Autobiography as a method for preservice teachers to analyze their expressed beliefs of multicultural, anti-racist education: Three case studies

Recently, teacher preparation programs have called for an increased awareness of issues surrounding the teaching of linguistic and cultural minority students. As the majority of preservice teachers are white and female, and with the growing diversity of incoming students, there is a noticeable need for discussions of race, privilege and power in teacher preparation programs. One way to open up this dialogue is with the use of narratives and autobiographies connected to courses in antiracist, multicultural education. In this qualitative study, a case study methodology was used to demonstrate the promise of autobiography as a tool for unpacking preservice teachers racial identities so that they might become better teachers for an increasingly diverse student population. This study took place over the course of an eight-week seminar which I conducted with three white, female preservice teachers. All three participants were required to complete this seminar as it is a mandatory course for their program. The setting for this seminar was a small, liberal arts college in a large city in the Southwestern United States. To better understand these three preservice teachers expressed beliefs of multicultural education and how these beliefs might be influenced by this seminar, multiple data sources were collected including recordings of class discussions, field notes, analytic memos, written documents and classroom artifacts. The constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and analytic induction (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993) were used to analyze and interpret the data. Three major themes emerged from the data: what we learned; race, power and privilege; and narrative and autobiography as learning tools. Implications for teacher education from these cases include recommendations for curriculum and pedagogy, considerations for white preservice teachers, and the need for honesty and engagement in multicultural education courses