Undergraduate Teacher Education that Cultivates Political Knowledge and Action in Future Teachers

Overview & Synopsis

Teacher education is charged with the goal of training teachers who will prepare the next generation of citizens. Since Horace Mann's common schools, teachers have been the purveyors of political education, often through teaching patriotic songs and celebrated historical events and individuals. Through liberal education and critical pedagogy, undergraduate teacher education can integrate and cultivate deep political knowledge (civic knowledge) with political action (civic engagement) to recontextualize and reify democratic living for prospective teachers before they enter their own classrooms. Undergraduate education has remained largely untapped for its potential to develop future teachers' dispositions and perspectives for the purpose of sustaining democracy in today's socially diverse classrooms. In this article, the author discusses how undergraduate teacher education cultivates political knowledge and action in future teachers.