Using Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) as theoretical grounding, this three-article dissertation offers perspectives on antiracist teacher education praxis, and the ways that White teacher educators can be more thoughtful and critical of our participation in perpetuating Whiteness. Across the articles, I explore how my attempts to embody antiracist praxis as a White teacher educator are still fraught with performances of Whiteness.In the first article, I use interviews from student-nominated exemplary social justice faculty to describe concrete practices of antiracist teacher education praxis. The four practices that emerge include: model vulnerability, shift agency to students, build community, and pose questions. Consistent across these findings is the belief that teacher education should be a project in collective humanization; and further, that it must be grounded in critical race theories.The second article follows my attempts to employ each of the four practices listed above throughout one semester of teaching a diversity-related course. The purpose of this article is to highlight the tensions I feel trying to embody this pedagogical stance as a White female teacher educator. My findings, presented in the form of fictionalized vignettes, reveal very concrete ways that I continue to perform Whiteness as I attempt to subvert it. I therefore argue that White teacher educators must engage with more critical tools--such as autoethnography--to identify and combat the impact of our best intentions.The final article is a poetic inquiry that explores one of the aforementioned practices--model vulnerability--through a more critical lens. Vulnerability is something commonly described in normative ways, particularly in the work of Dr. Brene Brown. I explore how, as a White woman, I have more freedom to express emotions such as vulnerability without fear of repercussion or of being perceived as weak. Moreover, through using poetry as both a method of inquiry and subsequent data to analyze, I find that even the process I use to write and think about Whiteness is, in fact, reflective of my Whiteness. We as teacher educators therefore must be mindful not to describe vulnerability in normative ways that do not take into account the ever-present sociopolitical context in which we live--a context that privileges the humanity and feelings of White people while disparaging the humanity and feelings of people of Color.By using CWS across all three articles of this dissertation, I am able to highlight myriad ways that my Whiteness continues to operate insidiously even as I attempt to counter it. I offer considerations for other White teacher educators who want to move their praxis closer to being actively antiracist, ultimately hoping that more will endeavor to do this kind of work.
Read
