"Race Space" Critical Professional Development: Social Justice Ideological Becoming and Enactment Among In-Service Urban Teachers

• In Event: 18.042 - Disrupting Traditional Teacher Professional Development (PD): Critical PD for Teachers Committed to Social Justice

Abstract

Purpose and Perspectives
The field of teacher education is not yet well-informed on supporting the ideological becoming of urban teachers espousing a stance that centers social justice in their instruction. Even so, social justice discourse in education has been critiqued for marginalizing people of color and privileging dominant identities (Agosto, 2010). Considering these issues, I propose a critical professional development (CPD) (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, & Ortiz, 2015) via ‘race space’ for in-service teachers as they learn about race, racism, and what it means to teach for social justice. The purpose of this ethnographic case study is to examine teacher learning and growth within the real-life blurred contexts of race space CPD and classrooms.

CPD operationalizes Freire’s (1970) notion of dialogic action, meaning that it is filled with dialogue, cooperation, unity, organization, and cultural synthesis among facilitators and participants. With the theoretical underpinnings of critical race theory in education (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), Third Space (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-Lopez, & Turner, 1997; Gutiérrez, 2008), and Bakhtin’s ideological becoming (Freedman & Ball, 2004), I employ the term race space to describe the engendering of transformational, reflective, real talk and action around race and racism that happens through collective effort.

Methods and Data Sources
Participants consisted of five secondary ELA and social studies urban teachers of students of color who espoused a social justice stance in their instruction. The teachers and I participated in the race space CPD twice a month during one academic year. Concurrently, I conducted classroom observations of each teacher’s class twice a week and interviewed teachers throughout the year. To understand the nature of the race space CPD and teacher ideological becoming over time, I draw from the following data sources: a) pre- and post- questionnaires, b) interviews, c) audio and video of race space CPD sessions, and e) classroom observation field notes.

Arguments and Significance
I argue that within a race space CPD, teachers reconceive who they are and what they might accomplish for racial justice, in the classroom, and beyond. Race space CPD disrupts dominant narratives and investigates racial histories and identities as they pertain to teaching. A race space CPD undergirds Freire’s (1970) notion of praxis; the recursive relationship between intellectual growth, reflection, and action.

To engage in racial and social justice research, one must have “robust hope” (McInerney, 2007) and the ability to dream of liberatory possibilities. I want to re-imagine schools as places where theory and research are integrated into practice; where teachers can be vulnerable, reflect, and grow; where taboo topics, such as race and racism, are unpacked, discussed, acted upon, and transformed. In order for this to happen, we need educators who are willing to take on this challenge by reimagining how they learn and act in schools. This study informs the field of the support social justice educators need and the ideological becoming of teachers over time as it translates to practice.

Author

• Tiffany M Nyachae, University at Buffalo - SUNY