“Can We Say the N-word?”: Exploring Psychological Safety During Race Talk

Abstract

Classroom interactions that engender psychologically safe climates have rich developmental potential; these interactions often facilitate engagement in academic risk-taking and exploration (Cooper, 2013). On the contrary, classroom interactions that are threatening to adolescents’ identities send messages of devaluation and can negatively impact feelings of belonging and academic achievement, particularly for youth of color (Sherman et al., 2013). In efforts to help explicate the interrelations between racial-identity linked risks and threats and psychological safety in classroom learning contexts, this exploratory case study examined two 9th grade English Language Arts teachers’ negotiation of attunement, authenticity, and power sharing during race talk. Our in-depth analysis of these classrooms suggested the following teacher moves may be particularly important for psychological safety during race talk: teacher moves that (a) support or inhibit power sharing, (b) indicate high or low levels of teacher attunement, and (c) demonstrate or mask the teacher’s authenticity. These results have implications for understanding the co-construction of psychological safety in classrooms during identity-salient and racialized interactions.

Notes

¹ The Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project is a national, longitudinal data set collected from 2009–2011 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to advance understandings of effective teaching.

² Pseudonyms are used throughout the article to protect the confidentiality of the participants.

³ We chose Latin@ as a gender neutral referent to students with cultural ties to Latin America.

⁴ [] Brackets indicate physical actions or overlapping speech.

⁵ The MET data set uses the term Hispanic. Here, we use the term Latin@ to remain consistent with our theorizing in the introduction and literature review.

⁶ We draw this conclusion based on the following passage from the book in which Dolphus Raymond says, “I try to give ‘em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason … . Secretly, Ms. Finch, I’m not much of a drinker, but you see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that’s the way I want to live.”