Research: High Fidelity: Factors Affecting Preservice ELA Teachers’ Commitment to Antiracist Literature Instruction

Abstract

As the U.S. grapples with a racial reckoning, teacher educators need to know what education programs can do to send preservice teachers into the field committed to engage in antiracist teaching and confident that they can do it well. This semester-long, bi-institutional qualitative study of preservice teachers in two white-dominant methods courses for the preparation of English teachers examines the research question: What factors contribute to preservice teachers’ commitment to teaching about racism in the context of literature study? Defining commitment as a combination of intention and demonstrated ability to enact antiracism in future antiracist teaching through Love’s concept of abolitionist teaching, as well as Kant’s conception of a categorical imperative, this study identified four factors affecting participants’ commitment to antiracism: 1) knowledge about race and racism; 2) the role of participants’ racial identity in doing antiracist English teaching; 3) experience with antiracist pedagogies; and 4) field-based experiences tied to race. Implications from the study focus on the need to connect teachers’ racial identity understandings to discipline-based teaching; modeling discipline-centered antiracist pedagogies; and helping candidates to racialize field experiences as part of their preparation.

“I’m really just scared of the White parents”: a teacher navigates perceptions of barriers to discussing racial injustice

“…Next, we reviewed data with the peer researcher to note significant ideas, words or phrases (see Table 1) that addressed the research question before coding data, a multi-faceted analysis process conducted and managed through Dedoose. Specifically, following Saldaña (2015), we used analytic memos, thick descriptions, the peer researcher and triangulation of data sources in this study. During the analysis of interview transcripts, field notes and journals, we based code names on recurring words and frequently mentioned concepts that related to the theoretical framework and the research question.…”

“…During the analysis of interview transcripts, field notes and journals, we based code names on recurring words and frequently mentioned concepts that related to the theoretical framework and the research question. Next, three cycles of provisional and theoretical coding (Saldaña, 2015) narrowed the data set to three overarching themes: fear of discomfort, lack of racial literacy and the urge to avoid politics. To further confirm these themes, we searched for words and representative quotations within each subset of data per theme, as demonstrated in Table 1.…”

“…In a qualitative case study, Sarigianides and Borsheim-Black (2022) found that PSTs who felt they had insufficient knowledge about race and racism expressed low fidelity to future antiracist teaching, but PSTs who demonstrated strong race knowledge expressed higher fidelity toward future antiracist teaching (16). Further studies have been conducted to explore the impact of discussing race with preservice teachers through literature study Discussing racial injustice (Haddix and Price-Dennis, 2013;Sealey-Ruiz and Greene, 2015;Price-Dennis and Sealey-Ruiz, 2021;Sarigianides and Borsheim-Black, 2022).…”