RESISTANCE TO CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACE By Eduardo Najarro, Jr. A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education---Doctor of Philosophy 2021 ABSTRACT RESISTANCE TO CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACE By Eduardo Najarro, Jr. Qualitative research continues to demonstrate a majority white, female, middle-class teaching force is struggling to effectively teach an increasingly culturally and linguistically U.S. student population (Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Nieto, 2000). As a result, teacher education incorporates multicultural education/diversity coursework to teach prospective teachers (PSTs) how to incorporate culturally and/or linguistically diverse children in the classroom (Hollins & Guzman, 2005). This has resulted in having discussions about race and racism. Consequently, due to the social-political nature of the topic, teacher educators have had a difficult time discussing how inequities occur along racial lines. Commonly, PSTs resist conversations about race by disengaging from the class discussion or dismissing viewpoints that highlight the historical influence of race in today’s society. This project compares teacher educator’s approach to resistance, my own experimental experience, and what discipline outside teacher education says about resistance, defensive resistance. Copyright by EDUARDO NAJARRO, JR. 2021 Para mis padres por su paciencia, gracia y devotion a mi bienestar. Gracias! To my parents for their patience, grace, and commitment to my well-being. Gracias! iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge and express my gratitude to all my former students. This includes the Julia de Burgos community, teacher candidates, and all the students I helped as a writing consult. Of course, a special recognition to Gail Kantor and Roberto Lopez for their support, patience, and guidance through my first year as a teacher. Also, to the community of doctoral students and professors that I engaged with throughout my dissertation journey. Specifically, Dr. Sandra Crespo for her guidance and Dr. Terry Flennaugh for continued support. And last but definitely not least, my friends and family for your kinds words, encouragement, and show of appreciation. Thank you and I love you all! v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ..................................................................................................................... viii LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................................................ix Dissertation Introduction ...................................................................................................................................1 Article #1: How Teacher Educators Understand Resistance ...............................................................3 Relevant Literature...................................................................................................................... 5 The Evolution of CME................................................................................................................ 8 Resistance to CME .................................................................................................................... 10 Modes of Resistance ................................................................................................................. 11 Pedagogical Approaches ........................................................................................................... 13 Audience ................................................................................................................................ 14 Race with Social Class .......................................................................................................... 15 Facilitating Discussion ......................................................................................................... 16 Forcing the Issue................................................................................................................... 19 Video Presentations .............................................................................................................. 22 Curriculum ............................................................................................................................ 23 Autobiographies & Narratives .............................................................................................. 23 The Complication of White Privilege Pedagogy ................................................................... 25 Supporting Faculty................................................................................................................ 26 Research Question .................................................................................................................... 27 Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 28 Methods..................................................................................................................................... 31 Data Sampling ...................................................................................................................... 31 Data Collection ..................................................................................................................... 35 Interview Format .................................................................................................................. 36 Data Analysis ........................................................................................................................ 39 Results ....................................................................................................................................... 40 Teacher Educators’ Context and Pedagogy ......................................................................... 41 Teacher Educators’ Interpretation of Student Resistance .................................................... 47 Teacher Educators’ Response to Student Resistance ........................................................... 49 Teacher Educators’ Recommendations For CME ................................................................ 50 Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 52 Social-Emotional................................................................................................................... 52 Beliefs that Empower K-12 Students..................................................................................... 54 Racism as Personal, Structural, and White Racial Identity.................................................. 56 How to Response and Engage Resistance ............................................................................ 57 To Close .................................................................................................................................... 58 Article #2: Resistance Defined ........................................................................................................................ 60 Teacher Education on Resistance ............................................................................................ 60 vi Cognitive Dissonance ............................................................................................................... 61 Lack of Experiences .................................................................................................................. 62 Teacher Educators' Racial Identity ........................................................................................... 63 Change in Course ...................................................................................................................... 65 Other Interpretations ................................................................................................................. 66 As a Political Act .................................................................................................................. 67 As a Behavior ........................................................................................................................ 71 As Transformative ................................................................................................................. 76 In the Physical Science ......................................................................................................... 77 In Sum ....................................................................................................................................... 79 Article #3: A Resistant Teacher ..................................................................................................................... 81 Article Thesis ............................................................................................................................ 82 Purpose of an Autoethnography................................................................................................ 84 My Introduction to Social Justice Education ............................................................................ 88 Low-Self Esteem ....................................................................................................................... 90 Relationship with Curriculum and Peers .................................................................................. 92 As a Teacher ............................................................................................................................. 95 North Philadelphia .................................................................................................................... 96 The Original Intention............................................................................................................. 100 Math Curriculum ................................................................................................................ 101 Initial Response................................................................................................................... 103 Initial Release ..................................................................................................................... 107 A Renewal of Spirit ................................................................................................................ 108 Discussion ............................................................................................................................... 111 Dissertation Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 114 APPENDICES..................................................................................................................................................... 115 APPENDIX A: Pre-Interview Questionnaire ......................................................................... 116 APPENDIX B: Interview Protocol ......................................................................................... 117 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................... 119 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Career Identities Of Participants ...................................................................................... 33 Table 2 Gender Identity of Participants ........................................................................................ 33 Table 3 Racial Identity of Participants.......................................................................................... 33 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Visual Representation of Coding Scheme ...................................................................... 40 Figure 2 Critiques of Social Oppression by Solórzano & Bernal (2001) ..................................... 69 Figure 3 Drug Usage in the Kensington Neighborhood ............................................................... 98 ix Dissertation Introduction This study questions the argument that knowledge about white privilege and social justice principles produces white preservice teacher committed--or at least attentive to—fair and equitable teaching practices. The dissertation begins with a comparison of how teacher educators understand student resistance compared to what is known from teacher education research. The field of teacher education argues that preservice teachers must learn, acknowledge and admit the prevalence of white privilege if they are to teach equitable. In doing so, the field argues students need to learn through curriculum about white privilege and that instructors must make students uncomfortable in order to press and pressure students to believe or at least acknowledge the concept of white privilege. A few authors offer arguments that students need information or knowledge to come to a new understanding of white privilege. These same authors invoke psychoanalysis and psychology to suggest and argue that resistance is not a consequence of not enough knowledge. Rather, they argue that students resist because of the psychological experience they must confront in order to accept the reality of white privilege. The intention of this first empirical piece is meant to compare and contrast how teacher educators understand resistance compared to what is argued in teacher education research. The intention of the study is to learn how closely teacher educators understand student resistance as question of knowledge or closer to the argument that resistance is a consequence of cognitive or psychological defense. How teacher educators understand student resistance provides an entry into a discussion of how other disciplines understand resistance. Is resistance understood as lack of knowledge as professed in teacher education. Or does resistance imply other issues at play. The intention is to show a broader conception to the term “resistance.” A concept that is much broader than what 1 we know from teacher education research literature and how does a broader concept of resistance align or misalign with how teacher educators understand resistance in their classroom. The first two pieces of the dissertation demonstrate and provide evidence that resistant behavior requires an understanding that is beyond what teacher education research literature currently outlines. Further, that resistance is not about knowledge but a tactical approach by students to defend or protect their current identity or worldview. The first two articles give evidence that the current pedagogical trajectory does not adequately or accurately understand the issue of resistance behavior. These two pieces also lead into the final and third piece that show how political ideology is insufficient to produce teachers concerned with the development and growth of black and brown students. In other words, the field can very likely remain with discriminatory teachers even if teacher education achieves their goal of every white preservice teacher to believe, acknowledge and admit any white privilege. The dissertation ends with an analytical autoethnography as evidence that political ideology does not produce equitable teachers. The autoethnography describes the motive for why the author of this study decided to teach, what social justice principles they held prior to being a classroom teacher, and how these beliefs still produce a performance that view students from a deficit lens, blamed students’ culture, and resembled many of the characteristic of white teacher’s teacher education research warns of. The autoethnography stands in contrast to what research literature proclaims as the most effective direction. The purpose of the autoethnography is to provide an example of how even the “right” social justice beliefs did not produce quality teaching. More, the reflective analysis demonstrates how emotional intelligence, awareness, and maturity is a greater predictor if a preservice teacher treats and support students equitably, particularly black and brown students. 2 Article #1: How Teacher Educators Understand Resistance There is an assumption in teacher education that a particular social-political identity and belief system produces equitable teaching (Sleeter, 2001). As such, teacher education attempts to have preservice teachers think, critique, and reorient their social-political belief system in an attempt to ensure equitable teaching. Hence, teacher education aims to instill a critical social justice mindset that denounces meritocracy and white privilege among preservice teachers, as an example (Kumashio, K. 2001; Nieto, 2000; Ohito, 2016; Boyd & Nohbilt, 2015; Banks, 2012). The attempt to reorient pre-service teachers' thinking about equity is in part the result of having a predominately white female teaching labor force in a public education system that is approximately 50% non-white (Macias, C., 2016). Teacher education has spent over two decades incorporating critical social foundations courses, a course requirement I refer to as critical multicultural education (CME). CME is defined as the study of the relationship between history, economic, and social constructs and their connection to power, ideology, and identity (Leistyna, 2002). CME is introduced in attempts to better prepare pre-service teachers for racially and culturally diverse classrooms, mainly white, middle-class females who make the large percentage of the teaching labor force in the United States (Banks, 2012). Unfortunately, however well-intentioned, said efforts rely on the assumptions that 1) identity produces a particular form of instructional practice, 2) pre-service teachers will understand how to implement equitable pedagogy without instruction or a model to work from, and 3) said critical multicultural courses make an impact in pre-service teachers’ pedagogy once they enter the classroom (Sleeter, 2001). Strangely, only a small portion of the literature covers how to effectively respond to student resistance (Gordon, 2015; Quaye, 2014). The research addresses the actuality of 3 resistance and certain pedagogical orientations but nothing in way of how to respond to a resistant person (Gordon, 2015; Quaye, 2014). As Quaye (2014) reiterates, “Little evidence exists that the majority of educators are adequately equipped to facilitate these dialogues when there is racial diversity in their courses or even when working with a more racially homogenous group of students” (p. 3). Quaye (2014) refers to Garcia and Van Soest (2000) to help summarize the “vexing problem”: Faculty must develop comfort with discussing issues related to diversity in order to demonstrate how to place perspective on heated and strain interaction…In the midst of class interaction on diversity, faculty need to feel free to share their impressions and insights yet maintain focus on the learning needs of students. (p. 3) The summary by Van Soest (2000) emphasizes the point that conversations about race with white teacher candidates extend beyond knowledge or pedagogy. Rather, the facilitation of dialogue about race and racism requires emotional balance, emotional intelligence, and an instructor’s ability to deescalate emotions (i.e. resistant). As Quaye (2014) reiterates: Managing the necessary emotions that result from racial dialogues, learning how to balance sharing one’s knowledge, and facilitating the process of learners articulating their own perspectives on racial issues are other issues with which educators must grapple. The shortage of empirical research on these matters underscores the importance of the present study. (p. 3) How teacher educators can anticipate, read, and respond to student resistance in CME courses is missing from the conversation. How teacher educators can use student resistance as a transformative moment in the learning process may prove beneficial to the teacher education community but unfortunately, this is absent from the current research literature. As a 4 consequence, this study aims to investigate how teacher educators approach student resistance in CME courses. Relevant Literature In 1974, Geneva F. Watkins and David G. Imig (1974) addressed the Association of Colleges for Teacher Education on the topic of "Multicultural Pluralism in American Schools." Their purpose: to promote the integration of multiculturalism into the education system so that "the diverse contributions and needs of America's peoples are adequately explored and explicitly defined” (Watkins & Imig, 1974, p. 9). To the authors, "For too long, various cultures of our society have existed in isolation from other groups not only geographically, but intellectually, and emotional as well" (Watkins & Imig, 1974. p. 9). The remarks come twenty years after the momentous supreme court case Brown v. Board of Education and at a time when "Many sociologist, economists, political scientists, psychologists, and educators agree that one cause for this social condition [lack of multicultural education] is the fact that American teachers are not adequately prepared to work effectively with children and youth from different cultural groups” (Watkins &, Imig, 1974. p. 10). Today, it is too common to observe preservice teachers adopt a color-blind ideology as a cultural strategy to stay clear of the political racial dialogue and maintain socio-cultural harmony (Amatea, E. S., Cholewa, B., & Mixon, K. A., 2012; Durham-Barnes, 2015). As one preservice teacher commented about diversity in teacher education: "I don't think of my students in terms of their race or ethnicity; I am color-blind when it comes to my teaching" (Kreamelmeyer, K., Kline, A., Zygmunt, E., & Clark, P., 2016, p. 136). However well-intentioned, operating from a color-blind perspective disallows the opportunity for individuals to adopt a healthy and positive racial identity. 5 What’s more, students from non-white European ethnic groups continue to underperform on standardized measures of achievement. Achievement tests do not provide a nuanced understanding of why low-income, urban, and rural students underperform. Nonetheless, the underachievement of standardized test scores has important social and economic implications for students, their families, and their communities. Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006) argues the disproportionate rate of achievement stems from a long history of institutional, structural, and individual forms of discrimination, creating a national education debt. Irrelevant of the cause, qualitative research continues to demonstrate how a majority white, female, middle-class teaching force struggles to effectively teach a culturally and linguistically U.S. student population (Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Nieto, 2000). As a result, teacher education incorporates courses on multicultural education and diversity, particularly racial diversity, to help prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to effectively teach culturally and linguistically diverse children (Hollins & Guzman, 2005). The strategy is to have preservice teachers discuss issues of race and racism to help them become self-aware and conscious of racial realities outside of their own lived white experiences. The field of teaching continues to represent a homogenous demographic of largely White (72%), female (83%), and monolingual (97%), (DeMulder, E., Stribling, S., Day, M., 2014, p. 46). In other words, the majority (over 80%) of the teaching workforce is white while half of the students in our public-school classrooms come from non-white cultures (Department of Education, 2016). The demographic of the U.S. teaching workforce does not reflect the national cultural identity of school classrooms, particularly those in urban or heavily populated areas. Hence, as one could imagine, cultural differences exist between teachers and their racially and culturally diverse student population. Unfortunately, such a difference is too often addressed 6 from a deficit position (Nieto, 2011). In other words, teachers view students from the non- dominant group as "less than" or "lacking" in knowledge or ability instead of a more compassionate observation that students from the non-dominant group hold a different and equally valuable knowledge set, language, and customs. The demographic diversity in public school classrooms and the racial homogeneity in the teaching workforce give evidence for the continued incorporation and value of multicultural education as part of the teacher education curriculum. Unfortunately, less clear is the objectives of Multicultural Education in teacher education, a theme I discuss in greater detail in the next paragraph. Multicultural education emerged as an attempt to create an “ethnoracial pentagon” that is African Americans, Asian-Americans, Latina/os, Native Americans, and European Americans (Ladson-Billings, 2003). Multicultural education held a limited definition, one that principally addresses issues of culture and race as an “aesthetic phenomenon” (Ladson-Billings, 2003). By “aesthetic phenomenon,” Ladson-Billings is referring to the thinking of multiculturalism as an ethnoracial pentagon with static categories. The “aesthetic phenomenon” held during the earlier days of the campaign for multicultural education, but the notion lost influence as demographic shifts and a growing understanding of multiple identities made ethnoracial distinctions a limited perspective on the meaning of multiculturalism and multicultural education (Ladson-Billings, 2003). The various waves of civil rights movements (e.g., Chicano, African Americans, Native Americans, etc.) and demographic shift in society brought an expansion to Multicultural Education’s sphere of concerns. The early beginnings of Multicultural Education articulated a “vision of history that positioned African-Americans as fully human cultural agents” (Ladson- Billings, 2003, p. 51). The continued contestation for freedom and liberation by various social 7 movements caused a reimagination of the multicultural curriculum that reflected the change in the social-political landscape. A change that began to challenge power, privilege, and the perception of America as a “white” country (Ladson-Billings, 2003). The growth of multicultural education did not go without challenge or deviation. Multicultural education began to "play itself out" as a selected multicultural curriculum that distorts the historical and social reality marginalized groups experienced in the name of a common culture (Ladson-Billings, 2003). The appropriation of multicultural discourse by dominant ideology—that is to say, the “watering down” of multicultural education—created the catalyst for a new set of scholars to reintroduce and transform multicultural education that would disrupt the diversity discourse and create a pedagogy of liberation and social justice (Ladson-Billings, 2003). Unfortunately, the intention to reclaim the direction of multicultural discourse remains challenged. The Evolution of CME The challenges and transformation of multicultural education are documented in Gorski’s (2008) meta-analysis research of course syllabi. The study found multicultural education courses discuss social-political issues (this includes race and racism) but deviate from the original intentions of multicultural teaching and learning. In examining the results, Gorski (2008) found multicultural education courses commonly focused on celebrating diversity, understanding the cultural “other” while rarely committing to conversations about Sleeter’s educational equity or social justice. Gorski’s (2008) meta-analysis research of course syllabi offers a convenient organizational framework to understand the various ways in which teacher educators and teacher education (TE) take up the task of integrating multicultural education in the teacher education curriculum. It’s worth mentioning that Gorski’s (2008) research is the only study found to date that captures the various reiterations of multicultural education in teacher education. Hence you 8 will find the prominent use of Gorksi’s (2008) framework to help understand the various “takes” of multicultural education in teacher education (TE). Gorksi (2008) captures multicultural motives under three archetypes: conservative, liberal, and critical multiculturalism. The first, conservative multiculturalism aims to discuss differences for the purpose of assimilation. Their objective is to get non-white groups to “Americanize” by adopting “mainstream culture and it’s adopting values, mores, and norms” (Gorski, 2008, p. 312). Liberal multiculturalists want to focus on diversity by promoting acceptance and the celebration of difference (Gorski, 2008). What differentiates critical multiculturalists from liberal multiculturalists is the attention given to questions about power, privilege, and equity. Critical multiculturalists maintain their purpose is to study larger sociopolitical contexts in hopes of reconstructing and/or dismantling social stratification (Gorski, 2008). Notable scholars in the field of education, particularly James A. Banks and Geneva Gay, have taken the charge to infuse “contestation” into the curriculum of multicultural education with intentions to challenge “old perceptions of America as a ‘White’ country” (Ladson-Billings, 2004, 52). Further, scholars offering “a new direction” for multiculturalism, like that of many theorists of Critical Race Theory (CRT), challenge the idea of an objective truth in research, particularly as the social sciences have adopted “the standards for knowledge production that have developed in the physical sciences” that clashes with the epistemological paradigms that emerge “from the experience of people of color and women…” (Ladson-Billings, 2004, 53). Sleeter and Bernal (2004) join the conversation by specifically campaigning for anti-racist education as part of a new multicultural paradigm curriculum. Like Ladson-Billings (2004), Sleeter and Bernal (2004) offer different but similar suggestions by demonstrating the current pitfalls and limits of multiculturalism in schools today 9 and largely build on Peter McLaren’s theory of critical pedagogy. Deriving from Paulo Freire’s work and the Frankfurt school, critical pedagogy seeks to: (a) provide a conceptual tool for critical reflexivity, (b) analyze class structure, corporate power, and globalization, (c) study empowering pedagogical practices within the classroom, and (d) provide a deeper analysis of language and literacy. The evolvement of Multicultural Education and the various reiterations of the discipline (e.g. Critical Multicultural Education) now leaves researchers asking what objectives and purpose teacher educators have when they teach multicultural education courses (Gorski, 2012; Cochran-Smith, 2012). Of principal concern for a researcher is how teacher educators define the purpose and objective of critical multicultural education, particularly in the contexts of teacher education programs. And given we know little to nothing about what preparation teacher educators have to teach critical multicultural education, we don’t know where or how teacher educators come to define their positionality and purpose for teaching a multicultural education course in teacher education classrooms. And arguably, less is known about how to handle resistance from students to critical multicultural pedagogy--the subject of this dissertation. Resistance to CME Qualitative research continues to demonstrate a majority white, female, middle-class teaching force is struggling to effectively teach an increasingly culturally and linguistically U.S. student population (Hollins and Guzman, 2005; Nieto, 2000). As a result, teacher education incorporates multicultural education/diversity coursework to teach prospective teachers (PSTs) how to incorporate culturally and/or linguistically diverse children in the classroom (Hollins & Guzman, 2005). The inclusion of CME in the teacher education curriculum intends to have studets think and discuss issues about race and racism, power, and privilege. Consequently, due 10 to the social-political nature of the topics, teacher educators have had a difficult time discussing the relevance of racial inequities among white preservice teachers. Commonly, PSTs resist conversations about race, power, and privilege. The difficulty in teaching about inequity leaves researchers and teacher educators in search of other and more effective ways to have productive conversations about inequities and structural forms of discrimination. Until now, the field still struggles with how to best deal, cope, or deescalate student resistance. In other words, we know plenty about where the problem of student resistance arises and potential causes (e.g. white privilege) but still have a limited understanding of how to best respond to resistance in a way that empowers teacher educators, the individual student, and the rest of the class in the hopes of engaging in critical conversations that will have preservice teacher capable of equitable instruction for all children, particularly those from historically discriminated against because of their income, race, and/or culture. Research tells us plenty about the difficulties involved with teaching critical multicultural education. Scholars have written extensively describing and categorizing the various forms of resistance students use when confronted with the assignment to interrogate issues of power and privilege, particularly as they relate to issues of race and racism. The majority of scholars link preservice teachers’ resistance to critical multicultural education to unacknowledged white privilege, continued residential segregation by race, and an overall refusal to challenge or open their minds to other viewpoints (Segall & Garrett, 2013 ). Modes of Resistance Common throughout the literature on teaching about race and racism is how white students resist, disrupt, or halt conversations about race. deKoven (2011) uses Geneva Gay and Kipchoge Kirkland (2003), Developing Cultural Critical Consciousness and Self-Reflection in 11 Preservice Teacher Education. deKoven (2011) provides a framework to organize how students resist under four categories: diffusion, silence, high-profile individuals, and benevolent liberalism. First, diffusion refers to preservice teachers who know about racial inequity but are not informed with a deeper, more historical comprehension of the factors that have driven these disparities to exist today. Often, students who use diffusion as a form of disengagement look at social inequity among races as gender or socioeconomic issues. The second form of resistance is silence; when preservice teachers tune out during conversations about race because of a perceived ignorance about the topic. They feel their whiteness does not allow them authority to speak about racism since they believe to have no experience with race or racism. The third, and perhaps one of the most aggravating for instructors, is what deKoven (2011) titles high profile individuals. This form of resistance describes how preservice teachers use high-profile celebrities, athletes, or business people as evidence of a racist free society. The last category, benevolent liberalism, identifies preservice teachers who believe that equity is defined by the fair treatment of children and ignores structural and institutional forms of privilege, power, and/or oppression. Zuniga et al. (2007) provide a second alternative to organize and make sense of how students express their resistance. For Zuniga, et al. (2007), students resist under three reasons: fear of the unknown, “lack of personal connection with, and to, race and racism,” and thirdly, disengagement. Zuniga, et al. (2007) argue fear comes from not having a clear script on how to navigate (seemingly) difficult conversations, such as race and racism, where “the conversation’s path and outcomes, are, or can be, unknown” (p. 156). The second category describes white preservice teachers who feel ignorant on the topic or have little experience or time spent with the 12 topic of race and racism which leads to the third self-explanatory category of disengagement. Although different, I believe the frameworks deKoven (2011) highlights provide a general idea of how students decide to resist: fear, disengagement, denial, or the adoption of racism as an individual issues void of structural or cultural analysis for racism. Pedagogical Approaches The following section presents a brief overview of the various ways educators and researchers conceptualize their pedagogical approaches. Of strategies practiced to teach on race and racism in coursework, the use of autobiographies and narratives stood out as one of the most prevalent, as determined by what is written most and found in teacher education research literature. Important to note: courses often integrate several other multicultural assignments or components (e.g. journals, field placements, etc.) that make absolute comparison across studies difficult, if not inappropriate. In 2001, Sleeter (2001) argued for teacher education to place greater attention on pedagogical practices that will best help prepare PSTs to teach racially and ethnically diverse students (Sleeter, 2001). At the time, Sleeter's (2001) assessment found the teacher education research database as heavily focused on white preservice teachers’ beliefs and resistance and very little on pedagogical tools and moves for teaching CME courses. "Although there is a large quantity of research, very little of it examines which strategies prepare strong teachers" (Sleeter, 2001, p. 94). At the time, action research and reflections by faculty made the grand majority of research articles on the topic (Sleeter, 2001). This literature review found the same. Case studies and narratives do well to provide detail but run the risk and limitation of researcher bias given course instructors, ‘tendency to discuss their success in their work” (Sleeter, 2001, p. 97). In evaluating the knowledge base, Sleeter (2001) makes several claims: i) “research has not been 13 designed to investigate [the] assumption,” that preservice teachers with multicultural education coursework become better teachers; ii) research should follow students into the classroom to measure the impact of CME, and iii) “researchers studying the impact of a particular course should take steps to gain some distance from the course itself, by studying another instructor’s course, for example” (Sleeter, 2001, p. 99). The literature I present below is mired with the similar limitations from a decade ago: “most of the small-scale case studies and reflective narrative suggest strategies that make an impact on students, but few critique coursework that is counterproductive” (Sleeter, 2001, p. 98). Audience A section of the literature on teaching about race and racism focuses on the audience’s racial identification and that of the instructor. Given the social, historical, and political racial and ethnic relationships within the United States, instructors need to take their students and their racial identity into account (Maybee, 2011). Race relations, as they do in the K-12 setting, continue to manifest in college classrooms. The dynamic creates the potential for greater tensions and resistance when an instructor is not white. For Leonardo, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California Berkeley, the racial identity of the audience should dictate how one designs their lesson plans. Leonardo (2004) argues that white domination should replace the term white privilege. He claims that “the discourse of white domination takes its project audience to be racial minorities (whether or not this is the case) and is, therefore, a more honest and liberatory pedagogy” (Maybee, 2011, p. 854). White domination should stand as the term used regardless of the audience. White domination emphasizes how whites are active agents of racial discrimination and helps to directly identify how the process of racial domination is constantly 14 reinforced and reestablished by whites of today (Leonardo, 2004). Leonardo (2004) goes on to suggest that white privilege “reinforces whites’ sense of humanity” and provides a space to talk about race and racism “that whites find more palatable” (Maybee, 2011, p. 854). Strangely, Leonardo (2004) also argues that white privilege does have use since the term is less intense allowing for greater receptivity among whites allowing them to engage in understanding the structures of racism. The idea stands in contrast to the charge of Critical Race Theory—a paradigm committed to bold unapologetic discussions and actions that serve to dismantle the pervasiveness of racism in the United States (Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J., 2012). Race with Social Class As mentioned before, resistant students or those that know little about race have an easier time discussing social class and use social class to explain racial inequities. In what seems a very roundabout way, Maybee (2011) connects ideas of existentialism that relate to emotions of rebellion to CRT’s approach to dismantling oppressive systems. Maybee (2011) explains the approach by saying: “I think that young white students are attracted in part to this cultural critique, and to the alternative approach to life that [existentialism] represents for them. It appeals to their adolescent and post-adolescent rebelliousness. In the same way that their rebelliousness leads them to adopt black music and the trappings of blackness as teenagers, right before they go on to take their parents’ places in the culture of whites and the system of whiteness, so they enjoy a moment of rebelliousness—through existentialism—against the culture of ‘cognitive rationality’, right before they take their places in that culture” (p. 859). 15 Establishing the role emotions play and the critiques about the “rationale” mind—a mirroring CRT criticism of objectiveness in science—Maybee continues to show how CRT and Marxism are both systems-focused theories. Marxism argues that class oppression was built into the system of capitalism, and therefore could never be addressed by piecemeal reform. Using this understanding, Maybee (2011) then shows the relationship with CRT’s claim that “racial oppression is built into the very system and institutions of the United States, and will therefore not be addressed or eliminated by piecemeal reforms of the sort…” (p. 861). Although not the silver bullet, Maybee (2011) reports that students who have a better understanding of classism but not racism demonstrate a willingness to entertain CRT’s claim that racism is a permanent feature of the United States. Nonetheless, the author describes resistance to the ideas coming from students of color who are black immigrants from the Caribbean or Latin America and hold a different concept about Blackness. Maybee (2011) also alludes to Leonardo’s (2004) conception of whiteness to explain how even non-white students can adopt dominant narratives about whiteness as normality to the extent that they do not perceive the function of white privilege in society. Facilitating Discussion Uniquely, Chizhik (2003) brings forth a larger problem with open-ended, whole-class discussions: they're intended to invoke only one side of an issue. Chizhik (2003) made continual returns to the research literature on teaching multicultural education courses. She repeatedly adjusted her teaching and reminded students that all opinions and values held her respect-- unfortunately, the students did not feel the same. Students still felt frustrated with the course. Impressively, Chizhik (2003) reflected on Higgenbotham (1996) suggestion that curriculum informs students about the instructor's thoughts on multicultural education leading to her 16 realization that all course readings presented one perspective, the perspective that most closely aligned with her worldview—a liberal social agenda that stands contrary to conservative beliefs many of her students hold. Chizhik (2003) held small group discussions that focused on evaluating the intentionality of the readings and how authors came to their conclusions instead of asking students to dictate their own opinions. Chizhik (2003) also diversified the readings although they largely pertain to a leftist agenda and still ushered mixed results from students. In another approach, Chavez-Reyes (2012) takes on the charge of discussion with the use of Critical Social Dialogue (CSD). Unfortunately, the effectiveness of CSD is difficult to evaluate given the context of the study takes place in a California State University classroom with racial make-up unlike most predominately white classrooms studied in CME. To put in perspective, 40% of the students identified as Latino, 35% as White, and 14% as Asian. Nonetheless, Chavez-Reyes (2012)—using CSD—further reiterates the point that most students come to class unskilled in discussions that concern race and racism. Equally astute, Chavez- Reyes (2012) also makes the point that instructors must have a reasonable amount of experience to execute CSD effectively and the objective is to help students to become racially aware. Chavez-Reyes (2012) and Chizhik (2003) provide a rare glimpse into the function of classroom discussion outside of research that pertains to how PSTs respond to non-white teacher educators. As stated at the onset of the section, further research is needed to understand what makes for effective classroom discussion. According to Quaye (2012), research has not yet focused on the required preparation to engage students in productive dialogues. Thus, his work focused on what instructors do to prepare themselves for facilitating discussion. I have organized Quaye’s (2012) ideas under three themes: defining the role of the facilitator, building relationships, and setting expectations. 