Race-Evasive White Teacher Identity Studies 1990–2015: What Can We Learn from 25 Years of Research?

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-58
Author(s):  
James C. Jupp ◽  
Alisa Leckie ◽  
Nolan L. Cabrera ◽  
Jamie Utt
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
White Teachers ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Search Term ◽  
Identity Studies ◽  
Colorblind Racism ◽  
White Teacher ◽  
General Search

Background/Context With a rationale informed by the demographic imperative, the resegregation of public schools, and our positionalities as researchers, we understand both the high stakes and the complexity of capacitating White preservice and in-service teachers capable of anti-racist praxis and race-visible teaching and learning in public school classrooms. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Deploying the framework of colorblind racism, we systematically reviewed race-evasive White teacher identity studies and answered the question: What can we learn from 25 years of research? Research Design In using the method called the synoptic text, we engaged electronic databases, with special emphasis on ERIC EBSCOhost. The simple and general search term “White teachers” conducted using year-by-year parameters provided the most systematic net for capturing relevant studies. In narrowing our focus, we developed the following criteria: (a) White teachers as central topic, (b) analytical emphases on colorblind racism, (c) publication in peer-reviewed journals, (d) use of qualitative and/or narrative research methodologies, and (e) publication date between 1990 and 2015. Data Collection and Analysis Our general search yielded 136 (N = 136) peer-reviewed empirical qualitative and/or narrative studies between 1990 and 2015, and after narrowing our criteria, we found 47 race-evasive White teacher identity studies (n = 47, 47/136) that we reviewed here. Each study in the document universe was abstracted by authors, added to a spreadsheet, and categorized by emergent themes. Findings/Results The following five themes emerged and developed over the last 25 years: (a) racialized silence and invisibility (9/47), (b) resistance and active reconstruction of White privilege (12/47), (c) whiteness in institutional and social contexts (8/47), (d) fertile paradoxes in new research (9/47), and (e) reflexive whiteness pedagogies (9/47). Conclusions/Recommendations We believe our literature review identifies the complex contours of White preservice and in-service teachers’ silence, resistance to, engagement in, and pedagogical grappling with racism, whiteness, and White privilege. The importance of pre-service and in-service teachers being able to engage, understand, and challenge these issues becomes critically important at our crossroads in the present, especially given the recent election that bolstered open and tacit White supremacists into power. If White teachers are to engage racism, whiteness, and White privilege, they must do so with as opposed to for their students, in a Freirean sense. If teaching for social justice is important, renewed interest and investment in White teacher identity studies and related whiteness pedagogies is key for the next 25 years.

How “Identity Play” Protects White Privilege

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison LaGarry ◽  
Timothy Conder
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
White Identity ◽  
Contested Spaces ◽  
Identity Studies ◽  
White Teacher ◽  
Ethnographic Analysis ◽  
Second Wave

This chapter, “How ‘Identity Play’ Protects White Privilege: A Meta-Ethnographic Methodological Test,” presents the findings of a 2013 meta-ethnographic analysis on White identity in preservice teachers (PSTs), as well as a methodological test of those findings in light of recent publications on Second-Wave White Teacher Identity Studies (SWWTIS). In the 2013 meta-ethnography, the authors first found a reciprocal argument in which the authors described similar tools or strategies by which White PSTs defended their own privilege. Through further reflexive interpretation, the authors then found a line of argument that situated the multiple theories used in the studies as contested spaces in a larger figured world of whiteness. In testing findings from 2013 against recently published studies on SWWTIS, the authors found that the earlier study anticipated a shift in thinking and theorizing within the field.

scholarly journals Towards a More Nuance Understanding of White Teachers of English Learners: Increasing Capacity and Capabilities

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Jenna Min Shim
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Identity ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Identity Studies ◽  
White Teacher ◽  
Monolingual Teachers ◽  
Major Factors ◽  
Teachers Perspectives ◽  
Teachers Of English Learners

Predicated on the idea that race, racialization, and racism are major factors that shape language teaching and learning, this paper draws on the second wave White teacher identity studies to argue for a more nuanced understandings on White monolingual teachers’ racial identities by exploring their perspectives on English learners’ (ELs’) learning experiences by asking the following research questions: (1) From the EL teachers’ perspectives, what contribute to EL’s struggles in school? (2) What effects do the EL teachers’ perspective have on ELs’ school experiences? (3) Are there any consistencies or inconsistencies among the participants’ perspectives and what do they mean? The findings report that tensions and contradictions arising from inconsistencies across the participants’ perspectives as well as within each teacher’s perspective reflect co-existence of race evasive and race conscious identities that in turn can serve as an important locus to transform their perspectives toward more equitable pedagogical practices for ELs.

