Clashes within one teacher’s racial logic: space of possibles?

Abstract

This study is to empirically investigate both residual and emergent factors that undergird one teacher’s understanding of race, racism, and racialization as he responds to two fictional stories and one film. Informed by an assemblage of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and his sociological theory of practice, Gee’s concept of primary Discourses, and Omi and Winant’s theory of racial formation, the research questions are as follows: How are the concepts of race, racism, and racialization understood by one teacher? What are the factors that shape this teacher’s perceptions of race, racism, and racialization? What social and institutional dimensions are imbedded in these constitutive factors? What are the consequences of his understandings of race, racism, and racialization with respect to working productively with students from historically racially marginalized groups? Are there any patterns and/or oppositions among his perceptions of race, racism, and racialization, and what do those patterns and oppositions mean?

Keywords:

• teacher socialization
• teacher thinking and knowledge
• teacher education curriculum

Notes

1. This is a pseudonym.

2. Recognizing that Borat is blatantly offensive to most people, I chose it because (1) it portrays extreme and magnified cultural differences, (2) the movie is not only about how Borat finds America but how Americans find Borat, (3) I was interested in investigating the participant’s response to the responses of Americans in the movie, (4) at times the movie does demonstrate how “what appears outlandish, brutal … may make sense in their own context and on their terms” (Rosaldo, 1989, p. 26).

3. I omitted the name of the university the participant attended.