17 Taking on the philosophical underpinnings of Paulo Freire’s (1993) work in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Quaye (2012) stressed the importance of instructors to view their role as facilitators and less as a teacher. The idea is that instructors need to view their participation in the classroom as co-constructing knowledge with the students. This does not overshadow the importance of a facilitator having a firm grip on content. Rather, supplementing content knowledge, instructors need to view themselves as co-constructors of knowledge in the classroom to enable students to take ownership over their conversations and beliefs. The idea helps prevent students from viewing the instructor as the authority figure on the subject and creates classroom space for students to build on their prior knowledge. According to Quaye’s (2012) research, facilitators need not deem themselves sole experts and “provide opportunities for students to see themselves as knowledgeable about the issues…” (p. 544). More demanding is the process of building relationships. There are five guidelines for establishing an emotionally stable and safe environment that will allow students to contribute to conversations. First, facilitators must build trust with and among their students by making sure students are not demeaned, ridiculed, or made to feel unsafe (Quaye, 2012). Second, facilitators must learn how to build emphatic capacity by genuinely trying to understand the varying perspective of the students. It’s important that students feel the facilitator is genuinely listening to their ideas as opposed to waiting to hear a particular “correct” response (Quaye, 2012). The third guideline requires facilitators to self- regulate their emotional responses, so they do not “inadvertently direct the participants to respond to the dialogue in a way she or he deems to be correct” (Quaye, 2012, p. 544). The next guideline calls for facilitators to developmentally progress from low-risks to high-risk tasks. This step serves as a way to scaffold the conversation. Lastly, the author calls for integration versus 18 intellectualization. Students need to synthesize their cognitive and affective responses to their peers. The intention is to help students do more than just intellectualize arguments. They want students to “connect affectively with their peers who may share different experiences than them” (Quaye, 2012, p. 545). The last piece to Preparing for Dialogues About Racial Realities requires instructors to spend time at the beginning of the course to set clear expectations for their conversations. For example, facilitators in the research express an expectation that students will give each other the benefit of the doubt when they say potentially racist comments. Setting expectations for dialogue helps assuage potential fears but will require continual negotiation and redefining throughout the extent of the course. Setting clear expectations with the aforementioned guidelines present a “reasonable” approach to conducting discourse on racism. Less palpable, as I will explain in subsequent paragraphs, is the use of a “recursive loop” to transform white identities in the classroom. Forcing the Issue Proponents of discomfort pedagogy—or pedagogy of discomfort— argue the inducing of discomfort is necessary to powerfully interrogate whiteness and have students comprehend and engage with the question of racial oppression. For Ohito, E. (2016), “A pedagogy of discomfort offers one route through which teacher educators might not only make visible but also tug and tear the seams of White supremacy” (p. 463). Ohito, E. (2016) continues with the argument invoking discomfort as a “far from futile” method that delivers “respite and rejuvenation;” a necessity for teacher educators and preservice teachers who “are crawling towards racial justice” (p. 463). Important to note, Ohito, E. (2016) underscores the fact the course studied is an elective housed in a social-justice-oriented teacher education program. The research setting is far from 19 typical or common for teacher education and the course—as an elective—limits the applicabaility of the author’s argument. The research article shared responses from students of which none of them displayed any sign of resistance (Ohito, E. 2016). For Ohito, E. (2016), an elective in a social justice-oriented program proves to enable such a pedagogy but efforts implemented elsewhere show less promise. In contrast to Ohito, E. (2016), Rich and Cargile (2007) had students write journals and anonymous reflections about class as a pedagogical strategy to have repeated loops of students’ voices in the classroom. After each class, students had to write in their journals and give an anonymous confession, which the professor later read to the class. The activity aimed to purge students’ authentic thoughts by voicing them anonymously to create tension for classroom discourse. In this study, the classroom had a mixture of white students and students of other races, all of whom professed a desire to participate in class discussions about race—this quickly changed as the discussions around race became emotionally charged and what the researchers, who are also the instructors, described as confrontational. Briefly, the students wrote about their frustration and anger over the course as black and white students took oppositional stances towards their interpretation of race and racism in the United States. In short, according to the researchers, white students conveyed their privilege, lack of understanding, and deficit views while students of other races proclaimed their frustration with whites students’ unwillingness to validate their perspectives. The situation reached an emotional threshold and the instructors had to figure out how to diffuse the situation. At this juncture, the instructors collected the students’ written confessions and had them wait outside. The instructors organized the confessions by themes and put them on poster boards for the purpose of a gallery walk. The students had 15 minutes to go through the different themes 20 and read the contrasting perspectives. At this point, the instructors describe the students as frustrated, quiet, and some on the verge of tears. After the 15 minutes expired, the instructor separated the students into self-identified groups—white and non-white. They, the instructors, felt that the students need a safe space to express their emotions. The students needed to describe how they felt as a racial group, how they believe the other group felt, and what they can do to positively impact the classroom community. The article never discusses how the students used their group work. Instead, at the request of the instructors, the article introduces Professor Julia Johnson who is asked to facilitate the white group discussion. A self-identified ‘Fat, White, Lesbian,’ Dr. Johnson “gently, but firmly, showed how their very complaints were rooted in White privilege” (Rich, & Cargile, 2007, p. 360). From the perspective of the instructors, some of the white students first argued vehemently with her—Dr. Johnson—but eventually many began to recognize how they were participating in racial discourse and benefiting from privilege. The case study ends with students describing their transformation and a newfound appreciation for the perspectives of their peers of other races. The article gave the impression that only someone of Dr. Johnson’s identity could aggressively push the discourse. The case study stands in stark contrast to Quaye’s (2012) idea of productive class discussion. For Ohito, O. and Rich, & Cargile, the emotional turbulence is justified if white students learn how endemic and pervasive racism is in the United States. I question the ethics of forcing students through an emotionally turbulent experience—the ends do not justify the means. More so, the practice places a heavy burden on instructors who may need to teach the course over several semesters, if not years. I do believe that tension and discomfort must present themselves for individuals to learn and grow. This process must take root but asking for instructors to take 21 on heavy emotional burdens is arguably unsustainable. Creating adversarial roles between teacher and student goes against many educational philosophies that people of many races tout as important in education. In other words, ditching educational principles of teaching and learning in exchange for strong direct challenges to white students’ perception make many instructors seemingly hypocrites of their philosophies. The practice does not help students learn how to become anymore self-aware in their own right. And interestingly enough, scholars have now taken to question the efficacy of having students confess their white privilege (Chinnery, A, 2008; Lensmire et al., 2013; Lowenstein, 2009). Video Presentations Color of Fear is a film from 1995 that is still held in high esteem. Barnes’ (2015) study used the film to teach about race and racism. The study concludes with the two principle assertions: the race of the instructor matters and racial diversity within the class helps create deeper conversations that in turn leave a greater number of students satisfied with the conversation. In their method of data collection, instructors served as facilitators. They used a list of questions but “each attempted to allow conversations to progress naturally asking additional questions only to prevent the conversation from stagnating prematurely” (Barnes, 2015, p. 5). The researchers gave the participants exit surveys with open-ended questions to “serve as a validity check allowing participants to share thoughts and reactions to the document privately that they might have been unwilling or unable to share in the group setting allowing for a level of triangulation” (Barnes, 2015, p. 5). In my analysis, The use of an exit survey serves to confirm the inability for honest conversations with instructors (facilitator) given their position of authority within the classroom. Moreso, the acknowledged occurrence of silence coincides with Gorksi’s (2008) classification of disengagement as a method for resistance among preservice 22 teachers. As the research continues to write, “The survey would provide an opportunity to examine discrepancies between the oral and written responses to the film allowing for further study.” Curriculum Ohio (2013) discusses this very same issue of diverse opinions within the curriculum as a position of growth. Her decision came as a response to student feedback asking for a greater diversity of opinion when it came to the curriculum. Surprisingly, student feedback still negatively criticized curriculum materials. It seemed as so mere opposing opinions did not prove effective enough to the audience of a fair and balanced undertaking. Important to note that Ohio (2013) is the only study found that directly spoke to curriculum design as an avenue to addressing students’ feedback and resistance. The study reveals the point, or at least makes the first suggestion, that the presentation of opposing viewpoints is insufficient to create a vibrant dialogue or ensure the course is open to diverse opinions. The study suggests that instruction should shift focus from conflicting opinions to divergent thinking. To place less emphasis on the presentation of contrasting opinions that can easily lead to polarized conversations. Autobiographies & Narratives Evidence suggests that autobiographies and self-narratives help preservice teachers--and individuals alike--interrogate their beliefs and privileges (Matias, 2016; Milner, 2007, Ullici, 2012). Autobiographies help make sense of the complex nature of teaching and learning, provide a tool for reflecting one’s own beliefs, and in the case of a CME course, address issues of cultural diversity (Milner, 2007). Unfortunately, many challenges and questions remain unanswered and unresolved before declaring the use of autobiographies an effective tool in CME. 23 First, there’s very little detail in the way teacher educators frame, structure, or organize assignments that ask students to reflect on their experiences. There’s plenty of studies that allude to autobiographies (in addition to reflective journals) but the details of how exactly the instructors use the assignments remain largely unclear (Mueller, J., O'Connor, C., 2007). From the literature—not knowing the details—I gather a diverse range of approaches to the use of autobiographies. Particular self-studies discuss the use of reflective biographies in multiple phases allowing instructors to assess PSTs’ understanding of course materials and respond accordingly to later drafts of their autobiography. Other research studies use autobiographies in conjunction with field placement (service-learning) and/or cultural immersion programs. Of the studies reviewed, some call for students to interrogate their own lives (Johnson, 2002), others ask students to compare theirs with a racialized other (Mueller and O'Connor, 2007), and Milner, H. (2007) shared his narrative with students as a method to connect with PSTs and further, explain how to inject a racial lens in one’s autobiographical reflection. Thus, the making of comparison across research is limited and difficult with a wide range of results that range from most students finding the activity beneficial (Matias, 2016; Milner, 2007) to students’ continual denial of a racialized self (Whittaker., 2005) and continued dependency in the belief of meritocracy to explain inequity in educational outcomes (Mueller and O'Connor, 2007). Nonetheless, autobiographies and narrative writing have the potential to become an effective tool in CME. Matias, C. (2016) takes narrative writing a little further by asking students to digitally represent their stories. The intention is to have students use digital media in a way that induces emotional responses from students and help them observe whiteness on their own. For Matias, C. (2016), dismantling whiteness requires emotional involvement and occurs with less resistance when students learn through the work than a traditional lecture. The latter point—learn through 24 the work—is important for Matias, C. (2016), like many other non-white teacher educators, who students often label as bias or incapable of objective truth due to their racial identity and position as the authority in the room (Chizhik, 2003). The issue of the instructors’ racial identity is a topic I will discuss further in later paragraphs and one that plays a significant role as instructors attempt to facilitate classroom discourse (Chavez-Reyes, 2012; Quaye, 2012). The Complication of White Privilege Pedagogy What if students don't want to confess their privilege? Lensmire, et al. (2013), argues the demand for a confession of white privilege serves as a dead-end for anti-racist action. To make their point, Lensmire, et al (2013) use Peggy McIntosh's seminal "knapsack" article to question teacher education's approach to anti-racist education. In their justification, "nearly every article discussing whiteness in education referenced McIntosh and approached the study of white from the perspective of white privilege" (Lensmire. et al, Lowenstein, 2009). Furthermore, to have students confess white privilege oversimplifies and flattens how we think about racial identities. For example: …that is, within white privilege pedagogy, white people are 'addressed' (Ellsworth, 1997) as little more than the smooth embodiment of privilege, leaving little room for exploring what that Jessie, for example, both feared the black man approaching her car and rejected that fear in herself and wanted to overcome it (Lensmire,, et al., 2013, p 429). Borrowing from Leonard’s (2004) work, Lensmire, et al. (2013) make a similar claim to other researchers (Matias, C., 2016; Sleeter, 2001) who argue that a focus on white privilege undermines the interrogation of whiteness and white-supremacy in teacher education. Thus, the belief that CME should have student confess their white privilege, as a principal objective, should remain a questionable approach that requires further reflection and caution. 25 Supporting Faculty To close the conversation on pedagogy, research is abundantly clear that teacher education knows little about the preparation of teacher educators (Banks, 2012; Gorski, 2012; Loughran, 2014) as a general topic and as a topic of concern for CME. Further, There is a small body of research in the United States and elsewhere about who is actually in the teacher educator workforce and how they arrived at those positions. Most studies suggest that teacher educators have little formal preparation as teacher educators and that there is little support or ongoing professional development to help teacher educators deal with the dilemmas (Banks, 2012, p. 2126). From what we do know, the professional development of teacher educators is best when done collaboratively, as a social engagement, where teacher educators have agency over their training (Patton, K., Parker, K., 2017; Han, S., 2016). Hadar, L., Brody, D., (2016) found teacher educators’ professional development successful when teacher educators socially collaborated on inquiry, reflection, and action research centered on student learning. The focus on student learning allowed teacher educators to focus on their meta-talk and how teacher educators could adapt to meet the needs of their students (Cochran-Smith, 2012). Several of the articles expressed continued support for faculty members who teach courses on race and racism (Keonghee, 2017; Had, 2016). These articles centered on Black and white instructors. The theme of these articles all converged on the point that the facilitation of discourse about race and racism is uniquely difficult as students openly resist that can lead to fatigue and/or frustration. Additionally, these instructors called for further support from their institutions for various purposes. For white instructors, the request is for classes and workshops that discuss race made available to all staff members. According to the self-identified white 26 author, promoting diversity is thrown around in the most general sense as part of their mission statement. Yet, most faculty members are white and few if any critically engage with the topic of race. For instructors of other races, the support from the institution looks different. Williams, D. and Evans-Winters, V. (2005) argue that institutions need to restructure their instructor evaluation systems. Institutions must take into account student resistance when evaluating black women as instructors. More specifically, evaluation systems need to embrace students’ potential frustration as the facilitator may force frustration among the students in hopes of “instigating dialogue”. Further, the authors argue that institutions need to provide mentorship to scholars who aren’t white and often face various forms of resistance or challenges from students. Mentors could assist in teaching and emotional support. More work is required to find suitable solutions to help white students understand their positionality. We make poor decisions if we believe one course will help white students develop a racial consciousness. Instead, schools need to ensure the discourse around race and equity is carried out through the entire program. And instructors must develop new methods that help white students see new racial perspectives in such a manner that class does not take on a theme of indoctrination. Research Question We need to better understand how to anticipate, engage, and potentially leverage student resistance for teaching and learning. We know little about how teacher educators understand student resistance and how they decide to pedagogically engage and lead students. What is the result of their pedagogical approach? How do teacher educators make sense of the response they receive from students in how they maneuver through resistant behavior? The literature is clear on the forms of resistance and the obstacle of unacknowledged white privilege as the culprit and 27 cause to why students decided to resist instruction. We do not know how teacher educators pedagogically decide to manage student resistance. What are their pedagogical objectives? What do they intend to accomplish and how do they interpret their relationship with students while navigating an emotionally tenuous learning experience? I propose to study how teacher educators' understanding of student resistance informs their pedagogy. How do teacher educators understand student resistance in CME courses? i) How does teacher educators’ professional development inform how they understand resistance? ii) How do teacher educators make sense of student resistance? iii) What recommendations do teacher educators’ have to address resistance in CME? Methodology This research project aims to better understand what informs how teacher educators make sense of resistance in social foundation courses. To borrow from Merriam (2002) in support of the methodological approach, “Qualitative researchers are not interested in people’s surface opinions as in survey research, or in cause and effect as in experimental research; rather, they want to know how people do things, and what meaning they give to their lives.” (p. 19) The purpose to understand the “how” is an attempt to compare and contrast what is written in the research literature (i.e. it’s because white preservice teachers don’t acknowledge their white privilege) with how teacher educators interpret, respond, and anticipate resistant behavior. To put a finer point on the justification of a qualitative methodological approach, “Questions of meaning, understanding, and process are appropriate for qualitative research” (Merriam, 2002, p. 19). 28 The intention to seek meaning and understanding implicates the sample size and format for each interview. “A small sample size is selected precisely because the researcher wishes to understand the particular in-depth, not to find out what is generally true of the many” (Merriam, 2002, p. 28). The larger objective of the dissertation is to interrogate and explore the meaning of resistant behavior that extends outside of teacher education research in the interest of improving the teaching and learning experience for teacher educators and PST alike, and in turn, the quality of teaching for millions of public-school students. Hence, there isn’t any intention to sketch a generalization from the data. Rather, the intention is to expand the conversation on student resistance beyond white privilege to improve how teacher educators engage pre-service teachers about questions that pertain to race and racism. According to Patton (2002), the use of “extrapolations” and not generalizability as a research goal helps explain and justify the purpose of this research project. More precisely, “In thinking about generalizability, a more accurate portrayal for this qualitative research is ‘context-bound extrapolations’ (Patton, as cited in Merriam, 2002, p 28).” With the frame of “extrapolations” as the motive for research, the next methodological concern becomes the definition of “context-bound” parameters for the research project (Patton, as cited in Merriam, 2002). Social foundation courses are the boundary for the context of the research project. The project takes a look at how teacher educators teach about race and racism to pre-service teachers. Not surprisingly, teacher educators represent the participants for the research. More specifically, teacher educators with at least two semesters of experience teaching social foundation courses. Eligible participants answer questions regarding their experience, how they understand and make sense of resistant behavior, and their intentions in how they respond to resistance. Data analysis extrapolates the various themes across and within participants’ sense-making in addition to the 29 collection of ideas on how to improve how teacher educators teach and how pre-service teachers learn about race and racism. From a methodological position, this research study operates from a post-positivist epistemology. That is to say, “(a) interpretations should be derived from data observed and (b) data collection and analysis methods should, in some way, be systematic and transparent (Guest, Namey, Mitchell, 2013, p. 6). Post-positivism closely resembles the scientific method but views a study’s findings “as evidence-based probabilities rather than absolute truths” (Guest, et al., 2013, p. 7) to “deal with imperfections in a phenomenologically messy and methodologically imperfect world, but [sic] still believe that objectivity is still worth striving for” (Patton, 2002, p. 93). Post-positivism allows for multiple truths or possibilities in contrast to one absolute objective truth. Such multiplicity of truth is important for this study who intends to broaden and interrogate how teacher educators from a range of experiences, racial and gender orientations understand resistant behavior. A qualitative approach “offers a way to dig deep into context, meaning, subjective experience, and other phenomena” (Burck, 2005; Shaw, 2003). Qualitative research is best adept to find multiple meanings and interpretations of lived experiences. Schreiber & Asner-Self (2011) describe qualitative research as an "opportunity to explore and discover hypotheses and theory, describe meaning (e.g. what an experience means to a person), and recognize multiple truths" (p.194). This study is less concerned with generalization and saturation as much as being an open inquiry to the meanings and “multiple truths” teacher educators hold about student resistance and how these truths align, misalign, or diverge from teacher education research and other disciplines less explored and applied such as psychoanalysis - as laid out in the previous section. Similarly, the study is interested to find out what teacher educators identify as the 30 objective of a CME course. The meaning and significance of resistance according to participants can provide depth to the current conversation, potentially provide a broader interpretation of the problem, and allow the field to engage the issue from a new position or level of consciousness. Qualitative research isn't set up to generalize to the population from the sample that you work with. Instead, qualitative research, as is used in this project, helps develop critical, analytical, and in-depth insights. The intent of this study is to connect how a variety of identities interpret and respond to student resistance in CME courses. These insights can help inform policy and practice without a need to generalize across all teacher educators or white preservice teachers. Additionally, much of teacher education seems settled as to the cause and culprit of student resistance but research in other disciplines or areas of education - as Toshali presents - provides a less singular take on the issue. Do teacher educators have the same singular position as the literature base in teacher education or do they hold a variety of perspectives? How do their views compare and contrast to other disciplines explore in the previous section? Here, the attempt is not to show causality but the multiplicity of views, perspectives, and takes to then decide if the field should reconsider their position on the problem. Perhaps this is greater than an issue of white privilege. Methods Data Sampling Sampling can take one of two forms: random and non-random of any representative population. Quantitative research tends to focus on random sampling to avoid appearing bias in their analysis (Rapley, 2014). Qualitative research, as is the case for this particular study, gravitates towards the use of non-random sampling in order to focus on a specific