Whiteness and Teacher Education

Edie White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136595899
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Due to the rise of internet use and a move toward globalization, it may be assumed that white millennial college students are more accepting of cultural diversity and are more likely to be advocates for social justice than generations that have come before them. This project shows that while many white students know how to speak the language of "correctness" and to some degree even believe in what they are saying, their limited personal experiences with those who are racially different from themselves often bump against their beliefs about racial acceptance and equality.

This project investigates the ways that one facet of identity, whiteness, influences teachers' understanding of their roles in the schools and informs their decision making within their practice. It explores several life stories of five teacher candidates, all born after 1985. Through these stories we get a sense of how white prospective teachers imagine themselves as teachers of diverse students and how they imagine developing equitable practices. This work advocates that teacher educators help pre-service teachers unpack and understand their biases in order to facilitate their students in balancing their life experiences with whom they imagine themselves to be as teachers.

1 Introduction

On the first day of sixth grade a new student came to my school. Her name was Nicole and she was African American. Her family was the first African American family to move into the neighborhood. She was the first African American I ever knew. The other kids in class called her “that Negro girl”; I just called her Nicole.

Although Nicole and I were in the same classes, we were not always treated in the same manner. Because we were chatty twelve-year-olds, Nicole and I were often separated and seated on opposite sides of the room. In our language arts class we had read the Miracle Worker and learned how to sign all of the letters of the alphabet. Nicole and I soon discovered that learning sign language afforded us the opportunity to continue to talk during class regardless of how far apart our teachers sat us. Because we only knew the letters and not the signs for whole words, we had to spell each word out; understanding each other required serious concentration. One day Mrs. Donahue, our language arts teacher, saw us signing across the room to each other. She stopped talking for several minutes while she and all of our classmates watched us. We were oblivious to the silence until she interrupted our secret communication and told us she wanted to see us in the hallway. She first spoke to Nicole and told her that that was not the way we behave in class and that if she wanted to be successful she had to pay attention like the other kids. She looked at me and told me she was disappointed because I should have known better.

When our parents went to parent-teacher conferences, Nicole’s parents were told that she “could be a smart child,” but she was not taking advantage of the education she was receiving at our suburban school. Her parents were told that she needed to learn how to act appropriately in a school setting. Mrs. Donahue assured her parents that Nicole was getting the same opportunities as everyone else but that she was making a choice to be a distraction to her peers by her constant chatter. My parents were told I was a good kid who was excelling.

In May of that year as Nicole and I were walking home together (like we always did), about twenty of the kids in our grade started running after us. We ran as fast as we could, but were quickly overtaken. We curled into balls on the grass as we were kicked and punched and told to “go back where we came from.” I didn’t realize at the time that they were not talking to me—that is until they added the “N” word. Eventually they stopped, and we gathered our things and continued to walk home. The only thing breaking the silence was the sound of an occasional sob. As we approached our street, I said, “Nicole, they’ll leave us alone now and forget about us.” She looked at me with fresh tears and said, “They’ll never forget that I’m black.” I told her that it didn’t matter what color she was. She just shook her head and continued walking. The next day I got a new bike so that I wouldn’t have to walk home from school; Nicole had a for sale sign in her yard.

On the day they sold their house, I was filled with sadness and cried to my mother because my best friend was really going to move. My mom reminded me that her father got transferred to Pennsylvania and that they had to move. She suggested to me that I should be happy for her. I disagreed. Remembering what Nicole had said, I told my mom that Nicole was moving because she was black. My mother said that I was being ridiculous and that our neighborhood was a good, safe place and the fact that her family was able to live there was evidence of their success. My mother assured me that times were different and that a person’s race didn’t matter anymore. She told me that success was determined by how hard people worked, not by the color of their skin. Although what she said greatly contradicted what I had experienced during my sixth-grade year, I believed her because I so desperately wanted it to be true.

