Clashes Within One Teacher’s Understandings of Race: Potentials for Altering Practice of Judgment?

• In Event: Understanding Teacher Agency

Abstract

This study empirically shows how large-scale social discourses manifest in one individual teacher’s understandings of race in a local site as he responds to fictional stories and one film. The research questions are: How are the concepts of race, racism, and racialization understood by one teacher? What are the factors that shape his perceptions of race, racism, and racialization, and what social and institutional dimensions are imbedded in these constitutive factors? What are the consequences of his understandings of race, racism, and racialization with respect to forging more productive forms of multicultural curricular and for a potential to bend taken for granted rules firmly in place? Are there any patterns and/or exceptions in his perceptions of race, racism, and racialization?

Author

• Jenna Min Shim, University of Wyoming