Teaching #BlackLivesMatter in the classroom: Exploring the racial pedagogical decision making of PK-12 teachers

ABSTRACT

This study explores the racial pedagogical decision making of teachers presented with the opportunity to address the #BlackLivesMatter movement in their classroom. Findings of more than 4,000 teachers indicate that suburban, urban, African American and Latino/a were most likely to address BLM through an antiracist positioning. Rural and more experienced teachers were the most likely to respond ‘All Lives Matter’ to a classroom scenario. Analysis of extended response items found that participants deployed three defences to avoid engaging with #BLM in their classrooms: constitutional, institutional and appropriateness. Findings generated in this study provide insights into how teachers will approach calls for challenging anti-Black racism in their classrooms.

KEYWORDS:

• #BlackLivesMatter
• race
• antiracism
• racial pedagogical decision making

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Although American Psychological Association (2020) guidelines recommend the capitalization of racial identities (White/Black), here we borrowed from Matias et al. (2014) and chose not to capitalize white, in any form, unless appearing within a citation or at the beginning of a sentence as an attempt to challenge the supremacy of whiteness within this article.

2. More information regarding the survey instrument is available upon request.

3. Example responses that could not be categorized ‘it should be obvious’, ‘white’, ‘NA’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Council for the Social Studies [Social Justice Research Grant].