1. Teacher Education as a Vehicle for Social Justice
and Transformation: Lessons Learned from
Contemporary Theorists and Current Research
on Teacher Disposition, Funds of Knowledge, and
Race
Jose Lalas, Ph.D.
Professor of Literacy and Teacher Education
Director, Center for Educational Justice

2. To institutionalize teacher
preparation as a vehicle for
social justice and
transformation,
we have to expose our
teachers to relevant,
appropriate, critical, and
provocative ideas!

3. Sources of Relevant Ideas
**Contemporary Theorists/Ideas
**My Current Research Work in Collaboration
with other Colleagues:
-teacher disposition
-funds of knowledge
-race

5. 2005 1st and 4th Annual Institute on Educational Leadership for
&
Social Justice
2008
James Banks: Multicultural Education
“We can get a full view of our own backgrounds and
behaviors only by viewing them from the perspectives
of other racial and ethnic cultures”
“the essence of culture is not its artifacts, tools, or
other tangible cultural elements but how the members of
the group interpret, use, and perceive them. It is the
values, symbols, interpretations, and perspectives that
distinguish one people from another in modernized
societies.”
Dr. Banks extends his ideas of multicultural teaching
which involves equity pedagogy and prejudice reduction
into citizenship education within a global context.

6. 2006 2nd. Annual Institute on Educational Leadership for Social
Justice
Catherine Marshall: Leadership for Social Justice
“We must engage with new terminology and concepts
such as border culture, heterosexism, wholistc visioning,
bridge people, cultural capital, equity audits,
hybridity, ... and others that go beyond the dominant
view of school leadership.”
Dr. Marshall seeks to build capacity and collaboraton
among scholars, practtoners, policymakers, and
students to infuence the existng powerful school
structures to incorporate social justce ideas, incentves,
and mandates.

7. 2007 3rd. Annual Institute on Educational Leadership for Social
Justice
Luis Moll: Funds of knowledge
The students’ multiple identities, social backgrounds,
and lived experiences are dynamic sources of “funds
of knowledge.” A variety of community and household
experiences as well as networks of friends, relatives,
and community contacts for any economic assistance
and social participation shape the strengths students
bring into classrooms.
Dr. Moll encourages researchers and teachers to
build from the “funds of knowledge” students already
have by openly acknowledging diversity in language,
culture, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and class
backgrounds as valuable points of reference.

8. 5th. Annual Institute on Educational Leadership for Social Justice
2009
Jean Anyon: Social class, Urban education, neighborhood
poverty, critical social explanation
“As education policymakers and
practitioners, we can act on the power of
urban poverty, low-wage work, and housing
segregation to dwarf most curricular,
pedagogical, and other educational reforms.”
Aside from her work on social class and
hidden curriculum in the classroom, Dr.
Anyon argues that we need not only better
schools but also the reform of public policies
concerning job, wage, housing, tax, and
transportation.

9. 2010 6th. Annual Institute on Educational Leadership for Social
Justice
Donaldo Macedo: Critical pedagogy; co-author with Freire
“Our colonial literacy model is designed to
domesticate so as to enable the “manufacture of
consent.”
Dr. Macedo challenges educators to examine
“potentially dangerous educational practices” and
engage in critical literacy to avoid “literacy for
stupidification.” He co-authored the book “Reading the
Word, Reading the World.”

10. 2011 7th. Annual Institute on Educational Leadership for Social Justice
Gloria Ladson-Billings:Critical Race Theory
“My decision to deploy a critical race
theoretical framework in my scholarship is
intimately linked to my understanding of the
potential and personal stake I have in the
education of Black children…”
“… culturally relevant teaching uses student
culture in order to maintain it and to
transcend the negative effects of the
dominant culture.”

11. 2012 8th. Annual Institute on Educational Leadership for Social Justice
David Berliner: Out-of-school factors
“Although the power of schools and educators to infuence
individual students is never to be underestmated, the out-of-
school factors associated with poverty play both a powerful and a
limitng role in what can actually be achieved.”
Dr. Berliner asserts that “among the lowest social classes
environmental factors, partcularly family and neighborhood
infuences, not genetcs, is strongly associated with academic
performance.”

