Untangling Epistemologies of Ignorance Through a Rhetorical Analysis of Pre-Service Educators’ Classroom Discourse

• In Event: Interrogating Inclusion to “Re-mediate” Unjust Educational Spaces

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the relational and rhetorical dynamics at play in teacher preparation classroom spaces, particularly when preservice (special) educators talk about the places, students, and families they work with/plan to work with. Specifically, we aim to untangle ‘epistemologies of ignorance’ (Mueller, 2017), discursive patterns of color-evasive racism (Author et al., 2022), and/or storylines constructing heroes and those in need (Siuty et al., 2024). Overall, this study asks, how do preservice educators talk about the places, students, and families they work with/plan to work with, and how are these discourses (scripts) reinforced or disrupted in relation to discursive patterns between faculty and students?

Theoretical Framework
This study draws from three interconnected theoretical concepts: 1) Siuty and colleagues’ (2024) conceptualization of white-ability saviorism, a dimension of white-saviorism that deepens examination into the role of ableism in educational inequities and teacher preparation, 2) color-evasive racism (Annamma et al., 2017), the reproduction of white supremacy through deliberate ignorance of the impact of racism (Annamma, 2017) and the discursive frames employed to circumvent actions addressing the modality of racism and ableism (Author et al., 2022), and 3) epistemologies of ignorance (Mueller, 2017), which articulates how structures of white supremacy are perpetuated through creative, innovative processes of ‘not knowing’.

Method
This study incorporates a critical discourse analysis with duoethnographic tools (Lund et al., 2012). Primary data includes student (preservice educator) discourse emerging from course activities (e.g., discussions, presentations). A secondary site of analysis involves researcher debriefing and dialogic consciousness raising (Paris, 2012), a process of (re)shaping understandings through co-constructed dialogic opportunities throughout the research. To do this, we employ a critical discourse analysis (CDA; Van Dijk, 1993) of student written and spoken communication and ongoing researcher meetings in which student and researcher (ethnographic)-level data and analysis is discussed. Participants are 40 majority-white women undergraduate special education majors and minors at a midwestern university enrolled in either a course on family and school partnerships or creating an inclusive learning environment through culturally responsive classroom management.

Findings
Findings illustrate how the theoretical constructs apply to overarching rhetorical and dialogic data and analysis, particularly in functioning to typologize — and in turn distance/ “other” — certain people, groups, or locales. Participants grappled with the relational dynamics at play when making discursive decisions regarding racism and ableism. Students relied on hero storylines to situate their professional identities and understand particular communities, places, and people as in need. Though discursively positioning educators as necessary to those perceived as in need (e.g., students with disabilities, students of color), students maintained a commitment to avoiding direct discourse on race/racism. The deployment of normative color-evasive discursive pathways for engaging in uncomfortable dialogue (e.g., centering one’s own lived experiences) functioned as site of pedagogical and ethnographic reflection.

Significance
This study provides insight illuminating the nuance of discursive decision-making in educator preparation spaces, especially for the purpose of exposing and examining how preservice teachers make sense of the inclusion/exclusion of multiply-marginalized students.

Authors

• Courtney L. Wilt, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

• Malinda Forsberg, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater