White Teachers Research Articles

Herman Witkin and the Rise and Fall of the Black Learning Style Idea, 1960–2003

Background/Context: Historical studies of this volatile period in educational history (1960–2003 tend to focus on educational policy and/or curriculum, but rarely address changes in learning theory. Numerous historical studies have traced how psychologists, psychometricians, policymakers, and social scientists have dismissed the intellectual potential of Black students over the course of the 20th century, but these studies have completely overlooked the controversial Black learning style idea and how the idea interacted with the educational and racial discourses of the period. Purpose: This intellectual history traces the rise and fall of the controversial idea that there was a Black learning style. Research Design: Hollinger (1985) defines intellectual history succinctly as the “discourse of intellectuals” (p. 131). Often described as thinking rather than thought, an intellectual history focuses on contingencies, contradictions, and inconsistencies in a discourse; contextualizes the discourse in evolving historical, political, and social contexts; and explores how these changing contexts affect the development of the ideas. Conclusions: The Black learning style and cultural mismatch theories both emerged from the research of psychologist Herman Witkin in the 1950s. The idea was further developed by Rosalie Cohen, Asa Hilliard III, and Janice Hale in the 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1990s, many scholars considered the Black learning style idea to be dangerous and stopped directly referencing it. Despite its eventual rejection, the Black learning style idea inspired many lines of inquiry about the ways that race, culture, and ethnicity impact learning that are still being pursued today. This intellectual history traces the origins, emergence, and fall of the idea that Black students had a different learning and/or cognitive style that clashed with that of White teachers, standardized testing, and American schools.

Whiteness Interrupted: White Teachers and Racial Identity in Predominantly Black Schools

Whiteness Interrupted: White Teachers and Racial Identity in Predominantly Black Schools

Support for Diverse Students Through Teacher Education Still Needs Presidential Leadership

In this article, Sleeter reflects on her previous article, “An Invitation to Support Diverse Students through Teacher Education.” She argues that her earlier recommendations are still valid, but changing conditions have lent them greater urgency. Research has made clear the positive impact of culturally relevant curriculum and pedagogy on students of color. Although White teachers still dominate the profession, White students are no longer in the majority. But schools are still highly racially segregated, with unequal access to resources, and school closures coupled with increased online education have only widened racial gaps. Because of these conditions, she argues that public education needs federal leadership.

An African American Dilemma: A History of School Integration and Civil Rights in the North by Zöe Burkholder

Reviewed by: An African American Dilemma: A History of School Integration and Civil Rights in the North by Zöe Burkholder Campbell F. Scribner (bio) Education, Education history, African Americans, Civil rights, Integration An African American Dilemma: A History of School Integration and Civil Rights in the North. By Zöe Burkholder. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 297. Cloth, $34.95.) An African American Dilemma is Zöe Burkholder's third book about the history of racial inequality in American education, and like her previous offerings it provides a rigorous, insightful, and unsparingly clear treatment of its subject. The book's title refers to Gunnar Myrdal's classic, An American Dilemma, which examined the cycle of hatred and dispossession that sustained American racism during the early twentieth century. 1 Confronting the issue from the perspective of Black students, parents, and community leaders, Burkholder introduces a second dilemma: namely, whether to pursue civic equality through racially integrated schools or to build sustaining communities in racially separate schools. Both approaches came with tradeoffs and shortcomings, and the persistence of anti-Black racism meant that neither could be implemented entirely on its own terms. Indeed, as Burkholder observes, "neither has been entirely successful," but it is for that very reason that "both ideals—integration and separation—reappear with each new generation" (4). Burkholder's task, and the real strength of the book, is to forgo simplified endorsements of either integration or separation—to accept the conflict over Black schooling as a genuine dilemma—and to demonstrate how intelligent and good-faith actors made difficult (and different) decisions based on the particularities of their own times and places. The book's historical analysis extends into the 1970s, but readers of this journal will probably take greatest interest in the opening chapter, which describes Black education in the North from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Burkholder synthesizes a number of recent studies with her own archival research to present one of the best overviews of Black education in the early nineteenth century to date. There are a few touchstones with which any historian of the period will be familiar: Judge Lemuel Shaw's rejection of Sarah Roberts's plea to integrate the Boston public schools (28–29), for instance, or the attack on Prudence Crandall's female academy (17), both of which speak to the era's institutional racism and vigilante violence. To these, Burkholder adds a [End Page 193] cast of lesser-known activists and settings, from cities like Cincinnati and Detroit and a number of small towns across the North. None of these communities followed a prescribed path for Black public education. Neighboring towns took sharply different approaches to challenging or working within implicitly segregated school systems (36). Some parents found that exclusion from common schools or abuse by white teachers made separate schools the most desirable option for their children. Others valued the proximity and academic quality of the common schools and fled segregated institutions at the first opportunity. Some insisted on common schooling as the path to equal citizenship, while others saw it as the most practical means to good education. It is precisely this sort of variety, complexity, and unpredictability that sustains the vitality of Burkholder's dilemma, and which offers a richly nuanced narrative. Unsurprisingly, the same contingency led to bitter political struggles between and within Black communities. For integrationists, hard-won access to common schools could not be jeopardized by internal dissent. Thus, Frederick Douglass wrote in 1847, "We should feel the most intense mortification if, while many of the most respectable white people of this city should be in favor of admitting our children to equal privileges in the use of our common schools, a single colored man should be found opposed to the measure" (29). Integrationists also accused their opponents of selfishness, arguing that they were merely trying to protect Black teachers, whose livelihoods depended on separate schools. "Should thousands [of children] be losers that a few be gainers?" they demanded (38). For their part, separatists pointed out that white teachers, whether in common or "colored" schools, "are nearly always mentally, morally, or financially bankrupt, and...