population to enable an intentional “bias’ or ‘information-rich” data (Rapley, 2014, p. 50). Of course, such a 31 generalization about sampling is not a rule of law rather a “rule of thumb” – what is general practice. Ultimately, a researcher’s “prior knowledge of the phenomenon” defines the most appropriate methodological approach. (Rapley, 2014, p. 50). Additionally, any question about sample size is dependent on the context of the question For this research project, non-random sampling is thought of as the most appropriate methodological approach given research literature’s unequivocal reiteration that the intensity, frequency, and method of students’ resistance is influenced and informed by the race and gender identity of the instructor. The participants represent various identities to meet the criteria and respond to the literature in how CME instruction varies according to the identity of the instructor and what their identity means for the kind and intensity of resistance they witness. The idea is to build deep, rich, think, narratives for analysis. The non-random sample chosen for this study balances participants’ racial and gender identity to the greatest extent possible-to represent the varying experiences of instructors based on research literature in teacher education. The non-random sample also attempts to balance the varying career stages of participants (e.g., grad students, new faculty, etc.) to interrogate how career placement may or may not influence students’ resistance to learning. The research knowledge base does not have much insight on how career identity influences students’ decision to resist and the form of resistance they decide to express. As an example, what is the resistance shown to a graduate assistant compared to junior faculty or a full professor, if any at all? The study uses four categories to frame “career identities”: grad, early, mid, and late. “Grad” refers to any participant still in graduate school. An “early” identity defines an assistant professor with two-three years’ experience as a faculty member. “Mid” career identity is a participant with three to six years of experience as an assistant professor and “late” 32 refers to a faculty member with more than five years of experience with a title of at least associate professor. The table below shows the balance of categories of the participants. Table 1 Career Identities of Participants Grad Early Mid Late Total 2 2 4 1 9 The balance of identities (racial, gender, career) is a reflection of the principle that “…sampling should never be the product of ad hoc decisions or left solely to chance. It needs to be thoughtful and rigorous” (Rapley, 2014, p. 49). Having participants that represent the varying identities highlighted within the research literature addresses questions of research validity. Broad and balanced inclusion of participants improves the validity and reliability of the research given the intentionality to represent what is known from research literature in Teacher Education. Table 2 Gender Identity of Participants Female Male Non-Binary Other Total 6 3 0 0 9 Table 3 Racial Identity of Participants Black White Asian Latino Total 3 4 1 1 9 33 Important to note that the intention to balance identities is not to make a case that these participants represent their corresponding identity groups but an attempt to discover any potential variety among different identity groups. The recruitment of participants--after a decision to sample purposefully--involved convenience and snowball sampling. The researcher identified known teacher educators who have recent experience teaching critical multicultural education courses with the intent to balance the various racial, gender, and career identities. A large percentage of participants interviewed came as a result of convenience sampling—the selection of participants based on access and financial feasibility (Schreiber & Asner-Self, 2011). The sample is also purposeful given the specific characteristic required to fit the scope of the study (e.g. teacher educator, experience with CME courses, etc.). After non-random convenience sampling, the research used snowball sampling to solicit participants given the parameters of the research question —this occurs when participants offer names of other potential participants for the sample (Schreiber & Asner-Self, 2011). The study intended to for a minimum of eight participants with an ideal sample size of between 10-14 participants to ensure balance across identities. According to Tracey Jenson (2012), the number of appropriate interviewees needed for a qualitative study depends on “the quality of the analysis and the dignity, care and time taken to analyze interviews, rather than quantity” (S.E. Baker, p. 5). Jennifer Mason adds to Jenson’s argument with the position that a convincing analytical narrative is based on “richness, complexity, and detail rather than on statistical logic” (S.E. Baker, 2012, p. 5). According to Maxwell (2005) “What you need are relationships that allow you to ethically gain the information that can answer your research questions” to further support the point of richness and depth over quantity, (p. 83). For Maxwell 34 (2005), relationships go beyond rapport but to the nature of the relationship. To rephrase, what is critical is the kind and the amount of rapport between participant and researcher. The kind of relationship between research and participants came into consideration when soliciting participants. The care in managing the relationship between the researcher and participants builds on Maxwell’s (2005) assertion that in qualitative studies “the researcher is the instrument of the research, and the research relationships are the means by which the research gets done” (p. 83). Lincoln & Guba (2000) share a similar sentiment on the process of reflecting critically on the self as a researcher, stating the same differently: “human as instrument” (p. 183). The sample population used for this study derived from a critical social-studies online teaching community and teacher educators known to the researcher who publicly expresses independent positions to help ensure “ethical” and accurate information. Data Collection The study used interviews to address four thematic concerns: i) teacher educators’ professional development for teaching CME; ii) teacher educators’ sense-making of student resistance; iii) teacher educators’ self-identified pedagogical objectives for CME; iv) teacher educators’ recommendations for CME. As a consequence, participants for the study must 1) have taught a CME course for at least two semesters in a higher education classroom and 2) specifically addresses the topic of racial inequality in society and/or public education as part of course requirements or their own pedagogical objective(s) for the course. All participants filled out a preliminary form that asks for their racial identity, previous educational experience, their current employment status (e.g. faculty, grad student), and the length of experience with social foundation courses. The form aided the balance of identities (racial, gender, career) and provided a basic context to the conversation based on each 35 participant’s experiences and identities. Subsequent to the pre-interview form, interviews occurred in person whenever feasible. Interviews not possible “in-person” occurred over recorded private Zoom video conference calls. Video recording enabled the interviewer to concentrate on the interview and respond to the interviewees’ answers, concerns, and disposition(s). The interview process followed the interview protocol (see appendix) but conversations also lead to unexpected tangents that connect with the study’s research questions but don’t necessarily fall under any of the protocol interview categories as a semi-structured dialogue. The interviewer composed a memo after each interview to capture memorable and significant themes that emerged from interviews. Memo writing adds to the credibility and trustworthiness of qualitative research as the memos help the researcher recall information during the data analysis phase of a research project (Given, L., 2018). Interview Format The interviews lasted between forty and seventy minutes. The interviewer—in this case, the researcher—opened the interview with a conversational tone to help the interviewee feel comfortable, relaxed, and transition into a focused discussion on the topic. Asking the interviewee about their past experiences, current work, and interest in the field will make most of the introductory questions to invite the interviewee into the conversation. The introduction then led to questions about how they--the participant--racially identify and how they make meaning of student resistance. The interview asked participants to describe the course they teach, the culture of their department, and their perception of how their students relate to the course. These questions help provide context as well as an opportunity to compare how teacher educators perceive the culture surrounding their work. Knowing how they and their students perceive critical multicultural 36 education courses offers a richer understanding of the context and what significance any difference in their perception of culture may have in the way teacher educators perceive their pedagogical intentions. The discussion then leads into their own practice. I began the interview with questions that would address how teacher educators perceive and decide to respond to resistance(s) based on what research tell us at the moment. For example, how did they come to understand resistance? I formulated questions about their understanding of resistance first since they speak to the central theme of the research study. With the questions settled, I moved on to the organization and structure of the interview. By structure, I refer to the order and a proposed progression of the interview that would theoretically take us from broad strokes of their past educational experience and their current practice into the finer points of the research: that is, insights into how teacher educators perceive and subsequently understand student resistance in their classrooms and how their perception(s) informs their practice. More precisely, I designed the interview in a way that would allow me to learn about their past experience and current practice before I broached the conversation about resistance. Prior, I presumed I would then move onto questions about resistance specifically once either the participant began to mention the phenomenon frequently enough to pivot into the topic or the participant had discussed everything about their current practice with little to no mention of resistance. At such a point, I could move into the topic of resistance explicitly and directionally. The theory did not “play out” as one planned as is typical with the nature of doing research. The nature of each conversation varied according to the relationship I, the researcher, held with the participant and the participants’ comfort with the topic and theme since each knew of the research question beforehand as part of the solicitation process for participants. 37 The interview protocol is divided into four themes: context, perception of student resistance, responding to student resistance, and improving and evaluating CME. Each theme is comprised of several sub-sections that contain anywhere between two and seven questions. In total, 45 questions made the interview protocol. I reorganized and reprioritized the questionnaire after my first interviewee as time quickly became an issue. The participant granted a follow-up session after the first 45 minutes did not allow enough time to finish the interview protocol, and not necessarily of negative consequence to the study. The participant shared many stories with great detail—they willingly contributed depth to the questions. I appreciated the level of detail and specific events the participant contributed but also recognized the unsuitability of the interview length. The first session with participant one (P1) occurred over two sessions. The first session lasted 40 minutes. The second session occurred a week later for an additional 30 minutes. By the end, I knew I had to focus and narrow the number of questions and themes I addressed and become adaptable as interviewees inadvertently answered questions, I had not yet asked but occurred later in the interview protocol. Not all the questions required an equal amount of time to answer. For example, “what is your racial identity” typically took a few seconds to answer when compared to the open-ended question, “How do you handle student resistance in your classroom?” Nonetheless, the number of questions and the linear process created far too long of an interview. Instead, I decided to highlight the most important questions to serve as a figurative anchor for each category. I then checked off the questions the participants answered in their response to the highlighted question in each category. 38 Data Analysis Each interview is recorded for reference purposes in addition to hand-written notes taken during each interview. Not all interviews required notes as some provoked thoughts and ideas to follow-up on during the interview or themes that the researcher found reoccurring throughout an interview. The researcher then listened back to the interviews several times to create an “interview memo.” The interview memo describes the various themes and arguments each participant shared during their conversation with the researcher. One can think of the interview memos as an outline and executive summary. The memos help frame the substance of each conversation and provide an organizational purpose to the data analysis processing of finding relational patterns across and between participants along with contributions that did not go beyond the mention by one participant but proved valuable based on the connection to the research literature. For example, the conversation with Annabelle revealed the affordance of taking a direct stance as a white educator—a theme that did not show elsewhere but connects to what we know from the research literature is that the racial identity of an instructor informs their classroom experience. After interview memos and transcription, data analysis proceeded to code participant responses (Saldana, J., 2009). The analysis starts with structural coding. Structural coding categorizes “sections of your text according to a specific structure with the intent to continue analyzing within these structures.” In this case, I have structurally coded the interviews into four sections. Four sections that correspond to the four research sub questions: what’s your previous experience, how do you understand resistance, what is the objective of your class, and recommendations. I then coded each structural code with value codes. Value codes represent excerpts that speak to the participant’s values, attitudes, and beliefs. Lastly, any text left un-coded received a description 39 code. I then proceeded to create categories based on the various value and descriptive codes. In other words, a thematic analysis or pattern coding of the results to organize themes or common responses across participants. Below is a diagram to represent the coding framework: Figure 1 Visual Representation of Coding Scheme Structural Code Value Code 1 Theme Code A Value Pattern Recognition Code 2 Theme Code B Value Code 3 Theme Code C Value Code 4 Results The principal research question of this study is to learn how teacher educators understand student resistance. More precisely, within the principal research question, this study wants to 40 learn the professional preparation of teacher educators to teach social foundation courses and their pedagogy, how they understand resistance, what they see as the objective(s) for their course, and what they would recommend improving the experience. Below is an analysis of the participants’ answers to each of the questions. The headings not italicized represent themes. Those headings italicized represent value codes. In discovery, or analysis, you find the values first. There’s a lot you wish to capture. In fact, the natural tendency is to capture everything. Several “pass throughs” or “reads” lead to an improve balance of what is defined as a value code. Typically, it’s length of discussion on the topic. They talk a lot of x for y amount of time. This became a barometer for how the study defines and captures value codes. The idea and concept for themes emerge after a third pass through of the data. Clusters appear. These “clusters” represent the themes of the data analysis. Teacher Educators’ Context and Pedagogy This first section speaks to educators’ experience, the context of their work, and their pedagogical approaches. Some participants taught in a large metropolitan area, others in the Midwest, and one participant came from abroad. The range of experience differed, as you might expect but common themes emerged. This part of the interview also asked participants what they believed is the objective of the course, what they personally hoped to accomplish, and how they know they’ve been successful. A significant percentage of the results do not come as a surprise given what we know from current research. For example, the gender and race of the instructor all played a role in how participants structured their pedagogical approach. More interesting, a few participants talked about how seniority affected how they taught, how explicit they decided to become with their pedagogy. 41 Identity Frames Approach Two of the white female participants made known how their whiteness lets them teach “to put it all out there” without feeling threatened “that students are going to harm me based on race” as Abigail highlighted. In regards to gender, the result is not the same. Abigail spoke of students who write comments on end-of-year reviews that she’s too emotional and “takes things too personally.” Abigail returns to the discussion of race and sees her objective to help students to see how they can use their racial privilege for something really well and to “not deny people of color just because you yourself haven’t had those experiences.” Interestingly, Abigail struggles with the feeling that her course is “only for white people to understand their privilege” and worries if students of color do not learn anything new. Her feelings mirror what is written in teacher education research literature. Very little is written on the experiences of students of color in a critical multicultural education class and much of the attention is placed on the preparation of white preservice teachers' ability to teach children, unlike their own race or culture (Brown, 2014). Abigail also touched upon the career position of a teacher educator as an influence on how they take up the course, “to what extent do these teachers educators have to buy into the courses that they teach do they feel like safe in their school situations where they can have the difficult conversations and not worry about any backlash. Are they pre-tenure? Are they tenured?” For Evelyn, individuals’ career positions helped her understand why certain professors decide not to take on issues of power and equity in their courses. Adding the Personal to the Curriculum Very commonly, participants shared the use of their personal lived experiences to help teach certain ideas. This is not new. Richard Miller (2007) documented how he used his life to 42 help shape and frame the curriculum. The approach uses teacher educators' own lived experiences as evidence and show of theoretical truth. The very first participant of this very study also spoke of their use of their own lives to help explain ideas to students. As anecdotal evidence, a former student once expressed his preference for stories – narratives, testimonios. Except for one, white participants did not use their own stories as commonly as their peer teacher educators which creates an almost implicit expectation: you must incorporate your narrative into the curriculum and your pedagogy as a teacher educator of color. How instructors inject themselves varied but most discussed how they incorporated their own personal life into their work. For example, Siti used art to help connect with her students, and equally important, she felt authentic in her delivery. “I am still interested in the arts idea because art moments were created like authentic expressions from students’ minds. And for more whenever I did the artwork, it is my real self there and I hope students will do the same. For Siti, it is through art that we can get to know what students actually think and feel, “we will get them to open up to us and tell what they really like and what they didn’t like.” Much of Siti’s interest in art as her pedagogy came from her difficult experience as an international instructor. She shared an experience where a student just about scolded her after class that she didn’t deserve to teach the course. Vulnerability “it was a perfect example of how to be vulnerable through writing and how if you’re vulnerable through writing and how if you’re vulnerable through writing then students feel better about them being vulnerable and we did it in class - they wrote their own narratives after I shared mine.” The participant continued to make the point plain, “I open myself up. Todo! I’m very clear. I’m very explicit. I’m very transparent,” Vanessa shared. Abigail also talked about 43 vulnerability but in a different light. For her, she made sure to let students know that she too makes mistakes and says “I have to figure out a way to overcome those and own mistakes and in going forward in order to be better.” The intent is to help students open up and or at the very least, relax their tension. Give Ownership to Students “...we need to step back and let our students handle it and I’ve been surprised even though I’m scared. They do [question each other]and they do it in ways that I’m like ‘I would have never been able to say and express it the way that she just did.” - Vanessa. Siti, unintentionally also used students to help with classroom conversations. On one occasion, Siti deliberately picked international and non-white students to start end-of-year presentations. According to Siti, a resistant white male student presented different ideas than what was written in their original PowerPoint by the time they had to present. She argues that the narratives of other students helped others, particularly this white male, re-think their position. Only Vanessa and Siti discussed the idea that students should take ownership of their learning. Every other participant discussed their responsibility to press students. As an example, Evelyn describes “asking students about their own experience. I'm posing questions...well where do you think that knowledge comes from tell me why you believe what you believe. I'm still interrogating what they believe in but I do very much have a specific end goal in mind.” Tim also alluded to how other students would also help in conversation and he speak of students being on a spectrum of understanding and those who felt comfortable and confident about conversations about race and racism would help advance the dialogue of race as a structural issue. 44 The Connection to Practice Vanessa shared a story of a student who struggled with the idea of LGBT literature in an elementary classroom. She used the incident to then ask students about how they would engage parents. What would they say to parents? For Vanessa, conversations needed to return to practice as part of her pedagogical approach. “It’s not just like I’m reading content aside. It’s all tied in. And, with everything, we always tie back to practice.” Lexicon For Abigail, she felt successful when students could connect issues across struggles and populations. For example, she shared how they would write keywords on the board to help make connections. As she explains, “so even if we're reading about the Indigenous experience one month and the next month's reading about women of color in the deep South when we start pulling out keywords, they start seeing how these things are related and not so you know just unique to Indigenous experience or African American experiences.” Objective The objective of the course is one of the more difficult topics and arguably at the metaphorical heart of this research project. Is it the responsibility of the course to have students believe x and y or is the course intended to have students intellectually engage with new viewpoints? These two objectives, surprisingly, did not function independently of each other. To borrow from the quote above, Evelyn explicitly states her intention is to have students come to adopt certain beliefs because it arguably means the students will become better teachers to students of color. At the same time, Evelyn wanted her students to become self-aware of their own position and how they reach such a conclusion yet maintain her position that students need to adopt certain beliefs in order to avoid doing harm to students of color. The position does not 45 align with my own auto-ethnographical experience. I arguably held all the right beliefs, but my behavior and actions did not coincide with my identity or belief. Most participants did answer with a perspective that CME intends to help students understand power, systems, and the relationship between school and communities. “I want future teachers here to have an informed and fuller picture of these different dynamics that are in play in schools so that they can better navigate for themselves and then also advocate for their students.” The challenge is to understand how one asks students to think deliberately for themselves while at the same time ensuring they become cognizant of racism and any potential bias or discrimination they may show to a student of color. More Than Learning About Others One participant voiced concerns about the lack of critical self-reflection. They felt much attention is placed on learning about others but of themselves. As they said, “ok I'm going to learn all these things about others but I'm also deeply learning about myself." This concern did not show up elsewhere in the interviews and makes a critical point. Interestingly enough, the literature speaks to the need for white students to develop a racial identity (Clarke & Gordon, 2003). Whiteness studies take the charge that white persons need to develop a healthy racial identity to become aware of their privilege, power, and work towards a more egalitarian culture, society, and country. Yet only one participant spoke of critical self-reflection. Abigail and Evelyn both discussed the importance of students becoming meta-aware of their beliefs and positionality but not to the extent to argue that white students need to develop a healthy racial identity as an avenue to develop an equitable teaching force. Clarke & Gordon use Janet’s Helm’s (1995) model to help white students scaffold the development of a white racial identity that moves from having internalized racism to the final stage of autonomy in were “a more 46 genuine internalization of a positive white racial identity, one which leads to active commitment to promote social equity” (Clarke & Gordon, 2003, p. 77). They explain further, “At the point the individual has a more meaningful understanding of one’s personal and political location in multiracial settings…” (Clarke & Gordon, 2003, p. 78). Teacher Educators’ Interpretation of Student Resistance The following section explores how teacher educators understand and interpret student resistance. Much of what is highlighted in the literature is reflected in Tim’s testimony in how white students adopted a view of race and racism as an individual issue and not systemic and he went on further to explain how this belief of race as an individual issue also lead to students perception that conversations about race and racism meant them thinking of themselves as racist. Challenge to Beliefs and World View “I think it’s because it doesn’t align with their view of the world and what they think is OK and they sometimes feel attacked.” - Vanessa. Abigail also spoke of a similar idea in that she feels students resist because of a “lack of acknowledgment that people experience a world in different ways.” Tim also agreed that conversations about race challenged students’ conception of themselves and what racism means. “I understood resistance from a personal level…resistance came from students thinking that talking about power is you directly talking about them and who they were...they can’t separate how they as an individual benefit from the power structure, aren’t the power structure.” Tim continued on to describe that his approach to resolving said resistance is to emphasize the systemic nature of resistance for students to realize they’re not being called out by the teacher. The intention is to get students to think about the system but people who benefit from racism will feel attacked by the conversation. He then defined resistance as students feeling attacked. 47 White Guilt “With other students especially with white students usually the resistance is more in the small group level. I think it's because they feel like everyone's saying that I'm at fault. That white people, in general, are at fault and I was even born then” Vanessa, shared. Abigail also shared the same idea about white guilt, “And so when they're confronted with that there's an overwhelming sense of guilt right and which you know I explain when you're talking about your guilt you're centering yourself and again we're not talking about a conversation that we need to be talking about. And so I think is a lot of that comes from not lack of exposure or lack of experience.” The idea of guilt is not as expressed in the research literature as the importance of exposure to other groups of people as a way to step outside of one’s whiteness. Discomfort & White Privilege Abigail feels resistance is because of white privilege and students’ dislike for discomfort. Discomfort is a common thread throughout the literature base and much of the comments of participants. For example, Abigail talked about the use of a model that outlines our comfort zone, our discomfort zone, and our learning zones. Typically, discomfort is used to explain why students resist or the need for discomfort to occur in order for students to learn. Of interest, Simon talked about discomfort from both positions: “students are uncomfortable when we talk about race and now, you're uncomfortable because we're not talking about race.” Positionality and Identity of Instructor “That they feel like they're on the spot and I think sometimes because I am who I am in the perspective that I take they might feel like ‘and the teacher is not neutral.’ It's very clear that she is basically with them right-maybe that también.” - Vanessa. Conversely, Simon - a white male teacher educator - spoke about his concerns that students of color remained largely silent. 48 Tim also remarked how he felt perceived by students based on his race, “Either one, what is he doing here. Or two, of course this is the race class. We got the black man!” Imani stated similarly and shared that students feel that the instructor of color aims to call them racist, is thought of as inadequate because of their race, and anticipate there’s a political agenda by the instructor. To a certain extent, the last concern is valid. There is a political agenda to different degrees based on who is the instructor. Abigail and Evelyn both shared explicit intentions to have students come to adopt particular beliefs. Shutting Down Interestingly, Abigail - a white instructor - explicitly describes resistance as “shutting down.” Mention of resistance as an outward expression of dislike in class did not enter the definition. She did go on to share that students do come to her after class to express their protest as in the case of a student who ask why she didn’t speak to black privilege when they discussed the topic of white privilege. Simon - also a white instructor - defined resistance as silence. Only white instructors talk about resistance as merely silent which speaks to what is known in research about the uneven expression of resistance shown by students according to race and gender of the instructor. Teacher Educators’ Response to Student Resistance Follow-Up Privately “I don’t call students out...I do check in on them afterward to say you know ‘hey I noticed that when we were talking about this it seemed like you were disconnecting a little bit.” - Vanessa. Siti also shared similar methods to help understand where students stand. Like Vanessa, Siti made attempts to see students after class or vice-versa. Siti also used exit tickets to provide other avenues for students to share their opinions. 49 Ask Questions “I just I ask them a lot of questions about their experience and I think understanding that intersectional piece is key. And to see that visual not just say that there is intersectionality right but to see that visual and what that looks like and so people can understand that we are sort of we walk through the world and we experience in much different ways.” The visual Abigail reference is from a reading that demonstrates a matrix of different identities and their intersectionality. She is also the only instructor that spoke to how they respond to resistance in the moment. Perhaps, results would vary if the research question explicitly asked participants how they responded to student resistance in the classroom, “in the moment.” Abigail spoke to the idea of “in the moment” in her pedagogical approach to have students take ownership of the conversation as did Evelyn but Abigail is the only participant who voiced a specific methodological approach to how they would respond to resistance from students. Teacher Educators’ Recommendations For CME The following section captures what participants felt needed to happen in order to improve what is being taught and what is being learned in critical multicultural education. Surprisingly, many didn’t have too much to offer in way of suggestions. Reprioritize the Course “Making sure that the people assigned to teach it either really want to teach the class or have some kind of expertise in it. It means - like those are the ways we don’t just end up shoving it aside. Es como esta en la esquinita [It’s like in the corner]. It’s required but you minimize it as much as possible. Because it’s very clearly not a priority even though it’s a requirement.” - Vanessa 50 Training for Faculty “...you don’t have to have any background in anything related to the description of the course I have you teach...so it ends up being kind of like the course that is assigned to faculty that just need more courses.” - Vanessa. Abigail also mentioned the need for professional development but also uniquely asked if there’s resistance among teacher educators to talk about issues of justice, particularly white teachers who can decide not to teach a CME course. “Because as a teacher educator that resistance could come from a place of not knowing how to have those conversations but again if you are a white teacher educator you have the power to just say no I don't want to do that.” Imani also spoke of the need for faculty to learn how to anticipate and respond to resistance – one of only two participants who acknowledge the need to anticipate and learn how to respond to the phenomena. For faculty to collaborate and learn from each other’s pedagogy. Garrett said equally the same but also called for a national curriculum and resources database to pull from. As he expressed, “My personal feeling is that we would do our field a service to have more like standardization in what we do because I think I think it's great that we have what kind of diversity which is awesome but I think in some ways sometimes like there's a piece that I do that's really great over here but I'd like to have seven other pieces that I know people have that are there but it's like not super well shared - but I wish there would be more collaborative resources.” How to Integrate Across Curriculum “We need support in how to teach, not just these courses, but just how to teach this across our curriculum. How to be more inclusive of all our students and how to have these challenging conversations really.” - Vanessa. Abigail also express an intention to integrate across the 51 curriculum but highlighted the lack of capacity, knowledge, and development among teacher educators to integrate topics of race and social justice across their program’s curriculum, and again, the privilege of whiteness to decide not to integrate equity and power issues in their curriculums. Bridging the Social-Emotional with the Intellect For Siti, a critical multicultural education course needs to have an emotional aspect. As she expresses, “critical pedagogy you like to challenge and uncover the hidden meaning of social practices. We want teachers to be like learning in the class and things like that, they are very good but if you look at teaching this in another dimension like an emotional dimension, what do your students think when we challenge particular racial groups?” Siti continues, again with her observation of the affordances and limits to critical pedagogy to say that, “how to make the balance between the human piece and the rationale piece, technical pieces, and the emotional piece.” For Siti, this balance of emotional and intellect drove much of her pedagogy and the experience led to her rethink the uses and limits of critical pedagogy. Discussion Social-Emotional I want to begin the analysis of the result with the social-emotional element involved in a critical multicultural education course. Siti is the only participant who described and identified a “social-emotional” element to CME. Others discussed cognitive dissonance, students who struggled and felt frustrated, and other descriptions of the social-emotional character of critical multicultural education courses, for the instructor and student alike. For Siti, this social- emotional element made a profound impact on her relationship and view of critical pedagogy. She felt strongly about the efficacy of critical pedagogy prior to being an instructor of a CME 52 course. Quickly, she learned the limits of the pedagogical approach. She shared how a white male student lambasted her after class to say she wasn’t fit for the course as an international graduate student. The event caused Siti to seek advice from faculty. The conversation led to the use of exit tickets and an end-of-year presentation to help overcome the resistance (and arguably anger) expressed by the students. The experience made her realize within her first semester as an instructor that a typical or conventional approach – critical pedagogy – or other wasn’t going to work. Garrett and Segall (2013) discuss how information or knowledge is insufficient for CME courses. They point out that teacher education literature often discusses white preservice teachers as having a “lack of knowledge” that teacher education must solve “by simply ‘adding’ new knowledge where none currently exists” (p. 296). Unfortunately, as Siti came to understand, “the underlying assumption of ignorance as a simple lack of knowledge that can be overcome with additional information is misleading” (Garret and Segall, 2012, p. 296). Rather, ignorance is not an absence of information but a willful decision and strategy of avoidance (Garret and Segall, 2012). Garret and Segall (2013) substantiate their position with the help of Feldman’s (1982) psychoanalytic “tone” for “Ignorance, in other words, is not a passive state of absence, a simple lack of information: It is an active dynamic of negation, an active refusal of information (p. 297). Garret and Segall (2013) is useful here to help extrapolate why more knowledge isn’t useful and the issue of resistance is beyond pedagogy – arguably, social-emotional or psychoanalytical as this study attempts to demonstrate. As Garret and Segall (2013) astutely point out, three problematic assumptions prevail teacher education and CME coursework: 1) the idea that white students are ignorant about race and racism, 2) the teacher educator must stand as the savior to rescue students from said ignorance, and 3) that described ignorance is remedied with mere 53 knowledge about race and racism. This third point gives further evidence that teacher education must put attention to the social-emotion, psychoanalytical aspect involved with the transformation of one’s beliefs and world view. Imani hints somewhat – to a lesser extent – to how important it is to help students navigate through emotional discord or cognitive dissonance, to use a more formal term. She tells her students at the start of the semester that they will feel discomfort and their task is to “sit but not stay in it.” This study infers “it” to mean the emotional discomfort involved when one must engage and consider a thought that counters the current paradigm of one’s belief. To put a fine point on the issue, teacher education must intentionally observe and address CME coursework from a social-emotional framework that includes literature but is also equally sensitive and considerate of the physiological experience students encounter that may or may not inhibit their personal transformation. Beliefs that Empower K-12 Students Evelyn made very strong remarks about her position and view of her responsibility as a white teacher educator. Now at a predominately white institution, Evelyn says “I’m not nice about it. I don’t want to cater to their fragility to the expense of the one or two students of color in the classroom…We talk a lot about not all opinions are not equal and this is not a safe space and if your opinions are harmful to others, we’ll have to work through that… I know a lot of this is mediates by own whiteness.” Evelyn acknowledges colleagues of color could not approach the subject in the same explicit manner. She believes her new approach and success is heavily influenced by her whiteness. Though, if we can put Evelyn’s whiteness aside for just a moment and suspend our beliefs, what is the argument, position, or approach to an explicit exclamation of the beliefs preservice teachers must adopt? As Evelyn describes: 54 “now I’m ok saying ‘I know what I want you to think.’ The field has shown us what you need to think. And if you don’t want to think that maybe you shouldn’t be a teacher and that’s ok. I’m not saying you [have to] believe what you don’t want to believe. You can believe those things, but if you believe those things you are potentially doing harm to children. So it’s my job to help wrestle with that discomfort and help you figure out if this is the profession for me.” Again, the issue of whiteness aside for a moment, Evelyn’s approach is vastly distinct and unique—and from her perspective, successful. She positions the beliefs as grounded in what works for children versus what she personally feels is accurate or “true” about race or racism in the United States. Teacher educators of color may take exception to the strategy, but the current approach isn’t widely successful either and students, from what participants shared, already have a view of instructors of color as inherently bias. What if teacher educators prompt students to ask themselves what beliefs will empower students of other races, cultures, linguistic backgrounds, and class? Perhaps this isn’t a complete approach, but I believe we can learn much from Evelyn’s testimony to make the point to the students that the arguments within course readings are not what a teacher educator wants others to believe but what we know from the field as beliefs that empower non-white children, as Evelyn passionately exclaims. To sum, ground the arguments about beliefs in what will make a positive impact in students’ lives in lieu of arguments that prove or disprove race and racism in the country. Perhaps a more effective approach is to demonstrate how certain beliefs “play-out” in practice. Vanessa is the only participant that voiced the importance of discourse and instruction being grounded in practice. Teacher education can claim an intent for preservice teachers to 55 enact an equitable or social justice curriculum but with no blueprint or template, the likelihood is unlikely. How does “color doesn’t exist” playout in the classroom when there’s a racial disparity in suspension, students in special education coursework, etc.? How does a preservice teacher learn to adapt curriculum if they never analyze curriculum from a racial lens? Participants all relied on readings and their personal stories, but absent is the application of what is in course material to the practice of curriculum design and instruction. Racism as Personal, Structural, and White Racial Identity A majority of the participants alluded to the discomfort and resistance by white students as white guilt, a view of racism as individual and not structural, or the conversation of race and racism as a personal attack. All these descriptions or explanations refer to an unhealthy racial identity by white persons. Janet Helms (1992) better articulates this point in her book, A Race Is a Nice Thing to Have: A Guide to Being a White Person: Therefore, it should be evident that I have written a book for White people. In this country, Whites seem to be the only racial group that spends more time and effort wondering about the implications of race for other groups than it does for itself. White people have difficulty accepting that they have a race and therefore are threatened by groups who have no such difficulties. Likewise, they seem to have no models for thinking about Whiteness as a healthy part of themselves (p. v). Imani briefly alluded to this same point in her concern that CME courses do not provide enough critical self-reflection and the experience becomes learning about “other” exercises. For Helm (1992), the objective is to get a white person to approach the world from a healthy perspective the ceases from denial, distortion, or avoidance of the realities of the world. This point connects to the first paragraph in this section that argues CME courses must help students move through 56 the discomfort, dissonance, or emotional discord to reach a healthy white racial identity. And tangentially, I believe the term people of color does not help the cause. This project uses people of color and non-white persons to show an incomplete agreement with the term, people of color. We each have a race and a term such as “people of color” denounces the idea that white people have a color – an argument antithetical to Helm’s (1992) point. CME would benefit from a focus on how to help white students transition to a healthy racial identity as outlined in Helm’s (1992) framework. How to Response and Engage Resistance Sigmund Freud—the founder of psychoanalytic theory—defines resistance as oppositional behavior when an individual’s unconscious defenses of the ego are threatened by an external source (Resistance-psychoanalysis, 2021). Far from being an expert in psychoanalysis, I do believe Freud’s work can help the field better understand the psychological and physiological experience of students who express resistance to then learn how to respond, “in the moment.” Absent from interviews is a clear idea of how to respond to resistant behavior or even use the moment to leverage instruction. Resistance occurs too often for the field not to have a certain set of principles known to help mitigate and deescalate resistant behavior. There’s some acknowledgment that the work must go beyond knowledge or the intellectual as outlined at the start of this discussion section. Freud said as much as he too views resistance as requiring more than just intellectual insight to overcoming and encouraged a slow process of working through. For Freud, a slow walking through process allowed the individual to discover repressed trends and for this reason, Freud argues that therapists must maintain neutrality, say only what’s absolutely necessary to keep the patient talking to help the patient observe their own resistance (Resistance-psychoanalysis, 2021). For in psychoanalysis, resistance is seen as a significant stage 57 to recovery. Resistance, for psychoanalysis, represents the unconscious mind's attempt to protect the ego (Resistance-psychoanalysis, 2021). The intention of the therapist is to help the patient confront the unacceptable desire or uncomfortable memory. What does this mean for teacher education? For one, that CME and resistance is more than a pedagogy of discomfort. That transformation involves more than mere knowledge and an appreciation for the inner turbulence white students must traverse to reach the stage of autonomy or racial self-actualization, according to Helms (1992). Racial self-actualization is the stage where a moral definition of Whiteness has become a stable and central component of who the person is (Helms, 1992). To Close Noam Chomsky in conversation with noted physicist and public intellectual Lawrence Krauss, Chomsky writes - on teaching - by quoting a Catholic priciest - “The idea of educating people to challenge to think for themselves to create to challenge what you’re saying, for example, that’s what education should be. You’re not giving the student body orders here is what you must believe but here is what I think and you tell me whether it’s right.” I highlight Noam Chomsky’s quote because it helps frame the tension that’s led much of this study. There’s a need to make sure our majority white teachers know how to teach children unlike themselves and the need to make the classroom a place of exploration, inquiry, and challenge--a place of intellectual rigor. Research in CME doesn’t emphasize the need for open dialogue. Very rarely is the spirit of Chomsky’s idea for education mentioned. Milner (2007) is one of a few who believes the intent is “not to have my students think in any particular way --or to believe what I believe the goal was to have the students in the course think about issues of race in education” (p. 587). Instead, Milner (2007) wants students to ask and think about who makes curricular decisions, how these decisions are made, on behalf of whom, and how does economic and social capital 58 influence curriculum decisions. But for sake of argument, let us believe every teacher educator stands behind, supports, and upholds the spirit of Milner’s (2007) intention for a CME course. The question still remains: how do you engage students who don’t want to engage about race and racism? First, make the objectives of CME clear. Let all know that the objective is not to have students adopt certain political beliefs but adopt beliefs that empower non-white children, specifically. Second, as a pedagogical tool, have students investigate their own beliefs and the beliefs of others—as many of the participants also shared and develop and healthy racial identity. In tandem, take a lesson from psychoanalysis to help them move through the discomfort and transformation. Also helpful, demonstrating how to apply the conversation to practice. To return to my autoethnography, why did I have to modify my math curriculum as a first-year teacher? What did I find about my students that lead to my decision to change the curriculum? To this end, show students how to apply concepts of equity and justice in their adaption of lesson plans or how they communicate with parents and families. Lastly, and connected to my autoethnography and what is discussed about psychoanalysis and Dr. Dispenza’s work on transformation, we need to teach preservice teachers, and arguably teacher educators, about emotional intelligence, stability, awareness, and maturity in order to manage, guide, and facilitate conversations about race and racism. The art of de-escalation is an invaluable lesson for preservice teachers and teacher educators, of all races, to intimately know and practice as present and future leaders of education. 