Cracks in the narrative: Black and Latinx pre-service PE teachers in predominantly white PETE programs

ABSTRACT

Background

PE curricula and pedagogy maintain dominant discourses of whiteness as normalized, lacking in cultural relevancy and disregarding racially minoritized students’ cultural knowledges (Azzarito 2019, “‘Look to the Bottom’: Re-Writing the Body Curriculum Through Storylines.” Sport, Education and Society 24 (6): 638–650; Clark 2020, “Toward a Critical Race Pedagogy of Physical Education.” Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy 25 (4): 439–450; Culp 2020, “Thirdspace Investigations: Geography, Dehumanization, and Seeking Spatial Justice in Kinesiology: National Association for Kinesiology in Higher Education 39th Dudley Allen Sargent Commemorative Lecture 2020.” Quest (grand Rapids, Mich) 72 (2): 153–166; Flintoff and Dowling 2019, “‘I Just Treat Them all the Same, Really’: Teachers, Whiteness and (Anti) Racism in Physical Education.” Sport, Education and Society 24 (2): 121–133). Both pre-service and in-service PE teachers of color often experience marginalization, hypervisiblity, exclusion, racism, and must consistently negotiate an additional emotional ‘load’ when located within white educational spaces (Flintoff 2014, “Tales from the Playing Field: Black and Minority Ethnic Students’ Experiences of Physical Education Teacher Education.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 17 (3): 346–366, 2015, “Playing the ‘Race’ Card? Black and Minority Ethnic Students’ Experiences of Physical Education Teacher Education.” Sport, Education and Society 20: 190–211; Simon and Azzarito 2019a, “‘Singled out Because of Skin Color … ’: Exploring Ethnic Minority Female Teachers’ Embodiment in Physical Education.” Sport, Education and Society 24 (2): 105–120, 2019b, ““Putting Blinders on”: Ethnic Minority Female PE Teachers’ Identity Struggles Negotiating Racialized Discourses.” Journal of Teaching in Physical Education 38 (4): 367–376.).

Purpose

This study aimed to understand Black and Latinx pre-service PE teachers’ negotiations of whiteness, and the accompanying emotional ‘load,’ at predominantly white institutions (PWIs). We utilized Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, and emotionality to establish a framework that included interrogating normalized discourses of whiteness through counternarratives (Milner and Howard 2013, “Counter-narrative as Method: Race, Policy and Research for Teacher Education.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 16 (4): 536–561), destabilizing a white/‘other’ dichotomy, and validating emotions connected to racialized identities (Ahmed 2014, Cultural Politics of Emotions. Edinburgh University Press).

Method

This qualitative study employed visual narrative methods, extricating, via counternarratives to whiteness (Miller, Liu, and Ball 2020, “Critical Counter-Narrative as Transformative Methodology for Educational Equity.” Review of Research in Education 44 (1): 269–300), the racialized experiential knowledge of 10 Black and Latinx pre-service PE teachers enrolled in predominantly white PE teacher education (PETE) programs. The researchers collected data through interviews, written reflections, and visual texts. Data, including interview transcriptions, participant-generated images, and researcher reflections, were analyzed both inductively and deductively.

Results

The results of this study demonstrated how participants first presented emotionally distanced negotiations of overwhelming whiteness in their PETE programs, engaging in a self-preservation response to inherent ‘othering’ and hypervisibility (Evans-Winters and Esposito 2010). With time and developed rapport with the researchers, ‘cracks’ in their positive narratives appeared as more details emerged about the pain caused by consistent experiences of racism in their PWIs. It was clear that participants’ racialization through dominant whiteness presented a multi-layered emotionality that had to be masked in order to be accepted within their white educational communities (Kohli 2018, “Behind School Doors: The Impact of Hostile Racial Climates on Urban Teachers of Color.” Urban Education 53 (3): 307–333).

Conclusion

Participants’ emotional responses to racially ‘othered’ hypervisibility provided insights to program attrition by students of color, and how teacher education maintains racialized discourses of whiteness. The results of this research support the idea that PE teacher educators need to demonstrate an outright and long-standing commitment to racial equity and to minoritized students’ emotional well-being before students of color may open up and share what’s ‘really going on,’ thus furthering emotional connections and understandings that can prevent pre-service teacher of color attrition. In the case of the Black and Latinx teachers in this study, the norms of whiteness which underpinned their educational context denied them their humanity regarding their potentially strong emotions towards their experiences of racism, prejudice, discrimination, biases, and stereotypes, placing them as ‘outsiders’ within predominantly white ‘collective bodies’ (their PETE programs and institutions).

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher education
• narrative research
• emotionality
• racism

Disclosure statement

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