Working in Solidarity: An Intersectional Self-Study Methodology as a Means to Inform Social Justice Teacher Education

In this article, we critically analyze our experiences in preparing pre-service teachers (PSTs) to teach for social justice. We utilized an intersectional lens to identify and validate our different positionalities and pedagogies. It is this interplay of validating our differences and commonalities that enabled us to form a sense of solidarity in our efforts to nurture our students’ critical consciousness. Through our collective engagement with intersectionality and self-study methodology, we co-constructed a common ground of what social justice teaching meant to us and how we navigated the highly personal, messy, and often contradictory experiences of engaging in this work with students. From this process, we uncovered three themes from our self-study: 1) curriculum is a living entity; 2) teaching is personal and vulnerable, and 3) co-teaching and collaboration invigorates us to keep practicing our social justice orientation.