Learning on the Job: How Teachers Learn to Adapt Their Approaches to Conversations About Racism
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In recent years, amplified by the unjust murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black lives, there has been a national push to better educate our citizens about race and racism. In response, there have also been attempts to limit these discussions, with some states passing bills that prohibit teachers from talking about racism, white supremacy, and Critical Race Theory. However, in order to help our students develop into empathetic and informed citizens, discussions of race and racism must occur in classrooms. Due to the flexibility of their subject and the focus on identity development, California high school English teachers are uniquely situated to highlight these discussions in their classrooms, yet many teachers do not feel prepared or comfortable to do so early in their careers. In order to better understand how teachers’ level of comfort with and approaches to these conversations change throughout their career, I conducted semi structured interviews with four California Bay Area high school English teachers, all of whom work at the same school and have been teaching for over a decade. My findings revealed most of the teachers felt uncomfortable having these discussions with their students at the beginning of their career, but they all viewed English teachers as having some level of responsibility to facilitate these discussions and struggled to engage different student beliefs. They all gained comfort with these discussions throughout their career and were able to adapt their approaches to these conversations accordingly by taking into account how they frame and model these conversations, learning from their mistakes, and establishing a strong classroom culture. Importantly, through working with colleagues who were equally open-minded and committed to this work and learning from their students, especially their Students of Color, they were able to gain comfort with their discomfort in these conversations by acknowledging that they have a great extent to learn from others’ lived experiences and commitment to this work.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Publication date | May 31, 2023; May 31, 2023 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Gould, Kayley |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor | Kelman, Ari Y |
| Thesis advisor | Garcia, Antero |
| Department | Graduate School of Education |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University |
Subjects
| Subject | Race |
|---|---|
| Subject | Racism |
| Subject | Education |
| Subject | Learning |
| Subject | Teachers |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Gould, K. (2023). Learning on the Job: How Teachers Learn to Adapt Their Approaches to Conversations About Racism. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/qb074vx0459. https://doi.org/10.25740/qb074vx0459.
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Graduate School of Education
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- Contact
- kayleygould100@yahoo.com
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