Getting Past Color-Blind: Using Photo-Elicitation to Help Teachers See and Talk About Race

• In Event: 63.074 - Participant Empowerment Through Photo Elicitation in Ethnographic Research: New Research and Approaches

Abstract

Despite a decade of concentration on closing the pervasive achievement gap in America, White students and Black students still attend schools with unequal results. Many strategies aimed at closing the gap exist, including increasing the number of African American teachers, but the majority of urban teachers are White, which will remain the case for the foreseeable future. Bonilla-Silva (2003) explained that there is a pervasive practice in schools referred to as “color blind racism” (p. 2). As Hayes and Juarez (2012) explained, “Holding on to a color-blind framework allows White people to be blind to… the very knowledge of culturally responsive teaching and social justice that is needed to transform the whiteness of education” (Hayes & Juarez, 2012, p. 7).
This ethnographic case study was designed to reveal how five successful White social studies teachers negotiate their teaching relationships with their African American students. The participants, from a midwestern de facto segregated urban district, were identified as successful teachers and chosen using a nomination process. They were observed in the classroom and interviewed using photo elicitation (Crilly, 2006; Harper, 2002). The photos were taken by the researcher of classroom interactions between the White teacher and students of color on an iPad. The interviews that followed allowed teachers to theorize about their pedagogy, practice, student interactions, and whiteness. The interviews were then qualitatively analyzed for emerging themes (Creswell, 2007; Patton, 2002; Stake, 1995). Through the use of photo elicitation, these teachers were able to theorize and reflect on the relationships with their students of color and their own ideas about race:
1) Teachers discussed the complicated dynamics of their relationships with students and their ability or inability to connect with individual students.
2) Teachers saw their interactions with students through a new lens and theorized about the nature of urban teaching and their own ideas about race.
3) Teachers revealed the complicated push and pull between empowerment and deficit modeling of their students’ lives.
Teachers’ attitudes about racially different students are important when thinking about the relationships formed across racial lines in the classroom. McGrady and Reynolds (2012) found that White teachers generally perceived Black and Hispanic students as less capable in both the academic and behavior categories than their White and Asian counterparts and are more susceptible to judging students based on stereotypes. All of these issues point to a phenomenon of whiteness that should be explored to understand this interplay between White teachers and their Black students. Photo elicitation offers researchers the ability to remove the researchers gaze and allow teachers to discuss more freely and reflect more deeply on their struggles with race.

Author

• Michael L. Boucher, Texas A&M University - San Antonio