Introduction

It was a sunny spring day when I went to Ricardo’s classroom for the first time. School had just released for the day and Ricardo met me at the school doors to help navigate me through the extensive, winding halls of the school. Upon greeting me, Ricardo was approached by a student who excitedly greeted him in Mexican Spanish. On our walk to his classroom, we were stopped by four students along the way, with each student conversing with Ricardo in Mexican Spanish. Knowing that my Spanish comprehension is minimal, Ricardo translated for me along the way. One student stopped to tell Ricardo “thank you” for helping him with an assignment, two others stopped to talk about soccer, and one just wanted to wish Ricardo a good evening. Along the way, I noticed other teachers – all white – going about their end-of-day tasks uninterrupted by students. I observed the walls of the hallways lined with trophy cases featuring pictures of notable alumni of the school, all of whom were white. When we got to Ricardo’s classroom, however, it seemed like his classroom was the antidote to the whiteness in the hallways of the school. The walls of Ricardo’s classroom were splattered with facts about Latino history, and featured pictures of notable, yet marginalized, individuals throughout history.

Observing Ricardo’s classroom and his interactions with his students made me question: How do racially minoritized educators navigate the complexity of their identity as a person of color and educator working within predominantly white concepts of knowledge and behavior construction? Throughout this chapter, I seek to illuminate, (1) how language and hybrid classroom discourse was used by Ricardo to connect with students, and (2) the deep responsibility Ricardo felt to create bridges to the curriculum for his students. The findings of this chapter underscore the need for teacher education programs to better support minoritized educators in navigating the complex positions they assume, as educators and as minoritized individuals, and the ways in which these two identities intersect in their practice.

Understanding the Identity Development of Minoritized Educators

In the United States, racial disparities between teachers and students, as well as broader disparities in education testing, access, and achievement, have led to calls to diversify the teacher workforce (Milner, 2006; Neena, 2018; Nevarez et al., 2019). However, there is little discussion and understanding around how to support educators of color as they enter the white majoritarian field of education (Montecinos, 2004; Sleeter, 2001). Research has shown that individuals’ complex racial identities and lived experiences shape their professional identity (Al-Khatib & Lash, 2017; Gilpin, 2005; Hasberry, 2019; Kayi-Adyar, 2019; Sparks, 2018). However, minoritized educators experience conflicts in forming their professional identity. These conflicts arise because their identity as a racialized, gendered and cultured beings differs from the professional identity they are expected to assume inside of school (Agee, 2004; Gilpin, 2005; Olitsky, 2020; Singh, 2019). Similarly, minoritized educators are forced to grapple with the proliferating constructs of whiteness and racialized gender constructs that have infiltrated the formations of their personal and professional identities (Burant et al., 2002; Gilpin, 2005; Ramanathan, 2006; Smith Kondo, 2019, Warren, 2020). Further complicating the development of professional identities for minoritized educators is the fact that they embody multiple complex and weaving identities that cannot be separated (Crenshaw, 1995).

This understanding of teacher identity is critical if we seek to understand the ways that minoritized educators approach pedagogy and curriculum decision making in their practice. While research has shown that teacher education programs play a role in shaping teacher identity (Alsup, 2006; Britzman, 1986; Clarke, 2009), there is a hyper focus on preparing white teachers to teach students of various cultural backgrounds that has often left minoritized educators on the margins of professional and pedagogical development in teacher education programs (Gay, 2000; Milner, 2006; Sleeter, 2001). Despite examples of exemplar pedagogy implemented by minoritized educators (Milner, 2006, 2010, 2012a; Vickery, 2016) research continues to show that some minoritized educators struggle to implement pedagogical strategies that are responsive to their students (Coffey & Farinde-Wu, 2016; Ullman & Hecshb, 2011) and continue to lack professional support (Castaneda et al., 2006; Gay, 2000; Mabokela & Madsen, 2003). For example, the structure of many multicultural education courses in teacher education programs addresses race in relation to whiteness and discusses pedagogical considerations in a way that is geared towards the development of white teachers (Agee, 2004; Gorski, 2009). This reality is especially problematic for teachers of subjects like social studies, where issues of race/ism and whiteness permeate the curriculum (Marri, 2003; Rains, 2003), curricular standards (Branch, 2003; Eargle, 2016; Marshall, 2003), and textbooks (Craig & Davis, 2015; Gay, 2003; Shear, 2015).

