Examining Preservice Teachers' White Emotions and Other Elements of Whiteness in Multiracial Contexts

• In Event: Preservice Teachers' Emotions

Abstract

This proposal describes a qualitative study on how White pre-service teachers’ white
emotions can be expressed ambivalently in multiracial contexts within education. Inspired by Bonilla-Silva’s (2019) description of racialized emotions, the authors utilize a Critical Whiteness Studies framework to examine the unpredictable nature of White pre-service teachers’ white emotions when interacting with students of color. Findings suggest that pre-service teachers’ white emotional expression in interracial contexts are expressed on opposite ends of an emotional continuum which can either lead to behavior that reproduces racial domination through emotional hegemony or prompt discourses of critical reflective thinking by practicing critical emotional reflexivity.

Authors

• Ja'Bria Barber, North Carolina State University

• Elizabeth Marie Allen, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Jessica DeCuir-Gunby, North Carolina State University