Second-Wave White Teacher Identity Studies

2016 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 1151-1191 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. Jupp ◽  
Theodorea Regina Berry ◽  
Timothy J. Lensmire
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Identity ◽  
Identity Studies ◽  
White Teacher ◽  
Second Wave

Critical White Studies and Curriculum Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. Jupp ◽  
Pauli Badenhorst
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Curriculum Theory ◽  
Identity Studies ◽  
White Studies ◽  
Critical White Studies ◽  
White Teacher

Critical White studies (CWS) refers to an oppositional and interdisciplinary body of historical, social science, literary, and aesthetic intellectual production that critically examines White people’s individual, collective, social, and historical experiences. CWS reflexively assumes the embeddedness of researcher identities within the research, including the different positionalities of White researchers and researchers of Color within White supremacy writ large as well as whiteness in the social sciences and curriculum theory. As an expression of the historical consciousness shift sparked by anglophone but also francophone African-Atlantic and pan-African intellectuals, CWS emerged within the 20th century’s emancipatory social sciences tied to Global South independence movements and Global North civil rights upheavals. Initiated by cultural studies theorists Stuart Hall and Dick Dyer in the early 80s, CWS has proliferated through two waves. CWS’ first wave (1980–2000) advanced a race-evasive analytical arc with the following ontological and epistemological conceptual-empirical emphases: whiteness as hegemonic normativity, White identity and nation-building, White privilege and property, and White color-blind racism and race evasion. CWS’ second-wave (2000–2020) advanced an anti-essentializing analytical arc with pedagogical conceptual-empirical emphases: White materiality and place, White complexities and relationalities, Whiteness and ethics, and social psychoanalyses in whiteness pedagogies. Always controversial, CWS proliferated as a “hot topic” in social sciences throughout the 90s. Regarding catalytic validity, several CWS concepts entered mass media and popular discussions in 2020 to understand White police violence against Black people—violence of which George Floyd’s murder is emblematic. In curriculum theory, CWS forged two main “in-ways.” In the 1990s, CWS entered the field through Henry Giroux, Joe Kincheloe, Shirley Steinberg, and colleagues who advanced critical whiteness pedagogies. This line of research is differently continued by Tim Lensmire and his colleagues Sam Tanner, Zac Casey, Shannon Macmanimon, Erin Miller, and others. CWS also entered curriculum theory via the field of White teacher identity studies advanced by Sherry Marx and then further synthesized by Jim Jupp, Theodorea Berry, Tim Lensmire, Alisa Leckie, Nolan Cabrera, and Jamie Utt. White teacher identity studies is frequently applied to work on predominantly White teacher education programs. Besides these in-ways, CWS’ conceptual production, especially the notion of “whiteness as hegemonic normativity” or whiteness, disrupted whitened business-as-usual in curriculum theory between 2006 and 2020. Scholars of Color supported by a few White scholars called out curriculum theory’s whiteness and demanded change in a field that centered on race-based epistemologies and indigenous cosmovisions in conferences and journals. CWS might play a role in working through the as-of-yet unresolved conflict over the futurity of curriculum theory as a predominantly White space. A better historicized CWS that takes on questions of coloniality of power, being, and knowledge informed by feminist, decolonial, and psychoanalytic resources provides one possible futurity for CWS in curriculum theory. In this futurity, CWS is relocated as one dimension of a broad array of criticalities within curriculum theory’s critical pedagogies. This relocated CWS might advance psychoanalytically informed whiteness pedagogies that grapple with the overarching question: Can whiteness and White identities be decolonized? This field would include European critical psychoanalytic social sciences along with feminist and decolonial resources to advance a transformative shift in consciousness.

Critiquing Un/Critical Pedagogies to Move Toward a Pedagogy of Responsibility in Teacher Education

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 463-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina N. Berchini
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Teacher Candidates ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
White Teacher ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
Critical Pedagogies ◽  
Systemic Examination

Transformative work with teacher candidates relies on a critique of the tenets of Critical Pedagogy and subsequent Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS). I employ analyses of extant scholarship to argue that these specific domains, as popularly framed, might be responsible for uncritical examinations of the White teacher education students who devotedly enroll in our courses and trust their teachers to treat them fairly, responsibly, and with care. I then entwine relevant research on White privilege pedagogies with my own narrative to argue that taking on the problem of Whiteness in teacher education seems to have inspired an uncritical pedagogy of harmful generalizations. To conclude, I reconceptualize the application of White privilege pedagogies for more complex, systemic examination, and argue that if we are to move beyond a pedagogy of dismantling students, more work which openly and honestly grapples with paradoxes, double binds, and contexts of Whiteness is needed.

Erratum

1941 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-48
Author(s):  
L. Gray Burdin
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Primary Grades ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Speech Pathologist ◽  
Speech Correction

March 3, 1941. As an addendum to a recent article of mine in the “Journal” (“A Survey of Speech Defectives in the Indianapolis Primary Grades,” September, 1940) the assumption was present that the situation revealed was as of the publication date. Since the data was gathered for this survey (1937), the Indianapolis Public Schools have rightfully set about to correct this need. The present director of Speech Correction is Miss Esther Glaspey, a well-trained speech pathologist. Her progressive remedial speech program in the Indianapolis Public Schools has met with hearty approbation.

Whiteness Interrupted

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Bell
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
White Teachers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Predominantly Black ◽  
Black Schools ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
Racial Privilege ◽  
American Society ◽  
Depth Interviews

In Whiteness Interrupted Marcus Bell presents a revealing portrait of white teachers in majority-black schools in which he examines the limitations of understandings of how white racial identity is formed. Through in-depth interviews with dozens of white teachers from a racially segregated, urban school district in Upstate New York, Bell outlines how whiteness is constructed based on localized interactions and takes a different form in predominantly black spaces. He finds that in response to racial stress in a difficult teaching environment, white teachers conceptualized whiteness as a stigmatized category predicated on white victimization. When discussing race outside majority-black spaces, Bell's subjects characterized American society as postracial, in which race seldom affects outcomes. Conversely, in discussing their experiences within predominantly black spaces, they rejected the idea of white privilege, often angrily, and instead focused on what they saw as the racial privilege of blackness. Throughout, Bell underscores the significance of white victimization narratives in black spaces and their repercussions as the United States becomes a majority-minority society.

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