Opportunities for Transformative Equity Learning: Limiting Labels and Dialogic Possibilities Within an Educator Dyad

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Equity and Social Justice to Activate Student Agency (Table 8)

Abstract

Developing a social-justice criticality is an ever-unfinished project for teachers and the leaders that support them. However, even for critically-oriented educators, numerous obstacles and deterrents can hamper such development. This qualitative case study of a white educator dyad examines opportunities for their transformative equity learning in educators’ weekly meetings. The first part of the paper finds that positioning one another as “equity-oriented” or “woke” and labeling practices as “equitable” functioned to limit inquiry and dialogue, ultimately preventing a robust critique of structural inequities and pre-figuring more just classroom relations. The second part of the paper examines a series of the educators’ discussions around translanguaging that broke from this pattern, illustrating possibilities for more transformative learning and change.

Author

• Joy Esboldt, University of Delaware