Unpacking power: The role of critical reflection in preschool internship

This study examined the potential role of critical reflection as a tool to support pre-service early childhood teacher interns in understanding and questioning pedagogical choices witnessed in their preschool internships while developing their own socially responsible teaching capacity. This study contributes to the field of critical reflection in teacher education by emphasizing an analysis of power, using Patricia Hill Collins’ matrices of power to understand the complexities of systemic injustices and identify potential solutions. The authors conducted an analysis of students’ critical reflections, which were completed weekly during their quarter-long preschool internship. The authors found that a critical analytic lens, using power, created intentional space to pause and expand interpretations of unequal and inequitable dynamics within the students’ preschool internship experiences, and had the potential to impact their subsequent pedagogical decisions. These findings hold the possibility for teacher preparation programs to bolster students’ reflective praxis and seed justice-oriented possibilities in early childhood education.

[1]  Janelle Brady.  Exploring the role of Black feminist thought in pre-service early childhood education: On the possibilities of embedded transformative change , 2022, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood.

[2]  Mariana Souto-Manning.  The Pandemic as a Portal: On Transformative Ruptures and Possible Futures for Education , 2021, Occasional Paper Series.

[3]  Kamania Wynter-Hoyte,et al.  A revolutionary love story in teacher education and early childhood education , 2021 .

[4]  D. Calderón,et al.  “Why didn’t I know this?”: Land education as an antidote to settler colonialism in early childhood teacher education , 2021 .

[5]  Paul C. Gorski,et al.  Striving for Critical Reflection in Multicultural and Social Justice Teacher Education: Introducing a Typology of Reflection Approaches , 2020, Journal of Teacher Education.

[6]  M. Holling,et al.  “White supremacy in heels”: (white) feminism, white supremacy, and discursive violence , 2020 .

[7]  I. Berson,et al.  Revisiting reflective practice in an era of teacher education reform: A self-study of an early childhood teacher education program , 2020, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education.

[8]  G. Boutte,et al.  When will Black children be well? Interrupting anti-Black violence in early childhood classrooms and schools , 2019 .

[9]  Felicia V. Black.  Providing quality early childhood professional development at the intersections of power, race, gender, and dis/ability , 2018, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood.

[10]  Katrina Liu.  Creating a dialogic space for prospective teacher critical reflection and transformative learning , 2017 .

[11]  Alexis Jemal,et al.  Critical Consciousness: A Critique and Critical Analysis of the Literature , 2017, The Urban Review.

[12]  L. Ludlow,et al.  Initial teacher education: What does it take to put equity at the center? , 2016 .

[13]  M. Perez,et al.  Black feminist photovoice: Fostering critical awareness of diverse families and communities in early childhood teacher education , 2016 .

[14]  Katrina Liu,et al.  Critical reflection as a framework for transformative learning in teacher education , 2015 .

[15]  Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz,et al.  Popular Visual Images and the (Mis)Reading of Black Male Youth: a case for racial literacy in urban preservice teacher education , 2015 .

[16]  L. Patel.  Countering Coloniality in Educational Research: From Ownership to Answerability , 2014 .

[17]  M. McKenzie,et al.  Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research , 2014 .

[18]  D. Calderón.  Speaking back to Manifest Destinies: a land education-based approach to critical curriculum inquiry , 2014 .

[19]  C. Cooper.  Parent Involvement, African American Mothers, and the Politics of Educational Care , 2009 .

[20]  G. Gay,et al.  Developing Cultural Critical Consciousness and Self-Reflection in Preservice Teacher Education , 2003 .

[21]  Cheryl I. Harris,et al.  Whiteness as Property , 1993 .

[22]  Nathaniel Bryan.  White Teachers’ Role in Sustaining the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Recommendations for Teacher Education , 2017 .