Methodology

This chapter focuses on the experiences of Ricardo,Footnote 1 a Latino male social studies teacher. Ricardo was a participant in a larger study that sought to understand urban (see Milner, 2012b) social studies teachers’ self-efficacy in enacting culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy. The study included four social studies educators who were all prepared at an institution that focuses on urban education in the United States Midwest. The four educators engaged in a series of focus groups and individual interviews that sought to illuminate their experiences as culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogues. Of the four educators involved in the study, two educators identified as white women, one educator identified as a white male and one educator, Ricardo, identified as a Latino male.

Throughout the course of the study it became clear that Ricardo’s curricular and pedagogical decision making was deeply informed by his lived experiences and identity as a Latino. As I continued data analysis for the larger study, it became apparent that the white educators did not leverage their cultural capital (Yosso, 2005) in the same way that Ricardo did when making curricular and pedagogical decisions in their practice. As the difference in Ricardo’s perspective became more salient, I recognized that deeper inquiry into Ricardo’s experience and identity was necessary. This chapter is the result of my inquiry into Ricardo’s experience.

To begin this examination, I started with the following research question: How do minoritized educators navigate the complexity of their identity as a minoritized individual and educator working within predominantly white concepts of knowledge and behavior construction? In this following section, I will outline the context of the research described in this chapter, the guiding theoretical perspective of this research, as well as the methods of data collection and analysis.

Context

Ricardo is a high school social studies teacher in an urban emergent (see Milner, 2012b) school district. While the teacher demographic data for Ricardo’s school is unavailable, 70% of the teachers in the school district that Ricardo teaches in are white, while only 12% of the students in the school district at large identify as white (DPI, 2018). Ricardo’s school district has a long history of racial segregation and educational disparities within the district’s schools. This mirrors the contentious atmosphere around race that has led to widespread residential segregation and various economic and social inequities throughout the city. At Ricardo’s school, 50% of the students identify as Hispanic/Latino, 28% of students identify as Black or African American, 15% of students identify as Asian, 4% of students identify as white, 2% of students identify as two or more races, 0.5% of students identify as American Indian or Alaskan Native, and 0.1% of students identify as Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (DPI, 2019). In describing his upbringing, Ricardo describes that he grew up in the neighborhood that his students currently live. In fact, he even went to the high school that he is currently teaching at and remembers the “white” social studies curriculum, which he says has influenced his approach to teaching today. Though Ricardo recalls his experiences throughout this chapter as a Latino teacher teaching predominantly Latino students, the shared racial identity that he and his students possess is still set within an educational system that is dominated by whiteness through the prevalence of white faces, policies, practices, and perspectives.

Theoretical Perspective

The research for this chapter is grounded in a post-positive realist conception of identity. A post-positivist realist conception of identity acknowledges connections between an individual’s lived experiences, social location and cultural identity (Mohanty, 2000; Moya, 2000; Gilpin, 2006). In acknowledging this, it is believed that “understanding emerges from one’s past and present experiences and interactions as interpreted in sociopolitical contexts” (Gilpin, 2006, p. 10). Because of this, “Understanding, then, is relative to one’s experiences as a raced, gendered, classed, nationalized, and so forth, being” (Gilpin, 2006, p. 10). A post-positivist realist conception of identity also assumes that knowledge gained through oppressive experiences influences identity formation (Mohanty, 2000; Moya, 2000). In the context of this study, a postpositivist realist conceptualization of identity is employed to understand how Ricardo’s curricular and pedagogical considerations are influenced by his experiences as a racialized, gendered, classed, and marginalized being.