12. Teacher Disposition Research
(Lalas & Bustos, 2012)
• Behaviors, characteristics, and perceptions teachers possess and
demonstrate as they work with students
• Fairly resistant to change and is consistent with the social realities under
which it was produced
• Influences the characteristics, observed behaviors and practices of an
individual in dealing with the realities around them
• Generates values, beliefs, traits, and perceptions that correspond to his or
her socialization, training, and community practices

13. Teacher Disposition: Key
Findings
• Teaching reading was mainly the school’s
responsibility
• Responses revealed “bottom-up” procedures that
facilitate reading through the acquisition of a series
of hierarchical skills
• Being energetic, motivated, patience, encouraging,
cooperative, and hardworking, resourcefulness,
loving, and respectful were associated with effective
teaching reading and writing.

14. Teacher Disposition: Key
Findings
• Limited access of teachers and the overall
community to different types of books and literacy-
related materials
• Teacher orientation in teaching reading was more
affective than cognitive or skill-based
• Writing was synonymous to penmanship

15. Teacher Disposition: Lessons Learned
• Teachers who are unable to think beyond the
“bottom up” and fail to consider vocabulary
development, comprehension, literature
response, and other meaning-based strategies,
might have made the lack of success in
achieving advanced proficiency in reading a
predictable outcome.

16. Teacher Disposition: Lessons Learned
• A teacher with an excellent disposition in
teaching reading ---
 involves all students in worthy meaningful and purposeful
activities
 Promotes the recognition of the value of each individual
 creates a learning environment that is democratic, just,
equitable, and caring.

17. Funds of Knowledge
• Funds of knowledge – practices that are
embedded in the labor, domestic, family, and
community affairs of Mexican American families
• Students’ multiple identities, social backgrounds,
and lived experiences are dynamic sources of
“funds of knowledge.”

18. Funds of Knowledge as it relates to
poverty…
• The notion of funds of knowledge is a recognition
and affirmation of home and community practices
including survival practices.
• It builds positive social identities for students and
informs teachers about the harmful ways in which
the school curriculum may exclude some and
privilege others.

19. Funds of Knowledge: Key
Findings

20. Funds of Knowledge: Key
Findings

21. Funds of Knowledge: Key
Findings

22. Funds of Knowledge: Key
Findings

23. Lessons Learned
• Students are given very adult-like roles in the home,
take on a mentor role with siblings and relatives,
develop networking skills for support, and work in a
team-like setting to solve problems and pass on
family values.
• This “funds of knowledge”—may go unused if
students are expected to remain passive, quiet, and
have little influence on the decisions made in class.

24. Race: Outcast Phenomenon
(Clay & Lalas, 2012)

25. Race: Key Findings
Tolerated :
• “I did not feel as isolated as I did in my original program,
but there still was not a feeling of being welcomed, it was
more of a feeling of being tolerated.”
Proving themselves
• “The professor told me he was not sure that I would be
able to do well in the program... Of course I had to prove
him wrong.”

26. Race: Key Findings
Isolated
• “I felt isolated and lonely most of the time…”
• “Not only did I feel ostracized by the other White
Americans, but the international students (mostly Chinese)
were not very friendly to me either.”
Invisible
• I guess that just comes with the territory of being a Black
student on a predominantly white university campus.”

27. Race: Key Findings
Overcoming stereotypes
• “I didn't want to leave them [white classmates] with a bad
experience and cause them to think that all blacks are
overbearing loudmouths.”
• “I wanted to avoid the misconceptions of being in the "all
black" group… and purposely joined the group of students
sitting closest to me.”
Feeling judged
• “Instead of being welcomed by the professor, I was
interrogated about what I was doing there, if I met the criteria
for enrolling…”

28. Race: Lessons Learned
Diversity is a challenging issue because some groups are either
culturally or structurally empowered or disadvantaged due to their:
 Race
 Ethnicity
 Religion
 Language
 Handicapping conditions
 Gender
 Sexual orientation
 Social class
 Citizenship status

29. Any questions
• Maraming Salamat Po!
Send me an email at:
jose_lalas@redlands.edu
Dr. Jose Lalas
University of Redlands
School of Education
 Professor of Literacy and Teacher Education
 Director, Center for Educational Justice