Educating While Racially Marginalized: The Teaching Profession as a Site for Care and Activism

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Research continues to highlight the need to retain and support a diverse teacher workforce to advance notions of educational equity (Bristol & Goings, 2019; Carver-Thomas, 2017; 2019). Yet, the field lacks a robust exploration of racially marginalized educators' experiences in the tensions of advancing social justice aims inside racially unjust systems. This session brings together qualitative studies across various methodological approaches that highlight and examine the subtle and syncretic practices of racially marginalized educators across various disciplines and contexts. This discussion will attend to how educators navigate their social justice commitments inside very real constraints presented by racially unjust spaces. Consequently, this session contributes to (re)imagining possibilities of racial equity in schools by elucidating current practices.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Division K - Section 04: Transformative Justice in Teaching and Teacher Education

Chair

• nives wetzel de cediel, University of California - Berkeley

Papers

• Preservice Teachers of Color, a Community of Abolitionist Praxis, and Pedagogies of Abolitionist Praxis - Rubén A. González, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Examining Preservice Teachers' Complex, Everyday Negotiations of the "What, Why, and How" - Andy Castro, University of California - Berkeley

• “Public School Is an Arm of the State”: Early-Career AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Teachers Interrogating Justice Possibilities - Faith Kwon, Stanford University

• Marginalized Toward (In)Effectiveness: Educating While Having (In)Justice on the Heart and Mind - Aukeem A. Ballard, University of California - Berkeley

Discussant

• Josephine Pham, University of California - Santa Cruz