Intersectionalities and Teachers of Color

• In Event: 75.020 - Charting the Landscape of Ethnoracial Teacher Diversity: Examining Research Across the Continuum

Abstract

Situated in schooling systems with violent legacies of White supremacist subjugation of students of colors, Teachers of Color (TOC) have been lauded for enacting pedagogies that reflect their own culturally informed insights into the learning needs of students of color, as well as their own culturally mediated advocacy and care for these students (Foster, 1997; Irizarry & Raible, 2011). While not dismissing these culturally responsive pedagogical legacies, a growing strand of educational scholarship has explored how multiple identities like class, sexual orientation, and immigrant status, when intersecting with race, can confound the culturally mediated rapport between TOC and students from similar cultural backgrounds (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2011; Brockenbrough, 2018). This strand, in tandem with the literature on the pedagogical affordances that emerge for TOC at the intersections of race and gender (Dixson, 2003; Lara & Fránquiz, 2015)), underscores the need to conceptualize the positionalities of TOC at the intersections of multiple identities and oppressions, and to explore their pedagogies, politics, and experiences at those intersections.

This paper seeks to highlight research that engages theoretical frameworks that surfaces the nuances and significance of the intersectional identities and positionalities of TOC (e.g., Black feminist intersectionality theory, queer of color critique, and Latina feminisms, just to name a few). Below are several questions that will be addressed based on our review of literature:

* How does race intersect with identities and positionalities such as (though not limited to) class, (dis)ability, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, and nationality in the lives and experiences of TOC?

* How do the intersections of multiple identities and positionalities shape the lives and experiences of a variety of TOC, particularly (though not limited to) undocumented, Asian, immigrant, Latinx, Black female, and Indigenous teachers?

* How do the intersections of multiple identities and positionalities inform the ways that TOC engage and impact a diverse array of students, including those who do not share (all of) their identities?

* How do the intersections of multiple identities and positionalities inform a wide range of practices engaged by TOC, including (but not limited to) curriculum design, classroom management, and parent and family engagement?

* How do the intersections of multiple identities and positionalities influence the recruitment and retention of TOC?

Authors

• Edward Brockenbrough, University of Pennsylvania

• Jason Irizzary