Interrogating Representations of Diversity and Social (In)Justice: Critical Perspectives on Teaching Materials

• In Event: Situating Complexities of (Missing) Representation in Teacher Education for Social Justice: U.S. and German Contexts

Abstract

Ongoing racial discrimination fundamentally conflicts with proclamations of inclusive education and principles of equity and social justice. Therefore, a constant "critical reflection on relations of difference that (also) shape educational contexts and re-produce inequality" (Shure, 2017, p. 646) is a constitutive requirement and continual process for recognizing and confronting social injustice in education. In considering anti-racist teaching practices, it is essential “that teachers come to recognize their own assumptions about themselves as teachers, about their students, about the curriculum they teach, and about the nature and impact of their teaching practices” (Johnson 2009, p. 121). In particular, this includes teachers’ critical literacy skills and abilities to make reflective judgments about the selection and design of materials used for teaching and learning purposes, given that in everyday classroom interactions, “racialized images of the teacher, students, and people that appear in teaching materials get produced and reproduced” (Kubota & Lin, 2009, p. 1) and that (mis-)representations in teaching materials constitute powerful “school knowledge” (Banks, 2016, p. 185). Following Höhne’s (2003) sociological perspective, we conceptualize teaching materials (such as textbooks and children’s picture books) as arenas of discourse(s) and transmitters of powerful knowledge production, that merge and represent complex societal discourses in a multiply filtered, pre-structured and controlled manner (Höhne, 2003, p. 18). Following a social justice-oriented approach, we are concerned with the modes of (missing) representation in teaching materials and their role in (re)producing and/or subverting processes of racialization and othering.
In this paper, we employ interdisciplinary and international perspectives on the representation of race in materials and provide selected examples from both research contexts: First, we present findings resulting from a study concerned with the (de)construction of race and racialized discourses in German textbooks for advanced EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners (secondary level). Using discourse analysis, the overall findings indicate that the textbook materials often fail to highlight the performativity of race as a concept and prevent students from developing a “greater awareness of the constructedness, artificiality, and elasticity of racial and ethnic categories” (Brubaker, 2016, p. 147). Instead, they promote a discourse on race that is characterized by tendencies of (1) terminological-definitional inconsistency (2) naturalization and essentialization, and (3) othering, which we will illustrate with examples from selected textbook materials.
In a second part, we will focus on (multimodal) representations and constructions of race in literary materials (e.g. children’s picture books) from both research contexts and compare and contrast dominant modes of (mis)representation and (in)visibility. Our findings illustrate how these materials, on the one hand, construct powerful counter-perspectives by promoting visibility and diversifying representations of race, but, on the other hand, often remain complicit in the (re)production of white normativity and constructions of ‘othering’. While taking into account the materials’ different situatedness in terms of dominant discourses of racial (in)visibility in both research contexts, we argue for the need to enhance pre-service teachers’ critical (self-)awareness and critical literacy skills of recognizing, deconstructing and transforming racial injustices as crucial objectives of their teaching profession(alization).

Authors

• Alena Beck, Technische Universität Braunschweig

• Ines Potthast, Leibniz University Hannover

• Christy Wessel-Powell, Purdue University