Race as a Durable and Shifting Idea: How Black Millennial Preservice Teachers Understand Race, Racism, and Teaching

ABSTRACT

The rapidly changing landscape of 21st-century education has sparked intense conversations around the need for a more racially and ethnically diverse PK–12 teacher population. Drawing from critical race theory and racial formation, I describe findings from a qualitative case study that examined how a group of black millennial preservice teachers understand race and racism. Findings from the study illuminate that race and racism continue to hold relevance for the participants, even as they recognized generational differences in how these issues operate in past and present social relations. Additionally, as the participants express both sophisticated and simplistic understandings about racism, social media and university spaces allow students to expand their knowledge about race and racism.

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Keffrelyn D. Brown

Keffrelyn D. Brown (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin–Madison) is an associate professor of Cultural Studies in Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin. She is affiliated faculty in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, and the Center for Women and Gender Studies. Her research focuses on the sociocultural knowledge of race, teaching, and curriculum; critical multicultural teacher education, and the education; of black people in the United States. Her recent book After the “At-Risk Label”: Reorienting Educational Policy and Practice was published in 2016.