Abstract
Teacher educators often encounter resistance when helping preservice teachers to investigate what different conceptions of social justice and anti-oppression education mean for their teaching and identities. What common conceptions are there? Why are they important? How might they be pursued? What are our own experiences with and responsibilities toward them? This chapter is written from the perspective of a subject area resource specialist responsible for helping preservice teachers think through these questions. It demonstrates the strengths of problem based learning (PBL) pedagogy in supporting preservice teachers’ inquiries into the institutional and cultural dimensions of privilege and oppression both in schools and beyond. In it, I first explore the role of the subject area resource specialist within the Teaching English Language Learners through Problem Based Learning (TELL through PBL) cohort structure. I then articulate the conceptions of social justice and anti-oppression that underpin my teaching and discuss why PBL is an excellent model for facilitating preservice teachers’ explorations of these concepts. Finally, I offer two detailed demonstrations of what my work exploring privilege and oppression with preservice teachers looks like.
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Notes
- 1.
The newly revised UBC program also has social justice education as one of its foundational themes.
- 2.
When I joined the PBL cohort in 2006, it was a standalone cohort that focused on the principles and practices of PBL pedagogy. The PBL cohort merged with the TELL cohort as part of UBC’s B.Ed. restructuring in the 2012–2013 academic year, becoming the TELL through PBL cohort
- 3.
From 2002 to 2006, I taught many sections of EDST 314: Social Issues in Education and EDST 427: Philosophy of Education for UBC’s Department of Educational Studies.
- 4.
I am indebted to Margot Filipenko and the rest of the PBL team for helping me develop my understanding of how to better use the PBL structure to support student learning, particularly in that first year.
- 5.
While the specific framing and content of my courses has shifted in the revised B.Ed. program that began in 2012–2013, these general themes have remained consistent across programs.
- 6.
In BC schools, “social responsibility” is another purposefully nonconfrontational term used in classrooms and in policy documents to refer to a particular strand of social justice education.
- 7.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau began the discussion of multiculturalism as Canada’s official state policy in 1971. This policy evolved into the Multiculturalism Act of 1988 (United Nations Association of Canada, 2002). In some ways, this policy has worked directly counter to social justice concerns by contributing to the national identity of Canada as a tolerant and multicultural mosaic of cultural and other diversities.
- 8.
Multicultural education is sometimes theorized as critical multiculturalism. This form of social justice education is far closer to the anti-oppression education described below.
- 9.
Originally, the tutors and preservice teachers met four times each case. Since the 2013–2014 year, they now meet three times per case.
- 10.
I make this claim recognizing that, especially with respect to social justice themes, every person will have different experiences, resistances, and trigger points.
- 11.
Because PBL’s 2-week case cycle makes its scheduling mostly independent of the rest of the B.Ed. program, we have the opportunity to schedule in an orientation week where other cohorts generally do not.
- 12.
Moreover, the same person usually also has the opportunity to work with the preservice teachers after they return from their long practicum placements for the duration of the summer term, extending these relationships and conversations across the entirety of their programs.
- 13.
I place the name and cultural origin of the foods underneath the food containers, so that the bulk of the time at each station can be spent on the analysis associated with the ensuing questions. I also ask the preservice teachers to keep their discussion of the foods themselves to a maximum of 3 minutes, which sometimes works and sometimes does not.
- 14.
There is a healthy debate about the usefulness of perpetuating the “myth of realness” of the concept of race through its continued use. I would argue that although “race” is a social construct that mostly serves to reinforce systems of oppression, its structural and lived effects are ongoing. As such, we cannot simply abandon the term.
- 15.
Instead, I’ve downloaded a recipe for the tea eggs and cook them at home at the same time as I make the hard-boiled eggs.
- 16.
- 17.
Over the years, I have used many different foods at the remaining stations, including durian, chopped liver, kimchi, spoilt milk, stinky tofu, and shrimp paste.
- 18.
The preservice teachers generally do not generate examples that illuminate the face of exploitation.
- 19.
I like to include a food that links to Jewish culture, as it is my heritage. This link provides a springboard both for educating the preservice teachers about Jewish culture and for continuing the process of getting to know each other that we begin in the orientation week and Case 1.
- 20.
In fact, many preservice teachers object vocally when the occasional Term 2 teacher who is new to the PBL cohort and pedagogy attempts to teach them in a more traditional style.
- 21.
The following is a self-description offered by this former preservice teacher as we corresponded throughout the writing of this chapter: “since Teacher Ed, I’ve been identifying more as gender queer than male. My preferred pronoun is they. I decided to keep the name [removed for privacy] because after being on hormone therapy, I now get read as male and my “feminine” name complicates that (in a good way). Transgender or trans is also still a good word to describe me.”
- 22.
The former preservice teacher’s chosen pseudonym.
- 23.
This successful preservice teacher was one of the brightest, most capable students I have ever had the honor to know. Unfortunately, much of this preservice teacher’s energy was directed toward repeated attempts to educate cohort members, instructors, school advisors, and others in the broader school community. An excellent, but problematic, example of Young’s (1990) description of exploitation: where social groups with privilege profit from the uncompensated labor of others.
- 24.
The Gender Spectrum: What Educators Need to Know (Pride Education Network of BC 2011) is a comprehensive, local example produced by Pride Education Network BC (formerly GALE BC). Questions and Answers: Gender Identity in Schools (Public Health Agency of Canada 2010) and Bending the Mold: An Action Kit for Transgender Youth (Lambda Legal and the National Youth Advocacy Coalition 2008) are just two more of many others.
- 25.
The Day of Pink annual event is also known as Pink Shirt Day. See: http://www.pinkshirtday.caand http://www.dayofpink.org and http://www.bctf.ca/DayOfPink/
- 26.
- 27.
- 28.
- 29.
- 30.
- 31.
- 32.
To see the performance of David Lloyd George Elementary and Churchill Secondary at Oakridge shopping center, visit: http://vimeo.com/19310370.
- 33.
- 34.
The idea to include flash mobs in this reworked case stems in part from the multiple flash mob final assignments that have been performed throughout UBC’s education building by physical education students in recent years.
- 35.
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Zavalkoff, A. (2016). Investigating Social Justice Education Through Problem Based Learning: A Subject Area Resource Specialist’s Perspective. In: Filipenko, M., Naslund, JA. (eds) Problem-Based Learning in Teacher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02003-7_11
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