What's the Question? A Critical Methodological Analysis of Teacher Interviews on Race, Culture, and Power

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Decolonizing Methodological Norms

Abstract

We employ Critical Race Theory (CRT) to analyze a set of semi-structured interview protocols designed as part of an investigation into how elementary teachers enact and learn to enact cross-disciplinary discussions that disrupt settled expectations of children, disciplines, and teaching practice. We discuss three ways that these protocols, designed and implemented by a team of white women, constrained what we were able to learn about race, culture, and power in teachers’ disciplinary discussion practice. Namely, they quarantined race talk, left room for avoidance and ambiguity, and led to probes and responses that individualized race and racism. We unpack the white, Western hegemonic epistemological roots of these features and analyze how they influenced our conversations with teachers.

Authors

• Rebecca Gadd, Boston Public Schools

• Ada Okun, Boston University

• Eve Manz, Boston University

• Lynsey K. Gibbons, University of Delaware