Collusion or collision: effects of teacher ethnicity in the teaching of critical whiteness

Abstract

Educational inequities persist in England today. Initial teacher educators are therefore charged with facilitating student teachers’ understanding of the issues pertaining to such inequities so they may work to disrupt them. Two lecturers at opposite ends of England, both with overwhelmingly White student cohorts, have approached this undertaking through the teaching of critical whiteness studies. This article exposes and explains the very different reactions of White student teachers to this approach given that one of the lecturers is Black and the other White. Explanations are viewed through a sociological framework which seeks to deconstruct normalized practices; in tandem with understandings of how whiteness operates to reinforce such normalization in order that inequitable power relations are reified. This revealed that student reactions were underpinned by racialised assumptions of teacher ability and motives, leading to collusion in whiteness for the White teacher and, for the Black teacher, a collision between her teaching and student perceptions of her role and values.

Keywords:

• whiteness
• teacher education
• teacher ethnicity

Notes

1. According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families (2008), 94.3% of the teaching population is White.

2. The term ‘Black’ is used in this article as a shorthand for the term Black Asian Minority ethnic commonly used in the UK and similar to the term ‘people of color’ adopted in the US.

3. Reference to each of the teachers involved in the study is made in conjunction with the definite article, so reference to ‘the Black teacher’ is shorthand for ‘the Black teacher involved in this study, and reference to ‘the White teacher’ is shorthand for ‘the White teacher involved in this study.’ The indefinite article is used in all other cases, i.e. for teachers in general.

4. ‘Interesting’ behaviour included strongly articulated views which agreed with or challenged the dominant discourse; explicitly articulated changes in understanding; non-verbal cues signalling discomfort.