Towards Continuous Improvement of a Racial Awareness and Knowledge Intervention: A Case from Michigan

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 3:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Transforming Systems, Centering Equity: Advancing Racial Justice through Continuous Improvement

Abstract

This paper describes a professional development series designed to grow educators’ knowledge of race, racism, and empathy specific to improving how they steward disciplinary interactions with Black youth. Our study makes sense of the professional development conditions needed to optimize K-5 educators’ understanding of the material consequences of race to their pedagogical practice. The findings contribute to improvement science scholarship given this study’s focus on the utility of continuous improvement to help educators: a) address systemic challenges in schools while also b) supporting them to innovate structural solutions needed to better serve Black learners in real time. The benefits and tensions associated with co-designing, revising, and iterating the racial awareness and knowledge intervention are discussed.

Authors

• Chezare A. Warren, Vanderbilt University

• Dorinda Carter Andrews, Michigan State University

• Bryan Beverly, Michigan State University

• Kenneth A. Frank, Michigan State University