Cultivating Truth-Telling With Descriptive Inquiry: Confronting Habitus for Racial Equity

• In Event: Contemporary Dilemmas of Ethics and Justice in Education

Abstract

This paper is premised on James Baldwin’s claim that racism is deeply and widely entrenched in our culture and on Pierre Bourdieu’s findings that we operate within complex networks of habituated practices. Within this framework, we ask how do we disrupt these calcified, complex, and racist ways of being? Specifically, we explore how teachers are habituated into particular ways of seeing and acting. We argue that conscious cultivation can promote greater equity and that Truth Telling is a necessary part of this cultivation if norms are to be disrupted. In doing so, we draw on a practice, Descriptive Inquiry, to promote Truth Telling and look at the ways that it led to changes in three urban public elementary schools.

Authors

• Cara Elizabeth Furman, University of Maine at Farmington

• Cecelia Traugh, Bank Street College of Education