Whiteness and Raciolinguistic Ideologies in the Preparation of Content Teachers for Working with Language-Minoritized Youth

Abstract

We must attend to raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015) in the preparation of new teachers to work with language-minoritized students. Racism and linguicism are manifestations of Whiteness (Frankenberg, 1993) and White Cultural Hegemony and, left insufficiently examined or non-confronted, they will continue to be the building blocks on which new teachers enter the profession. In this study, I used interpretive case methodology (Merriam, 1998) to examine three critical incidents (Flanagan, 1954) of White, English-speaking, content teacher candidates learning to teach language-minoritized youth. My findings call for preservice teacher development to include languaging and infrastructuring strategies (Cushing-Leubner, Kim, Sato, Schornack, Tobin, 2017) to hold complicated conversations (Mason, 2016b) about race and language. I offer a metaphor for Whiteness as an addiction and look to principles based in spirituality that could provide a pathway to recovery.