From the Other Side of the Desk: Notes on teaching about race when racialised

Abstract

This paper examines complexities involved in the classroom application of critical pedagogy and antiracism education. It examines the concept of border crossing as a tool for progressive classroom teaching. In educational theory, difference is seens as an analytic tool that students use to examine the ways in which dominant cultures create practices of terror, inequality and exclusions. It has also been argued that through the use of difference as an analytical tool, radical educators should be able to allow students to revise what 'difference' is by crossing over into cultural boundaries that make possible narratives, languages and experiences that provide a resource for rethinking the relationship between the center and margins of power as well as between themselves and others. When teachers use 'difference' as an analytical tool, they are said to be involved in what has been loosely referred to as border pedagogy. This is a pedagogy that moves beyond the opening up of diverse cultural and historical spaces for students. It allows for an understanding of the fragile nature of identities that are transforming into borderlands characterized by different languages, voices and experiences. Drawing from the author's experiences as a Black woman teacher-educator in a predominantly white institution, the paper critically examines the limits of border pedagogy when teaching about and through 'difference', and concludes by offering suggestions for future practices in teacher education programs.