Appropriating the Discourse of Social Justice in Teacher Education - Hardcover

Marta Baltodano's book, Appropriating the Discourse of Social Justice in Teacher Education, is a brave and provocative expose and cautionary tale for teacher education programs that seek to embody the principles of critical pedagogy as a path to social justice. Baltodano traces the arc of a program as it moved from a superficial embrace of "diversity" to a much more profound integration of critical pedagogy, and finally to the dismantling of the program's transformational orientation, when college administrators repackaged the program according to principles of neoliberalism with a focus on accountability (standardized testing), using the phrase "social justice" as a marketing tool. While the moral of this story can be read as disempowering and depressing for those committed to changing the conservative nature of teacher education in the US, Baltodano nonetheless delivers a message of hope through her analysis of what went wrong and how the program could have prevailed as a long-term model of transformational teacher education. Her recommendations speak clearly to all teacher educators and program administrators. -- Rosemary Henze, professor, Linguistics and Language Development, San Jose State University In this outstanding ethnographic study, Marta Baltodano exposes the political brigandism and educational outlawry of the political right in their deceptive hijacking of the discourse of social justice. But Baltodano does much more than this. With singular verve and lucid analysis, she offers teachers and administrators both a bold critique of how education reproduces the inequalities of the larger social order and a tactical strategy for fundamental educational transformation. Her critique is tightly argued, convincing, and gripping. And her vision brims with hope and possibility. I highly recommend this book. -- Peter McLaren, Honorary Chair Professor and Director of the Center for Critical Studies, Northeast Normal University, China

In recent years there have been strong movements of reforms in teacher education. The most common are intended to adjust teacher preparation to the standardization demands of NCLB, Race to the Top, and CAEP to make teacher education more accountable. These reforms carried out in the name of excellence, accountability, diversity, and inclusion constitute subliminal efforts to appropriate the possibilities for real transformation in teacher education. However, in spite of the pervasive rhetoric to identify diversity and social justice with the accountability and standardization movement, there are endeavors to create transformations in teacher preparation that are authentic. These deliberate changes seek to counteract the neoliberal vision of school reform and strive to reclaim the original goals of public education represented in a vision of rigorous content knowledge, democratic schooling, and social justice. Appropriating the Discourse of Social Justice in Teacher Education is a testimony to that kind of authentic reform. It documents the transformational efforts of a teacher education program that infused the preparation of its teachers with a vision of education as a public good. This book validates the claim that the process of reproduction of social inequalities in teacher education is not a perfect, static process, but on the contrary, the real seeds of transformation within teacher education departments are abundant."