Challenging Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers' Perceptions of Minority Group Children: A Review of Research

In the Winter, 1972 edition of The Journal of Negro Education, Earle H. West commented (in relation to uprooting racism) "we need in all our public schools to find counselors, textbooks, teachers, and programs of study directed at uprooting racial prejudices and animosities within the majority group and developing positive behavior patterns."1 He went further to call for those in positions of power to get at the roots of racism which lie in the attitudes and behaviors of the majority.2 Kenneth Clark recognized the same problem as existent in urban classrooms. He found that many teachers perceived black children in negative ways and behaved negatively toward them.3 Anthropological studies of urban classrooms also point to the attitude of white teachers toward black children to be rooted in racist perceptions. Moore, in his observations of urban classrooms, found subtle racist behaviors on the part of the classroom teacher to be a predominant factor in teacher-child conflicts.4 More recently, challenges to teacher education institutions to begin to deal with the racial attitudinal sets of prospective teachers has been put forth.5