Who refers whom? The effects of teacher characteristics on disciplinary office referrals

Teachers affect a wide range of students’ educational and social outcomes, but how they contribute to students’ involvement in school discipline is less understood. We estimate the impact of same-race teachers and other observed teacher qualifications on students’ likelihood of receiving a disciplinary referral. Using data that track all disciplinary referrals and the identity of both the referred and referring individuals from a large and diverse urban school district in California, we find that Black students’ probability of receiving at least one referral is about 3 percentage points (26.6% of Black students’ base rate) smaller than for white students when they have a Black teacher versus a white teacher. The reduced likelihoods of receiving referrals from same-race teachers also convert to reduced likelihoods of being suspended. These results are mostly driven by referrals for violence, interpersonal offences, and walkout infractions, middle school students, and students from high-poverty schools. Students are also less likely to be referred by more experienced teachers and by teachers who hold either an English language learners or special education credential. While it is unclear whether these findings are due to variation in teachers’ effects on actual student behavior, variation in teachers’ proclivities to make disciplinary referrals, or a combination of the two, these results nonetheless suggest that teachers play a central role in the prevalence of, and inequities in, office referrals and subsequent student discipline.

The work of growing young people con Cariño: a reconstructive lens on one white teacher’s anti-racist approach to teaching immigrant-origin Latinx students

PurposeThis paper aims to highlight a reconstructive lens on one white teacher’s critical approach to teaching literacy. This work equally highlights the importance of anti-racist approach to critical pedagogies centered on a humanizing ethic of cariño.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on portraiture and qualitative methods, this paper uses the reconstructive analysis of one white teacher’s efforts to disrupt white supremacy through critical pedagogies.FindingsThe author posits that Mr Hope was able to take on critical approaches to teaching literacy and design anti-racist pedagogies by honoring his students’ lived experiences. An ethic of cariño is embodied to design critical pedagogical choices and interactional moves that center the experience of immigrant-origin Latinx youth.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to a growing body of literature on reconstructive discourse analysis. The author suggests that taking a “reconstructive” approach to discourse analysis requires that researchers move beyond a narrow focus on transcripts of classroom interaction. The author suggests that a reconstructive lens requires that focus is not solely placed on the interactional level of the transcript, but rather that interactional data be put in conversation with other data sources.Practical implicationsThe author offers pedagogical implications for anti-racist teaching perspectives and offers key elements to critical pedagogies that engage Latinx students and center their experiential knowledge as a catalyst for curriculum design.Originality/valueTo date, few studies have explored how teachers of immigrant-origin Latinx students are intentionally resisting white supremacy and crafting anti-racist approaches to critical pedagogies.

