How Teachers Reframe Civic Roles to Counter Social Stereotypes

• In Event: 34.071 - Rethinking Civic Action as Embodied and Child-Driven in Early Childhood Settings

Abstract

Policy initiatives and social discourse in the US since the 1990s have coupled teaching practices and standardization (Meyer & Rowan, 2006).  This has impacted how teachers, who become agents of surveillance (Holligan, 2000), treat, label, and categorize children (Buchanan, 2015), particularly children of color (Skiba et al., 2002). Teachers embody these discourses through disciplinary strategies oriented towards achieving “normalized” ways of being (Toshalis, 2010).  This paper examines the case of one Head Start classroom, where teachers disrupted dominant surveillance and control narratives (Millei & Cliff, 2014; Landahl, 2013), and instead created empowering spaces that reframed children’s civic roles.

We draw on Foucault (1977; 1980; 1982; 1994) to understand the teacher-child classroom interactions in terms of the relationship between power, the subject and resistance. Specifically, we consider labeling as a panoptic technique. Then, we examine the teachers’ choices not to label children in socially stereotypical ways as an act of resistance.  This paper used ethnographic data (field notes, pictures, and film) collected in one general education classroom within a Head Start center, located in a low-income neighborhood in a large southwestern city.  We focus on two children (Diamond, an African American girl, and Luis, a Latino boy), whose stories stood out across six months of data collection.

"At breakfast, Diamond pushed children’s chairs in as they sat, slamming one child’s chair very hard.  The child and others protested. Diamond softened, but insisted she was the boss because she was five-years-old.  While some children accepted this, others still disagreed. The teacher, Ms. Luz walked over and told Diamond to sit and eat breakfast. Diamond looked at everybody and said, “I’ll be watching y’all!,” while pointing her fingers towards her eyes and then towards the children.  Ms. Luz casually responded, “You will be watching us? Okay” (Fieldnote, April 28, 2016).

In the US context, Diamond would too often be labeled as “at risk” for not following the rules, being “too loud,” a “bully,” or “disruptive.”  Yet, within the highly-regulated setting of Head Start, the teachers (Ms. Luz and Ms. Louisa) afforded young children opportunities to form meaningful relationships and empowering spaces, while also avoiding labels such as “at risk” or other racially charged labels such as bossy.  The teachers chose to reframe her actions as a leader, calling her “third teacher, and consequently gave her opportunities to help others and be a meaningful member of her classroom community. In the full paper, we will also describe the case of Luis, a Latino boy, whose behaviors could have similarly led to the label, “at risk,” but instead the teachers chose to reframe his role as someone who needed extra care from not only teachers, but also students.  

This paper details two teachers’ resistance to larger dominant discourses - both racial and social stereotypes and the regulatory landscape of US public education.  The teachers’ reframing of Diamond and Luis’ civic roles in the classroom community illustrates how teachers and children can be transformative beings, not just passive products of the systems in which they operate.

Authors

• Shubhi Sachdeva, San Francisco State University

• Katherina Ann Payne, The University of Texas at Austin

• Jennifer Keys Adair, The University of Texas at Austin