Cultivating Teacher Agency to Create Antiracist Movements: Investigating Participation in a Professional Learning Community

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Ten
  In Roundtable Session: Together We Rise: Transforming Teacher Education Through Collaborative and Critical Inquiry (Table 16)

Abstract

Guided by a theoretical framing of teacher agency, this study documents how five high school teachers cultivated spaces of agency through participation in a professional learning community (PLC). With administrative shifts, teachers were mandated to frame their humanities curriculum from an unbiased stance that honored ‘all perspectives’ when teaching ELA and historical content. Teachers viewed these policies to be restrictive and racist. In documenting teachers’ experiences in the PLC, data indicates how teachers utilized the liberatory design process to create and lead agentive spaces of change across their classroom, pedagogy, and school community.

Authors

• Jennifer M. Collett, Lehman College - CUNY
  Presenting Author

• Sunyata Smith, Lehman College - CUNY
  Presenting Author