Making Justice Fundamental: Teacher Educators’ Journey to Reimagine Accountability

ABSTRACT This article describes the journey of two teacher educators to reconstruct our knowledge about grading and shift justice from ornamental to fundamental in our teacher preparation methods courses. This work attempts to answer the call from scholars, who have been advocating for educators to be more prepared to meet the needs of a diverse student population. Despite these long-standing calls from scholars, teacher education programs, including the use of traditional grading methods, continue to uphold whiteness. We utilize a self-study methodology to document how we reimagined our grading practices in teacher preparation methods courses from perpetuating whiteness to centering justice. Drawing on principles of liberatory education, we designed a new accountability measure to invoke action and hold pre-service teachers accountable for growth toward anti-oppressive dispositions by taking ownership of their learning through the documentation of their learning and self-assessment of their continued progress. We discuss shifts in our own pedagogy, practices, and beliefs as a result. We also analyze the tensions of engaging in our efforts to adopt an alternative, justice-oriented grading method as white teacher educators and in teacher preparation classrooms that are predominately white, middle-class female pre-service teachers.

Spillover Effects of Black Teachers on White Teachers' Racial Competency: Mixed Methods Evidence from North Carolina

Spillover Effects of Black Teachers on White Teachers' Racial Competency: Mixed Methods Evidence from North Carolina

Illustrating linguistic dexterity in “English mostly” spaces: how translanguaging can support academic writing in secondary ELA classrooms

PurposeLittle research has been done exploring the nature of multilingual students who are not categorized as English language learners (ELLs) in English language arts (ELA) classes. This study about a group of multilingual girls in an ELA class led by a monolingual white teacher aims to show how, when a teacher makes space for translanguaging practices in ELA, multilingual students disrupt norms of English only.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use reconstructive discourse analysis to understand translanguaging across a variety of linguistic productions for a group of four focal students. Data sources include fieldnotes from 29 classroom observations, writing samples and process documents and 8.5 h of recorded classroom discourse.FindingsStudents used multilingualism across a variety of discourse modes, frequently in spoken language and rarely in written work. Translanguaging was most present in small-group peer talk structures, where students did relationship building, generated ideas for writing and managed their writing agendas, including feelings about writing. In addition, Spanish served as “elevated vocabulary” in writing. Across discourse modes, translanguaging served to develop academic proficiency in writing.Originality/valueThe authors proposed a more expansive approach to data analysis in English-mostly cases – i.e. environments shaped by multilingual students in monolingual school contexts – to argue for anti-deficit approaches to literacy development for multilingual students. Analyzing classroom talk alongside literacy allows for a more nuanced understanding of translanguaging practices in academic writing. They also show how even monolingual teachers can disrupt monolingual hegemony in ELA classrooms with high populations of multilingual students.

Teacher-child racial congruence and young children's preschool adjustment

The purpose of this study was to explore how adjusted preschoolers were to preschool when their teachers were either racially congruent or racially incongruent and whether gender and moderated these associations. In this study, 259 preschoolers (50% boys; Mage = 53.84 months; 63% White, 37% Black) in 44 classrooms at 16 federally- and privately-funded centers/preschools were rated for their adjustment to preschool using teacher (N = 44; 100% women, 52% White, 38% Black, 2% Asian, 5% American Indian/Alaskan Native, 2% Latine) reports and direct child assessments. Multi-level structural equation modeling was used to simultaneously address the non-independence of the data by estimating higher-level variance components (i.e., variance on a total of six preschool adjustment outcomes out due to the classroom and due to the center) as well as correlated outcomes. Accounting for classroom-level variance as well as school-, classroom-, and child-level covariates, these analyses revealed main effects for gender and teacher-child racial congruence, and not for race, but higher-order interactions were significant. White girls with White teachers scored higher than White girls with Black teachers on four outcomes. Black girls with Black teachers scored higher than Black girls with White teachers on three outcomes and lower on two outcomes. White boys with White teachers scored lower than White boys with Black teachers on three outcomes. Black boys with Black teachers scored lower than Black boys with White teachers on five outcomes and higher on one outcome. Magnitudes of associations found ranged from small to large across the analyses. These findings add to the growing literature concerning teacher racial congruence suggesting its association with preschool adjustment may be moderated by race and gender of the child. More research is needed to understand the mechanisms accounting for these associations.

