Teacher Candidate Supervision for Social Justice: Orientations, Practices, and Challenges

The need for teachers who are thoughtful and attentive to issues of social justice is more apparent now than ever before. Teacher education can and should be tasked with preparing teachers to serve a student population that is becoming more diverse over time. As teacher educators who function within both the university coursework and student teaching fieldwork spaces, teacher candidate supervisors are well-positioned to support candidates to make sense of and incorporate social justice-centered practices in their teaching. Building on the findings of Jacobs (2006), a comprehensive literature review of journal articles published in the last 20+ years revealed that orientations toward supervision for social justice can be characterized as "multicultural," "critical," "culturally responsive," or "anti-racist." This literature base described practices associated with supervision for social justice such as problematizing, storytelling, critical reflection, role-playing and rehearsals, and the use of professional learning communities. The identified literature also details challenges to supervising for social justice, including institutional barriers and power hierarchies, silence, or hesitancy with regard to conversations of race and racism, and the need for more research.