Woke Binaries: When Identities and Practices Are Labeled in Teacher Learning (Poster 31)

• In Event: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Preparing and supporting teachers for social justice remains an enduring issue in teacher development. Over the last decade, scholars have called for expanding attention from what teachers learn or reported changes in their beliefs to identify and examine the processes, mechanisms, and enactments of such learning. This poster presents findings from a qualitative case study of a new teacher and her induction mentor/instructional coach within a larger Research-Practice-Partnership. Specifically, it draws on ethnographic observations of teacher-mentor weekly meetings, classroom teaching, and mentor professional development to explore the co-construction of equity and social justice and what enabled and constrained enactment. I draw on Holland et al’s (1998) identities-in-practice to explore how the educator’s constructed positioning as “woke white teachers” within a school culture steeped in market logics and within a learning partnership established on hierarchies of expertise limited their dialogic reflection, learning, and enactments for justice.

Author

• Joy Esboldt, University of Delaware