Breaking Barriers: Promoting Equity and Inclusion in Teacher Education Programs
A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102). This special issue belongs to the section "Teacher Education".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2025 | Viewed by 171
Special Issue Editor
Interests: teacher education and professional development; critical race theory; urban education; ESL/ELL learners
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In this political moment, where dissonant discourses abound regarding what teachers must and must not do, it is no wonder that many teachers feel uncertain, vulnerable, and fatigued. This is particularly concerning for teacher education stakeholders—including university-based faculty and program leaders, and field-based mentor teachers and school leaders—working to promote equity and inclusion in teacher education. The looming question is: how can we engage both beginner and seasoned teachers with socially just instruction and critical praxis in the context of their professional learning and development? Against this backdrop, this Special Issue, “Promoting Equity and Inclusion in Teacher Education Programs,” centers on the pivotal role of socially just teaching and critical praxis in transforming teacher education. This Special Issue aims to explore both conceptual and practical possibilities to enact more just and humane praxis for making impactful changes in current teacher education programs.
The ultimate goal is to make teacher education a critically engaged endeavor that results in the promotion of equity and inclusion for all.
This Special Issue welcomes contributions that highlight the conceptualization and empirical examples of praxis—the link between critical reflection and action for transformation (Freire, 1998)—within and across the institutional boundaries of teacher education. This Special Issue invites contributors to consider the different levels at which issues of (in)equity and in/exclusion operate—e.g., epistemologically, pedagogically, curricula-wise, intersectionally, institutionally, and structurally—using a variety conceptual frameworks (e.g., teaching for social justice, critical pedagogies, critical race theory, intersectionality, humanizing pedagogies) and methodologies (e.g., conceptual, qualitative, post-qualitative).
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include, but are not limited to:
- Engaging teacher candidates in culturally responsive and sustaining practices;
- Re-thinking and re-envisioning teacher education curricula towards anti-racist and decolonizing goals;
- Praxis-based reflections (e.g., individual/collective reflections of teacher educators);
- Critical (race/feminist) praxis to counter hegemonic ideologies in teacher education programs;
- Curricular, pedagogical, and institutional reforms to support intersectionally minoritized teachers of color.
I look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Jihea Maddamsetti
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- equity
- inclusion
- social justice
- critical praxis
- teacher education
- socially just instruction
- humanizing pedagogies
- decolonization
- intersectionality
- critical race theory
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