Conceptualizing White-Ability Saviorism: A Necessary Reckoning With Ableism in Urban Teacher Education

Abstract

White saviorism is a well-documented phenomenon in the education literature. Particularly, researchers have made connections between white saviorism and teacher preparation for urban contexts serving Students of Color negatively impacted by legacies of systemic racism. Scholars are increasingly taking an intersectional lens to understand the ways in which racism and ableism intersect, yet much of the literature on white saviorism does not critically examine the role of ableism. In this meta-ethnography, we review extant qualitative research on urban teacher preparation in an effort to extend the analysis to include a robust examination of ableism and deepen our understandings of white supremacy in these spaces. To this end, we conceptualize white-ability saviorism as a more comprehensive and precise way to understand the dynamics at play in urban teacher preparation that contribute to white supremacy and perpetuate educational inequities for urban Communities of Color.