Navigating Whiteness: Counterstories of Critical Teacher Educators

• In Event: 25.067 - Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: 25.067-3 - Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Navigating Whiteness

Abstract

Objectives
Prominent scholars using a critical race theory framework have argued that education as an institution in the U.S. is designed to preserve and privilege whiteness (Harris, 1993; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Dixson & Rousseau, 2005). More and more, research is illuminating whiteness embedded in the structures, policies and practices of teacher education (Cross, 2005). Much of this work is focused on the lack of access to social justice content (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015) or the alienation teacher candidates of Color (Sleeter, La Vonne & Kumashiro, 2014) face in a predominantly White profession. Less scholarship, however, has focused on the influence of whiteness on teacher educators, specifically those who are committed to racial justice (Milner & Howard, 2013; Ladson-Billings, 2005). Using a critical race framework to acknowledge the permanence of racism, this paper unpacks 16 counternarratives of self-identified critical teacher educators in the way they navigate Whiteness in teacher education.

Theoretical framework
CRT is an interdisciplinary framework that challenges ideology, policy and practices that use individualized explanations for racial inequality such as colorblindness and meritocracy. Instead, it points to structural causes for US racial hierarchies (Crenshaw, 1995). It is a useful theory to frame teacher education because it moves beyond understanding racism as individual acts perpetrated by teachers, teacher educators or university administrators to an institutional understanding of how racism and Whiteness operates. These analyses rightfully shift our attention to policies and practices that affirm the status quo of racial inequity.

Methods and Data
This paper is an analysis of 16 narratives of non-dominant, self-identified critical teacher educators. A call was sent out soliciting narratives from teacher educators to center their voice and experiences as they confront racism in or through teacher education. We purposefully selected participants who were diverse in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, their position within teacher education (i.e. tenure track, clinical, adjunct) and geographic region. We then analyzed these narratives and coded along the themes of their struggles with racism in teacher education, and ways they strive for racial justice within those spaces In this paper, we focus on two broad emergent themes- the the trauma that critical educators face while navigating whiteness as well as the strategies they employed to resist institutional racism.

Results and Significance
Our analysis of the narratives revealed teacher education as an institution fraught with racism. From the condoned resistance and racism of teacher candidates, teacher educators and staff, the pressures of student evaluations, to teaching towards edTPA, the data revealed teacher education as a hostile environment for teacher educators committed to racial justice. Reflective of the permanence of racism we see in all other facets of society, this was not surprising, but the nuances and severity of their experiences provide evidence that transformation will not occur just from diversifying teacher education, but rather from actual structural shifts. It was also clear that many of the participants felt isolated, and thus individualized their racialized experiences- another mechanism by which racism functions to maintain itself. Unpacking their struggles as a collective, better illuminated systems of racialized oppression.

Authors

• Rita Kohli, University of California - Riverside

• Bree Picower, Montclair State University