I thought Nicole and I were best friends because she was the same as me in that we thought alike and had similar interests. But I was wrong. We were not the same; we experienced the world in very different ways. I didn’t realize the disservice I was doing her by expecting that she should have the same experiences as me. I remember telling her I didn’t see her dark skin, I only saw her as a person, not realizing that subtle implication I was making about our differences not being worth noticing. By pretending to not see her skin color, I was not acknowledging how her skin color made her experiences different from mine. Because I never thought about my race, I became frustrated with her when she thought about hers. When her family wasn’t invited to the block party, I tried to convince her that the invitation must have gotten lost in the mail. But she was convinced that no one liked her parents because of their skin color. When her house got tpeed and her family cars got egged, I told her that it was just crazy teenagers who randomly picked her house, but didn’t have an answer when she asked why they randomly selected her house so many times. In annoyance I asked her why she had to make a big deal out of everything. When we rode our bikes to Baskin Robbins to get an ice cream cone, I thought Nicole was being overly sensitive because she was afraid and thought that everyone was staring at her. I didn’t understand; neighborhoods that weren’t safe looked different than ours. I had been in those “unsafe” neighborhoods coming home from Chicago when my father told us to lock our car doors. It never occurred to me to question my own racist beliefs about an African American neighborhood not being safe. I never considered that Nicole’s race physically defined her to others just as I felt mine did when I was in Chicago. Since she lived in my community, I thought she was different from the inner city people. I considered her one of us and in doing so expected her to act, understand and interact with the world like one of us—a white person.

While she was trying to communicate to me that race was still an issue in the world, I was trying to convince her that it wasn’t. Because my race did not compromise me, I believed that sometimes things just happened and it wasn’t ever about race—those days were gone. Yet in the back of my mind I was confused by what I had experienced and what I had been taught. I saw what had happened to Nicole and her family, but I had been taught at home and at school to believe that people created their own circumstances. If they were struggling, it was because they hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunities that were available to everyone. I was taught that racism was about individuals who harassed and discriminated against people who were racially different than them. Nicole was trying to tell me that it wasn’t just a few individuals, but that it was everywhere. In her own way, she was trying to tell me that it was embedded in the culture, even within me, but I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t understand how from a very early age, social structures influenced my ideas about equality and race. I didn’t consider how the notion of equality and the American Dream were myths perpetuated by a force much greater than my parents or my teachers.

WHITENESS AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY

Despite current studies regarding privilege as it relates to whiteness (Lipsitz, 2006; Kendall, 2006; Dyer, 2005; Doane, 2003; Rodriguez, 2000; hooks, 1997; McIntyre, 1997) white privilege for the most part persists as an unmarked narrative. When white people are not seen or named, the implication is that they are the norm while all others are raced (Dyer, 2005). Yet, how one comes to understand the self and others is largely influenced by systems of normalization learned through school, religion, the media, national folklore and other means of education which in the United States privileges the socialization of white people.

In considering an ideology of race, whiteness must be understood as a racialized social system that is contingent upon historical, institutional and social influences (Kendall, 2006; Doane, 2003). These social relationships are created through dominant discourses that are used to racialize groups of people. Whereas people’s individual notions of truth are influenced by the ideologies of the society from which they are a part, these ideologies are explained through discourses that are passed from institutional and political sites. These discourses work to normalize a notion of what is true through the education and indoctrination of the citizens in a society. Foucault (1994) argues that

each society has its regimes of truth, its “general politics” of truth—that is, the types of discourse it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances that enable one to distinguish true and false statements; the means by which each is sanctioned’ the techniques and procedures afforded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true, (p. 316)

Yet, discourses of truth cannot be separated from discourses of power. Whoever has the power makes the discourse. White people have historically had the power to produce and control the discourses that become the official regimes of truth of society. In the United States, a white version of knowledge has become the official version of knowledge (Apple, 2000).

Interrogating whiteness is crucial as the population in the United States continues to grow more diverse. While the 2005 “minority” population in the United States represented 33% of the total population, by the year 2020, the “minority” population is predicted to be 39% (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2006). The increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the United States can be witnessed in the schools as well. In 1993, 66% of the student population in all national schools was categorized as white whereas 34 % was classified as non-white. By the year 2003, 58.7% of the total student enrollment was white while 41.3% of the students were identified as nonwhite (National Center for Educational Statistics 2006).

