Examining How Educators Are Developing Equity Beliefs and Aligning Practice to Equity Ambitions

• In Event: Understanding and Enacting Equitable Practices: Developing a Shared Understanding of Equity-Centered Work

Abstract

This mixed-methods study explores how teachers’ equity orientations are changing in response to increased national attention to racial equity and anti-Black racism, and how teachers are adapting their practices in alignment to their equity orientations. Recognizing the critical role of organizational conditions for supporting changes in teachers’ beliefs and practices, this study examines teachers’ perceptions of how and why school community orientations, students’ orientations, and their own personal interests in issues of race and equity have changed since before 2020. Using surveys with 532 US middle school teachers and follow-up interviews with 13 teachers, we illuminate broad trends in how these phenomena are changing, along with teachers’ perceptions of how school organizational conditions facilitate or hinder these changes.

Authors

• Mary-Louise Leger, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Kristy Cooper Stein, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Ann DeChenne, North Marion School District
  Presenting Author