Tensions as opportunities for transformation: Applying DisCrit Resistance to early childhood teacher education programs

Abstract

Efforts to “professionalize” early childhood through professional standards, licensure requirements, and standardized assessments have aimed to support effective practice and rectify the pay inequities experienced by early educators. However, such initiatives can inadvertently reinforce hegemonic developmentalism and have largely served to advance white, able-bodied norms and narrow views of teaching and learning. Teacher educators endeavoring to combat racism and ableism, therefore, can encounter several tensions that result from trying to apply critical perspectives while preparing pre-service teachers for graduation and certification in the current personnel preparation landscape. In this article, the authors employ Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) Resistance to explore these tensions and offer potential ways they can serve as key opportunities for supporting equity. They discuss how teacher educators can enact DisCrit Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Solidarity to diversify the knowledge(s) that are represented in content; center and affirm the identities and gifts of multiply marginalized teachers of color; and disrupt power hierarchies to honor relationships and interdependence.

As the early childhood field has pursued “professionalization,” an increasing emphasis on standardizing professional requirements and assessments has contributed to restricting what teacher educator programs focus on and whose knowledge is elevated as “good teaching” (Sherfinski et al., 2019; Souto-Manning, 2019a). The prominence of narrow standards of practice is evident around the world as policies and initiatives are implemented that move the field towards standardized qualification examinations and requirements (e.g. Nagasawa and Swadener, 2020). Such efforts are intended to strengthen the early childhood field’s identity as a specialization, support effective practice, and rectify inequities experienced by early educators (e.g. lower pay; National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2020; Wong, 2022).

However, the ways in which teacher education has taken up professional standards and accompanying assessments are deeply grounded in narrow views of child development and developmental theory (Nagasawa and Swadener, 2020; Wild et al., 2015). For instance, in the USA, standardized pre-service teacher assessments that are espoused as evaluating pre-service teachers’ “readiness” to teach emphasize their ability to observe children according to fragmented developmental domains and subsequently make decisions about how to help children progress along preestablished developmental trajectories, promoting a universalized notion of childhood (Reinke et al., 2019). Such notions of development reinforce white, middle-class, monolingual, able-bodied norms and consequently serve to reinforce race and ability hierarchies (Ferri and Bacon, 2011; Saavedra and Pérez, 2018). Moreover, scholars have observed how western developmentalism has been taken up around the world through teacher education and professional development. Gupta (2020) reports how teachers in India adopted western notions of child development and associated teaching strategies (i.e. developmentally appropriate practice) based on the western-informed preparation and professional development opportunities they accessed. Thus, professional standardization can serve to reify hegemonic ways of being and learning for children, and positivist approaches to “quality” practice for teachers (Lucero et al., 2020; Souto-Manning, 2019a).

The requirement that teacher education programs prepare pre-service teachers to meet licensure specifications, pass standardized assessments, and practice in an increasingly standardized field grounded in traditional developmentalism (e.g. ideas about universal child development trajectories that value white, nondisabled ways of being) is at odds with the need to diversify the people, abilities, and knowledges that are centered and sustained in early childhood teacher education (Luna, 2016; Sherfinski et al., 2019). Moreover, narrowing the teacher education curriculum and activities to meet white, ableist standards limits the extent to which teacher educators can incorporate necessary critical perspectives, particularly those that explicitly counter racism and ableism (e.g. Broughton, 2020; Hancock et al., 2021). In this article, we employ a Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) lens to explore the generative tensions that arise in trying to incorporate critical perspectives while navigating the current personnel preparation landscape. Then, we discuss how teacher educators can resist traditional developmentalism and white, able-bodied hegemonic standards while needing to enact personnel preparation programs in accordance with an increasingly standardized system.

Naming the tensions in early childhood teacher preparation

We enter this discussion as former teachers and current teacher educators who have engaged in efforts to promote equity and justice in early childhood education and special education through various means. The first author, a nondisabled Black woman, previously taught and supported children of color with disabilities in various types of inclusive classrooms. Her work has focused on ways to explicate and dismantle racism and ableism in existing systems, with a specific focus on the experiences of multiply marginalized children of color with disabilities and their families. The second author is a nondisabled white woman who previously taught preschool in a range of inclusive settings. As a teacher educator, she is committed to promoting critical reflection and action that fosters more equitable early childhood experiences.

Based on our own experiences, as well as other work documenting the challenges of incorporating critical perspectives in teacher preparation and supporting marginalized teachers, we came to identify several tensions at the nexus of the current state of teacher preparation and the need to resist racism and ableism through critical praxis. Underlying these tensions is the complex history and multifaceted nature of developmentalism, which has had both “productive and repressive legacies,” particularly regarding the social construction of systems and ideologies for educating children in relation to difference and disability (Baker, 1999: 797). Given that and the current accountability systems that drive teacher preparation, developmentalism cannot be simply erased either from teacher education programs or from the everyday educational settings of children of color, disabled children,¹ and multiply marginalized children at the intersections of those identities. At the same time, we must recognize the problematic ways in which hegemonic developmentalism has been taken up to pathologize the abilities and knowledges of marginalized children, families, and teachers.

