White Women Pre-service Teachers’ Elite Capture of Culturally Responsive Teaching and Social Emotional Learning

• In Event: BIPOC and White Preservice Teachers Grappling with Race

Abstract

This paper utilizes Thematic and Critical Discourse Analysis of White women identifying undergraduate pre-service teachers’ journal entries in an introductory course in the Elementary Education program at a Midwestern University. This study is situated in feminist frameworks of social reproduction theory (Federici, 2021; Fraser, 1997; 2017) as well as affect and embodiment in classrooms (Ahmed, 2004; Boler, 2009; Grumet, 1989; Jaggar, 1989; Nias, 2006) alongside the conceptions of elite capture (Táíwò, 2022) and progressive dystopia (Shange, 2019) to examine the impact of White womanhood on pre-service teachers’ understandings of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) and social emotional learning (SEL). More specifically, pre-service teachers’ perception of their gender marginalization is investigated in relation to their perception of the marginalization their students experience, both in pre-service teachers’ first field placement and in their imagined future classrooms.

Author

• Melissa Surrette, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities