Apprenticing for Equity Literacy Teaching: A Needed Change in Teacher Education

Grounded by critical race and landscapes of practice perspectives, this study examined teacher candidates who were asked to use equity as a lens to describe students’ literacy learning opportunities in their practicum sites. Analysis of this writing revealed wide variation in candidates’ participation, including a group who regularly noticed equitable/inequitable literacy teaching practices and structures and discussed how they would resist/change those they considered inequitable and a group that primarily overlooked these reflective opportunities. Follow-up interviews with two candidates revealed their different equity stances. Study findings can be used to reconceptualize literacy practice to help candidates identify and challenge policies and ideas that sustain inequity.