Gilpin (2006) outlines four tenets of postpositivist realist theory to include the understanding that “(1) identities are both constructed and real, (2) identities are mediated through cognitive and social processes, (3) knowledge garnered in the context of oppression should be afforded epistemic privilege, and (4) the power of individual and collective agency should be part of discussions of identity” (p. 13). The first tenet, which conceptualizes identities as both constructed and real, draws from the understanding that the racial identities are constructed through various aspects of society, though society’s construction of various racial identities are not all encompassing of oneself as a racial, ethnic, cultural, or other being (Gilpin, 2006). This is to say that parallels may be drawn within and across racially constructed groups, with the understanding that the totality of oneself does not exist within the confines of the racially constructed group you are categorized within. Similarly, the second tenet, which states that identities are mediated through cognitive and social processes, draws from the understanding that an individual’s experience is shaped by the identity categories they are placed within (Gilpin, 2006; Mohanty, 2000; Moya, 2000). The third tenet asserts that “knowledge garnered in the context of oppression should be afforded epistemic privilege.” This tenet is imbedded in the understanding that the knowledge and identities that one possesses work together “in constructing an understanding of the world that is uniquely valid” yet “intertwined with the understandings of those whose share elements of [their] historical positions and social group memberships” (Gilpin, 2006, p. 12). Through this understanding, the lived experiences and perceptions of individuals are used to not only understand themselves, but others who they interact with. The fourth tenet, which focuses on agency, is predicated on the understanding that individuals have agency and that this agency must be conceptualized through an understanding of “individuals, the groups to which the individuals belong, and the location of those groups within larger sociopolitical contexts” (Gilpin, 2006, p. 15). Throughout this chapter, I use a post-positivist realist conception of identity to analyze how Ricardo finds power and agency as a racially minoritized individual within a white majoritarian space.

Data Collection and Analysis

The data collection for this research is nested within the larger study, noted above. The methods included a semi-structured focus group interview, individual interviews, and the collection of curriculum artifacts over a 1 year period. Due to the shared experiences the educators had in their teacher preparation program, a semi-structured focus group interview was conducted with all of the educators involved in the study (Wilson & McChesney, 2018). Semi-structured individual interviews (Rubin & Rubin, 1995) were also conducted with the participants to elicit rich details about their teaching experiences. At one of the interviews, each educator brought a collection of self-selected curriculum artifacts they felt demonstrated their approach to teaching. These curriculum artifacts were discussed and collected by whom and for what?. Further, a series of phenomenological conversational interviews occurred with Ricardo to elicit understanding of his identity construction both personally and professionally.

The interviews were voice recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using a three-step inductive to deductive analysis process (Sipe & Ghiso, 2004). Through this approach to analysis, which first included a close read of the data followed by an inductive to deductive coding scheme, themes around language, identity, and curricular agency emerged. After the identification of these themes, line by line coding according to these themes was conducted. Through this line by line coding, 28 excerpts that discussed Ricardo’s curricular and pedagogical considerations in relation to language, identity and curricular agency were selected. The 28 excerpts were then analyzed using a post-positivist realist approach to discourse analysis that considered Ricardo’s positioning, experiences, and agency as a Latino male in a white majoritarian educational space. Drawing from perspectives on critical discourse analysis (Gee, 2011), the following questions were asked of each of the 28 excerpts:

  1. 1.

    What understanding of Ricardo’s identity does this piece of language elicit?

  2. 2.

    What activity is Ricardo’s identity being used to enact?

  3. 3.

    What identity or identities is this piece of language attributing to others and how does this help Ricardo enact his own identity?

  4. 4.

    How does this piece of language connect or disconnect Ricardo from other aspects of his identity?

  5. 5.

    How does this piece of language privilege certain aspects of Ricardo’s identity? Are there any parts of Ricardo’s identity that this piece of language minimizes or pushes aside?

The emerging themes within the answers to the above questions were analyzed with a postpositivist frame. This postpositivist realist approach to analysis illuminates Ricardo’s words and experiences in a way that would not be possible if analysis was conducted through a solely white majoritarian perspective.

Findings

Of the 28 excerpts I analyzed using a post-positivist realist conception of identity, I highlight three of them here to demonstrate how Ricardo felt a strong responsibility to create bridges to the curriculum for his students, and how his language and hybrid classroom discourse was used as a means to make this connection.

Language Usage

Language carries culture…at the end of the day, it can help and can contribute to the way that you teach.

In considering the prominent use of Mexican Spanish in his practice, Ricardo recalled the above sentiment in one of our conversations. Throughout my interactions with Ricardo, I noticed that he almost solely used Mexican Spanish when speaking with his Latino students. Further, his use of Mexican Spanish was structured throughout his lessons.

Throughout our conversations, Ricardo shared that his approach to teaching is rooted in the respect, understanding and sustainment of his Latino students’ cultural ways of knowing and being. For Ricardo, his usage of Mexican Spanish becomes a critical pedagogical tool that he uses with his Latino students because he is able to discuss concepts and ideas shrouded in whiteness through a lens more familiar to the students. Within the constructs of whiteness that permeate the schooling for his students, Ricardo explains that this shared language usage is an anomaly that becomes something the students gravitate towards as a beacon of cultural sustainment and affirmation in the classroom setting. Ricardo explained that this shared language usage became a means of cultural resiliency and sustainment, not only for his students but for himself, in a space where they are largely forced to conform to white norms. Because of the cultural resiliency and sustainment that Mexican Spanish provided for him and his students throughout the teaching and learning process, Ricardo drew on their shared use of Mexican Spanish to establish norms for hybrid classroom discourse.

Hybrid Classroom Discourse

I think at first they step back like, ‘Woah!’ they didn’t see that coming. They think that teachers, people who are professionals, just come from a good socioeconomic background, have good family values, and were never exposed to the type of experiences that I was.

The use of Mexican Spanish in Ricardo’s practice gave way to a number of natural conversations on Latino identity, culture and history. In the above excerpt, Ricardo reflects on how hybrid classroom discourse allowed him to engage with his students as a dialogic participant. This dialogic exchange allowed Ricardo to not only understand his students and their perspectives, but allowed his students to understand Ricardo and his perspective as well. Hybrid classroom discourse merges multiple forms of discourse into one space (Barton & Tan, 2009). For example, Ricardo and his students engaged in the use of conversational Mexican Spanish within a white, English dominated educational space. The use of hybrid discourse for students and teachers of color is seen as a form of resistance to dominant white, English discourse methods traditionally seen in educational spaces (Dyson, 1999).

Seeing how these conversations allowed him to understand his students’ lived experiences and understandings of their shared Latino identity more fully, Ricardo structured his classes to have a dialogic basis. Every class period began with a dialogic circle which provided the basis for learning. The students could elect to answer a question, or not, from a set of questions that Ricardo curated for the day which included questions like:

  1. 1.

    Tell us about a time in your life when you experience injustice.

  2. 2.

    Tell us about a time in your life when you experienced justice.

  3. 3.

    What change would you like to see in your community? What can you do to promote that change?

This use of hybrid classroom discourse allowed Ricardo to build deeper relationships with his students, understand their lived experiences, and make connections between the lived experiences they shared with the course curriculum.

However, Ricardo struggled to balance sharing aspects of his identity with his students, with the professional identity he was being asked to conform to. Ricardo noted a number of times throughout his first years of teaching where students felt a sense of closeness to him because he shared aspects of his identity that resonated with their own. Ricardo contended that it’s often hard for students to balance his professional identity with his Latino identity because the pervasive whiteness in education creates a reality where students see these identities as two separate identities that are never to intersect. Therefore, it is hard for them to imagine how one’s Latino identity and identity as a professional educator can coexist.

Responsibility to Bridge Curriculum to Students

I don’t see people of color in the curriculum and that to me is a huge problem…If you aren’t teaching them about their history and their ancestors and stuff like that, it’s easier for the white man to establish their culture and their values upon you. They have become so used to it that they never have fussed about it or said, “Well, why are we only learning about white people?”

In a conversation about how he approaches curriculum development, Ricardo expressed the above sentiment as his reasoning behind implementing Mexican Spanish language usage and hybrid classroom discourse into his practice. Throughout our multiple conversations, Ricardo expressed that his desire to bridge curriculum to his students was cultivated by his own realization that the history that he was taught himself was whitewashed. He explained that the content that he currently teaches his students, which is focused on the histories of minoritized populations, was not something he learned in his K-12 education or his teacher preparation program. Ricardo lamented the fact that he struggled to go beyond the confines of his teacher preparation curriculum and learn about these histories himself. Ricardo admits that his sentiment that “it’s easier for white men to establish their culture and values” upon individuals who do not understand their racial and cultural history stems from his realization of this occurring within himself, both personally and professionally. This process of sociohistorical discovery and reclamation for Ricardo filters into his professional identity, where it emerges as a deep responsibility to bridge the social studies curriculum he presents to the identities of his students.

