Discussion boards as a pedagogical tool engendering critical race conversations: Meeting anti-racist aims to raise consciousness and disrupt whiteness

Abstract

This study's purpose was to offer an explanation into how intentionally-designed and anti-racist discussion board prompts influence preservice teachers' written critical race conversations. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: Instruction-As-Usual (IAU) or Disrupting Whiteness (DW), with the latter group assigned discussion board prompts that included prompts that tasked students to interrogate structural racism. Qualitative analyses of discussion board post data were merged through integrating survey response relationship interpretations. Our results indicate that whiteness disruption and racial consciousness racialized constructs were present. Moreover, DW students evidenced more frequent critical race conversations, and integrated results reaffirmed a more holistic, anti-racist teacher education strategy. We conclude with implications for anti-racist teacher educators who use DBs in their pedagogy.