Exposing the White Ability Industrial Savior Complex in and Through Qualitative Research in Urban Teacher Education

• In Event: Challenging Dysconscious Ableism and Dreaming Beyond Pathology in Teacher Education

Abstract

Purpose
In an essay for The Atlantic, Cole (2012) coined the term “White Savior Industrial Complex”-- in which white people engage in self-serving, “benevolent” acts of saviorism on the African continent. Scholars (Aronson, 2017; Baldridge, 2017) have documented parallel phenomena of white saviorism in urban teacher education. Building on this work, we examined how ableism contributes to white saviorism in urban teacher education research. In particular, we investigated how ableism has been used to reinforce deficit framings of urban students’ bodies, minds, and behaviors (Lewis, 2022), positioning teachers and teacher candidates (TCs) as “saviors.”

Theoretical Framework
We drew on Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit; Annamma et al., 2013) and white saviorism (Baldridge, 2017; Cole, 2012). DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2013) highlights how ableism and racism intersect to oppress multiply-marginalized communities in education. White saviorism constructs a dichotomy of heroes and those in need (Baldridge, 2017), glorifying individual acts of “care” while ignoring structural inequities (Cole, 2012). Together, these perspectives allowed us to explore how urban teacher education capitalizes on and cultivates saviorism using both racism and ableism, as dominant conceptions of ability justify the “saving” of urban communities of Color, and further establish superiority of white, nondisabled ways of being.

Methods & Data Sources
In this meta-ethnography (Noblit, 2018), we used inductive and interpretive forms of knowledge synthesis to ask new questions of the literature (Neal-Jackson, 2018), and more explicitly examine how ableism promotes white saviorism in and through urban teacher education qualitative research. Data sources were included if they were (a) peer-reviewed empirical, qualitative studies in urban teacher preparation programs in the U.S., and (b) positioned preservice TCs as focal participants. We conducted three rounds of keyword and hand searches to select 81 articles for review. We iteratively and collaboratively coded the selected articles via Dedoose software, meeting weekly to discuss emergent patterns, codes and themes.

Findings
Across the qualitative literature we analyzed, we found three interconnected storylines. First, white teachers and TCs were positioned as tourists who experimented on communities of Color within urban teacher education programs, often to their own professional benefit. Next, even as the literature described efforts to dismantle systemic racial oppression in urban teacher education, the ways ability and ableism contributed to these processes was not acknowledged. Finally, teachers, TCs, and teacher education programs themselves were described through stories of redemption, predicated on students’ academic success. Together, these storylines highlight how ableism promotes white saviorism in urban teacher education.

Significance
Although white saviorism in teacher education has been extensively discussed, we describe how ableism contributes to this process in urban teacher education research. We document how addressing racism alone in teacher education is insufficient to dismantling racial hierarchies rooted in ableism. We argue that uncovering these storylines can help urban teacher preparation reckon with its role in perpetuating a White Ability Savior Industrial Complex and imagine paths forward for more transformative and justice-driven educational approaches.

Authors

• Molly Elizabeth Siuty, Portland State University
  Presenting Author

• Maggie Beneke, University of Washington
  Presenting Author

• Tamara Handy, Stanford University
  Presenting Author