Here, we articulate four tensions that address how narrow notions of child development embedded in teacher preparation have particularly impacted multiply marginalized children of color (e.g. children of color with disabilities) and their families, as well as marginalized teachers (e.g. teachers of color, disabled teachers, and teachers at the intersections of those identities). First, teacher preparation programs are tasked with preparing pre-service teachers to pass standardized assessments and licensure requirements (e.g. standardized examinations and teaching portfolios that are scored using standardized rubrics). Yet such assessments reinforce narrow views of development that reify racism and ableism (Drame et al., 2022; Souto-Manning et al., 2019). Second, the education field is increasingly recognizing the need to recruit, retain, and support teachers of color and disabled teachers (e.g. Loeppky, 2021; Rogers-Ard et al., 2013). However, teacher education programs must be prepared to support teachers of color, disabled teachers, and multiply marginalized teachers at the intersections of those identities, and help them develop a positive teacher identity as they enter spaces that are often hostile to their identities and knowledges. Such spaces include field experiences where supervising in-service teachers (who are predominately white and able-bodied) may undermine marginalized pre-service teachers’ sense of belonging in the field because of widely held traditional views of child development (e.g. Cheruvu et al., 2015; Souto-Manning et al., 2019). Third, there is a tension between building teachers’ knowledge, professional identity, and self-efficacy while needing to challenge what counts as professional knowledge and expanding the wisdom that should shape practice given the pervasiveness of whiteness and normative notions of ability embedded within hegemonic developmentalism (Luna, 2016; Ryan and Grieshaber, 2005; Souto-Manning, 2019a). Finally, even as teacher educators may change their individual practice to incorporate critical perspectives and praxis within the current system, there is a need to advocate for systemic change (Annamma and Morrison, 2018). In the following sections, we introduce DisCrit Resistance and use that lens to expound on these tensions and discuss potential ways forward for early childhood teacher education.

Identifying and engaging tensions through DisCrit Resistance

Drawing on Annamma and Morrison (2018), DisCrit Resistance encompasses three driving forces: curriculum, pedagogy, and solidarity. DisCrit Curriculum centers the lives of multiply marginalized children and families through content that explicitly addresses intersectional injustices and embodies resistance to intersecting oppressions. Through its attention to the multifaceted gifts and wisdom of multiply marginalized communities, DisCrit Curriculum counters the tendency for curriculum to evade histories of oppression (e.g. racism and ableism) and resistance (Annamma and Morrison, 2018). For teacher education, this means considering whose knowledge is upheld through the curriculum, and how curricular affordances can enable marginalized pre-service teachers to fight oppression during their preparation and afterwards. DisCrit Pedagogy centers on the need to reframe multiply marginalized students of color, dismantling deficit-based perspectives of their knowledge and skills, and elevating their unique gifts. Moreover, adopting a DisCrit pedagogical lens means understanding disability, race, and other intersecting identities as political identities that speak to historical and contemporary inequities as well as methods of resistance (Annamma and Morrison, 2018). Finally, DisCrit Solidarity emphasizes authentic relationships between learners and educators, with particular attention to eschewing adult behavioral expectations that pathologize and punish the resistance of multiply marginalized students of color. Instead, an approach informed by DisCrit Solidarity is sensitive to power relationships, rooted in care, and committed to cultivating the gifts of multiply marginalized students of color (Annamma and Morrison, 2018). Teacher educators can draw on this approach to purposefully plan for and engage with pre-service teachers’ multiple ways of knowing and resisting.

Together, these three movements prompt a praxis of redefining what is desired, taught, and supported in teacher education programs. In the following sections, we discuss why these approaches are needed and provide examples of employing them to address the tensions that come up when teacher educators must prepare teachers within the current personnel preparation system while endeavoring to dismantle racism, ableism, and other systems of oppression.

DisCrit Curriculum

The need for DisCrit Curriculum

The curriculum has not been adequately considered in efforts to better prepare teachers to serve multiply marginalized children with disabilities, despite its essential role in shaping knowledge and skills for equitable and inclusive teaching (Naraian, 2021; Pugach et al., 2020). Although teacher educators make final decisions about what content is taught, these choices are largely shaped by personnel preparation standards, certification requirements, accreditation policies, and other forms of program accountability (Mickelson et al., 2022). As previously discussed, many personnel preparation standards reinforce narrow views of ability, creating a tension for teacher educators who are committed to countering racist and ableist perspectives of children and approaches to early childhood education. Teacher educators cannot simply remove this content from the curriculum when program accreditation necessitates demonstrating adherence to standards. Thus, narrow notions of development are (re)constructed through accountability requirements to align course content and assessments with standards that uphold hegemonic developmentalism. This places an additional burden on teacher educators to prepare pre-service teachers who not only understand but can also challenge traditional views of development through more inclusive and equitable approaches (Tension 1). DisCrit Curriculum offers a means for teacher educators to navigate this tension through nuanced exploration of both dominant discourses and counternarratives.

Teacher educators must also address tensions regarding professionalization and expertise as they develop a curriculum that cultivates professional identity while also challenging narrow views on what counts as professional knowledge (Tension 3). Notions of child development that reify whiteness (Broughton, 2020; Gupta, 2020; Souto-Manning, 2022) and normative views of ability (Ferri and Bacon, 2011) in early childhood teacher education have contributed to a curriculum that does not fully consider the interconnected nature of racism and ableism, and how schooling can perpetuate such oppressions. For example, early childhood teacher education materials, such as textbooks, typically exclude the theoretical and pedagogical contributions of people of color (Broughton, 2020; Hinitz, 2013), further institutionalizing whiteness and normative views of ability within early childhood teacher education (Ferri and Bacon, 2011; Souto-Manning, 2022). When what counts as “official knowledge” about child development and who counts as a prominent theorist in the teacher education curriculum only reflects universalistic approaches based on white, Eurocentric, middle-class norms, the preparation of early educators reinforces deficit-based views of children and families of color, and those experiencing poverty (Broughton, 2020; Saavedra and Pérez, 2018; Swadener, 2012). Meanwhile, disabled children are positioned as requiring intervention as well as potential segregation (Ferri and Bacon, 2011). DisCrit Curriculum helps illuminate how narrow views of development and learning can be reinforced within a teacher education curriculum, the consequences of said perspectives, and what knowledge needs to be challenged and/or expanded on to combat harmful approaches.

Finally, teacher educators must negotiate decisions about how and when to engage in resistance and advocacy regarding the curriculum while still preparing pre-service teachers to succeed in required assessments (Warner et al., 2020) (Tension 4). Although standardized teaching assessments are increasingly required in the USA, it can constrain the teacher education curriculum, minimize opportunities for pre-service teachers to develop equitable approaches, and exclude teachers of color and disabled teachers from the field (e.g. Baldwin, 2007; Dover and Schultz, 2016; Han et al., 2017; Souto-Manning et al., 2019). Consequently, calls to reconceptualize the teacher education curriculum to counteract developmentalism and foster critical perspectives on teaching and learning (e.g. Ryan and Grieshaber, 2005) face competing demands. While teacher educators have an obligation to prepare pre-service teachers to meet the needs of multiply marginalized children and families (Warner et al., 2020), they also have an obligation to prepare pre-service teachers to pass the required certification assessments (Mickelson et al., 2022), which are typically grounded in traditional developmentalism. By highlighting the systemic ways in which norms are created and sustained, a DisCrit Curriculum approach can help teacher educators discern how to advocate to transform the early childhood teacher education curriculum.

Enacting DisCrit Curriculum

DisCrit Curriculum (Annamma and Morrison, 2018) offers opportunities to engage with the tensions embedded in early childhood teacher education curriculum development, and can provide a framework to critically analyze how course content characterizes children’s development and the goals of teaching. In other words, a DisCrit Curriculum perspective encourages teacher educators to reject one-dimensional portrayals of identity (e.g. focusing only on race or disability) and instead build a curriculum that presents the fullness of multiply marginalized communities’ identities, knowledges, and histories (Annamma and Handy, 2019). Following Broughton (2020) and Annamma and Handy (2019), teacher educators can examine course texts and embedded assumptions regarding development through reflective questions such as: Whose perspectives, experiences, and resistance are centered and affirmed through these materials? Whose are excluded? Who is enabled by these materials? Who is debilitated?

Through a DisCrit Curriculum perspective, teacher educators can also engage with tensions surrounding their responsibility to successfully prepare pre-service students for required standardized assessments that uphold problematic views of development and the need to promote professional identity without constraining whose knowledge matters. To engage these tensions, it is important for teacher educators to expand the curriculum to allow pre-service teachers to learn about and contrast different views of development. This may include contrasting narrow developmentalism with views that more explicitly counter racism and ableism. For example, curricular materials can highlight Black early childhood scholars and theorists (Broughton, 2020; Hinitz, 2013), epistemologies from the Global South (Saavedra and Pérez, 2018), and narratives written by people with disabilities (Valle et al., 2004). Juxtaposing such perspectives with traditional developmentalism can facilitate pre-service teachers’ ability to analyze how histories of oppression are intertwined with white, Eurocentric, ableist frameworks of development.

Integrating the histories and knowledges of multiply marginalized communities of color into the curriculum also fosters exploration of resistance, including how children enact resistance and how teachers can help resist oppressive systems (Annamma and Morrison, 2018). For instance, Broughton (2020) describes how he elevated Black pre-service teachers’ resistance when they questioned the relevance of traditional theories of child development for Black children. To interpret their observations of children, the class ultimately infused Du Bois’s (1903) concept of double-consciousness with Wilson’s (1978) exploration of Black children’s complex negotiation of identity during play, resulting in the pre-service teachers’ new framing of “double-conscious play.” Thus, honoring pre-service teachers’ resistance led to the class expanding the curriculum with culturally affirming scholarship. The teacher educator and students collectively supported one another’s nuanced understanding of child development while rejecting universalist views of development. Similarly, centering the perspectives of multiply marginalized communities can unearth alternatives to teaching methods that are harmful to disabled pre-service teachers during their school experiences (Duquette, 2000).

A DisCrit Curriculum lens can also support broader curriculum advocacy. Scholars have recognized that teacher educators need to do more to identify and complicate ableist assumptions within the normative curriculum, such as the idea that deficiencies are located within the individual and should dictate the opportunities one receives (Connor and Gabel, 2013; Naraian, 2021). Teacher educators can expand and deepen the interdisciplinary alliances (e.g. early childhood, early childhood special education, disability studies, and curriculum studies) that are integral to enacting truly inclusive teacher education (Pugach et al., 2021). For instance, Connor and Gabel (2013) describe “‘cripping’ the curriculum” of teacher education by drawing on disability studies in education to identify ableism in everyday practices and ways to combat it. Universally aligning the curriculum with a disability studies in education lens can also help infuse disability into the curriculum as an aspect of human diversity rather than deficiency. This helps ensure that the curriculum is relevant to and accurately represents the lived experiences of disabled children.

DisCrit Pedagogy

The need for DisCrit Pedagogy

The field of early childhood remains dominated by nondisabled white women (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021a, 2021b). This can, in part, be attributed to structural obstacles in teacher education that present barriers to marginalized teachers (e.g. teachers of color, disabled teachers, and multiply marginalized teachers at the intersections of those identities) entering the field and dictate narrow bounds around what knowledge and skills are valued. In particular, standardized assessments and portfolios, like the teacher performance assessment (edTPA), have increasingly become a guide for the ways teacher education programs prepare teachers and determine who is perceived as “ready” to teach (Dover and Schultz, 2016). Yet these assessments cost time, money, and energy, which can be particularly challenging for teachers of color, who are more likely to experience poverty, need to work during their preparation programs, face language barriers, or have family commitments to balance with their education (Souto-Manning et al., 2019). Standardized teacher testing serves as a form of racism in that it purports to assess knowledge and skills in a “neutral” way while failing to acknowledge how race impacts educational opportunities and upholding white interests and knowledge (Sleeter, 2017). At the same time, the espoused need to uphold professional standards through standardized assessment has been juxtaposed with providing appropriate accommodations for disabled teachers, leading to the exclusion of disabled teachers from the field and hesitance to disclose disability (Baldwin, 2007; Neca et al., 2020). Consequently, required testing has contributed to keeping the education field disproportionately white (Rogers-Ard et al., 2013), and is another way of upholding white, nondisabled ways of being as the standard (Annamma et al., 2017). Thus, despite repeated calls to recruit and retain teachers of color and disabled teachers, program structures and assessments maintain norms that make it more difficult for marginalized teachers to enter the education field (Tension 1). DisCrit Pedagogy helps expose how ostensibly neutral structures and policies disproportionately harm multiply marginalized teachers of color and those with disabilities.

Marginalized teachers of color have reported a variety of ways they experience racism and ableism during their preparation programs. For instance, teachers of color have been questioned about their merits or belonging in the teacher education program and their ability to contribute to the field, reflecting how white ways of being and knowing are privileged (Cheruvu et al., 2015; Souto-Manning and Cheruvu, 2016). Such perspectives can interrupt multiply marginalized teachers’ development of supportive professional networks and relationships with their peers (predominantly, white women from middle- and upper-income families; Tension 2). Moreover, such deficit-based perspectives can follow pre-service teachers of color into their field experiences and impact the ways they are perceived, treated, and evaluated by white supervising teachers and mentors. For instance, in-service teachers of color have reported that white university-based supervisors reinforced deficit perceptions of children and families of color through their feedback to pre-service teachers (Souto-Manning, 2019b). Disabled teachers have similarly reported having their abilities questioned and experiencing isolation (Duquette, 2000; Loeppky, 2021). Additionally, disabled teachers face a lack of appropriate accommodations during their preparation programs, particularly during field experiences (Baldwin, 2007; Csoli and Gallagher, 2012).

Finally, it is important to remember that teachers of color with disabilities and those experiencing poverty navigate multiple marginalized identities and share identities with the children and families who are most marginalized by traditional developmentalist views. Teachers of color report having to confront internalized deficit perspectives of their identities, as well as hearing and challenging deficit views of children and families who share their identities (Cheruvu et al., 2015; Kohli, 2014; Souto-Manning and Cheruvu, 2016). Likewise, disabled teachers are exposed to the ableist perspectives of their peers and instructors (Csoli and Gallagher, 2012; Loeppky, 2021), and have to combat a negative self-image as a result of marginalization (Vogel and Sharoni, 2011). The same systems and perspectives that harmed multiply marginalized teachers during their education in turn harm them as teachers, necessitating advocacy that breaks systemic cycles. Teacher educators must be willing to challenge long-held beliefs about marginalized children and families, and advocate for transformative change while preparing teachers to operate in the current system (Tensions 3 and 4).

Enacting DisCrit Pedagogy

DisCrit Pedagogy centers the knowledge, abilities, and support needs of multiply marginalized children of color and their families, as well as marginalized teachers. This requires reframing dominant notions of ability and knowledge, and interrogating the histories, policies, and practices that perpetuate oppression (Annamma and Morrison, 2018). Ryan and Grieshaber (2005) describe the multiple ways in which teacher education programs can move beyond positioning hegemonic developmentalism as absolute or objective knowledge that should drive practice, including incorporating learning activities that situate all knowledge as context-specific, historical, and political. Teacher education programs that are required to demonstrate adherence to standards grounded in narrow views of development can situate that knowledge within its historical and political context, including the ways it has and can harm multiply marginalized children of color and their families. This opens the door to sharing multiple ways of knowing that center and sustain the cultures of multiply marginalized children and families of color (e.g. juxtaposing hegemonic developmentalism with content from scholars of color and people with disabilities, as previously discussed). Situating all knowledge as contextualized and political also provides opportunities for pre-service teachers to critically reflect on the assumptions embedded in developmentalism and the ways it reflects incomplete, and potentially inaccurate, knowledge. Pre-service teachers of color, disabled teachers, and families and communities of color can contribute to these discussions as knowledge generators, breaking down the power hierarchies that dictate whose knowledge matters (Annamma and Morrison, 2018). Pre-service teachers of color and disabled teachers need to have their assets acknowledged and used as resources to both increase access and belonging within teacher education programs and support effective preparation for all teachers to serve multiply marginalized children of color and their families (Cheruvu et al., 2015; McDevitt, 2021; Valle et al., 2004).

DisCrit Pedagogy also requires engaging pre-service teachers in opportunities to reflect on their own identities and the impact this has on their schooling experiences and practice (Annamma and Morrison, 2018). Facilitating pre-service teachers’ reflections around their identities extends and facilitates the situation of knowledge as contextualized and political. Ryan and Grieshaber (2005) describe the use of images to support pre-service teachers in reflecting on their professional identities, providing opportunities to push back against a singular image of a “good teacher” as a white woman who demonstrates attributes and practices grounded in hegemonic developmentalism. It is important that pre-service teachers interrogate both their professional and personal identities in relation to schooling. Pre-service teachers can develop critical school memoirs to explore their multiple social identities (Muller et al., 2022; Wynter-Hoyte et al., 2021). In the memoirs, pre-service teachers can reflect on their educational experiences and analyze school artifacts (e.g. school news clippings, yearbooks, or websites) in relation to marginalization and power. Muller et al. (2022) describe how memoirs allowed pre-service teachers to identify the ways racial hierarchies shaped their experiences and views of Blackness in particular, although analyses of other forms of oppression were present as well.

Identity-based reflections and analyses of how oppression influences schooling could be incorporated into multiple types of assignments that require pre-service teachers to articulate their teaching philosophy or describe the children and families with whom they work in a setting. For example, Templeton and Cheruvu (2020) describe an assignment where pre-service teachers drew on critical perspectives and culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies to reimagine taken-for-granted classroom practices. The assignment supported the pre-service teachers’ resistance to narrow perspectives of teaching and learning. Additionally, the edTPA and many teaching portfolios require pre-service teachers to describe the demographics and characteristics of the children in their classroom during student teaching. Such an exercise could be supplemented by pre-service teachers also reflecting on the ways their own identities and school experiences do and do not match those of the teachers and children in the classroom; how that impacts their practice; and how they can resist systems of oppression (e.g. racism and ableism) that impact the children and families with whom they work. No description of children or families should be devoid of considerations of their identities and historical and political contexts.

