Supporting Language and Literacy Educators to Wrestle With Race in Text-Based Discussions

• In Event: Different Approaches to a Shared Dilemma: Challenging Racism Through Anti-Oppressive Literacy Education

Abstract

Purpose
While literacy scholarship is rife with arguments about the necessity of facilitating dialogue about race and racism with students (Thomas, 2015), this work remains either rare or shallow in many schools across the nation (Howard & Navarro, 2016). The importance of this work paired with the absence poses a particular challenge for professional development (PD) providers: how can teachers be supported to engage in practices that they rarely see in schools and are, in some cases, actively discouraged from enacting by colleagues and administrators (Lent, 2008)? We wondered what would happen if we ensured that teachers had experiences witnessing and facilitating text-based discussions about race and racism in their PD sessions. We designed and studied a series of professional learning experiences for K-8 teachers. In these experiences, participants facilitated text-based discussions in grades 4-8. All texts were selected because they each wrestled specifically with questions relating to racial identity and teachers prepared to teach these lessons as a collective.

Perspectives
We ground our investigation in sociocultural theories of learning and critical perspectives on the purpose of education as a tool for social transformation. Our perspective on learning as participatory (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Schön, 1984), social, situated (Lave, 1991), and mediated by tools (Vygotsky, 1978) undergirded both our PD design and our coding scheme. In addition, our grounding in critical perspectives on education (Freire, 1970) as a tool for dismantling historic and ongoing injustices (hooks, 1994), particularly those rooted in legacies of racism (Kalin, 2002), influenced the focus of both our professional development and of our inquiry.

Method
Using a qualitative case study approach (Yin, 2009), we drew on four primary data sources: video and field notes of six learning labs that focused on facilitating text-based discussions; semi-structured pre and post interviews with each participant; three video stimulated recall interviews with each participant; and all learning lab artifacts. Analysis included inductive and deductive coding using codes created and honed iteratively. Twenty percent of all data sources were double coded to ensure consistency in interpretation. High levels of agreement were established.

Results
Research findings suggest that participants experienced significant fear and anxiety about opening up text-based discussions about race and racism with 4-8 grade students, specifically about the possibility of creating spaces for open-ended interpretive work with complex texts that left open the possibility that students might publicly express biases. Teachers also expressed fear and anxiety about allowing students to read texts where the messages about race and racism were open for interpretation. Finally, across learning experiences, teachers explicitly expressed fear and anxiety decreased, suggesting that repeated opportunities to facilitate text-based discussions that dealt centrally with race and racism may have supported teachers to become comfortable engaging in this critical work.

Scholarly significance
Both the contemporary political context and contemporary scholarly conversations are rife with tensions relating to how best to engage young people in explicit conversations about race and racism. This study makes an important contribution to a topic that is timely both to studies of teacher learning and studies of anti-racist pedagogy.

Authors

• Sarah Schneider Kavanagh, University of Pennsylvania

• Katie Danielson, University of Portland

• Chenelle Boatswain, University of Pennsylvania

• Elizabeth Gotwalt, University of Pennsylvania