STEAM Teachers Embracing Rightful Presence: A Shared Commitment to “Amplify the Sociopolitical”

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Revolutionary Pedagogies for Equity and Social Change in K–12 Classrooms (Table 17)

Abstract

The following paper describes a qualitative study designed to examine teachers’ perspectives of rightful presence, and specifically, how teachers “amplify the sociopolitical” in their roles. Over the course of three years, 26 STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) teachers participated in a professional learning course on rightful presence (RP) in education. The preliminary deductive analysis indicated that teachers became more aware of their prior attitudes and were committed toward creating classroom environments that support the tenets of RP in the future. This study proposes that these teachers amplified the sociopolitical in three main ways, 1) teacher presence (or representation) as sociopolitical, 2) relationships as a sociopolitical act, and 3) the use curriculum and content to amplify sociopolitical issues.

Authors

• Justina Jackson, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Katherine Boice King, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Meltem Alemdar, Georgia Institute of Technology