Abstract
This paper is a result of the reflection on Kristin Searle, Colby Tofel-Grehl, Andrea Hawkman, Mario Suarez, and Beth MacDonald’s paper, “Whiteness at work in the elementary classroom: a case study,” which follows a White male teacher as he is trained to employ an integrated technology unit that connects science, social studies, and language arts. The need for teachers to integrate content in culturally relevant ways is imperative as schools become increasingly diverse. Our engagement with this paper left us to question whether the professional development program was designed to support Mr. Anderson’s (and other teachers’) sociopolitical consciousness and subsequently his (and their) capacity to enact Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. In this forum, we offer grappling with racism as a foundational practice for teacher education as a way to interrupt dysconsciousness among science education researchers and teacher educators, as well as those with whom we learn.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Freire, P. (1974). Education for critical consciousness. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Gutiérrez, K. D., & Vossoughi, S. (2010). Lifting off the ground to return anew: mediated praxis, transformative learning, and social design experiments. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 100–117. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109347877
Howard, G. (2016). We can’t teach what we don’t know: White teachers, multiracial schools. Teachers College Press.
King, J. E. (1991). Dysconscious racism: Ideology, identity, and the miseducation of teachers. The Journal of Negro Education, 60(2), 133–146. https://doi.org/10.2307/2295605
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465
Ladson-Billings, G. (2000). Fighting for our lives: Preparing teachers to teach African American students. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 206–214.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2011). Yes, but how do we do it? Practicing culturally relevant pedagogy. In J. Landsman & C. Lewis (Eds.), White teachers/diverse classrooms: Creating inclusive schools, building on students’ diversity and providing true educational equity (pp. 33–46). Stylus.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2021). Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Asking a different question. Teachers College Press.
Mackenzie, A. H. (2021). A socially-just science classroom: What will we teach with Critical Race Theory under attack? [Editorial]. The Science Teacher, 89(1), 6–7.
Mensah, F. M. (2021). “Now, I see”: Multicultural science curriculum as transformation and social action. The Urban Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-021-00602-5
Mensah, F. M., & Jackson, I. (2018). Whiteness as property in science teacher education. Teachers College Record, 120(1), 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811812000108
Ortiz, P. (2018). An African American and Latinx history of the United States. Beacon Press.
Patterson, A., & Gray, S. (2019). Teaching to transform: (W) holistic Science Pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 58(4), 328–337. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2019.1626616
Ringgold, F. (2016). We came to America. Alfred A. Knoft.
Roberts, D. (2011). Fatal invention: How science, politics, and big business re-create race in the twenty-first century. New Press/ORIM.
Roediger, D. (1999). The wages of Whiteness: race and the making of the American working class. Verso.
Roediger, D. (2005). Working toward Whiteness: How America’s immigrants became White—the strange journey from Ellis Island to the suburbs. Basic Books.
Searle, K., Tofel-Grehl, C., Hawkman, A., Suarez, M., & MacDonald, B. (2022). Whiteness at work in the elementary classroom: A case study. Cultural Studies in Science Education.
Sheth, M. J. (2019). Grappling with racism as foundational practice of science teaching. Science Education, 103(1), 37–60. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21450
Smith, T., Sonnenfeld, D. A., & Pellow, D. N. (Eds.). (2006). Challenging the chip: Labor rights and environmental justice in the global electronics industry. Temple University Press.
Underwood, J., & Mensah, F. M. (2018). An investigation of science teacher educators’ perceptions of culturally relevant pedagogy. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 29(1), 46–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/1046560X.2017.1423457
Wilkerson, I. (2020). The warmth of other suns: The epic story of America’s great migration. Penguin UK.
Willey, C., & Magee, P. (2016). Clinical experiences and mediational activities in urban teacher preparation: Learning and critical consciousness. Global Education Review, 3(4), 107–126.
Woodson, J. (2017). This is the rope: a story from the great migration. Puffin Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Lead Editor: Felicia Moore Mensah.
This review essay addresses issues raised in Kristin Searle, Colby Tofel-Grehl, Andrea Hawkman, Mario Suarez, and Beth MacDonald’s paper entitled: Whiteness at work in the elementary classroom: a case study (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-022-10121-8).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Crabtree, L., Titu, P. What will we teach the teachers? Grappling with racism in a professional development setting. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 17, 899–906 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-022-10119-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-022-10119-2