Educational Equity and the Teacher-Student Diversity Gap

This chapter introduces the theoretical and methodological foundations for this book, beginning with the overarching social-political problem of how to address educational inequity in the context of an enormous and persistent nationwide gap between the racial diversity of the student body and their home communities with the racial homogeneity of the teacher corps. We argue that the overwhelming Whiteness of education in the United States, including prospective and in-service teacher populations, coupled with the paucity of teachers of color, requires us to restructure teacher education to prepare White teachers for the practice of anti-racist education. We conclude the chapter with a brief description of our research project and an overview of the book.