Reading While White: Examining Teacher Candidates' Written Reading Responses to the Texts of Racial Issues

• In Event: Uplifting Antiracist Teaching and Decentering Whiteness

Abstract

This qualitative study examined whether and how teacher candidate participants’ written reading responses conveyed their invisible and unrecognized whiteness. Twenty-three junior-level teacher candidates admitted to the elementary and middle childhood education license programs participated in this study. Using critical content analysis, I analyzed the participants’ written reading responses to assigned readings about race and racism that they submitted to an online platform. The researcher’s reflective journals were also included to make the researcher’s subjectivity visible. The results reveal their perspectives about whiteness as reflected in their reading responses, e.g., colorblindness, white fragility, and white privilege. It is crucial for teacher educators to pay more attention to whiteness that is permeated in teacher education and the society.

Author

• Young Ah Lee, The Ohio State University - Lima
  Presenting Author