The Epistemologies of Teachers of Color: Disrupting White-Centered Racial and Linguistic Hierarchies in Schooling

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session amplifies the emancipatory work of teachers of color by cohering their pedagogies and lived experiences through four qualitative studies. Guided by a critical race lens, presentations employ an interdisciplinary perspective in their inquiries (i.e., language, gender, geography) to explore what the epistemologies and ontologies of teachers of color afford in the classroom. Speakers focus on the licensing of Black Language in an early childhood context, counterstories of reclaiming schools, how women of Color educators rehumanize teaching and learning, and what is lost through dominant ways of preparing teachers. Our discussion seeks to re-imagine what schooling might look like when the epistemologies of teachers of color disrupt those established by white-centered norms.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Division K - Section 03: Teachers’ and Teacher Educators’ Lives: Lived Experiences, Identities, Socialization and Development

Chair

• Dorinda Carter Andrews, Michigan State University

Papers

• Raciolinguistic Embodiment as Lived Pedagogy: A Black Teacher's Licensing of Black Language and Uprooting White Linguistic Mechanisms - Alice Y Lee, University of California - Riverside

• "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For": Teachers of Color Reclaiming and Reimagining Schools - Rita Kohli, University of California - Riverside

• Teaching Is an Act of Love: The Ontologies of Women of Color Teachers - Yu Chi Micki Lin, University of California - Riverside

• Shifting Dominant Narratives: Valuing Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers Through Grow Your Own Programs - Conra D. Gist, University of Houston

Discussant

• Dorinda Carter Andrews, Michigan State University