Teacher Training Designs for Improving Instruction in Interracial Classrooms

Abstract

Teacher training programs are among the variety of efforts utilized to meet the challenge of school desegregation and to improve the quality of interracial education. This article details some of the underlying assumptions of teacher retraining efforts-both inservice and preservice-and ties them into ongoing problems of racism in public schools. In addition to delineating targets of change or retraining, the article provides examples of various strategies for change, including the presentation of written and audiovisual materials, laboratory training sessions, diagnostic studies and feedback, formation of internal confrontation and problem-solving teams, and others. The strategies cannot stand by themselves, however; in use they must be integrated into other attacks on the structures of racism in our schools.