Is CRRP Enough? Addressing Antiracism(s) in Teacher Education

Abstract

Anti-Black racism continues to exist as a troubling reality for many students across all levels of Ontario schooling. These systemic and targeted racisms perpetuated and perpetrated by students, educators, and the school community, are sometimes acknowledged but remain undisrupted. In this article, we unpack Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy (CRRP) and examine some of the ways it contributes to the ongoing resistance of anti-Black racism. We also ask how CRRP acknowledges and enacts antiracism in Ontario teacher education programs, public schools, and communities. We begin by providing an historical overview of CRRP, followed by outlining the ways it has been taken up in Ontario literature, policy, and practice. In our examination we find that CRRP can play an effective role in the work against anti-Black racisms but doing so requires understanding and engaging ‘culture’ in relational and non-tokenistic ways. We conclude that CRRP may contribute to helping educators understand the relationships to communities and the pathways where antiracism can be enacted.