How Race Operates in Graduate Assistants’ Lives: Lessons From Teacher Education

• In Event: Poster Session 1
  In Poster Session: Faculty, Curriculum, and Teaching

Abstract

U.S. universities currently are engaged in efforts to diversify their faculties as a means of offering more global, multicultural perspectives to prospective teachers. Drawing on life history methods, we investigated the experiences of graduate assistants of color and white, European American graduate assistants regarding issues of difference they encountered (race, class, gender, language background, sexual orientation, etc.) when working at a Midwestern, predominantly white U. S. university. We show how graduate assistants’ experiences with white, prospective teachers are highly influenced by their racial identities and that these have outcomes for the career choices they make—both in terms of type of program in which they wish to work and the selection of a college or university for employment.

Authors

• Mary Louise Gomez, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Amy Johnson Lachuk, University of South Carolina

• Mel Freitag, University of Wisconsin

• Ayesha Khurshid, Florida State University