They have also argued that this stereotype has tangibleconsequences, that it may cause differential treatmentof students by teachersand even psychological harm (Crystal, 1989; Lee, 1996; Osajima, 1993). Thesetheories imply that in order to challenge oppression educators should prohibitthe use of the stereotype-as well as the voicing of hateful, harmful speech(Butler, 1997)-or strategize ways to "resist,""challenge,"or dismantle an al-ready-existing structure(throughcritical pedagogy

Ratherthan aim for understandingof some critical perspective, anti-oppressivepedagogy should aim for effect byhaving students engage with relevant aspects of critical theory and extend itsterms of analysis to their own lives, but then critiqueit for what it overlooks orfor what it forecloses, what it says and makes possible as well as what it leavesunsaid and unthinkab

Thus, when students have both knowledge about oppression and critical think-ing skills they will be "empowered"to challenge oppressio

Othering,but also unlearning(Britzman,1998a) what one had previouslylearnedis "normal"and normati

By integratinglessons on the Otherthroughoutthe curriculumeducatorscanmove away from merely adding on a lesson here and there. Such integrationcanwork against the notion that teaching and learning about the Other can beachieved with a day's lesson, say, on Native Americans,and then anotheron thephysically disabled. In addition,the movement away from discretelessons aboutthe Other can work against the tendency to treat different groups as mutuallyexclusive. Such an approachenables educators to address the intersections ofthese differentidentities and their attendantforms of oppression,examining, forinstance, queer themes in ethnic literature(Athanases, 1996); queer sexualitiesin communities of color (Sears, 1995; Wilson, 1996) or critiques of feministmovements and feminist spaces by women from working-class backgrounds,women of color, women with queer sexualities, and so forth (Anzaldua, 1987;Maher & Tetreault, 1997; Schmitz et al, 1995

iduality of the students, but that constantly look to the margins to find stu-dents who are being missed and needs that have yet to be articulated.Educatorsshould create safe spaces based on what they see is needed right now, but theyshould also constantly re-create the spaces by asking, whom does this spaceharm or exclude? They should create supportive programs, but should alsoconstantly re-create the programsby asking, what practices does this programforeclose and make unthinkable?They should engage in equitable and relevantpedagogies, but should also constantly rethink their pedagogies by asking,whom does this pedagogy miss or silence? Withoutconstantlycomplicatingthevery terms of "the Other," an education "for the Other" will not be able toaddressthe ways it always and alreadymisses some Other

Are they only for studentswhoidentify as gay, lesbian, and bisexual, and perhapsare questioning their identi-ties as well? What about students harassed because they are perceived to begay/lesbian/bisexualbased on their gender expression, or children of gay/les-bian/bisexual parents? They are all harmed by homophobia, and they all de-serve support, but one could argue that they need different kinds of suppor

To fail to work against the various forms ofoppression is to be complicit with them

In short, these studies suggest that educators should not ignore the differ-ences in their students' identities, nor should they assume that their studentsare"normal"(i.e., expect them to have the normative,privileged identities) or neu-tral, i.e., without race, sex, and so forth (which is often read as "normal"any-way). Rather,educatorsneed to acknowledge and affirm differences and tailortheir teaching to the specifics of their student populati

For example, researcherssuggest that ratherthan assume that students ofcolor are intellectually inferior to White American students or culturally defi-cient, educatorsshould incorporatethe students' home culturesinto their class-rooms and pedagogies, teaching in a "culturallysensitive" or "culturallyrel-evant" way (Ladson-Billings, 1994; Philips, 1983; Sheets, 1995; Vogt, Jordan,& Tharp, 1993), or even teaching studentsabout the "cultureof power" so t

Many have even arguedthat schoolsshould be, or at least provide, learningspaces exclusively for the Othe

Students have respondedin a variety of ways to these oppressive treatmentsand dispositions. Some have "overcompensated"by hyperperformingin aca-demic, extracurricular,and social activities (Friend, 1993); some have accom-modated enough to succeed academically but have maintaineda sense of con-nection to their ethnic culture and community (M. Gibson, 1988); some haveresisted the dominantvalues and norms of school and society (Fordham,1996;Willis, 1977); some have experiencedan arrayof "hiddeninjuries,"such as thepsychologicalharmof internalizingor even resistingstereotypes(Osajima,1993);and some have endured depression, turned violence onto themselves by abus-ing drugs, starving and scarring their bodies, even attempting or committingsuicide (Orenstein, 1994; Uribe & Harbeck, 1992). Thus, to the onlooker, someof these students"succeed"in school, whereas others are marginalized,fail, anddrop out, while still others exhibit no signs that distinguish them from themajority of the student body. But despite the apparent differences betweenthose studentswho "succeed"and those who "fail"or simply fail to distinguishthemselves, all experience oppression

