Advancing Practical Understandings of Teaching Across Difference in Public Schools

• In Event: 46.041 - Preservice and Professional Teachers Working Across Difference: New Documentarian Research on Cultural Competence In-Action

Abstract

The goal of this presentation is to advance and document new, practical understandings of how White preservice teachers make sense of race, racial identity, and the complex milieu of these concepts in relation to schooling. These goals are connected to broader aims toward justice in schools and society.

This presentation draws from a larger project that extends previous research in critical white studies, particularly recent work that encourages teacher educators to avoid dichotomous (Jupp, 2013) and shame-focused approaches to discussing race with predominately White preservice teachers (Lensmire et al., 2013). Because I am also concerned with how students' thinking translates into their eventual teaching – and I understand the often performative nature of preservice teachers' engagement with such assignments – this presentation documents participants' analyses of their difficulties integrating ideas about racial injustice into their understandings of how schools work. Focusing on these moments of complexity and contradiction allows more nuanced and honest analyses of White preservice teachers’ identities and challenges to conscientization they experienced.

The study used Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2003) to analyze texts written by white preservice teachers preparing to work in various settings. All fourteen participants were enrolled in a summer course in multicultural education with an urban field experience. Students completed various writing assignments documenting their processes of coming-to-consciousness about race, racial identity, and schooling.

Findings further advance the notion that racial identities are non-linear and constantly in flux, and that an orientation toward social justice teaching demands continued self-study. Also:
1.The following two understandings seem to contribute to students' burgeoning recognition of the ongoing, dynamic process of becoming a justice-oriented teacher: (a) the complexity of race and its relationships with schooling and (b) the power that “common sense” (Kumashiro, 2008) notions about fairness and equal opportunity have in shaping society's views about who succeeds in school, how, and why.
2.While students (like their professors) face the notion that a single course can lead to significant transformation and that they should be able to immediately apply that transformation in their teaching, the grandiosity of this image threatens to damage preservice teachers' self-efficacy. Instead, teacher educators must model the ongoing nature of coming-to-consciousness and the need for constant flexibility in contexts that are always shifting.
These findings contribute to more robust concepts of multicultural teacher education as a critical first step in ongoing teacher identity development that must continue throughout teacher education and professional development.

References

Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge.

Kumashiro, K. (2008) The Seduction of Common Sense. New York: Teachers College Press.

Jupp, J.C. (2013). Becoming teachers of inner-city students: Life histories and teacher stories of committed White teachers. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Lensmire, T.J., McManimon, S., Tierney, J.D., Lee-Nichols, M.E., Casey, Z.A., Lensmire, A., & Davis, B.M. (2013). McIntosh as synecdoche: How teacher education's focus on white privilege undermines antiracism. Harvard Educational Review, 83(3), 410-431.

Author

• Ann Mogush Mason, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities