‘It’s probably still written by a white person’: challenging assumptions about racial identity in a critical professional development course

ABSTRACT

In this article, we present a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the online discussion board posts of a group of elementary educators as they discussed their interpretations of four historical timelines that presented different – sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory – information about the goals of the Lewis & Clark expedition and its effects on Native populations. This activity was one part of a virtual professional development course on anti-racist critical literacy pedagogy for K-8 teachers, which was structured around three key concepts: 1) considering multiple perspectives can disrupt common understandings of texts; 2) issues of power determine what is present and absent in the stories authors tell; and 3) texts are social constructions that can be deconstructed and reconstructed. The teachers featured in this article worked in the same urban district and throughout their discussion, we found that they perpetuated discourses of Whiteness while simultaneously attempting to disrupt them. However, we also found discursive reconstructive potential in the ways one teacher responded to her assumptions being interrupted by a course facilitator, as well as the value of using CDA to examine teacher language. Our findings point to further directions for teacher educators working to foster racial and critical literacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial literacy
• critical discourse analysis
• critical literacy pedagogy
• elementary education
• professional development

Acknowledgement

This research was determined by the University of Oregon IRB to meet the qualifications to be exempt.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s ).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Audrey Lucero

Audrey Lucero is an associate professor of language and literacy education and director of the Latinx Studies program at the University of Oregon. Her current research focuses on how K-8 teachers understand race and racism and engage children in critical conversations about these issues as part of their literacy instruction. She teaches courses in bilingualism & biliteracy, Latinx studies, and elementary literacy methods.

Janette Avelar

Janette Dalila Avelar is a second year PhD student in the Quantitative Research Methods in Education program at the University of Oregon. She received a B.A. in Spanish, English, and Latin American Studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is completing her Master of Science degree in Educational Methodology Policy and Leadership at the University of Oregon. Her current research interests include Latinx student experiences, linguistic identities and the ways they are racialized, and heritage language maintenance with a focus on Spanish heritage learners.