Racial Identity Development Toward Transformative Pedagogy

• In Event: Discussing Race, Ethnicity, and Culture While Teaching Educational Psychology

Abstract

Our research works under the premise that race is an essential social category of analysis for policies and everyday practices experienced in all areas of American society. Therefore, we work to expose whiteness in everyday situations as a means to ultimately dismantle it. “Whiteness refers to the structural arrangements and ideologies of racial dominance within the United States. Racial power and inequities are at the core of whiteness, but all forms of power and inequity create and perpetuate whiteness” (Castagno, 2013, p.101). Due to the concealed nature of whiteness, we advocate for the use of critical theories such as critical pedagogy and critical whiteness studies to reveal it. Critical pedagogy is a teaching approach grounded in a critique of institutions, texts, ideologies, etc. It examines power, oppression, and the status quo. Thus, it pushes individuals to analyze, critique, and challenge power and oppression, ultimately cultivating critical consciousness. Critical whiteness studies (CWS) is a growing field that aims to explain and understand the pervasive yet invisible structures that shape white privilege and white supremacy. CWS analyzes the origins of race and racism and its connection to white supremacy. CWS also examines normative pedagogy rooted in whiteness and the ways whiteness is maintained through complicity (Applebaum, 2016; Tanner, 2018).
Using the theories described above, in our research and practice we engage in-service teachers and graduate students in their own racial development. We ask our graduate students and in-service teachers to “turn the mirror on themselves” and explore their positionality as racialized and historical beings. As they get to know their racialized selves, they recognize they are “unfinishedness as human beings” (Freire, 1998), which is foundational in their development toward their own critical consciousness and critical pedagogical practice in the classroom and future careers. Relatedly, the teachers and graduate students realized their identity and positionality could not be separated from their pedagogical and epistemological trajectories. When people are engaging in this development, they often have reactions based in whiteness (e.g., disengagement, denial, disbelief, rage, and guilt; Davis 1992; Haddad & Lieberman 2002; Lawrence & Bunche 1996; Lucal 1996; Valiente-Neighbours, 2015). Drawing from our research expertise regarding racial consciousness and experience teaching, as described above, we will discuss why students are having these reactions and what to do.
One panelist is a former K-12 teacher and Assistant Professor. She studies the influence of race and ethnicity in urban education and human development. Her work investigates the significance of critical pedagogies on the critical consciousness and sociopolitical development of adolescents and adults. From a practical and theoretical perspective, her research draws from Critical Race Theory and the interrogation of Whiteness Ideology. Indigeneity, sociopolitical development theory and Participatory Action Research inform her epistemological approaches to pedagogy and research.
The second presenter is a doctoral student in a Community, Culture and Change Program, and is a former K-12 teacher. She studies race consciousness and the relevance of race in school settings. Her research interests center around student-teacher relationships in the classroom and the interrogation of color-blind racial ideology.

Authors

• Rachel F. Gomez, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Ejana Bennett, Virginia Commonwealth University