Tensions Between Envisioned Aims and Enacted Practices: Whiteness, Cultural Identity, and Teaching Muslim Literature

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Explorations of Equity and Identity in Humanities Classrooms

Abstract

This qualitative inductive study examined how a white high school teacher negotiated tensions that emerged between her aims and her practices when she infused young adult literature with Muslim characters and content into her curriculum. Drawing upon Critical Whiteness Studies and Cultural Identity Theory, the study looked across interview, observational, and artifact data to reveal the ways in which the teacher’s aims were often in direct conflict with her enacted practices. The study intimates the inadequacy of simply wanting to teach less familiar cultural content and argues that these efforts demand content and pedagogical-content knowledge that extend beyond empathetic aims and require explicit and unique training and support for white teachers interested in taking up this important work.

Authors

• Wendy J. Glenn, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Ricki Ginsberg, Colorado State University