Becoming Accomplices for Racial Justice: Preservice Teachers and Auto-Ethnography as Praxis

• In Event: 18.029 - Enacting Social Justice Practices and Knowledges in Teacher Preparation

Abstract

This paper explores a pedagogical approach, autoethnography as praxis; a method to support white pre-service teachers in their process toward becoming accomplices for racial justice. In this qualitative study, students wrote three drafts of their autoethnography throughout a semester as part of a course assignment. They analyzed their lived experiences by putting them in conversation with established theories around race, power, and schooling among other ideas learned in class. After each iteration, students met in critical friends groups to engage in dialogue around their writing process, struggles, and areas of discomfort. Findings reveal how this process encourages white students to identify themselves within systems of power and discrimination as they move through cycles of autoethnography as praxis.

Authors

• Jessica Sarah Powell, Southern Connecticut State University

• Meredith N. Sinclair, Southern Connecticut State University