Pedagogy in process: engaging micro-decisions about race and gender

1 The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions as well as Lisa Poirier, David Wellman, and Mina Kalkatechi who offered additional critique and insights.

Abstract

How might cisgender teachers of color who identify as male problematize social norms connected to race and gender? What privileges, limitations, and possibilities may emerge from such a social location? This essay explores these questions by looking at a number of micro-decisions that I make in an introductory-level undergraduate class. By utilizing a self-reflexive and inductive starting point, I ask: How do I, as a cisgender, heterosexual Mexican-American man, perform race and gender in the context of the classroom? What explicit and implicit messages may I be sending to students? And in what ways may these messages contribute to—or constrain—course themes around human liberation and freedom? Such considerations underscore the importance of attending to race and gender not only in terms of the ‘what,’ or content, of a given course, but also the ‘how’ of pedagogical delivery.

Keywords:

• Pedagogy
• micro-decisions
• gender
• Latino
• ethnomethodology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions as well as Lisa Poirier, David Wellman, and Mina Kalkatechi who offered additional critique and insights.

2 West and Zimmerman are, in turn, influenced by the work of Harold Garfinkel (1967), Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna (1978), and Erving Goffman (1976).

3 Discursive/poststructuralist approaches often draw on the influential work of Judith Butler, who, in turn, draws on the work of Michel Foucault, as well as other poststructuralists. See Butler (1990).

4 To his credit, towards the end of the clip Cmdr. Reed expresses a change of heart.

5 See DePaul University: Institutional research and market analysis (n.d.); U.S. Census Bureau quick facts (n.d.).

6 Both of these essays may be found in Matovina and Riebe-Estrella (2002).

7 David Carrasco makes a similar point in Carrasco (2000).

8 A discussion of the central study of this book, and its relation to the field of Chicanx Studies at large, may be found in Hurtado (2005).

9 Apart from the learning experience itself, one could also inquire into whether males make the leap from consciousness to commitment, and then from commitment to political action. As Pérez and Okello (2017) point out, while Hurtado and Sinha argue that male respondents were committed to addressing inequities, ‘their political actions remained unseen.’ ‘Longitudinal work on… respondents,’ suggest Pérez and Okello, ‘could provide valuable insights about how educated, feminist-identified Latino men work toward dismantling patriarchy’ (p. 2).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher D. Tirres

Christopher D. Tirres is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of The Aesthetics and Ethics of Faith: A Dialogue between Liberationist and Pragmatic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2014). His research interests include pragmatism, liberation theology, liberation philosophy, critical pedagogy, and Third World Feminism.