Race and Management: Teachers' Stories of Racial Diversity and Classroom Conflict

• In Event: Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Gender, Social Justice, and the Intersections

Abstract

Educators can create or constrain possibilities for students, even unwittingly, along race, class, and gender lines. However, little is known about how teachers process schooling inequality in a way that contributes to or challenges these phenomena. Using data from an online professional development course for teachers, I find that teachers with a strong, non-White racial identity described race-related conflicts as those in which injustices were perpetrated against their students or themselves. Those who did not describe a strong racial identity and those identified as White, tended to equate diversity-related conflicts with classroom management infractions. These findings may shed light on unjust school punishment patterns.

Authors

• Sherry Lynn Deckman, Lehman College

• Sabina Rak Neugebauer, Loyola University Chicago