Beyond Diversity Recruitment: Towards A Healthy Racial Climate in Teacher Education Programs

 

As attention to the needs of a diverse teaching force grows, we must contend with a well-documented yet unheeded issue in teacher education: the racialization and marginalization of teacher candidates of Color (Amos, 2010; Brown, 2014; Kohli, 2018). To encourage programs tomove beyond locating the problem within individual people or practices, Kohli and her colleagues (2021)1 build from higher education research on racial climate (Hurtado, 1992; Ledesma, 2017; Milem, Chang & Antonio, 2005) and health (Ledesma, 2016) to present a model that explores racism structurally and multidimensionally within teacher education programs. This practice brief outlines key concepts of that article, specifically summarizing the five dimensions of a healthy racial climate (historical, organizational, compositional, behavioral, and psychological) that centers racial literacy: (Guinier, 2004; Skerrett, 2013).