Is This What We Want Them to Say? Examining the Tensions in What U.S. Preservice Teachers Say about Risk and Academic Achievement

This article was published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol 26, Issue 4, Author(s): Keffrelyn D. Brown, “Is This What We Want Them to Say? Examining the Tensions in What U.S. Preservice Teachers Say about Risk and Academic Achievement“, Pages 1077-1087, Copyright Elsevier (May 2010).

Questions abound in the U.S. based teacher education literature about the kind of knowledge teachers should possess about learning and academic achievement that will enable them to provide all students with an equitable, effective schooling experience.

This paper examines how a group of preservice teachers—enrolled in a teacher education program that challenges deficit thinking—understand and talk about academic achievement.
The article pays particular attention to the extent to which the candidates account for academic achievement and recognize potential academic risk.

Based on the paradoxical stability and tentativeness of teacher candidates' talk about risk, academic achievement and the deployment of the “at-risk” category, the author suggests the need to illuminate the complex body of knowledge that informs teacher candidates' understanding, particularly the knowledge deployed in teacher education curriculum.