"Not of the Spirit but of the Letter": Technical Compliance and Whiteness as Property in Teacher Education

• In Event: Different Words, Same Song: Ecologies of Whiteness Within Higher Education

Abstract

“He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Corinthians 3:6)
This study draws on the critical race analytical tool of whiteness as property (Harris, 1993) to examine white liberal approaches to culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1998) and culturally responsive (Gay, 2018) pedagogy (CRP) in teacher education. In contrast to the above quote, white teacher education programs often embrace the letter but not the spirit of CRP in preparing future teachers. By focusing on technical compliance at the expense of sincere engagement, teacher education protects white racial identity needs and their own programmatic limitations while continuing to produce teachers who lack robust understandings of sociopolitical consciousness or complex conceptualizations of racism and its manifestations within systems of schooling (Milner, 2017; Vasquez, 2021).
Theoretical Framework and Methods
I apply the critical race theory (CRT) analytic tool of whiteness as property to examine how teacher education programs’ focus on technical compliance inhibits meaningful progress toward racial justice through teacher preparation (Castagno, 2014). I engage in textual analysis (Fairclough, 2003) of University of Wisconsin System teacher education websites and related institutional news outlets, program course descriptions and syllabi to examine how (or if) CRP is engaged, where and how it is located within respective programs, and the extent to which race and white supremacy are named as part of institutional discourses around CRP.
Results
The study is in its initial stages, but early results indicate that many UW System teacher education programs deploy terms like “equity”, “inclusivity,” and “diversity” and avoid directly naming race, racism, or white supremacy in formal programmatic materials. Further, most rely on one-course “catch all” models to engage CRP, meaning one course serves as the “diversity” course while other program courses typically do not substantively include CRP in their course descriptions or syllabi. Results suggest that the letter rather than the spirit of CRP is at play, thereby protecting whiteness as property and validating white racial ignorance (Mills, 1997; Cabrera, 2018).


Connection to Conference Theme
Increased engagement with CRP is important in teacher education, and the past two years have shown a push for webinars, professional development, and guest speakers related to CRP. However, as others have noted (Milner, 2017; Vasquez, 2021), not all engagements with CRP maintain a focus on historical and institutional contexts of inequities or on sociopolitical consciousness. Instead, many teacher education programs’ focus on compliance undermines the critical engagement and intrinsic motivation to act that characterize CRP implemented with fidelity. Because teacher educators remain both overwhelmingly white and understudied, teacher educator inputs to CRP often remain unnamed in studies of whiteness in teacher education. By examining the shortcomings of a white-centered approach to CRP that privileges whiteness as property over racial justice, we can support critical and sincere engagement with humanizing, empowering pedagogies.

Author

• Christin A. DePouw, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay