Through the Looking Glass to Ourselves: Developing Self-Understanding in the Online Multicultural and Bilingual Teacher Education Classroom

Conceptual Framework

This chapter draws from, and builds on, four conceptual points of entry. These points are cultural (inclusive of language) learning, dialogue and systemic oppression, honest and open self-examination and self-critique, and the public school-to-prison pipeline.

This chapter engages Krashen’s (1983 & 1996) ideas on language learning and expands these ideas in discussing learning about e-racism, e-classism, and the other e-isms that manifest in the online multicultural and bilingual educational learning environment. Accordingly, the chapter describes the processes by which knowledge beyond the students’ initial capabilities is cultivated, not only through connection to prior knowledge, but also within an e-learning context that lowers the students’ affective filters or resistance to learning usually brought on by anxiety or fear.

This chapter connects to Freire’s work (1993) on dialogue and systemic oppression in facilitating all students’ understanding that they have the ability and the right to interact in, and with, the world and, in so doing, can change it if they choose. Specifically, this chapter embraces Freire’s notion that educational resistance to systems of oppression helps both the teacher and learner achieve the liberatory goal of becoming more fully human.

This chapter is buoyed by Lorde’s (1984) commitment to confront her worst personal and political realities in order to become free to express her best personal and political realities, and to be open to the same from others. Lorde’s commitment was borne of her decision to overcome her silence about all of whom she was, in particular to ‘come out’ as lesbian. In deciding to speak out about her true, complex identity, Lorde was catapulted into action against myriad injustices in the world. In engaging online multicultural and bilingual teacher education students in confronting their and others’ worst so they can express their and experience others’ best, the hope is that they will, in turn, do the same with and for their PK-12 students.