Teachers of Color and Grassroots Organizing: A Praxis-Based Model of Professional Development

• In Event: Centering the Professional Development Needs of Pre- and In-Service Social Justice Educators of Color

Abstract

Objectives
Teachers of color committed to social justice in education are incredibly invaluable and yet commonly pushed out of the profession (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2011). The tensions and traumas that result from oppressive school systems and the lived experiences of teachers from marginalized backgrounds, inevitably calls for the need for teachers of color to heal (Kohli, 2008). In response to this issue, this study illustrates how a grassroots social justice teacher organization explicitly centers the voices, needs, and passion that teachers of color bring to their organization. The ways in which they co-construct knowledge, share leadership roles, co-facilitate critical study groups, organize conferences, and events is essentially grounded in a community of praxis that yields more holistic, anti-oppressive teacher professional development.

Theoretical Framework
This study utilizes Communities of Practice theory to understand the situated social construction of meaning, learning, and identity that teachers co-construct through legitimate peripheral participation (Wenger & Lave, 1991; Wenger, 1999) Additionally, the term social justice in education is used and defined in multiple ways. Hytten and Bettez (2011) explained that the term social justice can include, “democratic education, critical pedagogy, multiculturalism, post structuralism, feminism, queer theory, anti-oppressive education, cultural studies, post colonialism, globalization, and critical race theory” (p. 9). The multiple conceptualizations of social justice in education is important in understanding teachers’ ideological, pedagogical and moral commitments in their practice.

Methods and Data Sources
All five participants in this study were committed members of a social justice grassroots teacher organization and served in the inner core group, which contributed, to the planning, steering, and leadership within the organization. I conducted, tape-recorded, and transcribed five open-ended interviews (Patton, 2002), ranging from 1-1 ½ hours. I also employed participant observations (Patton, 2002) by taking field notes while attending most meetings, events and study groups.

Results
The teachers in this study highlighted the importance of having a community of critical teachers of color to learn and build with as they navigated the challenges of social justice practices within oppressive teaching conditions. Their identities and experiences as teachers of color within mostly white spaces also highlighted their need to be part of a community that felt safe to challenge, question, and grapple with issues that they felt unable to do within their respective workplaces. Additionally, participants communicated their intentions to disrupt the mainstream purposes of professional development by creating a model centered and led by teachers committed to repurposing education as a tool for liberation.

Significance
These findings led to problematizing the mandatory teacher professional development imposed on teachers of color who do not ascribe to the dominant practices of American schooling. This particular social justice grassroots teacher organization offered counter models and manifestations of “professional development” that differs from existing apolitical/ahistorical models within formal institutions, one that is explicitly critical and political at its roots and has implications for practitioners and teacher educators committed to diversifying the profession and teaching social justice in education.

Author

• Farima Pour-Khorshid, University of California - Santa Cruz