This article builds a rationale for using the transformative pedagogy of critical race theory (CRT) to reframe early literacy teacher education and create counternarratives to address pervasive issues of inequity among minoritized students. This article also highlights the tensions that resulted from the author’s use of such a framework: Preservice teachers enrolled in the author’s early literacy methods course expressed feelings that focusing on issues of race and racism was at the expense of their “literacy training,” problems accepting the idea that they could be personally biased, and notions that the CRT frame was inapplicable to them because they were at White schools. This article makes practical suggestions for teacher educators’ efforts to counter such tensions and use CRT in order to address inequitable practices and meet the needs of minoritized students.
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