Supporting Preservice Teachers to Explore School Censorship and Teacher Advocacy

Abstract

This study combined experiential, authentic literacy instruction with scenarios of censorship preservice teachers (PTs) will encounter in their future classrooms. By presenting these questions and scenarios through authentic literacy practices, PTs were able to think critically and discuss the issues of challenges to culturally responsive texts, and the possibilities of teacher advocacy. The class context and design are presented in this chapter along with the results of this mixed-methods study to determine how successful the classroom environment and literacy instruction was for preservice teachers to discuss the issues and challenges to culturally responsive texts and to explore how these preservice teachers viewed their role as advocates following that discussion. Implications and future research directions for teacher education are also discussed.