Importantly, such reflections about identities and larger systems of oppression should not be a one-time exercise, but rather can be adapted to different courses and experiences to be tailored to a specific content. A teacher educator interviewed by Drame et al. (2022: 37) articulated: “Whatever we evaluate and assess in our pre-service teachers, they’re going to value. If we value racial equity and we assess them according to that, then they’re going to value racial equity.” Even assignments that are tied to preparation for specific licensure requirements should include an opportunity for pre-service teachers to reflect on their positionality and how systems of oppression have impacted the knowledge they are being expected to reproduce. For example, a critical school memoir can be adapted to a critical language memoir in a required Literacy Methods course to provide pre-service teachers with the opportunity to unpack their language experiences and reflect on how their home language influenced their schooling (Wynter-Hoyte et al., 2021). At the same time, pre-service teachers can consider the ways in which hegemonic views of language development are based on, and ascribe value to, English monolingualism (Saavedra and Pérez, 2018). Such reflections do not have to be writing-heavy exercises. Souto-Manning et al. (2019) demonstrate how pre-service teachers of color employed poems to process and express their identities and experiences. In this way, it is important that teacher educators counter narrow views of development and learning in their own practice as well by providing opportunities for pre-service teachers to show their knowledge in accessible and culturally affirming ways (Annamma and Morrison, 2018).

Finally, DisCrit Pedagogy requires that teacher educators themselves critically and iteratively reflect on their own interpretations of what knowledge matters and whose knowledge is represented and affirmed (Annamma and Morrison, 2018). Preparation program syllabi are a key artifact reflecting program content, learning activities, and assignments. While syllabi are typically driven by state and national standards requirements (Mickelson et al., 2022), they are an important first step to ensuring that learning activities and assignments provide opportunities for pre-service educators to challenge hegemonic knowledge. Conducting syllabi and activity audits can guide teacher educators in reflecting on whose experiences and perspectives are being affirmed and the extent to which alternatives to traditional developmentalism are present. Garrity and Catlett (2022) describe three steps for promoting equitable and inclusive practices through syllabi audits and (re)development: (1) deciding what is important through collaborative processes; (2) measuring what matters using a syllabus rubric; and (3) deconstructing and reconstructing syllabi to ensure that the content and instructional practices are aligned, appropriately in-depth, and explicit. There are multiple considerations for teacher educators to engage in this process from a DisCrit Pedagogy lens. First, given the hegemonic views of development that reinforce race and ability hierarchies in teacher education (Ferri and Bacon, 2011; Lucero et al., 2020; Souto-Manning, 2019a), teacher educators must prioritize partnering with multiply marginalized communities of color throughout collaboration efforts. Such partnerships can help expand what knowledge(s) are centered and affirmed in teacher education.

Next, Garrity and Catlett (2022) recommend a syllabus rubric to examine how content is incorporated across coursework to support knowledge acquisition and application along specific indicators, often determined by professional standards and competencies. Adding a DisCrit Pedagogy lens to such a syllabus audit facilitates explicit consideration of whose knowledge is being supported and applied in application activities. By following that line of thinking, teacher educators can help (re)define what counts as knowledge in order to combat racism and ableism (Annamma and Morrison, 2018). For instance, is multiply marginalized children’s, families’, and teachers’ wisdom being used in activities that ask pre-service teachers to describe and/or respond to children’s development? Challenging whose knowledge is being centered and affirmed may result in additions or adjustments to the syllabus rubric indicators being used to assess coursework and assignments. Moreover, we emphasize that knowledge acquisition and application should be seen as cyclical processes that require reflection, investigation, dialogue, and problem-solving to address manifestations of racism and ableism, and transformative action.

Finally, Garrity and Catlett (2022) describe the use of an assignment alignment tool to support syllabi deconstruction and reconstruction. Applying the tool requires answering questions about what course objectives/learning outcomes each assignment addresses; which assignments support knowledge acquisition and application; and which assignments explicitly focus on syllabus rubric indicators related to equity, inclusion, and cultural and linguistic responsiveness. Importantly, an assignment alignment tool itself can be tailored to different program and community contexts (Garrity and Catlett, 2022), allowing teacher educators to be responsive to marginalized communities. Are assignments providing opportunities to critically examine the historical and political contexts and implications of the knowledge being supported, including how different knowledge(s) contribute to or help dismantle systems of oppression? Such determinations would again require collaboration with multiply marginalized communities. Thus, collaboration is a concerted initial step in the planning process, as well as an important opportunity to embed throughout planning and assessment.

DisCrit Solidarity

The need for DisCrit Solidarity

In addition to shaping the early childhood teacher education curriculum and pedagogy, hegemonic developmentalism impacts relationships, particularly through an emphasis on independence, which aligns with perspectives of the Global North (Karmiris, 2021) and promotes the ableist perspective that self-reliance can and should be achieved through effort (Annamma and Handy, 2019). Such underlying assumptions about relationships and our obligations to one another inform multiple facets of early childhood teacher education (Wynter-Hoyte et al., 2021). For example, how early childhood teacher educators build and maintain relationships with pre-service students reflects assumptions about expertise (whose knowledge and perspectives matter), power (e.g. race and ability hierarchies), and independence. If teacher educators do not address how systemic racism and ableism inform the relationships of multiply marginalized teachers, children, and families of color, they risk essentializing difference and reinforcing whiteness and able-bodiedness as the norm (e.g. Kulkarni et al., 2022).

