Challenges in Teaching for Critical Multicultural Citizenship: Student Teaching in an Accountability-Driven Context

As public schools become increasingly diverse, novice teachers are being called on to prepare their students for a multicultural democracy. This article presents a case study of three preservice teachers who attempted to teach for critical multicultural citizenship during their student-teaching semester in an accountability-driven school context. Although all three participants felt constrained by the culture of accountability, two were able to negotiate these constraints and implement critical multicultural citizenship education in their classrooms. Findings suggest that although participants employed successful strategies—such as de-emphasizing the test, sneaking in multicultural and critical content, and teaching multiple perspectives—feeling a sense of ownership in the classroom served as an essential prerequisite to enacting citizenship education that goes against the grain.