Talkin’ in the company of my sistas: The counterlanguages and deliberate silences of Black female students in teacher education

In this article, the author draws on critical race theory to examine Black female preservice teachers’ perspectives on their racial identity in relation to how they are positioned inside and outside the context of a traditional teacher education program in the United States. The author shares findings generated from a year-long ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of the discursive practices of Black female preservice teachers, all nonstandard language and dialect speakers, across three settings, including the university classroom, the K-12 practicum teaching classroom, and a social setting. Critical race theories and conversational analysis proved useful for revealing the deliberate decisions that these preservice teachers made about social and personal engagement and how these choices positioned themselves and each other as insiders within and beyond the dominant context of teacher education.