The relationships that pre-service teachers develop during their preparation program set the stage for future professional relationships with peers, mentors, families, and children (McGowan et al., 2021). Thus, early childhood teacher educators must not only attend to fostering their own authentic relationships with multiply marginalized pre-service teachers, but also create programmatic structures that foster solidaristic relationships between supervisors, mentor teachers, and multiply marginalized pre-service teachers. Said relationships may be fraught when white, nondisabled teacher educators, supervisors, and mentors are unprepared to critically examine their own privileges, biases, and contributions to oppressive systems (Souto-Manning, 2022; Wynter-Hoyte et al., 2021; Tension 2). For instance, Cheruvu et al. (2015) document how pre-service teachers’ relationships with white supervising teachers were strained when their perspectives about children’s development, diversity, and cultural responsiveness differed from those of the dominant field and their white supervisors. Given these challenging experiences, teacher educators must particularly attend to multiply marginalized teachers’ initial identification with and induction into the early childhood field, as well as the formation of professional support networks (Cheruvu et al., 2015; Souto-Manning and Cheruvu, 2016). DisCrit Solidarity builds from critical consciousness to foster authentic, meaningful relationships across settings, and emphasizes interdependence (Annamma and Handy, 2019).

An additional tension arises when early childhood teacher educators aim to foster future teachers’ professional identity while also working to challenge limited views of what counts as the knowledge that should inform practice (Tension 3). Traditional developmentalism perpetuates narrow views of desirable development and behavior that align with the white, middle-class perspectives of the Global North (Gupta, 2020; Saavedra and Pérez, 2018). When teachers draw on constrictive views of professional identity and knowledge regarding children’s behavior and development, they can legitimate surveilling, intervening on, and punishing multiply marginalized children of color in the name of moving children towards white, nondisabled ways of being and behaving (Migliarini and Annamma, 2019; Park et al., 2021). Therefore, teacher educators need to promote the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that allow future teachers to view children’s behaviors not only as valid communication, but also as purposeful resistance that signals the ways they are being marginalized and shows educators what children need instead (Migliarini and Annamma, 2019). Moreover, when teachers construct their professional identity as the educational experts, they may take the lead in educational planning at the expense of honoring parent expertise—a finding that is particularly robust when teachers are working with families of color experiencing poverty (Cheatham and Ostrosky, 2013). Thus, teacher educators have a particular responsibility to act in solidarity with multiply marginalized children, families, and teachers by centering them as knowledge generators (Migliarini and Annamma, 2019). DisCrit Solidarity honors multiple ways of knowing, being, and feeling, recognizing how the perspectives of multiply marginalized communities are worthy and valuable (Annamma and Handy, 2019).

Early childhood teacher educators must also consider how they can prioritize solidarity within institutional confines that promote hierarchical power relationships between teacher educators and pre-service teachers in the name of student success (Tension 4). Just as early childhood classroom policies regarding attendance and behavior can serve to uphold white, nondisabled interests (Souto-Manning, 2022), teacher education program policies are not neutral (Souto-Manning, 2019b). For example, rigid attendance policies that penalize students who are unable to document illness with a doctor’s note disproportionately impact disabled students and those without access to health care. Thus, teacher educators must interrogate how policies and practices (re)construct power, and reflect on who is likely to benefit or be harmed as a result of decisions.

At the same time, teacher educators must be wary of the ways that progress for multiply marginalized people of color only occurs when it aligns with white, nondisabled needs (i.e. interest convergence that benefits white, nondisabled people; Annamma et al., 2013). For example, recruiting students of color often aligns with white faculty interests to receive particular grants or make programs appear more diverse, but that can create more harm when programs are not equipped to support students of color (Drame et al., 2022). Program changes based only on interest convergence can maintain inequities if they are not coupled with meaningful efforts to act in solidarity with multiply marginalized communities of color (Drame et al., 2022). Grounded in the priorities and experiences of multiply marginalized pre-service teachers, children, and families of color, DisCrit Solidarity can drive commitments for teacher educators to transform power dynamics and engage in more equitable relationships with multiply marginalized pre-service teachers.

Enacting DisCrit Solidarity

Relationships that are rooted in solidarity must recognize the unique gifts and resistance of teachers, children, and families of color, as well as those with disabilities, and reject superficial, color-evasive notions of “love for all” that do not acknowledge both systemic oppressions and individual needs (Annamma and Handy, 2019; Annamma et al., 2017; Wynter-Hoyte et al., 2021). To start, early childhood teacher educators need to recognize and seek to disrupt the ways in which interconnected oppressions are (re)constructed in classrooms (Annamma and Handy, 2019). For instance, teacher educators can provide all pre-service teachers with knowledge and skills to understand their future students’ emotions and behaviors as welcome and valid strategies of resistance. By understanding the emotions and behaviors of multiply marginalized children of color as creative strategies of resistance, teacher educators and pre-service teachers can combat the constrictive nature of hegemonic developmentalism, which punishes behaviors that fall outside of normative expectations (Annamma and Handy, 2019). Consequently, teacher education activities can explore what practices, such as behavioral supports, look like when they are not in the service of white, nondisabled norms.

