Ideologies-in-Pieces: Award-Winning History Teachers' Complex Stances on Race, Racism, Whiteness, and Antiracism

• In Event: Teacher Orientations: Praxis and Pedagogies of Critical History Teachers

Abstract

This paper reports on a project examining how teachers who have won their state’s history teacher of the year award conceptualize race and related concepts and how these ideas connect with their teaching. Drawing predominantly from survey data and supplementing with interviews, the findings indicate that teachers almost universally view themselves as antiracist educators, yet diverge in their conceptions of what characterizes antiracist teaching. Moreover, teachers expressed commitments to dueling ideas about the role of race in their teaching simultaneously, representative of Philip’s (2011) notion of ‘ideology in pieces’ whereby individuals simultaneously embody contradictory stances.

Author

• Charley Brooks, University of California - Santa Cruz