Research: ELA Teachers and Whiteness: Hesitancy as Barrier to Teacher Agency Development

Abstract

This study examines ways preservice teachers transfer their developing agentive identities—specifically around race/ism, inequity, and whiteness—from the teacher education context to secondary English language arts classrooms, as well as barriers preventing that transfer. This inquiry utilized qualitative case study methods to conduct in-depth analysis of six ELA preservice teachers’ written reflections, class discussions, and student-instructor conferences. While the preservice teachers showed evidence of developing “theoretical agency” in the teacher education context, they often struggled to maintain their agentive poses within secondary ELA contexts. Their struggles manifest as hesitancy connected to their awareness of and navigation of their own whiteness. Findings suggest preservice teachers need opportunities to interrogate whiteness through curricula and structural inequities and to engage in agency development across a variety of contexts.