Countering Complacency With Radical Reflection: Critical Multicultural Praxis for White Teachers

• In Event: White Supremacist Ideologies and Culture in Teacher Education

Abstract

Although White teachers can be effective teachers of racially diverse students, studies continue to document factors that can undermine their success, such as colorblindness and unawareness of racial privilege. These factors often contribute to a sense of complacency among White teachers regarding culturally affirming pedagogy. In this paper, I advance an argument for the need for radically reflective practices that lead to effective educational praxis for White teachers who teach in urban classrooms. Using Critical Multiculturalism as a framework, I address a gap in the translation of theory to practice by providing a set of process-oriented strategies necessary for the constitution of teacher praxis that is both radically reflective and radically hopeful, and where complacency is not an option.

Author

• Tina M. Durand, Boston University