"Like Treading on Eggshells": A Preservice Biology Teacher of Color Reasons About Race and Pedagogy

• In Event: 14.044 - Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: 14.044-21 - Critical Race Theory and Critical Pedagogy in Science Education

Abstract

This study examines the case of Donna, a preservice teacher of color learning to teach biology in a primarily White student teaching placement. This research focuses primarily on the subtle ways in which her organizing conceptions about race and its pedagogical implications changed over the course of her field experience, mostly in reference to biology topics that referenced race in some way. The concept of race had very little explanatory power for her, except perhaps as a marker for the precipitation of racism in certain situations. This study supports the need for more nuanced understandings of how teachers—and teachers of color specifically—learn the pedagogical implications of race.

Author

• Douglas B. Larkin, Montclair State University