While the nation’s student population continues to grow in ethnic diversity, the racial diversity of teachers has stayed relatively the same with white teachers representing approximately 84% of all teachers working in elementary and secondary schools over the last decade (National Center for Educational Statistics 2003-2004). The fact that our nation’s schools continue to become more diverse whereas the teacher population continues to be predominantly white has become a growing concern for educators who are concerned with all students being given the opportunity to experience success (Howard, 2006; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Rodriguez, 2000; Lipsitz, 2006). As the number of students from racially diverse backgrounds continues to increase, teacher educators urgently need to turn their focus toward preparing both practicing and pre-service teachers to work with culturally diverse students. The teacher population must become more knowledgeable about contextualizing teaching practices to meet the educational needs of diverse populations of students—the future of our country—who will provide the nation with the intellectual resources to participate and compete in a global society.

SITUATING THE STUDY

At State University students are grouped into cohorts. They proceed through a five-semester teacher certification program in which they take all of their education classes together. I met one of the cohorts of twenty-four in the autumn of 2006 during the second semester of their journey. I taught two literacy methods courses to the group. The cohort consisted of twenty-two white students and two students who self-identified as biracial.

In addition to incorporating course readings that addressed the theories and methods behind teaching literacy, I also included readings that discussed how literacy is understood in social and political contexts. I wanted to offer my students the opportunity to understand the importance of making the content and lessons of their classes relevant and accessible for all students. As an educator, I found this information invaluable. Yet, I was surprised at the apathy that bled through our class discussions. I did not understand the tacit resistance from my predominantly white students whenever we discussed strategies for teaching children who come from marginalized communities.

In order to better understand what I perceived as my students’ apathy, I asked if the group expected to have an entire class of children who looked like them and who had similar schooling and life experiences as they had. I asked if they saw any importance in learning how to develop their practices in ways that would meet the diverse needs of all of their students. While my questions were for the most part met with blank stares, one student, Brittany, stopped my line of inquiry by answering, “Of course we care, but we already talked about diversity and culturally relevant pedagogy last semester. We don’t need to talk about this anymore. Besides, no offense, but we’re different from you and most of the teachers we had growing up. We have friends from all different ethnicities from all over the country and all over the world. We don’t have the same hang ups about race that your generation has.”

Brittany, like all of the students in the class, was born after 1980. Much has been written about this group—often referred to as the millennial generation. Recent research suggests that due to the rise of internet use and a move toward globalization, millennial students have more experiences with people from diverse populations and are more accepting of cultural diversity (Greenberg & Weber, 2008; Howe & Strauss, 2000; Rainer & Rainer 2011). Indeed, the common view of millennial youth appeared to be true with my cohort.

After Brittany shared the beliefs and attitudes her generation had about diversity, many of the students in the class offered stories recounting their daily interactions with people from ethnicities and cultures different from their own. The students in the class also shared that some of their friendships with culturally diverse people were started and continue to exist on facebook and other social networking sites. They were pleased to speak of the ways they were connected to others.

Intrigued, I asked the group to talk more about their various interactions with diverse groups of people. Several of the students in the class talked about the plethora of volunteer hours they needed to graduate high school and get into the university. They shared stories about service-learning projects in which they had to work with underserved communities in order to earn credit in their college courses. Without a doubt, my students had many more opportunities than I did (or did many of my contemporaries in their forties and fifties) when I was their age to interact with those who are ethnically and culturally different from themselves.

When I asked the students to share with me what their experiences with diversity taught them, they overwhelmingly agreed that “people are people, we’re all the same” and that “it doesn’t matter where you come from or who you are, we’re all on an equal playing field now.” I was somewhat taken aback by their answer. While I agreed that there is a degree of consistency in the human experience, I disagreed that there is an equal playing field. Upon further discussion, it became clear that they didn’t see the complexity of cultural diversity in quite the same way that I did; they weren’t conscious of the role that one’s culture played in determining whether an individual might be socially, politically and economically privileged or marginalized. Despite what we had read in class or what the two people of color in the cohort had to say about their experiences, the twenty-two white students were particularly resistant to critically examining the ways their race afforded them privileges while at the same time marginalizing others. What was missing from the discussion of their experiences with cultural diversity was a critical reflection about how structural and institutional beliefs and practices have created, and continue to create, inequity.