59 Article #2: Resistance Defined The word resistance is used widely for different purposes. In some context, resistance is just and the right action. In other space, resistance is the show of white preservice teachers’ unwillingness to acknowledge white privilege. The attempt of this conceptual piece is to show the complexity of resistance. To show how resistance is the response people provide as they struggle with change. I want to connect the academic with my personal autoethnography that compassion is required to help a person move through their challenges and the more we attempt to force or cajole, the more we lose control. More precisely, I want to show that the resistance often described of white preservice teachers is more than just disagreement and interrogate and learn what makes for an appropriate response from a preservice teacher who outwardly expresses their disagreement. I also intent to discuss how the imbalance of power between instructor and student influences the authenticity of a conversation and highlight the implicit expectation by teacher education to have white preservice teachers adopt specific political ideologies. Lastly, I also want to delineate resistance as the discomfort required to transform and resistance as a fear response. To begin, I would like to first review of what teacher education says about resistance in critical multicultural education courses, often referred to as social foundation courses. Teacher Education on Resistance The intent of this section is to extrapolate the various ways teacher education research defines, describes and articulates what resistance means. The description of teacher education’s argument of resistance serves as a contrast to what is known in other disciplines, principally in the field of psychoanalysis. The intent is to show a broader view of what is meant by resistance and why people resist certain behaviors, actions or ideas. As mentioned, the review starts with teacher education and then proposes four categories in which resistance is taken up: as a political 60 act, as a behavior, as a part of transformation, and as part of the study of physical sciences. There’s categories represent the four frames that resistance is often discussed and defined us. The intention is to show how resistance is much more complex and varied than what teacher education research outlines. Cognitive Dissonance White preservice teachers have a difficult time with diversity issues in critical multicultural course material because the teachings collide with their beliefs and understanding (McFalls & Cobb-Roberts, 2001). The clash between students’ beliefs and the tenants of social foundation courses creates an unwelcomed amount of cognitive dissonance, and hence, sheer frustration. Socio-politically, groups of privilege find self-worth by feeling superior (Goodman, 2001). This feeling of superiority leads individuals to perceive others as threats, becoming overly concerned with resources and blaming people of color for their failure (as cited in DeMulder, K., Stribling, M., & Day, M., 2014). Diggles, K. (2014) argues differently and describes the lack of racial awareness because of little prior knowledge about the subject contradicting the idea of blatant racism or explicit beliefs in white superiority as the reasoning for students’ resistance to racial identities. Irrelevant of the cause, teacher educators arguably benefit from a proficient understanding of cognitive dissonance and a psychoanalytical appreciation for what occurs when one’s belief system is acutely challenged. Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief the new evidence cannot be accepted. It creates a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with that core belief (Neuroscience News and Research, 2018). 61 Although not from a clinical perspective the assessment remains congruent with Neuroscience News and Research (2018) Whenever we ask students to question their identities and to reconsider how they understand themselves and their relation to others, we are stepping on highly sensitive and emotionally charged terrain. In effect, we are asking students to take a personal risk that can threaten deeply held cognitive, psychological, and emotional investments in forms of identity and relations of belonging (Ambrioso, 2013, p. 1376). The experience of a white student who changes their identity to fit the narrative of social foundation courses is rarely documented. Ambrioso’s (2013) comment highlights the importance to understand the experience from the students’ position to presumably inform curriculum and pedagogy. As Toshali (2015) also adds, "Adolescents with racial privilege are typically not accustomed to having their behaviors, beliefs, and take-for-granted assumptions challenged" (Toshali, 2015, p. 227). The focus on cognitive dissonance in teacher education is a slice of the metaphorical pie. Much of the attention given to conversations about race with white teacher candidates largely centers on students’ unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of white privilege to the point of blame. Preservice teachers who refuse the concept of white privilege, systemic racism, or do no believe in affirmative action often get labeled or discussed as obstacles or the problem. The sections that follow discuss a few other reasons why students struggle or experience cognitive dissonance according to teacher education research. Lack of Experiences White preservice teachers commonly resist conversation given their lack of exposure to communities of color, low-income, ethnic minority students, and conversations that deal with 62 race and racism in the U.S. (Ameatea et al., 2012; Zygmunt-Fillwalk, 2005). Yet, surprisingly, a certain number of white PSTs profess a readiness to teach urban students of color without having no previous meaningful interaction with people of color (Matias, 2014). Returning to the earlier discussion on whiteness, PSTs haven’t had to grapple and make sense of racialized self. Common thinking leads one to believe that experience and interactions with an unknown group mediates assumptions and preconceived notions. Research says exposure to social-cultural groups unlike your own is proving a positive endeavor in altering and influencing beliefs (Zygmunt-Fillwalk, E., 2005). The study of the impact service-learning placements (urban and non-urban alike) have on preservice teachers goes beyond the scope of this review but of the few studies found, experience with new groups shows promising results. Exposure to communities of color helps mature preservice teachers and conversely, a lack of exposure to communities of color leaves the door open to deficit paradigms and notions of a color-blind approach to social- cultural understanding (Ohito, 2016). According to a study by Durham-Barnes (2015), “just more than half” of the students reported having occasional opportunities to discuss race before coming to college (p. 5). Not surprisingly, the lack of exposure leads to emotional unsteadiness when discussing race and racism in society. Teacher Educators' Racial Identity There is a growing body of literature addressing student resistance in social foundation courses from the perspective of teacher educators. The literature on teacher educators is made of three foci: i) teacher educators, ii) white teacher educators, and lastly iii) teacher educators of color. Literature that speaks about teacher educators as a singular group addresses the issue of student resistance and the need for continued institutional support and professional development (Keonghee, H, 2017; Closson, Bowman, Merriweather, 2014). The latter foci discuss 1) how the 63 racial identity of a teacher educator dictates how and what an instructor teaches and 2) how students interpret and interact with instructors. We know from teacher educator narratives that student resistance stands in the way of constructive dialogue and the professional development of a compassionate and competent teaching workforce (Banks, 2018). Research expresses the need to support faculty members who teach courses on race and racism (Keonghee, 2017; Closson, Bowman, Merriweather, 2014.). These articles center on Black and white instructors. The themes of these articles all converge on the difficulties involved with teaching resistant students about race and racism to the point that the instructors in the articles expressed their fatigue and/or frustration as they teach the course. Additionally, these instructors called for further support from their institutions for various purposes (Gordon, 2005). For white instructors, classes, and workshops that deal with race should become available to all staff members. According to the self-identified white author, promoting diversity is thrown around in the most general sense as part of their mission statement (Gallman, 2010). Yet, most faculty members are white and few if any critically engage with the topic of race (Gordon, 2005). For instructors of colors, the support from the institution looks different. Williams and Evans-Winters (2005) argue that institutions need to restructure their instructor evaluation systems. Institutions must consider student resistance when evaluating Black women as instructors. More specifically, evaluation systems need to embrace students’ potential frustration as the facilitator may force frustration among the students in hopes of “instigating dialogue”. Further, the authors argue that institutions need to provide mentorship to scholars of color who often face various forms of resistance or challenges from students. Mentors could aid in teaching and emotional support. 64 Change in Course Garrett and Segall (2013) argue for a shift in the way teacher education approaches white teacher candidates about race and racism. Unlike the most common mantra of giving PSTs more information, Garrett and Segall (2013) contend that the current approach to CME maintains three problematic assumptions: 1) first, that white students stand ignorant to issues of race and racism, 2) the role of the teacher educator is to “save” PSTs from ignorance, and 3) that providing enough information on the topic of race and racism remedies any ignorance students carry. Adding to the call for a change in perspective, Bronkhorst et al. (2014) suggest teacher education begins to view resistance as interactive in nature with the potential for positive outcomes by engaging in the behavior. Lowenstein, (2009) makes one of the stronger arguments against the current thinking about PSTs that much of the problem that occurs in CME stems from a perspective that sees White PSTs as deficient learners in regard to issues of diversity in multicultural education. Resistance is thought of as an expression of emotion or cognitive discomfort (McFalls, Cobb-Roberts, 2001). The discomfort leads students to express their level of psychological tensions or “cognitive dissonance”— “when new knowledge or information is incongruent with previously acquired knowledge” (McFalls, Cobb-Roberts, 2001, p.165). Cognitive dissonance and the expression of resistance is not unique to teacher education and psychological research finds three ways a person minimizes their dissonance: 1) change one’s thinking to help the new information fit with prior knowledge, 2) deny the newly obtained information, or 3) change behavior (McFalls, et al., 2001). Keeping the principles of cognitive dissonance theory in mind helps explain and elucidate the phenomena of resistance in social foundation courses when race and racism become the topic of conversation. The resistance documented does not imply 65 exclusivity and/or static nature; any one person can exhibit multiple forms of resistance varying across curricular tasks and assignments (Bronkhorts, et al., 2014). This multiplicity of resistance is important to keep in mind. To understand white preservice teachers’ resistance, one must acknowledge the cultural, racial, and literal physical distance that exists in the United States between whites and other racial communities. There is little to superficial contact between white people and those of other races that creates space for erroneous beliefs and ideas that preservice teachers adopt or become socialized to believe about communities, unlike their own race. Advancement in racial-awareness stalls if teacher education does not “understand the psychosocial dynamics at work in protecting forms of identity and belonging" (Ambrioso, 2013, p. 1377). Other Interpretations The meaning of resistance is far from uniform. Resistance is used to describe and define a number of different behaviors that depend on context. For example, psychoanalysis explains resistance as largely stemming from a person's fear of change while teacher education most often describes resistance as white teacher candidates’ unwillingness to acknowledge white privilege. And even more broadly across public education, the meaning of resistance isn’t always consistent. Take Eric Toshalis (2015) who argues that student resistance in urban schools is a behavior that teachers must learn to read—not react to—in order to advance classroom learning. Toshali’s argument stands in opposition to a common philosophy in teacher education that believes instructors must overcome and press through resistant behavior by white pre-service teachers (Ohito, 2016). Even more curious, spiritual perspectives explain resistance as a non- acceptant behavior (uncooperative) and an inability to get beyond one’s own judgments or biases. For example, Sadhguru—who is a self-proclaimed mystic from India—frames resistance 66 as the inability to accept the change that occurs as people grow and seek safety over life. In his words, “the more security-oriented you are, the more disturbed you will be with every change that happens in your life” (Sadhguru, 2017). Resistance also carries a different connotation in the context of politics and also how the rest of the academy interprets the definition of the term. Although the different perspectives on resistance vary in meaning, value, and purpose, one fact appears consistent: resistance behavior is part of human life. A broader read of resistance brings a varied ideas and definitions. This study organizes the various interpretations and uses of resistance under four categories. These categories resulted from how researchers and different disciplines take on the issue of resistance. These categories do not represent all definitions of resistance but only what this study capture in the review of literature. These varied conceptualization of resistance give evidence and support to the argument that resistance as currently discussed in teacher education research is beyond a dislike or disagreement with the idea of white-privilege. As a Political Act The Oxford Languages defines resistance as peaceful political disobedience against a law, tax, or “the system.” More exactly, “The refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form of political protest.” Resistance as a form of political disobedience is used much more broadly today and outside of the “peaceful political protest” criteria of the definition. As an example, the Black Lives Matter movement after Minnesota police officers killed George Floyd. Some called the damage to property as being excusable part of people’s frustration. Others labeled the comportment as outright wrong or inexcusable. Similarly, what is now coined as the January 6th insurrection, is referred to as an inexcusable protest for some and a fight for freedom by others. Other examples of violent protest include The French Revolution, 67 The American Revolution and The Civil Rights Movement. All came with violent elements. Many forms of political resistance - what Henry Thereaux pens as civil disobedience - is nonetheless a common definition for resistance - be it peaceful or otherwise. The point: not all forms of political resistance are peaceful nor agreed upon as being an appropriate show of civil disobedience. Writing in the Journal of Urban Education, for example, Solórzano and Bernal (2001) examine resistance by Chicano students on an urban campus to demonstrate and define critically conscious resistance as “transformative resistance.” According to Solórzano and Bernal (2001), resistance is transformative and critical if the behavior is motivated by social justice. The authors use their research to argue that “it is crucial for educators, policymakers, and community workers better understand how students engage in resistance strategies that attempt to counteract the conditions and results of ineffective educational practices” (Solórzano & Bernal, 2001, p. 310). Below is a diagram they drafted to explain the different forms of resistance with transformative resistance being the ideal position on the quadrant since it is motivated by intentions for social justice. 68 Figure 2 Critiques of Social Oppression by Solórzano & Bernal (2001) Solórzano & Bernal’s (2001) use the diagram to illustrate their argument that resistance is an intentional political act of transformation and not the more commonly thought of the image of insubordinate students, particularly Chicano/a students when motivated by social justice. As their stated intention, “the authors extend the concept of resistance to focus on its transformative potential and its internal and external dimensions” (Solórzano and Bernal, 2001, p. 308). In question is the author’s reliance on the claim that transformative resistance is defined by a social justice objective or a critique of social oppression. Social justice or critiques of social oppression have subjective interpretations. As an example, “liberals” proudly professed their “resistance” to the Trump-Republican administration as a positive and necessary attribute. This group felt right in their actions. Concurrently, the same term is used to negatively describe Republicans, notably during the years of President Obama’s administration, that made every attempt to thwart any 69 Obama White House action. They too felt righteous about their actions. These examples give evidence to the confusion and multiple uses of the word resistance as positive and negative – or desired and undesired. Solórzano and Bernal (2001) would seemingly argue that resistance is positive if the resistance is motivated by a concern for social justice. In other words, resistance is transformative if the behavior or actions express concern for the dignity of others and not a mere show of capricious behavior. Their position is altruistic and attractive but what is defined as social justice is not always straightforward. Let us take the catholic church for example. They stand against contraceptives as an act of justice according to their belief system. Those outside of the Catholic church would argue differently insisting contraceptives help prevent sexually transmitted diseases and empower women over their reproductive rights, as evident through research. In such instances, both parties claim their campaigns have social justice motivations making the classification of “transformative resistance” as defined by Solórzano & Bernal (2001). To provide another example, let us take the case of a non-heterosexual lifestyle. Political science professor William E. Scheuerman (2017) succinctly describes the contradictory nature of the word by writing: “The term resistance has always been ambiguous. It has referred to both violent and nonviolent political action, acts aiming at a fundamental and perhaps revolutionary overhaul of existing society, and those seeking to preserve or re-establish the status quo” (Publicseminar.org). In further support of Dr. Scheuerman’s (2017) take, the Virginia state government in 1956 adopted a policy to block the desegregation of public schools by the Supreme Court. They labeled their movement “Massive Resistance.” In a political context, the value and purpose of 70 resistance depend on the political subjectivity of the persons. Hence, similarly, in regard to social justice, resistance as a purely politically transformation is a subjective interpretation. To simplify, this paper makes a distinction between four definitions of resistance. One as a political reference, as just described. Two, as a show of fear, anger, or defensiveness. Third, as a physiological part of growth. And last, as part of physical science. I divide resistance into these four categories because the term is use interchangeably but mean different ideas. For example, political resistance in Solórzano & Bernal (2001) is deemed warranted and appropriate. But political resistance by white preservice teachers is seen as the opposite. Now, not all resistance from white preservice teachers is appropriate but if support is given to students to express their disagreement to political stances, in the same way Solórzano and Bernal (2001) argue in their work, then we must also allow white preservice teachers to object to the ideas within the critical multicultural education courses. As a Behavior Research in psychoanalysis provides a similar and slightly varying understanding of resistance and how best to respond to the behavior. Psychoanalysis, unlike teacher education, explores the relationship between the authority figure and the resistant person to greater lengths. One cannot make an identical comparison between what occurs in a therapeutic setting and what’s observed in social foundation courses but many of the same tensions described in psychoanalysis are equally observed in teacher education research. For one, patients and therapists enter their work with the intention of transformation, although a patient may resist transformation for reasons detailed in subsequent paragraphs. Students may come in with the intent to learn but not necessarily transform their identities. Second, there’s an observable difference in how psychiatry defines resistance as the cause while teacher education largely 71 identifies white privilege or other lack of agreement with a social-political position as the cause and resistance as the symptom. In other words, in psychoanalysis, resistant behavior is the issue, not the circumstance that engenders the resistance. Unlike teacher education research, psychoanalysis frames resistance as individuals’ attempt to maintain their current identity and self-hood out of fear of change; they are seeking stability “in the face of difficult or painful change” (Cullin, 2008, p. 295; Ullman, 2017). In psychoanalysis, a skillful therapist can help a client feel comfortable and safe while facilitating a desired change (Cullin, 2008). For psychoanalysis, resistance from the client is an impediment to progress and the necessary content needed to organize the psychoanalytical dialogue (Civitarese & Foresti, 2008). It is in this spirit of viewing resistance as part of the solution and not the problem that Civitarese & Foresti (2018) highlights that could help inform pedagogy in teacher education. To see resistance, “not as a negative viscosity opposing change but as a safety valve for individual’s identity, enabling one to negotiate between old and new patterns of experience” (p. 82). The appreciation of change a student undergoes is echoed in Ambrioso’s (2013) earlier quoted text but not adopted at large in the field. As Ullman (2017) explains, the fear of metamorphosis is the patient's fear of a complete alteration of valued aspects of her or his self- hood, which she or he experiences as an imminent catastrophe (Ullman, 2017, p. 480). I argue that the fear of metamorphosis is a particular variation of the resistance to change (Ullman, 2017, p. 480). Hence, similar to teacher education, the patient, therefore, appears to resist the analytic process as she or he attempts to protect valued aspects of her or his self-hood from total conversion. I will argue that the fear of metamorphosis and the seemingly defensive efforts that ensue, which are traditionally interpreted as resistance, can be seen to express a quest for agency, or loyalty to a world- view (Ullman, 2017, p. 481). 