Trajectories of anxiety and reflexivity: White teacher educator subjectivities and Ethnic Studies co-design

• In Event: Co-Designing Collective Learning for Ethnic Studies Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives
Teacher solidarity co-design (Philip et al., 2022) engages teachers and researchers as change agents to transform dehumanizing school systems. However, white teacher educators may experience aversion to such efforts due to investments in overlapping institutional and racial subjectivities (Leonardo & Gamez-Djokic, 2019; Picower & Kohli, 2017). Teacher organizers have utilized critical racial affinity groups to create humanizing, healing spaces for teachers of color (Pour-Khorshid, 2018), yet impacts of white caucus spaces have been ambiguous (Pollock & Matschiner, 2024; Varghese et al., 2019). Given this context, how did an all-white group of teacher educators engage with co-design practices during a yearlong Ethnic Studies collaborative? How did affective dimensions of teacher educators’ subjectivities mediate trajectories of individual and collective learning?

Framework
The study draws on teacher solidarity co-design, race-based caucus spaces, and white teacher subjectivities – which together offer infrastructure for remedying racialized relationalities in teacher education. Teacher solidarity co-design nurtures “mutual learning [...] that could not have happened without collaboration,” while recognizing that “teachers and researchers are multiply positioned in systems of power, often in fluid and contradictory ways” (Philip et al., 2022, p. 60). Race-based caucus spaces create opportunities to critically engage participants’ shared (and contradictory) racial positioning (Varghese et al., 2019). White caucus spaces contend with affective dimensions of white teacher subjectivities that shape trajectories of learning and practice (Matias, 2016; Picower, 2009). These dynamics highlight importance of growing programmatic structures – and critical, caring relationships – through which white educators deepen reflexive, collaborative engagement in caucus and multi-racial spaces (Leonardo & Gamez-Djokic, 2019; Philip & Benin, 2014).

Methods & Data Sources
The author (white male) joined a co-design group of 6 teacher educators (all white females): a de facto caucus space. We tailored initial inquiry to educators’ respective contexts of practice (lesson planning, teaching, supervision), bookended with planning and debrief conversations. We also held multiple group conversations over the year. Data sources included conversation notes and transcripts, and the author’s field notes and analytic memos. Analytically foregrounding salient accounts of affective experience, I attempt to trace educators’ learning trajectories over time and space (Penuel et al., 2016; Wortham & Reyes, 2015).

Results
The cases of two teacher educators – Andrea and Eliana – illustrated three core findings:
● Co-design surfaced anxieties, and provided novel opportunities to work through anxieties in full-group, caucus, and one-on-one spaces. For Andrea, one-on-one conversations expanded engagement that was constrained by caucus discussions.
● Co-design invited – and challenged – teacher educators to turn the lens on their own practices, positioning, and institutional dynamics. Eliana’s refusals to engage reflexively illuminated investments in institutional subjectivity mediated by tools of whiteness (Picower, 2009).
● Co-design created opportunities to engage Ethnic Studies frameworks that affirmed, challenged, and expanded teacher educators’ professional knowledge, while simultaneously centering commitments, knowledges, and practices of educators of color.

Significance
Findings highlight benefits and tensions of white caucus spaces within multi-racial learning collaboratives. Expanding the principle of mutual learning in teacher solidarity co-design, transforming institutional and professional practices requires attention to affective dimensions of teachers’ institutional and racial subjectivities.

Author

• Ian Slattery, University of California - Santa Cruz