Hopeful or Hopeless? Teacher Education in Turbulent Times

Education policies and schooling in England continue to sustain if not exacerbate the simultaneous notions of assimilation into the mainstream whilst maintaining the discourse of the “Other” within. Teacher education continues to be part of an education system designed to assimilate Black, Asian and minority-ethnic school students be they newly arrived children of migrant families or born in England. The increasingly diverse pupil population is contrasted with a predominantly White teacher workforce which is mandated to promote fundamental British values, to act as state instruments of surveillance and to advance Eurocentric curricula to perpetuate the dominant discourse of whiteness. So, amidst this turbulent social and political milieu, how can teacher education be cultivated as a place for hope and change? This chapter shows how the whiteness of teacher education can be disrupted to advance student teachers’ understanding of race and racism, and how they can become catalysts for hope and change.