72 The Paradox of Treatment Similar to social foundation classes, the analyst intends to create a particular change in the individual. At the same time, both analyst and teacher educator work within the paradox of respecting the “otherness” of the individual while expecting the individual to change. Ullman (2017) eloquently captures the paradox by writing, “Our postmodern Zeigesit sensitizes us, theoretically and ethically, to respecting otherness, and upholding people’s right to stay “other” even as they and we suffer from it. At the same time, analysts engage in an analytic process intended to transform not only patients’ superficial symptoms but their character, their very nature” (Ullman, 2017, p. 482). The wanting to change a person’s worldview or character while allowing for disagreement creates an atmosphere in where “authority is no longer questionable” (Ullman, 2017, p. 482). Ullman (2017) continues: “Thus we are embedded in a dialectical tension of respecting, even celebrating, otherness, while we may be seen as engaging in an effort to transform it” (p. 482). Ullman’s (2017) work points out the tension and paradox in wanting someone to change while at the same time having an intent to respect differences. Comedically, Ullman (2017) references a Broadway show that best summarizes said paradox: I Love You, You’re Perfect. Now Change.” I can’t say all teacher educators view their students with the feeling they’re perfect or complete, but the title again captures the antithetical intentions of wanting to respect someone’s viewpoint while also working to change their positionality or overall identity to one of their own. For Ullman, a resolution to the paradox and tension occurs when both parties, analyst and patient, begin to respect and appreciate the patient’s fear of metamorphosis in attempts to protect their nature. In other words, the sentiment shifts to “I love you, you are imperfect, and it’s OK 73 not to change” (Ullman, 2017, p. 483). Presumably, the solution to the tension that Ullman offers is difficult for teacher education given the desire for preservice teachers to change their mindset in the interest of them becoming racially equitable educators. But the inclusion of Ullman’s (2017) work here is less about finding a reasonable solution and more about making the paradox of respecting dissenting viewpoints while expecting students to shift positions visible. As Wilson (2003) equally asserts, “the analyst wants things from the analysis, from the analysand, and from being an analyst; the practicing analyst is a desiring being every step of the way” (p. 72). The same is for teacher educators who desire an outcome from their students. And such desire by the educator can quickly escalate in greater tensions and further resistance as they attempt to control the social-political belief system of white teacher candidates. The same is true in a therapy session between analyst and patient. "In the course of treatment, it soon becomes evident that the more forcefully a therapist tries to impart insight, the more resistive does the patient become” (Sherman, 2007, p. 194). In treatment, patients use the therapist’s desire for change in the client as a strategy for reinforcing their irrational statements by “provoking the therapist’s opposition…[that] serves to maintain the very same irrational behavior…” (Sherman, 2007, p. 194). The therapist’s opposition, in this case, doesn’t have to involve anything more than their interpretation of the discussion. Sherman (2007) makes the additional argument that “to some extent therapists may need the irrational behavior of patients in order to maintain their own defensive integrity” (p. 195). In other words, the therapist is using the patient’s irrationality to justify their positionality—“why I’m right.” Sherman (2007) describes this “back-and-forth” between patient and therapist as a need for attention by the patient, similar to young children’s behavior in seeking attention. In response, 74 Sherman (2007; 1961) invokes the strategy of “siding with resistance” in an effort to impel the patient to reasonable behavior. It’s important to note that the strategy of “siding with resistance” is not a cure-all and only effective if used appropriately under certain conditions and proper training. According to the research, the technique involves joining the patient’s irrational response to induce them to oppose their own pathology. The objective is to persistently use the technique until the patient appears healthier and more reasonable than the therapist, who in this case comes to represent the patient’s pathology by their continual siding with the patient’s resistance. The following is an excerpt from the study to help visualize the technique: “When she raised some question about the propriety of this extramarital sex, I sided with the resistance and said that she was making too much of an issue out of sex and that it wasn’t really all that important. However, the more I took this attitude the more Minnie began to protest against her own sexual behavior and then described how it was her husband who had gotten them so involved with the other couples. Previously unable to voice any criticism at all toward her husband, she now gradually withdrew from this particular circle of friends and began to develop other interests” (Sherman, 2007, p. 197). Siding with resistance is best when resistance is at an extreme degree when any kind of interpretation of the patient’s rationale is of little effect (Sherman, 2007). And equally important, Sherman (2007) suggests only using the technique if one feels comfortable in such a role. What’s more, the technique is found ineffective with individuals who have low self-esteem because any response is seen as an attack. The use of siding of resistance, to help summarize, works best as an alternative to situations in which continued interpretations by the therapists create further hardship making clinical gains indiscernible (Sherman, 2007). 75 The idea of a session of a therapist or a traditional liberal arts education is to transform’s one’s life. Additionally, psychoanalysis tells us that people resist out of fear to protect their current identity. They do not want to change the current organization of their social world. Patient, like students, resist change. More, there is an implicit role of the therapist and instructor to want to change the patient or student but the more the therapist attempts to change the patient, the more resistance is expressed. I believe there’s many parallels we can draw from psychoanalysis to better equip teacher educators to anticipate and respond to resistance. As with patients, the more we attempt to have students believe a political ideology counter to their world view, the more we can expect preservice teachers to resist – rather outwardly or through disengagement. Lastly, psychoanalysis demonstrates that resistance is an issue much larger than a decision to agree or disagree with white privilege. Resistance depends on the ability of a person to interrogate opposing views and potentially change their mental schemes, heuristic, and current worldview. Resistance is an issue much larger than student disagreement to political ideology. But to change one’s life is to transform one’s being. To take from the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself”. As Transformative A certain level of "resistance" is felt when we embark on an unknown creative endeavor in the spirit of growth. For example, the athlete experiences a certain level of "resistance" as they train and compete in their absolute best. The self-improvement community refers to this meeting point of resistance as the edge between your comfort and discomfort zone. Often, this same self- development community refers to the place of discomfort as the point where life begins and matures. The discomfort or feeling of inconvenience is one readily feels as they advance in 76 growth and progress and is vastly different from the outwardly expressed resistance against persons, events, or ideas out of fear, anger, or disagreement. To think that preservice teachers resist because of mere political disagreement is to neglect the science and difficult change is for anyone - on any subject. As people we resistance even that which we know is a benefit to us. The question then is why do we resist? Why can’t we overcome ourselves and transform into a new being, a new life, a new state of being? In the context of preservice teachers, it’s easier to fight defensively against beliefs that challenge one’s state of being than have to struggle to reprogram “behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, emotional reactions, habits, skills, associative memories, conditioned responses, and perceptions that are now subconsciously programmed within us” (Dispenza, 2012) A preservice teacher may grapple with the concept of white privilege and still return to their original conclusion but their ability to “stay open” and participate in the discomfort of the challenge demonstrates an ability to change one’s opinion and demonstrate a willingness of a person to take on the charge of making their own social-political identity independent of the opinion of others or their past experience. In other words, I don’t believe we can achieve full political agreement, but we can achieve a commitment to listen to each other and mature out of dismissive attitudes when we encounter evidence counter to our beliefs. In the Physical Science The physical sciences define resistance as the measure of opposition within an electric current. The amount of resistance in an electric current is measured by comparing the relationship between voltage (the amount of electrical pressure present) and the flow of electricity (current). Formulaically, resistance is measured by dividing the amount of voltage (V) by the electric current (A) that flows through (R=V/A). Scientists observe resistance when an 77 electron collides with an ion in the metal that the electron attempts to flow through. Scientists have learned how to leverage the activity of resistance by designing “resistors'' to help control the flow of electrical current and prevent the destruction of electrical components that cannot handle voltage above a particular level. To simplify: scientists use electrical resistors to help prevent electric burnout. Conversely, short circuits have little or no resistance. As a result, short circuits carry a high level of voltage and dangerously release large amounts of heat energy. From a physical science perspective, resistance is helpful if resistors help prevent the “frying” of electronic components and undesired if resistance prevents the moving of electrical current to power high-voltage items. The idea of resistance in physical science is a useful analogy to frame how resistance can play a foe or hero in our lives. Resistance as friend or foe, to follow the analogy, would depend on our ability to interpret and leverage the use of resistance for a specific purpose (e.g. reduce voltage or increase voltage). I introduce resistance as defined in physical science because I want to illuminate the position of impartiality to the meaning of resistance and reaffirm the use--leverage--of the phenomenon. In physical science, resistance is used to manage voltage and in social behavior sciences, resistance can serve as a potential vehicle for growth. As in physical science, teacher education can improve “the flow of energy” if we can view resistance as a behavior or experience that we can anticipate and part of the process. Teacher educators can use expressed resistance as an opportunity to inquire about a student’s belief system – not to change them but to help the student become metacognitive of their positionality, on what logic or evidence they base their position, and how well they know the position of others and where they derive the evidence for their positions. The intention is not to change the person but help a person become self-aware of their positionality, how they arrived at their positionality, what are other positions, 78 and how do others come to their decision. The idea is not to squelch resistance. Rather, inquire to extrapolate conversation. To connect to physical science, resistance from white preservice teachers can block the flow of electricity but through intentional inquiry, resistance can help the electricity of the conversation reach a new level, or electrical flow. In Sum The degree of disruption resistance creates in social foundations will continue to occur unless teacher education as a field decides to reevaluate the current approach and address the issue from a new (and intentionally productive) perspective. The field has not adequately resolved how to teach preservice teachers, most of whom are white and female, to have proper and productive engagement with conversation concerning power, equity, and justice, particularly conversations about race. And of equal concern, the field is unaware of the extent of influence social foundations courses have on pedagogical practices once preservice teachers enter a classroom (Sleeter, 2011). At the moment, research literature in teacher education, on the subject of student resistance, continues to center on the argument that preservice teachers’ resist the truth of white privilege with little effort given to how to properly address, understand, prevent, or leverage the tension— or view resistance as the root cause and unacknowledged racial privilege as the symptom (Garret and Segall, 2013). In other words, resistance behavior by white preservice teachers will not end even if critical social foundations courses achieve a long-vetted outcome: that all white pre-service teachers acknowledge white privilege. I believe to describe resistant behavior as unacknowledged racial privilege is reductionist. How would teacher education fare in the quest for equitable teaching if we help guide teacher candidates through their resistance and assist their emotional awareness rather than the current attempt to change teacher candidates’ social-political philosophies, orientations, beliefs, and dispositions? 79 First, I think teacher education can learn from psychoanalysis in that the more you try to have a person change, the more they express resistance. Anecdotally, I have observed adversarial exchanges between instructors and students when a student does not accept a political idea being taught. Second, the field needs to decide if the intention is for preservice teachers to adopt certain beliefs or is the intent to have critical dialogue? Critical dialogue does not exist if the instructor intends for the student to believe x,y, or z. Otherwise, the field can save time and energy if educators show transparency and explicitly state their mission is to have preservice teachers believe in the actuality of white privilege as an example. In connection with being explicit with intentions, instructors must realize the power imbalance. Students may only engage so much since they know instructors have control over their grades and ability to progress through their program. Therefore, students can’t speak openly, particularly if the instructor is shown to thwart arguments from students that run contrary to the political belief they attempt to impart via the curriculum. Students observe if the instructor directly challenges the student or uses the disagreement to ask questions, ask other students of their ideas, or have students explore what other people believe and their reason for those believes. Teacher educators appear to take the position of task master in their attempts to have students believe “y.” Such a position is disingenuous to the spirit of education. Third, and perhaps most importantly, we need to help students 1) become emotionally aware and 2) understand if their resistance is from a place of fear or dislike of change or is the resistance the discomfort often associated with growth and change. 80 Article #3: A Resistant Teacher A reporter once asked famed music and television producer Quincy Jones what made him such a great artist. Unexpectedly, he said that you must become a great person to become a great musician. At the time, I didn’t understand the wisdom. I felt attracted to the idea given the altruism of the statement, but I half-heartedly believed what he shared. It isn’t until recently that I reflect on my experience as a public-school teacher that I understand, know, and embody Mr. Quincy Jones’s sage advice. The western world and much of the global economy promotes hard work and determination as the “secret formula” to success-however you want to define success. Dedicated passion in one’s work is favorable but perhaps still an incomplete recipe for success. For maturity, compassion, and character determines how one responds to adversity and decides what purpose, direction, and value their work will hold beyond themselves. To borrow from the late and beloved chef, Anthony Bourdain, “Skills can be taught. Character you either have or don’t have.” Although I disagree with Mr. Bourdain and believe you can develop character, I do find truth in the perspective that character matters as much if not more than talent for “you can only go as far as your character,” to borrow from Pastor Creflo Dollar. It is a person’s character that decides how one responds to adversity. It is one’s character that defines how a person treats others. Our character decides if we lead by example with integrity and compassion or “lead lives of quiet desperation” (Thoreau, H.D., 1993). I became a public-school teacher with plenty of pedagogical and sociological knowledge, but I frankly lacked emotional maturity – or awareness. Unfortunately, the lack of maturity and emotional intelligence on my behalf created an opportunity for blame and deficit perspectives 81 about my students, their families, and their culture. I became that white teacher we commonly read in teacher education research literature (Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Nieto, 2000). Article Thesis This autoethnography outlines how and why I became a teacher, the challenges that occurred during my teacher education program, what occurred once I became a teacher, what I learned and changed and how my transformation informs my current interest and inquiry into student resistance. The section on how I became a teacher is intended to show how I became to identify as being a “social justice teacher” and carried many left-leaning political beliefs: capitalism is inherently corrupt, the distribution of wealth is necessary, and overall collectivist viewpoint. Unfortunately, none of these beliefs made any effect on being a quality teacher. I purposefully picked a social justice urban education teacher preparation program because I felt committed to my beliefs. The paper details my transition into my teacher education program as little is written about teacher education programs from the perspective of a non-white student. More importantly, the paper then transition to my experience as a classroom teacher in North Philadelphia. In other words, I represented an ideal preservice teacher according to teacher education literature, but I turned out an incompetent teacher. It wasn’t until I invested time in spirituality, self-awareness, and ultimately emotional maturity that I became a worthwhile educator. It wasn’t any political belief that made my instruction equitable or productive. It was a change in my character. A change in how I decided to respond to students and circumstance. Hence, this paper challenges the current notion that equitable teaching comes from a person’s adoption of certain political beliefs: the myth of meritocracy, collectivism, the actuality of white privilege, the United States is inherently racist, etc. Rather, equitable teaching begins first and foremost from a person’s emotional awareness and maturity and their ability to handle 82 challenges and avoid blame. My story is intended to show evidence that political beliefs, in off themselves, does not ensure equitable and quality teaching. More precisely, teacher education needs to help preservice teachers learn how to move through change and drop their resistance! White preservice teachers have the unique position of learning about everyone else’s racial identity but never interrogating their own racial identity and/or racialized experience (Matias, C., 2014; Durham-Barnes, 2015). Whiteness—as a social ideological construct— instructs and promotes color-blind ideology in attempts to help maintain white people safe from engaging racial discourse and helps deny the reality of race, a privilege of whiteness (Ambrioso, 2013). According to McIntyre and Valli (as cited in Zygmunt-Fillwalk, E., 2005) literature suggests White preservice teachers adopt a color-blind perspective to help cope with ignorance and fear. Color-blindness is at best a strategy to promote kindness towards each other by ignoring racial difference (Durham-Barnes, 2015; Kreamelmeyer, K. et al., 2016). Unfortunately, the denial of racial identities excludes the examination of racial inequity, the sustaining of white supremacy, and the healthy act of racially identifying oneself in a racialized world. The inherent resistance in whiteness to racial dialogue and racial identity maintains the status quo as many whites come to believe removing the focus on race eliminates the potential for racism (Kreamelmeyer, K., 2016). The strong hold of whiteness on white preservice teachers sets the stage for tensions, discomfort, and alas resistance. In many ways, I behaved and worked similarly to white teachers (and white preservice teachers) storied in teacher education research. Of course, there is much difference between the typical preservice teacher and me as a Latino and undocumented immigrant. Simultaneously, I also have the