant professor of learning sciences, University of California, Berkeley "In this timely and accessible text, Self and Stengel underscore both the importance of engaging preservice teachers in the equity- and justice-related dilemmas they are likely to encounter once teaching and the necessarily contingent nature of engaging such dilemmas. This book adds much-needed complexity to discussions about how to prepare equity- and justice-oriented teachers." --Jamy Stillman, associate professor of education, director of elementary teacher education, University of Colorado, Boulder Elizabeth A. Self is an assistant professor of the practice of social foundations of education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College. Barbara S. Stenge