“Kids Who are Trouble Know Who He is.” Disentangling Pre-Service Teacher Sources of Knowledge about Race and Police

Prior research has explored the complex issue of how future teachers learn to engage in socially just and antiracist teaching practices. This research revealed reasons why pre-service teachers do not engage in racialized conversations, including not believing that it is appropriate to talk about race with young children, and exhibiting resistance through emotions of guilt and fragility. Nevertheless, scholars must fully understand how pre-service teachers think about race and where they learn about race. Using Mezirow's Transformative Learning Theory as a lens to understand this phenomenon and Critical Whiteness Studies as an analytical frame, I first examined the experiences that participants had in which they obtained knowledge about race and police. I then considered how the Whiteness connected to these experiences shaped participants' frames of reference or ways of thinking about race and police. I then offered intentional experiences to the participants in the form of classroom scenarios, and videos to better understand participant frames of reference and the influence of Whiteness on those frames of reference. My findings suggested that participants drew from multiple knowledge sources when thinking about race and police. These knowledge sources included future teachers' families, interactions with children, and university coursework. Conceptualizing participant frames of reference was complicated by discourses of Whiteness that were intertwined throughout experiences thus influencing frames of references. Implications for practice and research include continuing to investigate emotions associated with racialized events and considering the effects of Whiteness as a discourse on students of color.