"Not as multicultural as I'd like" : White English teachers' uses of literature for multicultural education in predominantly White contexts

Summary

Research at the intersection of multicultural education and English education has established that English teachers who engage multicultural literature study in predominantly White contexts face formidable challenges. English teachers not only meet a dearth of multicultural literature curriculum but also struggle to overcome student resistance and norms of Whiteness in classroom discourse. Existing research has contributed to a deeper understanding of the complexity of the issue. However,... Show moreResearch at the intersection of multicultural education and English education has established that English teachers who engage multicultural literature study in predominantly White contexts face formidable challenges. English teachers not only meet a dearth of multicultural literature curriculum but also struggle to overcome student resistance and norms of Whiteness in classroom discourse. Existing research has contributed to a deeper understanding of the complexity of the issue. However, much existing research assumes that literature is either multicultural or not, that multicultural education means applying pedagogy to content that is already multicultural, and that the myth of the generic, emancipated critical educator is a solution. Drawing on Critical Antiracist Multiculturalism and Critical Whiteness Studies, this dissertation study aims to challenge those assumptions and to identify new possibilities for teaching and research. Informed by critical educational methodology and employing a multi-phased qualitative research design, this dissertation explores the following research questions: What literature, if any, do White English teachers use to enact multicultural literature study in predominantly White contexts? How do White English teachers use literature to enact multicultural literature study in predominantly White contexts? What challenges do they face? And how does Whiteness shape their work? I explain that White English teachers who participated in the survey reported using literature by White authors, often canonical literature, to address multicultural themes, most often race and racism. Bringing together canonical literature and multicultural themes constructs a curricular borderland characterized by tensions and conflicts. I follow up on those findings with a case study of one White English teacher who employed a critical multicultural approach to To Kill a Mockingbird with her White students. Through that case study, I identify a constellation of practices she used to make Whiteness visible and to teach her students about institutional racism. At the same time, I explore how she and her White students participated in Discourses of Whiteness even as they attempted to disrupt them. Bringing together critical multicultural pedagogy and traditional English curriculum constructs a pedagogical borderland. Next, I explore one White English teachers' negotiations of competing discourses informing her notions of "diversity" and "prejudice" thereby complicating her purposes for multicultural literature study. By foregrounding multicultural discourse, a research interview provided a borderland space in which the White English teacher grappled with tensions and conflicts related to her curriculum and pedagogy. Finally, taken together, data chapters suggest that among the many challenges White English teachers negotiate are Discourses of Whiteness that work simultaneously at individual, institutional, societal, and epistemological levels and complicate "White contexts." Ultimately, this dissertation suggests that grappling with conflicts and tensions is the essence of critical antiracist multicultural literature study in predominantly White contexts. In other words, borderland discourses, which illuminate those conflicts and tensions, offer generative spaces for doing such work. Show less