Critical Teacher Inquiry: Humanization as a Vehicle for Developing Teachers as Intellectuals

• In Event: 73.061 - Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: 73.061-2 - Toward Pedagogies for Liberation and Transformation: The Possibilities of Humanizing Pedagogies

Abstract

In a time when most teachers report most of their professional development is not useful (Strizek et.al., 2006), this paper examined the ways a critical inquiry groups can be used to empower teachers to deeply understand their craft and build expertise as participants in knowledge creation. This research suggests the importance of engaging teachers in a humanizing inquiry process where knowledge production is encouraged in order to support teachers in developing critical and culturally relevant pedagogies.

To examine an inquiry-based approach to teacher development the following questions were explored: What is the usefulness of a teacher-led inquiry group for participants? Is a teacher-led inquiry group humanizing? If so, how and why?

This study builds on the existing body of literature surrounding critical teacher inquiry groups (Duncan-Andrade, 2005; Nieto, 2003; Picower, 2007), and Freire’s notion of humanization as mentioned above. Along with this, Giroux’s (1988) work on “teachers as intellectuals” where the work of teachers and teaching is thought to be a process to build up humanizing and empowering spaces for students is central to this study. Taking into account Giroux's notion that teachers should be the ones that will develop a discourse and set of assumptions that allow them to engage in the creation of knowledge, provided with study with a lens to make sense of the ways participants increased their capacity to critically serve students.

This project draws from the field of ethnography (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995; Schensul et al., 1999), especially from the area of critical ethnography (Carspecken, 1996; Creswell, 2012; Wolcott, 1987). Critical ethnography is important for this project because of the ways in which it seeks to shift power relationships between the researcher and participants (Carspecken, 1996). The participants were a convenience sampling (Weiss, 1994) of seven educators that voluntarily attended the bi-monthly inquiry group during 2012-2013 and worked in elementary and high school settings in South Los Angeles. The participants taught across the academic disciplines from English to chemistry. The data for this study was collected through the use of participant observations and interviews, which has amounted to over fifty hours of audio and over a hundred pages of detailed notes.

Finding that emerged from this research are that in order to become the kind of teacher intellectual Giroux envisions, it is important that teachers engage in a process of humanization as they work to develop their critical consciousness about the complex nuances of their positionality under, within, and outside of dominant discourses.

This research is significant because in a time when traditional teacher professional development is hyper-focused on building teacher expertise to increase student achievement on standardized testing, this group of teachers were able to make deeper connections between the larger social forces that impact their schools and classrooms. This is important because it can support teachers in developing pedagogies to better meet the needs of students and support them in developing the type of critical consciousness, social compassion, and collaboration needed to transform unjust social conditions.

Author

• Antonio Nieves Martinez, University of Massachusetts - Amherst