Awakening Critical Awareness of Self and Society Through Critical, Self-Reflexive Research

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Challenging Hegemony in Self and Society: An Analysis of Three Teacher Educators’ Critical and Self-Reflexive Research

Abstract

Objectives: This paper is an analysis of the semester-long, critical, self-reflexive research I undertook to investigate the effectiveness of my practice as a critical multicultural teacher educator. My goal in pursuing this research was to explore the ways in which hegemony, embodied by myself, my students, their social worlds, and school, interrupted the successful attainment of the social justice goals of my course, Multiculturalism: Dialogue and Field Experience.
Theoretical framework: Society is made up of systems of relationships, defined in contradictory ways by people in power through narratives disseminated in the media, school, and other institutions. The most powerful of these systems are hegemonic—that is to say, oligarchs manipulate the consent of the people for narratives representing their elite interests (Chomsky, 1993). These narratives represent normalcy and common sense, as in the privileging of whiteness and Christianity. Once normalized, dominant narratives are largely invisible, and present a dangerous barrier to the functioning of democracy, which requires a clear understanding of social narratives (Lea & Sims, 2008; Giroux, 2012).
As a result of the power of hegemony, teacher-students need to be facilitated through critical pedagogy to recognize how power and privilege work. However, teacher educators should not exempt themselves from this dialogical process. Most people need support to recognize the micro-details of the social practices by which the extreme privilege of the very few, the privilege of some, and the alienation and oppression of the many are reproduced daily.
Methods: In my Multiculturalism course, students conduct their own research on critical multicultural pedagogy in the ethnically diverse, mid-west schools where they undertake their cross-cultural field experience. During my own research project, I shall monitor my everyday verbal and nonverbal acts in the university classroom as I prepare the teacher-students for their research, and facilitate activities that address, for example, the concepts of culture, colonialism, and race. With my teacher-students’ permission, I shall record my own voice and our dialogue, look for evidence of classroom community, and my own effective praxis and critical consciousness. After class, I shall listen to and transcribe important parts of recorded mono-and dialogue, and engage in critical analysis of this data.
Results/Conclusion:
In my long experience teaching foundations of education, my disproportionately white, middle class students have found the study of “race,” the most challenging area of their study. A pilot self-study during summer school 2013 demonstrated that my mid-western students responded best to the subject of race when I clearly modeled reflection on my own whiteness and racism. The pilot also demonstrated the power of praxis to recognize, in real time, when my practice represents hegemony.
Scholarly Significance
This project is significant in that it contributes to our knowledge of the best strategies for preparing social justice teachers. Through monitoring our own practice, teacher educators may be a source of inspiration and support for some teacher-students, especially those struggling to address their own relationship to diversity having been raised in segregated, racist communities.

Author

• Virginia M. Lea, University of Wisconsin - Stout