Making Justice Peripheral by Constructing Practice as “Core”: How the Increasing Prominence of Core Practices Challenges Teacher Education

Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparation, with particular emphasis on identifying and centering core practices. In this article, we argue that organizing teacher education around core practices brings its own risks, including the risk of peripheralizing equity and justice. Situating our argument within the broad economic trends affecting labor and higher education in the 21st century, we begin by examining the linkages between the core practices movement and organizations that advocate market-based solutions to education. We then explore how constructs of practice and improvisation and commitments to equity and justice are taken up, and with what implications and consequences, in core practices scholarship and its applications. In conclusion, we consider how work being done around core practices might contribute to a collective struggle for greater equity and justice in schools and in society.