Additionally, teacher educators should strive to develop positive teacher identities among pre-service teachers of color and disabled teachers by positioning them as valuable and knowledgeable (Annamma and Handy, 2019; Csoli and Gallagher, 2012; Kulkarni et al., 2022). For example, rather than positioning pre-service teachers of color as newcomers with little knowledge or skills, teacher educators can position them as both learners and experts whose insights and lived experiences matter (Kulkarni et al., 2022). This stance promotes the reciprocal teacher educator–student relationships that are needed in early childhood teacher education (McGowan et al., 2021), and can help combat imposter syndrome and deficit perspectives perpetuated by racism and ableism (Kulkarni et al., 2022). Further, teacher educators can honor the complicated emotions that multiply marginalized teachers of color may have in response to interlocking oppressions such as racism and ableism (Annamma and Handy, 2019). This can be done by decentering white emotions and allowing for, but not requiring, emotional responses from multiply marginalized pre-service teachers of color. Following Annamma and Handy (2019), teacher educators—and pre-service teachers—can learn to ask why emotions and behaviors occurred, building connections between the injustices faced by multiply marginalized teachers and children of color, what they feel, and how they may behave as a result.

In addition to course-based opportunities to position pre-service teachers of color and disabled teachers as knowledgeable, teacher educators can explore structures outside of the classroom. For instance, Kulkarni et al. (2022) report how a critical affinity group afforded opportunities for pre-service and in-service teachers of color to process and share their perspectives about racism and ableism. The critical affinity group format, which was outside of the formalized structures of the teacher education program, provided unique opportunities for student–student and student–teacher educator relationship-building and solidarity. The group also purposefully allowed time, space, and safety for pre-service teachers to process emotions related to experiences of racism and ableism. Thus, through both course-based and external supports, teacher educators can cultivate solidarity by positioning pre-service teachers of color as agents of resistance.

Building from a position of politicized care (Annamma and Handy, 2019) and revolutionary love (Wynter-Hoyte et al., 2021), early childhood teacher educators can recognize relationships as both interpersonal and political to support broader advocacy against racist and ableist systems. Saavedra and Pérez (2018) detail how drawing on Global South epistemologies created new ways to engage with and alongside pre-service teachers, including opportunities for both the teacher educator and pre-service teachers to reflect on their intersectional identities and how these identities could impact relationships with multiply marginalized children and families. To further support advocacy through solidarity, early childhood teacher educators can reject the notion that leadership and progress must occur through dominant frameworks of control and individualism. Pham (2022) describes solidaristic leadership approaches enacted by teacher leaders of color as non-hierarchical, collectivist, and relationally intimate. For example, one El Salvadorian teacher leader redistributed power to Black colleagues, students, and families by advocating for Black leaders and Black-led spaces, and redistributing a stipend to planning team members.

Wynter-Hoyte et al. (2021) also describe how collective responsibility and interdependence informed faculty approaches to early childhood program development and enactment. For example, when white pre-service teachers’ discomfort with addressing racism led to opposition towards a Black teacher educator, other program faculty members followed her recommendation to adapt course structures. Other faculty joined key discussions, who could draw on their whiteness or other privileges (e.g. tenure) to demonstrate explicit support for the Black faculty member, and model willingness to engage with topics related to race and racism. These shifts demonstrated the faculty members’ commitments to one another as they collaboratively engaged white students in examining and grappling with their discomfort. Such critical reflection and subsequent action is essential for unlearning racism and ableism, and working towards interdependence (Annamma and Handy, 2019).

Conclusion

Narrow hegemonic views of children’s development and learning serve to reify racism and ableism (Ferri and Bacon, 2011; Saavedra and Pérez, 2018). Despite the increasing standardization of early childhood teacher education, teacher educators have a responsibility to help dismantle oppressive systems and prepare early childhood educators to serve the most marginalized young children and families. At the same time, multiply marginalized pre-service teachers, including teachers of color and disabled teachers, should be supported in their development of a positive teacher identity and have their lived experiences honored as contributing necessary knowledge. DisCrit Resistance (i.e. DisCrit Curriculum, DisCrit Pedagogy, and DisCrit Solidarity) offers a framework that teacher education programs can employ to explicitly counter hegemonic norms in the current system while advocating for larger systemic changes. It is a lens through which teacher educators can employ critical reflection and action that engages with the tensions that arise when combating racism and ableism rather than continuing to default to dominant norms.