Clashes within one teacher’s racial logic: space of possibles?

Abstract

This study is to empirically investigate both residual and emergent factors that undergird one teacher’s understanding of race, racism, and racialization as he responds to two fictional stories and one film. Informed by an assemblage of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and his sociological theory of practice, Gee’s concept of primary Discourses, and Omi and Winant’s theory of racial formation, the research questions are as follows: How are the concepts of race, racism, and racialization understood by one teacher? What are the factors that shape this teacher’s perceptions of race, racism, and racialization? What social and institutional dimensions are imbedded in these constitutive factors? What are the consequences of his understandings of race, racism, and racialization with respect to working productively with students from historically racially marginalized groups? Are there any patterns and/or oppositions among his perceptions of race, racism, and racialization, and what do those patterns and oppositions mean?