Storying a Social Drama: How Discourse and Practice Prevent Transformation Through Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

• In Event: 32.083 - Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 32.083-7 - Educator Identity, Preparation, and Assessment: Framing Teachers as Social Actors

Abstract

In a sociohistorical moment during which racism has become more widely accepted as a social fact, educators continue to struggle with how schooling might participate in its eradication. In suburban, elite, Midwestern Pioneer City Public Schools, a series of initiatives I refer to as “the transformation” aimed to eliminate racial disparities through efforts (1) to redistribute children from a racially and economically isolated elementary school and (2) to train all staff in a particular brand of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). I argue that Pioneer City was unable to address the transformative goals of CRP, in part because of irresolvable tensions between an explicitly anti-racist theory and the authoritative discourses still insidiously suggesting that racism is a thing of the past.

Author

• Ann Mogush Mason, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities