Toward a Curriculum Theory-Based Antiracist Professional Development for White Practicing Teachers

• In Event: 43.035 - What Is to Be Done With Curriculum and Educational Foundations' Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers

Abstract

Purposes
This paper focuses on a curriculum theory (CT)-based professional development (PD) curriculum of antiracist conscientization implemented with eight white practicing teachers in the Midwestern United States. The aim is to describe the particular ways in which a CT frame enables needed pedagogical insights for articulating a “second-wave” whiteness studies (Jupp, Berry, & Lensmire, 2016) approach to white practicing teachers as capable learners who can/do act on antiracist commitments.

Perspective(s)
This work is framed by the intersections of critical whiteness studies (Roediger, 2007; Thandeka, 2006) and critical pedagogy (Freire, 2000; hooks, 1994), to imagine antiracist educational praxis: action and reflection in equal measure on the world in order to transform it (see Author, 2016 for more on these intersections). Together, critical whiteness studies and critical pedagogy can be read through the multiple lenses of the field of CT (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1995/2006; Pinar, 2004), to ask critical questions of who is privileged and who is marginalized in particular educational discourses, practices, and contexts. A CT frame for work in PD can challenge the findings of the field and generate new possibilities, as research has demonstrated most PD does not engage teachers intellectually, come from teachers’ own volition and motivation, articulate why it is important for teachers’ and students’ learning, align content and pedagogy, or connect to local experiences and needs (Kennedy, 2016; Randi & Zeichner, 2004; Wilson & Berne, 1999). These findings offered both conceptual and practical insights into both the design and our analysis of our PD program.

Methods and Data
For the 2012-13 and 13-14 school years, we met with eight white practicing teachers for three hours monthly. The three elementary, two middle, and three high school educators were each from different public schools and districts. Drawing on practitioner inquiry (Dinkelman, 2003), we integrated study, reflection, and action into the context of ongoing engagement with CT. We audio-recorded each session of RaceWork, conducted two interviews with each teacher, administered formal and informal evaluations, collected artifacts from teachers and their schools, kept field notes and individual journals, and met monthly to debrief and plan. Data for this paper is drawn primarily from the interviews and an analysis of the syllabi from both years of the PD.

Results
The paper focuses on the ways that a sense of group “accountability” was produced through the divergent and multiplicitous commitments and perspectives in the group, and the ways this accountability echoes commitments to robust intersectional understandings of the social contexts of teaching and learning. The paper works to discuss three ways that a CT frame offers needed insights into sustaining antiracist interventions in personal, local, and structural terrains of antiracist struggle.

Significance
Greater engagement with CT in the context of PD can help to counter the neoliberal onslaught that characterizes much of the so-called ‘diversity’ trainings available to teachers today. Detailing this engagement is critical scholarship that will help to “democratize evidence” and challenge our “post-truth era”.

Authors

• Shannon McManimon, SUNY - College at New Paltz

• Zachary A. Casey, Rhodes College