Sometimes, these disposi-tions-both conscious and unconscious ones-are about whom the Other isand/or should be. For example, researchershave pointed to various racial andethnic prejudices and stereotypes that influence how teachers treat their stu-dents of color (Miller, 1995), or the sexist ideologies and stereotypesthat influ-ence how teachers differently treat their female and male students and howstudentstreatone another(Kenway & Willis, 1998; Mac an Ghaill, 1994). Some-times, however, these dispositions are about whom the Other is not but shouldbecome or about whom the privileged must be in ordernot to be the Other.Forexample, researchershave pointed to the assimilationistideology that studentsof color should conformto the mainstreamcultureand become more like middle-class White Americans (Miller, 1995) or to the sexist and heterosexistassertionthat all boys should exhibit hegemonic masculinity in order to be "real"men(Askew & Ross, 1988)

Sometimes, however, the harm results from inactions by educators,administr

The viability of our proposal depends not onwhether standards exist but on their substance

Such knowledge andskills develop only with experience. It is realis-tic, however, to expect prospective teachers tocome away from their preservice teacher educa-tion programs with a vision of what culturallyresponsive teaching entails and an understand-ing of what culturally responsive teachers do.They could also be expected to demonstrate aninitial ability to tailor their teaching to particularstudents within particular contexts, a centralquality of culturally responsive teaching. Todevelop these understandings and abilities,prospective teachers need exposure to cultur-ally responsive teachers—by reading aboutthem, analyzing teaching cases featuring them,and watching them in action. They also needpractice in diverse classrooms themselves withfeedback from experienced responsive teachers.Such practice is most productive when it isaccompanied by guided reflection

Culturally responsive teachers also promotecandid discussions about topics that, althoughrelevant to the lives of the students, are regu-larly excluded from classroom conversations.For example, the teachers who participated in astudy conducted by Ladson-Billings and Henry(1990) openly discussed with their studentsissues related to drug use and teenage sex. Asthese researchers reported, instead of offeringmoral pronouncements, the teachers helped thestudents to examine why such conditionsexisted in their communities. In so doing, theinstructors validated the students’ experiences.At the same time, they made those experience

One way teachers can sup-port students’ construction of knowledge is byinvolving them in inquiry projects that havepersonal meaning to them

Unless prospective teachers experience theknowledge construction process as learners,they are not likely to adopt constructivist viewsof education or use constructivist strategies intheir own teaching (Feiman-Nemser & Melnick,1992). For example, teachers-to-be who as learn-ers were not provided frequent opportunities tointerpret ideas, solve problems, explain solu-tions, defend explanations, and refute argu-ments will probably not engage their future stu-dents in these types of exchange either. Teachereducators, therefore, must model constructivistpractices for their students. Simply tellingfuture teachers about the merits of cons-tructivist approaches will not produce thedesired results

If they see schools through the rose-col-ored glasses of the meritocratic myth, they willunwittingly perpetuate inequities. At the sametime, if we promote awareness of these inequi-ties without engendering an accompanyingbelief that schools can change, we will discour-age the very people needed to teach the chang-ing student population from becoming teachersat all

The more challenging tasks will beto motivate teacher candidates to inspect theirown beliefs about students from nondominantgroups and to confront negative attitudes theymight have toward these students

They convey this confi-dence in numerous ways, such as exposing stu-dents to an intellectually rigorous curriculum,teaching students strategies they can use tomonitor their own learning, setting high perfor-mance expectations for students and consis-tently holding them accountable for meetingthose expectations, encouraging students toexcel, and building on the individual and cul-tural resources they bring to school. Strategiessuch as these, which convey respect for studentsand affirm their differences, become the basisfor meaningful relationships between teachersand students and produce favorable academicresults

This will not be easy because in admit-ting that schools privilege some students—whether based on race, social class, gender, lan-guage group, or any other factor—prospectiveteachers begin to pull a thread that inevitablyleads to the unraveling of their commonsenseunderstanding of social stratification in theUnited States, a society that most have come tosee as a meritocracy

Ulti-mately, the benefit that can be derived from aframework such as this depends on the extent towhich those involved in preparing teachers at agiven institution come to share the vision of cul-turally responsive teaching inherent in thatframework. Such a vision cannot be imposedfrom the outside

We use the metaphor of strands tohighlight the interconnectedness of thesethemes. They are made up of knowledge, skills,and dispositions that, like the strands of threadin a piece of cloth, constantly intertwine anddepend on one another to form a cohesivewhole. We argue that they must be consciouslyand systematically woven throughout thelearning experiences of prospective teachers intheir coursework and fieldwork. Thus, theyserve as the organizing framework guiding theinfusion of attention to diversity throughout theteacher education curriculum

n this article, wecontend that to successfully move beyond thefragmented and cursory treatment of diversitythat currently prevails, teacher educators mustfirst articulate a vision of teaching and learningwithin the diverse society we have become.They must then use that vision to systematicallyguide the infusion of multicultural issuesthroughout the teacher education curriculum.This infusion process requires that teacher edu-cators critically examine the curriculum andrevise it as needed to make issues of diversitycentral rather than peripheral. Below, we illus-trate the coherent approach to infusion weadvocate.