Abstract

Shallow notions of social justice where race & oppression-evasive discourses including notions of “niceness” and “kindness” (i.e., institutional norms and practices that obscure the structural and ideological roots of racial injustice) are a staple of elementary education teacher preparation in the U.S. Building on Newcomer’s (2018) notion of funds of caring, “authentically caring and culturally responsive relationships between teachers and students” (p. 182), and critical pedagogy which challenges conformity to injustice by cultivating awareness of unjust socio-political conditions in learner’s lives we conceptualize “critical funds of caring pedagogy.” Critical funds of caring is a pedagogical stance and component of critical teacher agency that teacher educators of Color embody in their teaching and relationship building with pre-service, linguistically minoritized teachers of Color. In this conceptual paper, we highlight four components of critical funds of caring pedagogy that extend our understanding of how teacher educators of Color utilize their critical teacher agency to confront hegemonic, assimilatory and subtractive schooling practices. These four components include: 1) enacting teaching as political work 2) caring rooted in collective liberation, 3) humanizing vulnerability and 4) culturally and linguistically sustaining praxis.

Keywords: critical teacher agency, critical pedagogy, teacher education, preservice teachers of color, teacher educators of color, politics of care, kindness, elementary education

How to Cite:

Nevárez, A. & Mendoza Nevárez, D., (2025) ““But is their Kindness Rooted in our Liberation?” Teacher Educators of Color Reimagining Critical Pedagogy through a Critical Funds of Caring Approach”, International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 14(1). doi: https://doi.org//ijcp.1399