Reproduction Through Relationships: How Two Teacher Residencies Construct Unequal Relationships With Students

• In Event: The Centrality of Community as a Site for Learning: Interrogating Beliefs, Relationship, and Curriculum

Abstract

This paper draws from a two-year ethnographic study that explored how two different teacher residency programs approached the development of teacher-student relationships. Findings reveal two very different approaches to relationship development, leveraged at two different populations of students: one of the residencies trained students to form instrumental and limited relationships with students of color from low-income backgrounds to improve their classroom behavior and academic effort; the other prepared residents to form holistic and reciprocal relationships with their mostly affluent white students that advanced students’ critical thinking and self-advocacy. Program logics around relationship development notably influenced beginning teacher practice. As a result, these two programs structured unequal relationships, with historically marginalized students receiving less access to meaningful relationships with teachers.

Author

• Victoria Marie Theisen-Homer, Northern Arizona University