Got a TIC for Liberation? Ethnic Studies Teachers and Self-Implicating Reflexivity as Transformational Intersectional Capital (TIC)

• In Event: 4124 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (100 min): Table 1. Education

Abstract

Ethnic Studies (ES) curriculum and pedagogy increases graduation rates, attendance, grade point averages, standardized test scores, a stronger sense of identity, community-belonging, and self-confidence for all students and particularly minoritized youth. While the evidence grows on the positive impact of ES on students, less attention has been paid on how teacher critical reflexivity may play in these outcomes. We ask: how, if at all, do ethnic studies teachers engage reflexivity about their social locations in simultaneous and overlapping systems of structural inequalities (e.g., tribal status/settler colonialism, race/white supremacy/structural racism, gender/patriarchy and sexuality/heterosexism). In what ways might attending to teacher reflexivity illuminate the mechanisms that may be contributing to the empowerment of marginalized students through ethnic studies? To address these questions, we conduct in-depth interviews and focus groups with ethnic studies high school teachers participating in a first-year districtwide implementation of ethnic studies elective classes in a large urban public-school district in the U.S. Southwest. Utilizing a community based participatory research approach and case study methodology our theoretical guideposts include Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality theoretical groundings provide a critical optic for this case study data analyses. Findings direct to a spectrum of reflexivity among both white and racial and ethnic minoritized teachers –from antiracist self-implicating intersectional frames and praxis, to color and power evasive frames where some teachers did not see themselves as affected ideologically or materially by intersecting oppressions. We propose Transformational Intersectional Capital (TIC) as a framework for mapping the spectrum and levels of teacher reflexivity. Recommendations include institutional and policy changes that can cultivate TIC among educators and administrators as a strategy for advancing ethnic studies and interrupting and transforming racialized inequities into opportunity structures in education and beyond.
Keywords: intersectionality, critical race theory, reflexivity, ethnic studies

Authors

• Florence Emilia Castillo, University of New Mexico

• Magdalena Vazquez Dathe, University of New Mexico

• Nancy López, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque