Let's Get Real: Exploring Race, Class, and Gender Identities in the Classroom (original) (raw)
Related papers
Inquiry into Identity- Teaching critical thinking through a study of race, class, and gender.pdf
2012
For students in our "Inquiry into Identity" class, acquiring academic skills is a side effect of high engagement, with the diversity among the students in the room serving as a springboard for higher order learning. Experiential activities (dialogues, Socratic seminars, fish bowls, social inventories, reflective writing and sharing, etc.) infuse inquiry-based learning (cycles of authentic questioning, web research, group collaboration, project-based learning and presentation) to bridge the gap between students’ personal lives and their lives at school. When the experience of students becomes the subject of critical reflection, critical thinking emerges.
Beyond the breach: transforming White identities in the classroom
Race Ethnicity and Education, 2004
Efforts aimed at promoting multiculturalism in the classroom are often pedestrian and ineffectual. When instructors do succeed at facilitating honest discourse, they frequently fail to anticipate the great deal of pain, frustration and anger that is invoked. Rather than sustain a false sense of community, we argue that a dialogic, multicultural community can only be achieved by fostering breach of mainstream norms. Using cultural anthropologist Victor Turner's notion of social drama as a theoretical framework, we document the intense con¯ict that erupted in our classroom when students were pressed to engage one another regarding issues of race. In order to both acknowledge and make public our students' emotional responses to the dialogue, we implemented a`recursive loop', a pedagogical strategy designed to provide immediate feedback and enable students to come to a richer understanding of how their experiences of race are inextricably linked. By analyzing the students' discourse, we demonstrate how these voices do not occur in a vacuum; to the contrary, they are articulated in response to one another and to grand narratives used to make years of oppression appear invisible. Ultimately, we contend that White Identity Transformation is necessary for a multicultural community and that such transformation is facilitated, ironically enough, by con¯ict.
Discussing race and culture in the middle school classroom
2009
i Acknowledgements I wish to thank the members of my committee, all of whom have influenced and inspired me as a scholar and teacher. A special thank you to Timothy Lensmire, whose careful, thoughtful feedback and advice throughout my research (and my graduate career) were invaluable. Thanks, Tim, for believing that I could do this work.
Courageous conversations about race, class, and gender: voices and lessons from the field
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2015
The purpose of this paper is to present a qualitative secondary analysis of two empirical studies that focused on the leadership practices of female practitioners at the secondary level engaging in discourse and practices to disrupt educational inequities. The guiding research question is, "How do school leaders engage in courageous conversations to: (1) transform beliefs and practices concerning educational inequities, and; (2) engender equity to enhance learning for all students?" Building on Singleton and Linton's (2006) framework on courageous conversations, this study examines how some school leaders break the silence and interrogate educational inequities to improve schools. Findings explicate how conversations amongst practitioners can be the impetus for transformative actions, which in turn, lead to the educational achievement of all students. The voices of participants are magnified and lessons from the field are forwarded.
Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 2013
This article documents the transformation of cognitive and relational dispositions within a group of 14 White female undergraduate students ranging in age from 18 to 21 years and enrolled in a semester-long diversity course. Using Mezirow's transformative learning theory as an interpretive frame to guide our phenomenological analysis of written assignments, data revealed that students experienced multiple cognitive and relational transformative processes. Findings suggest that transformative learning theory's framework around processes of transformation is a useful analytical framework for capturing students' unique transformative learning processes or journeys. Findings further suggest that, students' relationships with members of cultural communities previously unfamiliar to them were an important part of students' transformative journeys. These relationships provided students with tangible experiences that assisted them in shifting their worldviews and arriving at greater understanding of how inequality, oppression, and prejudice impact the daily lives of others. Finally, the findings indicate that instructors' perspectives on what accounts for a transformative process is often not aligned with students' opinions of their own growth and development. The study concludes that transformation is a process, and that all steps are a necessary part of a transformative experience.
Walking the Talk: Examining Privilege and Race in a Ninth-Grade Classroom
English Journal, 2008
Kelly Sassi and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas describe their struggles and eventual success with students in constructing a "counternarrative to colormuteness and colorblindness"--the self-imposed student segregation and silencing of voice. Because of discussions during a Native American unit and student participation in a classroom intervention activity, interpersonal dynamics openly shifted for the better.
A vulnerable disclosure: Dangerous negotiations of race and identity in the classroom
This autoethnographic essay shares my experience as a teaching assistant, desiring to be more self aware of how my race informed my pedagogy in the classroom. Set in "Race and Cultural Diversity,“ an advanced undergrad writing course, I examine my commitments to racial and social justice within classroom happenings. Using critical performance pedagogy, this study explores my identity performance to identify and create effective strategies that further dialogue on the often charged and sensitive topic of race. Moreover, this essay reveals what I learned about myself and clarified my teaching/learning philosophy.