Discussion

The findings show how Ricardo’s approach to language usage, hybrid classroom discourse, and his desire to connect curriculum to his students’ lived experiences is informed by, and deeply intertwined with the complex personal identities he holds. For example, Ricardo and his students drew on shared language usage as a means of cultural resiliency and sustainment within a space where they are largely forced to conform to white norms. Throughout his teaching, Ricardo drew on shared language usage to build relationships and forge deeper meaning in the curriculum with his students. Through this demonstration of resistance capital (Yosso, 2005), Ricardo was able to actively resist the constructs of whiteness that persisted throughout various levels of the broader school context that he and his students operated within. While the use of shared language has been documented throughout educational research to be a great relationship building strategy (Stevenson et al., 2019) and correlates with increased academic and socioeconomic success for students (Carreira, 2007; Delgado-Gaitain & Trueba, 1991; Walqui, 2000), teacher preparation programs fail to support educators of color in recognizing and activating their various forms of resistance capital – like shared language usage- as a means of cultural and professional sustainment (Castaneda et al., 2006; Gay, 2000; Mabokela & Madsen, 2003).

Similarly, Ricardo reflected on how hybrid classroom discourse allowed him to engage alongside his students as a dialogic participant, which allowed him to not only understand his students and their perspectives, but allowed his students to understand him and his perspectives. Once again, Ricardo expressed tension in finding balance between sharing this dialogic space with his students, which allowed him to engage with his students around their shared Latino identity, and the expected operationalization of his professional identity within the classroom. While educational philosophy and research has evaluated the merits of shared dialogue in the classroom (Dewey, 1938; Emdin, 2016; Freire, 1998), Ricardo’s struggle to implement this strategy in his practice reflects the prevalence of a theory-practice gap in Ricardo’s teacher preparation program around the use of shared dialogue as a pedagogical strategy. Further, it illuminates the fact that many teacher preparation programs privilege white educational norms that fail to acknowledge the professional development needs of teachers of color (Castaneda et al., 2006; Gay, 2000; Mabokela & Madsen, 2003). In the same vein, Ricardo vehemently expressed that his desire to share Latino histories in his curriculum was cultivated by his own realization that the history education he received was whitewashed. In explaining this realization, Ricardo lamented the fact that the whitewashing of history was not a topic that was critically addressed in his teacher preparation program.

The salience of Ricardo’s Latino identity throughout various aspects of his pedagogical and curricular considerations in the classroom, and the degree to which this was not addressed in his teacher preparation program, leads me to question how the role of identity in the pedagogical and curricular decision making process is discussed and addressed in teacher preparation programs and professional development. To this end, this research underscores the need for teacher preparation programs to attend to the specific needs of minoritized educators (Souto-Manning & Cheruvu, 2016). While everybody involved in education must understand and consider the role of identity in the pedagogical and curricular considerations of teachers, this task is especially relevant for teacher preparation programs due to the role they play in shaping teacher identity (Alsup, 2006; Britzman, 1986; Clarke, 2009).

Conclusions and Implications

Ricardo’s experience with language and identity as a Latino educator, and how his multiple identities intersect and influence the curricular and pedagogical considerations he makes in his practice are not necessarily generalizable. Instead, they reflect his experiences and perceptions as a uniquely racialized and gendered being.

However, the considerations he makes in his practice may provide insight to the way other minoritized teachers approach curricular and pedagogical decision making in their practice. The findings of this chapter underscore the need for teacher education programs to better support minoritized educators in navigating the complex positions they assume, as both educators and as minoritized individuals, and the ways in which their multiple identities intersect in their practice.

This chapter highlights a case study of a Latino educator’s pedagogical and curricular decision making. Findings demonstrate how the educator felt a strong responsibility to create bridges to the curriculum for his students, and how his language and hybrid classroom discourse was used as a means to make this connection. The findings of this research underscore the need for teacher preparation programs to attend to the specific needs of minoritized educators in navigating the intersectionalities of their personal and professional identities by explicitly discussing and demonstrating how to fuse identity, language and pedagogy in practice.

I contend that we must analyze how teacher education programs can assist teachers in navigating the intersectionalities of their personal and professional identities, which is especially pertinent for educators of color (Gutierrez et al., 2019; Prabjandee, 2020). A part of this must include discussions and demonstrations of how to fuse identity, language and pedagogy in educators’ practice, and scaffolded support as they navigate this process. This is especially pertinent considering that research shows that minoritized educators struggle to implement pedagogical strategies that are responsive to their students (Coffey & Farinde-Wu, 2016; Ullman & Hecshb, 2011) and continue to lack professional support (Castaneda et al., 2006; Gay, 2000; Mabokela & Madsen, 2003).