Using Performance Ethnography to Confront Issues of Privilege, Race, and Institutional Racism: An Account of an Arts-Based Teacher Education Project

Abstract

Preservice student teachers engaged in a collaborative research initiative to examine the memory of the 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision that culminated in a public performance. Ethnographic data were translated into performance texts through students' performances that confronted issues of privilege, race, and institutional racism in their university context. Critical examinations of the memory of the Brown court decision in their university learning community led to implications for teacher education. Students' use of performance ethnography as an arts-based educational research approach is discussed as a valuable means of alternative assessment.

Acknowledgments

Author's Note: The performance ethnography for this study was developed through the collaboration of faculty from departments of communication, education, and history. Drs. Larry Little, Terry Nance, Heidi Rose, and Connie Titone provided inspiration at the onset of the project. I would also like to thank Anne Feldman, Dr. Krista Malott, and Brittany McVaugh for their scholarly feedback on this manuscript.

Notes

¹These institutional inequities were revealed though a demographic analysis of the race and gender of students, staff, faculty, and administration.