Arguing Race in a 10th-Grade Language Arts Classroom

• In Event: Using the Teaching of Argumentation to Explore Issues of Race, Gender, and Sexuality

Abstract

Background

This is a case study of arguing race in a 10th grade language arts classroom. Across the year, the teacher embedded the teaching of argumentation in all units of study. One unit of study focused on the “American Dream” as experienced by diverse ethnic and racial groups. As part of that unit students encountered “Scientific Racism,” the so-called scientific study of racial differences and hierarchies. “Scientific racism” was based on “scientific” arguments with claims, evidence, and warrants. Later in the year, the students read Inside the Hotel Rwanda whose first chapter provides a history of how European “scientific racism” was imported to Rwanda. The students had to generate arguments on various topics in both the American Dream and Hotel Rwanda units of study.

Purpose

The purpose here is to explore how argumentation influences understanding and interpreting race while simultaneously exploring how a topic, such as race, influences the nature and process of argumentation.

Theoretical Framework

Multiple theoretical frameworks are employed. Critical Race Theory (Crenshaw, 1995; Solorzano & Yosso, 2002) is used to examine how the students used their everyday experiences and stories to interrogate dominant narratives. Communicative rationality (Habermas, 1984) and dialogic rationality (Gadamer, 1976) are used to examine the students’ argumentation. Interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1986) was used to analyze how the teacher and students interactionally constructed definitions of argumentation, knowledge, social identities and social relationships.

Methods

This year-long, ethnographic case study involved participant observation, video-recording of 54 class sessions, interviews, and collection of student work. The students were from low-income and working class families. The class was an honors class. Although the school is co-ed, all of the students in this class were female. The class consisted of two African-American students, four Somali students, one Latina, one Cambodian student, one multi-racial student, and seven white students. Data analysis involved identifying “rich points” (Agar, 1994), detailed microethnographic analysis of the event, and then examining related previous and subsequent events.

Findings

Interviews with the students confirmed that the students had internalized the teacher’s emphasis on argumentation as a way of exploring a topic, as a way of generating what they called “essential questions” to guide the inquiry, and as a way of valuing multiple perspectives, empathy, and working toward consensus. When the students examined “evidence” to support “scientific racism,” they used their own experiences, stories, and empathy to question the claims of “scientific racism”. After preliminary research, they generated “essential questions” that allowed them to explore the complexities and contradictions of a topic – such as how a country moves forward after a genocide – building on each other’s research (evidence), warrants and backing, working toward consensus but without necessarily achieving it. This stance toward argumentation developed slowly over the year. This stance toward argumentation allowed the students to critique “scientific racism” while still exploring the topic of race (and genocide) accepting of multiple perspectives and the inherent complexities and ambiguities of the topic.

Authors

• David M. Bloome, The Ohio State University

• SangHee Ryu, The Ohio State University - Columbus

• Min-Young Kim, The Ohio State University