I have shared this story to offer perspective on an all too common occurrence in teacher education classrooms. While many white youth from the millennial generation believe they are more accepting of cultural and racial diversity than previous generations, their life experiences of privilege too often bump against their notions of racial acceptance and equality. Studies discussing the experiences of pre-service teachers (Artiles, 1998; Villegas & Lucas, 2002; Cochran-Smith, 2004; Gonsalves, 2008) show that white teacher candidates often resist forms of socio-historical analysis of their own schooling. Because so many have benefited from the school system that privileges those from their own socio-cultural upbringing (white, middle class), they are unlikely to acknowledge the presence much less the effects of institutionalized racism within the educational system at large (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). Furthermore, Gonsalves (2008) suggests that questioning the norms of the dominant culture often leads to feelings of guilt and confusion which result in denial and other performed acts of resistance.

Because of the resistance I encountered from my white students when I asked them to reflect on the ways their personal experiences shaped their notions of teaching and learning, I began to focus my energies on helping teacher candidates move past this resistance. I felt it was important for them to acknowledge and understand difference and inequalities so that they would see the need to develop practices that serve culturally diverse populations. Yet, in order to prepare prospective teachers for working in a diverse world, it became apparent to me that teacher educators need to offer authentic opportunities for their students to interrogate their personal beliefs and experiences and reflect on how these shape their teacher identities with respect to notions of teaching and learning. Helping pre-service white teachers explore the ways they are situated in the world juxtaposed with the experiences marginalized groups encounter in various social systems can give these teacher candidates the needed insight to develop pedagogies and craft their practices in ways that prepare culturally diverse students for a changing world.

THE STUDY

This study examines the life histories of five, millennial, white pre-service teachers. It explores how they have come to see themselves and unpacks the spoken and unspoken biases that shape who they are and who they imagine themselves to be. The study looks to answer the following questions: How do white prospective teachers discuss and understand their life experiences and the ways these experiences shape their teacher identities? How do white prospective teachers discuss an equitable pedagogy and how do they imagine practicing this pedagogy? How can our understandings of the intersection of life experiences and pedagogies of equity be developed in teacher education programs so that teacher candidates are given the opportunity to consciously develop practices that meet the needs of all of their students?

The stories you will read are the individual stories of five participants as told in their own words. Yet, they can be viewed as a microcosm of white teacher candidates across the nation who struggle with understanding the ways their own socio-cultural heritages shape their professional identities. It was important for me to include the participants’ stories, uninterrupted, as told in their own words. The purpose of this was so that the readers of this work have an opportunity to study the speaker as well as the experiences themselves.

The stories are then interpreted using Bakhtin’s notion of the development of the self. What makes this analysis so revealing is that Bakhtin’s theories allow us to study the language the speaker uses when looking back on the experienced life; that is to say we are not looking at the just the stories the participants tell to make meaning of their lives, but we are examining the language that the participants use to give the experience meaning. What this gives us as readers is a chance to study the speaker as well as the experience being described.

In a time where being white still carries privileges, teacher educators need to provide a space for pre-service teachers to reflect on how their life experiences, at least in part, shape who they are as teachers. It is also important for teacher educators to help white pre-service teachers understand the ways people of color may interpret and respond to whiteness. When a space is provided in teacher education programs for prospective teachers to reflect on the similarities and differences between their own life experiences and the experiences of people of color, to understand how their spoken and unspoken biases have shaped how they make sense of the world and the ways they interact with others, teacher candidates can more clearly see and respond to schooling discrepancies across cultures. Armed with this potential for developing cultural awareness, teacher educators can help pre-service teachers develop appropriate pedagogical approaches, frame curriculum content which is accessi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Making of a White Teacher
• 3. The Emerging Self: A White Identity
• 4. The Examined Life
• 5. Desiree
• 6. Emma
• 7. Alex
• 8. Lauren
• 9. Sarah
• 10. Growing Up
• 11. School Days
• 12. College Campus Life
• 13. How to Be a Teacher
• 14. Merging the Past and Present
• References
• Index