Racial Story Lines and Science Teacher Identity

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: Race, Politics, and Teacher Identity: Reflecting on Professional Learning and Practice

Abstract

Purpose: to address how race and racialized experiences influence the identities and teaching enactments of teachers of Afro-diasporic descent. “In what ways do racial storylines emerge and how were they accepted or challenged in their teaching practice?” guide the (re)telling of the experiences of three science teachers and their navigations of teaching science in a large urban school system vis-à-vis their professional and social identities and their perceptions of self in relation to their students.

Framework: racial storylines (Nasir et al., 2013) describe how messages about race emerge in schools and how they were enacted, resisted and/or challenged by the teachers. Nasir et al. describe learning, goals and identity as a “three prongs of a triangle…”, where each evolve together in social practice, racial storylines present spaces where learners could resist, articulate new goals and take up new identities. Thus identity and learning are connected to learning to teach, teaching and teachers’ goals, personal histories with schooling, self-perceptions and perceptions of students as situated in the context of schools.
Teachers participated in bi-monthly meetings as a collaborative inquiry group over three years. Data sources: digital audio recordings, field notes and artifacts teachers brought in to share. Portraiture was employed as an analytic tool to retell the stories of the teacher through the “subjective, empathetic, and critical lens of the researcher” (Dixson, et al., 2005).

Findings: racial storylines in schools produce the additional mental and emotional labor of negotiating racialized contexts and identities for teachers of color. Short narratives: T teaches in a public middle school that is situated in and draws students from the surrounding affluent, mostly white community. T asserts, “I feel like, my mission is…to tap into students of color…so I notice more when they are not raising their hands and like I make sure to call on them.” She reflected on her role as a teacher of color, “And I struggle…feeling like I need to be somewhere else because… am I really making a change here? Am I really doing transformative work?…Am I really needed here? But I am because of the six [Black] students.”
E, when reflecting on constant struggle for science in a math and literacy assessment-dominated school, “I think I am their voice, because if I’m not their voice, who is going to be their voice? So that is my thing.” Her “thing” being to advocate for engaging science learning experiences both within her school and taking her students out of school. She works often during her free time in order for her students to have opportunities to imagine futures for themselves beyond what is presented in school, “you know our community and especially African American and Latino students, you don’t really see them becoming scientists because they’re not exposed to it.” Thus in dreaming of possibilities for their students, these teacher must engage in the constant struggle to resist the racial storylines of people of color in relation to science and school, for themselves and their students.

Author

• Jennifer Dawn Adams, University of Calgary