Pedagogical Practices of Teachers of Color

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

Abstract

Teachers of Color (TOC) have historically fostered and sustained the personal, academic, emotional, and spiritual identities of students of color in U.S. schools. Their ability to critically care for students and support healthy identity and academic development through effective relationship-building continues to have positive impact at individual and communal levels. As the number of students of color in K-12 U.S. schools continues to grow, it is paramount that research on (TOC) further illuminate how their pedagogical and leadership practices positively transform educational spaces for all students, particularly traditionally and historically marginalized youth. Decades of research, primarily by scholars of color, have enhanced our understanding of the mindsets, dispositions, and instructional and leadership styles of TOC. However, this literature can and should be expanded to deepen our understanding of the multifaceted and nuanced approaches to and enactment of pedagogical and leadership practices of Native American, African American, Latinx, and Asian American teachers.

To this end, this paper utilizes ideological, epistemological, and methodological diversity in illuminating how TOC enact humanizing, nurturing, and culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies, practices, and leadership in a variety of educational contexts (e.g., urban, suburban, rural, out-of-school). The paper will utilize critical and unconventional theoretical (e.g., Womanism, Indigenous and endarkened feminist epistemologies) and methodological (oral history, critical ethnographies, critical race methodologies) approaches to explore these topics qualitatively and quantitatively.
Relevant topics that will be included are:

* An examination of Indigenous-centered and decolonial pedagogical practice and teacher leadership enacted by Teachers of Color and rooted in their cultural, historical, and political positionalities.
* Decolonial research methodologies and approaches to examining teacher leadership enacted by Teachers of Color that counters traditional Eurocentric ideologies, discourses and methodologies present in current research
* Exploration of unconventional forms of teacher leadership exhibited by Teachers of Color historically and in contemporary contexts (e.g., teacher activism). Traditional scholarship on teacher leadership emphasizes Eurocentric conceptions and racializes the concept of leadership in ways that render Teachers’ of Color enactments invisible and invalid.
* The conceptualization of teacher leadership in the context of teacher activism amidst resistance movements historically (Civil Rights Movement, Brown Power Movement) and in contemporary contexts (e.g., Black Lives Matter, immigration reform, teacher strikes, NoDAPL).

Author

• Dorinda Carter Andrews, Michigan State University