Preservice Teachers' Understanding of Themselves as Racialized and Cultural Beings

• In Event: 69.037 - Critical Family History and the Novel as Tools of Whiteness Pedagogies: A Theory-to-Practice Symposium

Abstract

Frameworks
The following three directions in the racial conscientization of White preservice teachers informed this paper: critical family history (Sleeter, 2015), the use of novels as tools for learning about race (Watson, 2016), and second-wave whiteness pedagogies (Session Organizer).

Context of teaching and goals
Teachers are increasingly asked to teacher across racial divides in US classrooms. In order to do so, teachers must see themselves as racialized and cultural beings. The focus of this study was to look at how the use of the novel White Bread as well as the critical family history project aided students’ view of themselves as a racialized and cultural being: How did students’ investigation into their own family history within the social and political context influence their “teacher” identity? This study took place in a spring 2016 course titled Cross-cultural Teaching and Learning, formally Introduction to Multicultural Education. My section of the course included 30 students, the majority being White females.

Data sources and analyses
Data sources included weekly reflections, an initial cultural autobiography, notes from the weekly White Bread novel discussions, and a critical family history project. To capture how family history project influenced pre-service students’ future identity as teachers, open and closed coding were conducted as well constant comparison (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).

Substanitated observations and scholarly significance
Findings demonstrate that the students were highly motivated to engage in conversations about the complexities of race through the use of the novel White Bread. The main findings are as follows:
1.The use of White Bread allowed students to make connections and share stories about their identity during our class discussions and in their weekly reflections.
2.The use of the novel White Bread provided students with a model for their own critical family history investigations. Through their critical family history investigations, students learned new information about their ancestors and were able to share stories in class.
3.Through the reading of this novel and the completion of the critical family history project students were able to see themselves as racialized and cultural beings. This is an importance first step in order for them to adequately be able to instruct their future students, who are likely to be from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Overall, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature by offering an example on how to implement a curriculum among pre-service teachers that encourages them to see themselves as racialized and cultural beings so they are better equipped to educate an increasingly diverse student population in public schools.

References

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine.

Sleeter, C. E. (2016). Critical family history: Situating family within contexts of power relationships. The Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 8(1), 11-25.

Watson, A. (2016, April 26). Directions for public sociology: Novel writing as a creative approach. Cultural Sociology, 1-17.

Author

• Sandra Lucia Osorio, Illinois State University