Beyond “Good-Faith” Efforts: Diversifying the Faculty Ranks in Teacher Education through Equity-Conscious Recruitment Practices

Abstract

ABSTRACT This autoethnographic cross-case study articulates a set of field-tested strategies, focusing on how White-dominated teacher-preparation programs (TPPs) could recruit a greater number of teacher educators who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) by actively designing, implementing, and modeling equity-conscious recruitment practices. The conceptual framework describes the instrumental value that BIPOC teacher educators bring to Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) by drawing on a sociocultural assets-based view of racially diverse professionals in historically White settings. Methods involved a directed approach to content analysis of 50 search-related documents across 10 faculty searches that the author facilitated between the years 2009–2018 that led to all-BIPOC hires. The findings focus on three major milestones during a typical faculty search with an emphasis on the contexts of TPPs: (a) planning for equitable and inclusive practices from start to finish through a model of shared accountability, (b) encouraging search committees to actively engage in innovative approaches to recruitment, including traditional and non-traditional strategies, and (c) supporting stakeholders, such as committee members and voting faculty who have direct or indirect decision-making power in faculty searches, in reducing cognitive errors throughout the evaluation and selection process. Implications are offered for practice and theory.