Professional Development for Providing Time and Opportunities for Change in U.S. Teachers’ Ethnic-Racial Identity

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe teachers’ perceptions of changes in their ethnic-racial identity after completing professional development designed to support facilitation of a school-based ethnic-racial identity student curriculum – the Identity Project. We analyzed interview data from 11 U.S. high school educators (four Teachers of Color; seven White Teachers) who completed 32 training hours and post-program individual interviews to reflect on the impact of the program on their ethnic-racial identity. Based on reflexive thematic analysis, we found that the program influenced teachers’ ethnic-racial identity by offering them time and opportunities for change through guided self-reflection. This included participating in all aspects of the Identity Project that is designed for students and learning from and sharing with colleagues. The program (a) served as a reminder reinforcing prior learning about one’s ethnic-racial identity, (b) leveraged unique benefits of reflecting in community about issues of ethnicity, race, and identity, and (c) activated curiosity to learn more about one’s ethnic-racial identity and its connections with supporting students. Nevertheless, there was teacher-specific variation in these findings that illustrated nuanced experiences. Our findings illuminate paths forward for fostering teachers’ ongoing ethnic-racial identity development in the service of promoting students’ learning and well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic-racial identity
• ethnicity
• race
• teachers
• professional development

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the school administrators and educators involved as partners in this work and to the following individuals for their contributions to the research process: Elana McDermott, Elisa Gomez, Jamie Johannsen, Shandra Jones, and Elaine Luo.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

Data availability statement

Participants in this study did not give written consent for their interview data to be shared publicly; thus, supporting data are not available to be shared. Inquiries regarding the study data will be considered upon reasonable request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15283488.2024.2366892

Notes

1. To preserve anonymity, the specific percentage for each minoritized group is not reported.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the William T. Grant Foundation under Grant No. 189853 to Adriana Umaña-Taylor. Michael R. Sladek was supported by the Dean’s Impact Fund at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the National Science Foundation SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1911398, and a fellowship from the Vice President for Research and Partnerships of the University of Oklahoma. Any opinion, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.