Mode-switching as Face-saving Resource in a Synchronous Online Class about Linguistic Racism

Why might students in an online synchronous course about classroom communication opt to use simultaneous chat, rather than audiovisual participation, during a video teleconference call? Drawing on prior research about online discussions and video-mediated communication, we used critical discourse analysis to examine how prospective and practicing teachers in an English teacher education course at a university in the Southern US switched from the mode of video to chat during an online synchronous teleconference lesson on Black Language and linguistic racism in Secondary English teaching. We found that, aside from practical concerns regarding privacy and internet access, the White teacher participants chose chat to express perspectives on Black language that revealed both traces of their biases and emerging awareness regarding inclusive language pedagogy. We offer implications regarding online teaching of issues associated with language/education. (134)

Race talk tensions: practicing racial literacy in a fourth-grade classroom

PurposeThere is a pressing need to teach students how to talk critically about race to understand the personal and political implications of racism in the contemporary US society. Classroom race talk, however, often includes moments of discomfort or confusion as teachers and students navigate new norms for making sense of race and racism. The purpose of this paper is to examine how one white teacher and her multiracial class of fourth-grade students navigated race talk tensions while reading and discussing shared texts.Design/methodology/approachData for this paper were collected as part of a larger, year-long qualitative study on antiracist pedagogy. In this paper, the author analyzes video data of classroom race talk recorded during whole-class and small-group literacy lessons. Using inductive coding and reconstructive critical discourse analysis, the author examines how the teacher and students co-constructed meaning during tense or confusing conversational moments.FindingsThe findings demonstrate that the teacher and students jointly mediated tensions by using the practices of racial literacy, which included learning about the history of racial inequality in the USA, considering racism as structural and systemic rather than individual and asking and answering questions for continued inquiry and critical self-reflection. While previous research studies have characterized race talk tensions as problems or obstacles to student learning, the findings from this study suggest that tensions can be generative to developing and enacting racial literacy.Originality/valueIn the current political climate, alarmist rhetoric issued by conservative politicians and media outlets has discredited race talk as harmful or damaging to children. This study offers a positive reframing of tensions, which may provide teachers encouragement to pursue literacy instruction that equips students with knowledge and skills to better understand and confront racism.

“What they allow us to learn”: exploring how white English teachers cultivate students’ critical literacies through curriculum and pedagogy

PurposeThis qualitative research study examines classroom observations and transcripts, teacher and student interviews and student writing to investigate how white English teachers can cultivate students’ critical literacies regarding race and oppression through classroom literature. As research and practice in the field of critical literacy has yet to effectively center black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) lives and histories, this study aims to expand on existing critical literacy research by examining how literature teachers disrupt the perpetuation of whiteness through literature instruction that explicitly grapples with race and structures of oppression.Design/methodology/approachThis research examines the pedagogical practices of two white English teachers through a yearlong investigation of classroom instruction and curriculum in an urban high school in a large Northeastern city. The overarching question of this study asks, how do white English teachers cultivate students’ critical literacies regarding race and social justice through classroom literature? Additional questions that guided this study are: How do students in these classes learn about structures of oppression? What language is used in these classrooms to discuss ideas about power? What texts and materials do these teachers use to engage students in critical literacy practices?FindingsThe findings of this study provide insight as to how white English teachers can foster students’ critical literacy development regarding race and oppression through their pedagogy and curriculum. The two teachers’ introduction of critical language and frameworks in the classroom supported students’ ability to critically engage with classroom literature and with their own social worlds. In addition, these teachers’ practices emphasize the need for white teachers to decenter their own knowledge and identities to effectively foster students' critical and sociopolitical development.Originality/valueThis research responds to McLean et al.’s (2021) call for a disruption of the “perpetuation of Eurocentric, hegemonic perspectives by white scholars” in the field by centering race in approaches to critical literacy development in the classroom. By analyzing data from classrooms in the same school with distinct curricular approaches, this study examines not only what but also how educators are teaching in classrooms designed to cultivate students’ critical and sociopolitical development through English Language Arts. This study offers hope for developing critical and culturally sustaining pedagogies among non-BIPOC educators who teach Black and Latinx populations.

Race Talk Moves for Racial Literacy in the Elementary Classroom

The study examines how a white elementary educator used discursive practices I refer to as “race talk moves” to support students’ racial literacy during whole-class read-alouds. This case study found that the teacher used four moves that have been previously documented in literature discussions: listening, participating, synthesizing, and challenging. Significantly, however, the teacher drew upon these moves in ways that were responsive to students’ racialized identities and emergent understandings of race. Moreover, the analysis identified a new, fifth move, what I call “anchoring,” that supported students in moving from surface-level conceptions of race to a deeper understanding of systemic racism. By actively responding to and deepening students’ racial literacy contributions, anchoring moves illuminate how teachers and students can co-construct critical race knowledge. This study diverges from previous research on the drawbacks of white teachers talking about race to demonstrate the moves teachers can make to support students’ racial literacy development.

“Breathe and Be Ready to Learn”: The Issue with Social-Emotional Learning Programs as Classroom Management

As social-emotional learning (SEL) has become a more acknowledged and central part of early schooling in the last two decades, many schools and educators, particularly those in progressive spaces, have adopted SEL programs to supplement or substitute other systems of classroom management. While research demonstrates that children’s social, emotional, and cultural practices and experiences are central to inclusive, humanizing, and culturally relevant learning, SEL programs are often implemented to more closely resemble behaviorist systems of classroom management. This article presents findings from a progressive first-grade classroom of Latinx children from immigrant families led by a white teacher. Examples from ethnographic observations of the classroom illustrate the ways that the teacher used an SEL program alongside a discourse of “readiness to learn” to manage and control children’s behavior. These classroom experiences proved to be closely connected to the ideas about learning that children in Mr. Walsh’s class shared in video-cued interviews, namely that students need to be calm, quiet, focused, and “ready” in order to learn. The article considers the ways that larger systems of whiteness, individualism, and control weaving through SEL programming and progressive schooling create, foster, and perpetuate discourses of control and “readiness” that ultimately prevent children from meaningfully contributing and engaging in the type of deep learning that results from focused, structured agency and relationships of mutual trust and respect.

“Free License to Communicate”: Licensing Black Language against White Supremacist Language Assessments in a PreK Classroom

The policing of Black Language is inextricably tied to the policing of Black people and is entrenched in a long history of white Western European colonization. The legacies of white supremacy pervade schooling in its earliest years, yet Black teachers have consistently mounted a counterforce in battling white hegemony. In this article, I feature one such teacher, Raniya, who licensed Black Language in her preK classroom. Based on three months of classroom observations and interviews, this ethnographic case study explores the institutional architecture that affords white supremacist language assessments, particularly through an epistemology of language as an abstracted entity and through its process of curricularization. A raciolinguistic perspective illuminated how the white teachers at Raniya’s school insisted on broadly dehumanizing students of color through a schoolwide policy based on white monolingual standards. Drawing on notion of “vernacular insurrections,” I juxtapose white teachers’ raciolinguistic ideologies with Raniya’s practices. She claimed her classroom as a critical vernacular site through her approach of student language as a practice, and by subverting the normalcy of white hegemony within the schoolwide assessment process. This article calls for a shift in thinking about skills-based, decontextualized approaches as inherently white supremacist, and excavates how such a language approach supports white supremacy to thrive. I discuss the significance of centering the fight against white supremacy in our analysis of literary practices, which elucidates the potency of even small amounts of white dominance in institutional mechanisms as detrimental for Black students. As a field, the stagnation of Black student equity and commitment to white hegemony by white educators and administrators across preK through higher education persists. Though some white educators diverge from hegemonic practices, we must consider who benefits and what is sustained when exceptions are used to overlook and not interrogate the norm. This work contributes to the mounting rationales for racial diversification in the teacher workforce.

