"Doing Diversity": A Narrative Examination of Veteran Teachers' Renewed Agency Through Intersectional Teaching

• In Event: Teacher Education: Muddying the Truths About Equity

Abstract

This paper examines how two White teachers, experienced and award-winning veteran literacy educators, navigated issues of race, class, and privilege in their instruction, and ways that their efforts and shortcomings shaped both teacher agency and classroom spaces. Using Ahmed’s (2007) “language of difference” discussion as a conceptual framework, and using interviews, observations, and discussion groups as data sources, this study found—as Ahmed notes—that efforts in enacting intersectional social justice can happen “in a way that may actually block action” (p. 240). social justice-oriented teaching is not intrinsic to the course content itself. While Anna and Luca had planned carefully and with good intentions, but their intersectional curricular materials had become a substitute for intersectionality.

Authors

• Stephanie Anne Shelton, The University of Alabama

• Shelly Melchior, University of Alabama