The reflective cultural portfolio - Identifying public cultural scripts in the private voices of white student teachers

The main objective of this article is to describe and evaluate one of the activities, the 'cultural portfolio,' that I use in my teacher education classroom to help my disproportionately White student teachers reflect on the public cultural scripts-ways of thinking, feeling, believing, and acting-that shape their practices. First, I frame the issue in terms of the powerful set of cultural scripts that may be called cultural 'whiteness.' Next, I look at the current political and economic climate that affects current teacher education and reflective practice. Following this, I look at my own cultural whiteness. Then, before I illustrate the cultural portfolio process with two case studies, I describe some of the work in reflective teacher education that has helped me develop ways of enabling student teachers to recognize and, if necessary, transform the public cultural scripts in their private voices. I suggest that some student teachers may benefit from the cultural portfolio process well after the class is over.