Culturally Relevant Critical Teacher Care in Elementary Classrooms

• In Event: 14.028 - Powerful and Emancipatory Practices of Teachers of Color

Abstract

This paper draws on the literature on effective African American teachers of African American students to investigate the enactments of culturally relevant critical teacher care (CRCTC) in two fifth-grade teachers’ classrooms in a large, urban school district. Using interview and observation data, the findings illustrate the teachers’ knowledge of the constraints upon their students’ futures. This knowledge catalyzed their enactment of a particular kind of care designed to prepare their students with the dispositions, knowledge, and skills to be the authors of their own lives. The study reveals the transformative potential of teacher care explicitly linked to a larger social justice agenda.

Authors

• Elyse L. Hambacher, University of New Hampshire

• Elizabeth Bondy, University of Florida