Exploring the Lived Experiences of Middle Grades Teacher Candidates Engaging in Critical Consciousness to Inform Equity-Oriented and Responsive Teacher Education

To inform equity-oriented and responsive middle grades teacher education, the current article is a qualitative study of lived experiences candidates enacting critical consciousness in their first semester two-year preparation program. Equity-oriented education defined as professional learning for preservice inservice teachers that advances development consciousness, develops capacity, knowledge, skills culturally developmentally young adolescents, attends to cultural historical locations, pedagogical needs, interests, concerns. Using phenomenological research tradition theories relevant pedagogies, researchers closely examined 20 participants’ narratives annotated reflections on how they “read world” perceived through lenses locations descriptions with incidents injustice documented Justice Journals. Two major themes emerged data regarding engaging consciousness: (1) noticing commenting systems oppression (2) describing responses strategies connection instances patterns injustice. Within theme oppression, three sub-themes included (a) gender socialization, (b) classism, (c) racism. injustice, analysis revealed four sub themes: responding discomfort, critiquing/distancing, stopping, (d) feeling blessed. These represent candidates’ primarily focused awareness, reflection, analysis. Implications developing are provided.