A director like me: Teacher-leader racial/ethnic match and job outcomes in child care centers

The leaders of child care centers shape the everyday experiences of child care teachers, who play a critical role in supporting young children. While research has linked leadership to policy-relevant outcomes such as teacher job satisfaction and turnover, little is known about specific leader characteristics linked to teacher job outcomes. In K-12, one key factor associated with increased job satisfaction and lower turnover is teacher-principal racial/ethnic match, however there is no evidence to date on how teacher-leader racial/ethnic match relates to teacher job outcomes in child care settings. Using data from a sample of 1,011 teachers at child care centers in Virginia, this study documents the prevalence of teacher-leader racial/ethnic match. We estimate associations between racial/ethnic match and teachers’ views of leadership, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and turnover after six months. Although two-thirds of child care teachers experienced racial/ethnic match with their child care center leader, Black and Hispanic teachers were far less likely to experience racial/ethnic match than White teachers. We did not find significant associations between racial/ethnic match and teacher job outcomes after adjusting for covariates. We discuss potential explanations, directions for future research, and implications for policy.

Teachers ‘looking into a mirror’ - a journey through exposure to diverse perspectives

ABSTRACT This study examined the impact of a workshop for teachers entitled ‘Things are Not Always What They Seem’. The workshop’s aim was to raise awareness of teachers’ roles in heterogenic classrooms. The study’s primary assumption was the importance of increasing teachers’ awareness of their biases and the need to foster intercultural sensitivity. To do so, the workshop exposed 35 teachers to the perspectives of ‘other’ teachers and students including those deriving from the following defined categories: middle-class, advantaged, white teachers (MAW), and low social economic status, disadvantaged, and black (LDB) students. The research method was qualitative interpretive, based on the analysis of texts from the teachers’ workshop. The workshop included exposure to the MAW statements towards their students and LDB statements about their personal experience with racism. The teachers from the workshop read the quotes, searched for connections between them, and reflected about the texts. Findings indicate that the teachers’ responses to the offered quotes demonstrate intercultural sensitivity, as manifested through understanding their students’ points of view.

Disruptive race spatiality: educators, white postures, and antiracism

ABSTRACT This article explores notions of spatiality, race, and productive disruptions of whiteness; focusing on two dinners which were one component of a mixed method study on racism, teaching, and implicit race bias with secondary teachers in Toronto, Canada. The dinners were focused on cross race dialogue. White teachers experienced the dinners as uncomfortable, motivating, and in one case upsetting. The dinners offer a unique look at White experiences of racial spatial disruption. Drawing on reflections, interviews, and dinner transcripts, this article sketches a messy typology of these experiences to flesh out connections between White teachers’ racial (dis)engagements with/in race dialogue, and related (dis)engagements with antiracism. The paper theorises three distinct but related postures of White self-location, and takes up the implications of each for teacher self-identity and engagement with antiracism. Critically engaging the notion of spatiality, this work is guided by critical race theory, and critical phenomenological approaches.

Elementary teacher occupational health outcomes across schools with varying resources and demographics

AbstractEquity for students includes access to a healthy teacher workforce across all school settings. This study sought to disentangle the role of racial/ethnic (in)congruence in teacher stress from school resources by using propensity score analysis to match Black, Hispanic, and White elementary teachers on individual, classroom, and school characteristics, and examining whether these matched teachers reported differences in stress outcomes when working in schools where the predominant student demography was either congruent or incongruent with their own. Data from the 2015−2016 National Teacher and Principal Survey was used to find propensity score matches among 7540 Black, Hispanic, and White elementary teachers. Black, Hispanic, and White teachers all reported stronger occupational health outcomes in higher‐resourced, majority‐White schools. Black and Hispanic teachers reported higher levels of occupational health outcomes than White teachers when teaching in under‐resourced, majority−minority schools. These findings suggest important implications for teacher training and support, such as considering increased training and reflection opportunities on culturally responsive teaching, broadening policies that homogeneously categorize and aim to uniformly support “teachers of color,” and examining the ways in which teacher identity uniquely informs their workplace experiences and may necessitate differentiated resources.