“Earning My Identity”: A Individual Self-Study in the Teaching of Elementary Science Methods

• In Event: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Pedagogy of Humanization: Preparing Teachers for Culturally Sustaining Classrooms

Abstract

Upon earning my PhD in Elementary Science Education in 2011, I have referred to myself as a person who “teaches teachers to teach elementary science in culturally relevant ways”. I thought that completing a single course on Critical Pedagogy and writing a dissertation that looked at culturally-relevant elementary science instruction had facilitated me in the necessary work to claim that identity. However, in the summer of 2020, I went through a process of self-reflection and self-assessment that proved — at least to myself — that I had not lived up to that title in my actual teaching and practice. I had not, in fact, earned my identity — and realized that being someone who is committed to restorative justice, particularly for someone like myself who benefits from layers and layers of privilege, is a never-ending process of always becoming, never being. This realization prompted a crisis of self, which required me to do the work necessary to heal (Valenzuela, 1999) through the process of addressing my own insecurities, triggers, and privileges, and how these affected my practices (Nieto & Bode, 2012; Sleeter, 1996).
In this session, I will explore in detail reflections on my practices as a science teacher educator which resulted from my collaboration with a colleague and friend who is an expert in critical race theory and restorative justice in education. Employing the methodology of self-study — primarily through the lenses of co/autoethnography (Taylor & Coia, 2019) and of developing a community of critical inquiry through self-study (Kitchen & Ciuffetelli Parker, 2019) — I pay attention particularly to what I consider my shortcomings, areas of weakness, and even past failures in implementing a justice-oriented curriculum in my science teacher education classes. This attention on areas requiring improvement is done to highlight my acknowledgement and acceptance of my own sociocultural, political, historical and ethnic complexities, to showcase my vulnerability, and to model how I humanize myself, which has afforded me a template to humanize my teacher candidates and their students (Valenzuela, 1999) — a template which I now attempt to model and pass along to my teacher candidates.
Data for this blended individual/collaborative autoethnographic study (Chang, 2016b) include transcripts from video conference calls with my expert colleague, excerpts from WhatsApp text conversations, and personal journals. Additional coursework artifacts such as PowerPoint references are included as points of reference to the personal memory data, self-observational data, and self-reflective data (Chang, 2016a) produced as a result of this self-study. Ultimately, the goal was to showcase my vulnerabilities as exposed during the Summer 2020 online session of Culturally Relevant Teaching and Classroom Management I co-taught with my expert colleague — a process which Lyle (2019) has described as messy, but essential in exposing important opportunities for growth. Ultimately, the goal has been to aspire toward a better possible self by telling my story — or restor(y)ing wholeness through autobiographical writing (Lyle, 2018).

Author

• Katie Brkich, Georgia Southern University