experience of a childhood in an idyllic suburb with little league baseball, camping in the summer, and a “safe neighborhood.” I became a teacher with a strong identity as Latino, a 83 belief in social justice, and a commitment to help marginalized communities, particularly the Latino community. I now don’t believe identity serves a useful purpose besides being a descriptor of a person and not an embodiment of who they are or their character. I now distance myself from social justice circles, although I desire and work for a more humane and just world. I’ve come to a change in belief after my experience as a teacher revealed how political alignment or your representation of a community is not enough to ensure equitable teaching – or equity generally. Yet, much of teacher education and social foundation courses invest in this same assumption: equitable teaching occurs when preservice teachers adopt a particular political agenda, a social justice orientation (e.g. they must acknowledge the existence of white privilege). My experience is evidence that such an assumption does not hold. The storied nature of my experience and the critical reflections is why I have deiced to use an autoethnography to extrapolate my interest, experience, and thoughts on what makes a productive and respectful educator. Purpose of an Autoethnography The purpose of an autoethnography is to connect one’s narrative with a phenomenon within a specific sociological context. An autoethnography provides an opportunity to give voice to “personal experience for the purpose of extending sociological understanding” (Wall, S., 2008, p. 38). Many understand autoethnography as sole personal narratives – this is an incomplete assessment. Autoethnography uses personal narrative to engage and link concepts from the research literature to a narrated experienced. A personal narrative grounded in literature is a rigorous and justifiable form of discovery as another form of inquiry (Wall, S., 2008, p. 38). Historically, autoethnographies have their roots under the branch of ethnographies (Ellis, 2004). As with other forms of qualitative research, “the epistemological premise of an autoethnography 84 posits that reality and science are interpreted by human beings, focused on explaining some phenomenon and its interactions aside from numbers and statistics…” (Tilley-Lubbs, G.A., 2016, p. 4). Said differently, but with equivalent meaning, “not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts,” a quote often credited to Albert Einstein. Like many other qualitative forms of inquiry, autoethnographies can take different shapes. The most common forms of autoethnographies are evocative and analytical. This paper employs an analytical approach. It’s useful to understand the difference between the two approaches – evocative and analytical – to justify why this work adopts an analytical method to autoethnography. Evocative forms of autoethnographies focus on the personal narrative connected with a phenomenon within a specific context with little to no focus on the construction of theory and extrapolation of patterns. The evocative approach allows researchers to lean on their personal experiences to understand a particular phenomenon or culture (Mendez, 2013, p. 280). Ellis and Bochner (2000) define evocative autoethnographies as "...an autobiographical genre of writing that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural" (p. 739). The critical detail is to not mistake an evocative autoethnography as a mere recount of one’s experience (Mendez, 2013). Instead, an evocative autoethnography is a deliberate attempt to engage one’s experience with literature in the interest of demonstrating a new paradigm to the experience. Mendez summarizes this very same point rather simply, “evocative autoethnography aims toward researchers’ introspection on a particular topic to allow readers to make a connection with the researchers’ feelings and experiences” (Mendez, 2013, p. 281). A reader can become aware of realities not thought of before by reading a cultural or social account of an experience (Mendez, M., 2013). The same is true of analytical autoethnographies with the added 85 element that analytical autoethnographies endeavor to contribute to sociological theory and sense-making. According to Anderson (2006), there are three qualifications to an analytical autoethnography: "...analytic autoethnography refers to ethnographic work in which the researcher is (1) a full member in the research group or setting, (2) visible as such a member in the researcher's published texts, and (3) committed to an analytic research agenda focused on improving theoretical understanding of broader social phenomena” (p. 375). Anderson, (2006) also posits five key features that differentiation and evocative from an analytic autoethnography: complete member researcher, analytical reflexivity, a visible and active researcher in the text, dialogue with informants beyond the self, and a commitment to an analytical agenda. This paper relies heavily on Anderson’s (2006) conception of an analytical autoethnography because the attributes frame analytical autoethnographies as a specialized subgenre of analytic ethnography and not “similar first-person narratives, such as the autobiographical ‘creative non-fiction’ that is highly popular today in creative writing programs around the United States” (p. 387). A complete summary of each of the five qualities follows in respective order, given this project advances with an analytical methodology. This first quality is, as suggested, "...the researcher is a complete member in the social world under study... (Anderson, 2006, p. 379)." This is appropriate given my lived experienced as a preservice teacher, a middle-school math teacher, and most recently, a teacher educator. The second quality of analytical reflexivity entails "an awareness of reciprocal influence between ethnographers and their setting and informants,” coupled with “an introspective intention to better understand both self and others through examining one's actions and perceptions in reference to and dialogue with those of others" (Anderson, 2006, p. 382). In other 86 words, analytical reflexivity requires the researcher to understand the symbolic interaction between themselves, their settings, and those around them. For the third quality, Anderson (2006) argues that the researcher must make themselves “visible, active, and reflexively engaged in the text” in contrast to only reflexive social analysis and self-analysis (p. 383) which leads into Anderson’s (2006) fourth quality of a visible and active researcher in the text. As with the common quality to autoethnographies, "The researcher's own feelings and experiences are incorporated into the story and considered as vital data for understanding the social world being observed" (Anderson, 2006, p. 384). Anderson (2006) goes further with the expectation that "Autoethnographers should expect to be involved in the construction of meaning and values in the social worlds they investigate" (p. 384). Yet, what’s most relevant to this writing is the expectation that "...they [autoethnographers] should openly discuss changes in their beliefs and relationships over the course of fieldwork, thus vividly revealing themselves as people grappling with issues relevant to membership and participation in fluid rather than static social worlds" (Anderson, 2006, p. 384). The change in belief, perception, and paradigm is found throughout the following pages. The fourth quality takes a step away from introspection and calls for the researcher to “dialogue with informants beyond the self.” The idea is to prevent the researcher from the potential of self-absorption or explained alternatively, “No ethnographic work—not even autoethnography—is a warrant to generalize from an “N of one” (Anderson, 2006, p. 386 The fifth and last quality is a restatement of the overall purpose of an analytical autoethnography with the explicit expectation that, unlike an evocative autoethnography, analytical autoethnographies must endeavor towards “theoretical development, refinement, and extension” (Anderson, L. 2006, p. 387). More elaborately, "The purpose of analytical 87 ethnography is not simply to document a personal experience, to provide an ‘insider's perspective,’ or to evoke emotional resonance with the reader. Rather, the defining characteristic of analytic social science is to use empirical data to gain insight into some broader set of social phenomena than those provided by the data themselves” (Anderson, 2006, p. 387). To conclude on why an autoethnography, the methodology allows for a balance between narrative storytelling, analytical reflection, and sociological theory construction. The approach does not come without reproach from the larger research community but as Wall (2016) succinctly and wisely summarizes: “In my estimation, if we are to act too conservatively and hold fast to a traditional conception of the use of self in research (minimal, background, self as only one action among many), such as the envisioned by Anderson (2006), we lose an opportunity to tap into legitimate and unique sources of knowledge and insight that come from a particular view of one's place in the world. That said, I do agree with Atkinson (2005) that we lose the important goals of analysis and theorizing when undertaking passionate, evocative acts of storytelling and sense-making, such as described by Ellis and Boeher (2006)” (p. 7). Although Wall (2016) finds Anderson’s (2006) still too conservative, Anderson’s concept of an autoethnography (2006) serves the purpose of making a distinction between an evocative and analytical autoethnography. For this paper’s purpose, the intention is to balance what Wall (201) describes as the self-being visible in the text while not deviating far from literature. My Introduction to Social Justice Education Like many, I didn’t know what I wanted for a career when I entered college. It wasn't until sophomore year that I realized I felt I could find purpose, meaning, and value as a public- 88 school teacher in an urban school. The decision to teach came after I enrolled in a Sociology of Education course. Unfortunately, every week I left class devastated, concerned, and admittedly overly pious about the eradication of social-economic inequities in the U.S. through education. I personally knew first-hand the difficulties that come with life at the lower end of the economic ladder, and equally, the power education can provide to a person. My father worked under the table as a carpenter, and my mother cleaned houses. They worked tirelessly and came home only to stress the importance and value of education. I came into the Sociology of Education from an experienced world view of inequality and injustice, and while at the same time held strongly to the belief that education helps even the odds “for the less fortunate.” I held the belief strongly given my personal experience as an undocumented immigrant now receiving a quality university education in one of the most expensive cities in the country, if not the world, in San Francisco. My time at the University of San Francisco influenced my decision to adopt social justice as an identity and the principles that I would use to guide my decision as an educator – at least at the start. After the semester ended, I decided to volunteer at a juvenile detention center to stay engaged with social justice work and continue my decision to pursue a career as a public-school teacher. I spent my Wednesday evenings tutoring high school-aged boys in a juvenile detention center. I can still remember the cold, dreary hallway that led to the back of the building. At the end of the hallway, gates with officers met our group; Each One Reach One - a non-profit that helps youth in juvenile hall prepare for their general education diploma (GED) exam. The officers checked our credentials, patted us down, and led us to an adjacent room. Once inside, the officers went cell by cell to each student that enrolled in the program. I didn’t know what to expect, but I helped a young man go through a science test prep workbook before long. I quite 89 frankly don’t know how much I helped. Not every student returned after their first week and we didn’t know much about their stories either. It felt weird to find myself in a cold, gray, isolated, and emotionally distant environment to only an hour later find myself back into one of the most vibrant cities in the country known for its food, music, and of course history-past and present. Low-Self Esteem I strongly believe a large part of my interest in education stemmed from low self-esteem. I wanted to become a teacher, especially in a poor urban area, because I wanted to help as a way feel better about myself. The idea of life as a mission for social justice brought meaning, purpose, and direction when I did not feel great about myself. Not that I didn’t see value in service, but low self-esteem proved a strong motive to go into public service. I worked and did everything I could in high school to get in college, and by the end, I still felt empty inside. I wasn’t living a life according to what I found of interest. I felt a conflict between an unimplied and assumed obligation I owed to my parents for their sacrifices and what I wanted to pursue as a career. Until college, every motive returned to a feeling that I owed my parents for the opportunity they provided a child born in Nicaragua during the height of the Iran-Contra Affair. I believed education and a traditional career would best repay and fulfill the implicit debt I felt I owed my parents. As a result, I didn’t live life according to my own personal imagination. I lived life as a sacrifice I owed to others that I internalized and could not come out of. As a result, and perhaps to no surprise now in hindsight, I over-abused alcohol – more so than what is “expected” of a healthy young person. Yes, some of the behavior stemmed from the experience that many young people have as they find their bearing in the world, but my behavior stemmed from a desire to numb pain and confusion. 90 I did not like how I often felt during my undergraduate years. After several nights of heavy alcohol abuse, I too realized more alcohol was not going to cure the empty feeling inside. I knew I needed to change and physiologically wanted to feel better! I eventually realized that I could feel better about myself if I helped others. The University of San Francisco, my alma mater, is a Jesuit university dedicated to educating minds and hearts to change the world. It is their belief in the work for a more “just and humane world” that I decide to matriculate at the small private liberal arts school over the larger and arguably well-known institution of the University of California, Santa Barbara. College did represent the first time I felt I could explore my intellectual curiosity. No more rigid curriculum for a “you have to go to college” motive. Now, the question became: what do you want to learn? What is in your interest? I decided early on to study sociology, given the many questions I had about life. Intellectually, I believe my degree in Sociology helped provide language, contexts, and reason to many questions I felt and observations I knew but I could not name. I remember taking classes on gender, sexuality, and theory and being completely enthralled by how many great persons studied, observed, and structured the world to better understand ourselves as groups and individuals. Sociology and a Jesuit university provided the perfect conditions to learn about injustice, the work of many before and present who work to make our world a better place, and a community to create my own identity as a person devoted to social justice work – however vague or naïve. I still remember my first year when I met the Dalai Lama and heard his talk in our small church on campus. I also learned about the Schools of the Americas, the violent dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile, and countless other stories and events that go unspoken in today’s classroom. 91 I began to apply to graduate school for a master’s degree in education with the intent to become a public high school teacher in an under-performing school in an urban center during my senior year. I decided to apply to graduate schools that maintained a social justice mission and focused on urban education. The decision led to my matriculation at the University of Pennsylvania’s – Graduate School of Education. My intent on being a teacher with a social justice mindset helped assuage feelings of low self-esteem. I felt I had a vision and a mission and the opportunity to help others created positive feelings for myself as a person. Relationship with Curriculum and Peers I purposely enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania because of their proclaimed commitment to urban education and social justice. The program is ten months and starts over the summer with course work and field placement in the fall and spring semesters. We started our placements in the fall with two days of student teaching. We eventually graduated to full weeks of student teaching by the end of the spring semester, a month before graduation in May. We took the summer to learn about Philadelphia and its history and a tour of a few historic neighborhoods. We took methods courses in the fall and spring semester and a social foundations course in the fall semester each Friday. The program split students into two cohorts: elementary and secondary. I enrolled in the elementary cohort with about twenty other peers. We each had the option of picking a different placement for the fall and spring semester or one placement for the entire academic year. Additionally, we could choose a placement in a suburban school for one of our semesters. Individually, I felt I made the very best of the program through the relationships I built with my professors – some of whom I still call friends today – and how I used the opportunity to gain experience in an underperforming urban school, as I intended. 92 Unfortunately, I struggled to connect with peers and felt undersold by the school’s commitment to urban education and social justice. It became evident early on in the fall semester that what I envisioned was not going to come to pass. On one occasion, our social foundation’s course professor arranged us in a circle and asked us to step into the circle if a description fit our experience. For example, “step into the circle if you have any school loans.” Everyone with school loans would step inside. Everyone made their observations of who stepped inside. “Now, step back into the ring of the circle,” the instructor directed. The process repeated once more with different descriptors: step-in if you’re a U.S. citizen, parents paid for your masters, etc. The idea of the activity, as I best understand, is to compare and contrast our experiences with one another. I knew to expect differences in our group because I represented one of three males and the only Latino in the cohort. To my surprise, I didn’t realize how much my peers’ parents supported them financially. In hindsight, perhaps I should have known given the cost of an Ivy League institution such as the University of Pennsylvania. The exercise represented one of many occasions when I realized the gap between my peers and I in experience and knowledge about inequities and social injustices. On another occasion, our social foundation class discussed immigration. In 2008, a group of citizens alongside the Southern border to Mexico organized themselves as a military response to undocumented immigrants under the title of “Minute Man.” They took their name from a group of civilians during the American Revolutionary War that fought against British rule. Wikipedia describes the present-day group as “a vigilante organization started in August 2004 by a group of private individuals in the United States to extrajudicially monitor the United States– Mexico border's flow of undocumented immigrants” (Minute Man Project, n.d.). I was the only one in my cohort to know of the group. I remember feeling taken by surprise. I didn’t realize 93 how disconnected my peers’ lives existed from those of other racial groups. No one person is an expert at everything, but the tension at the border during that era appeared everywhere in mainstream news. The border and immigrant represented one of the most tenuous issues during the Bush administration years. The disconnect appeared even greater to my frustration as we continued in the fall semester and peers held placement in suburban schools. I could not explain why the program offered placements in suburban schools or placement in university partnership schools. The partnership schools resembled international baccalaureate schools. They did not function as a typical urban school – a school with a large non-white population, a large percentage of students on free or reduced lunch assistance, a percentage of second language learners, and largely made of poor to lower-middle-class families. I decided to student teach in an urban school and found a home at Julia de Burgos K-8 in North Philadelphia in an area known as Kensington. At first, the preference of a suburban school did not come as a bother. I did not understand the decision, but I felt no consequence, at least at the start. By the middle of the fall semester, I noticed that the questions, concerns, and frustrations I experienced or observed did not resemble my peers’. As a result, competition for what we discussed in class emerged. At one point, I felt I represented the token urban school as everyone else went about their business. I soon began to participate much less and realized I would have to nourish my growth in other ways. This is when I made relationships with my professors, joined a social justice reading group, and made friends with peers in the secondary cohort whose placements resembled closer to my experience. I don’t know how much interest my peers held for social justice and urban education – the same for the institution. I expect that the suburban placement helped attract a larger audience who could afford the expense of a master’s degree at an ivy league institution. Nonetheless, I 94 believe the experience mirrors the little we know about preservice teachers of color. That is the experience of being “tokenized” and held responsible for educating our peers on injustice issues, as I did when I raised my hand as the only person who knew of the Minutemen and gave a summary of the group to my cohort. Many of my peers seemed to want to teach, while I wanted to tilt the needle towards a more humane and just world. However difficult, I’m grateful for the people I met, the relationships I built, and the opportunity to student teach and then become a teacher at Julia de Burgos K-8 school. At this time, I thought and believed myself as one of the “better” preservice teachers. I felt I would become one of the better teachers of our group. I felt this way because I held strong convictions about social justice and desire to teach in an urban school. I couldn’t have been more wrong! My social political beliefs in social justice did not equate to quality instruction. My adoption of a social justice framework may have created a positive self-image about myself and helped my preparation for graduate coursework, but in no way did my social-political identity translate into being an equitable, fair, and quality educator. Instead, I performed as what teacher education fears about white pre-service teachers: culturally insensitive. Inevitably, I transitioned from a preservice teacher at the University of Pennsylvania to being a middle years math teacher at Julia de Burgos K-8 school in North Philadelphia. As a Teacher My short teaching tenure went from a frustrated and angry individual to a much more compassionate, committed, and focused professional. I believe many of my behaviors, particularly during the first months, resembled what research literature says about white teachers and white preservice teachers: they hold a deficit mindset and blame students, the student’s families, and their culture for the experience in the classroom (as cited in DeMulder, K., 95 Stribling, M., & Day, M., 2014). Teacher education currently spends considerable time, money, and resources to have white preservice teachers come to a set of political beliefs about children of different races and cultures (Delpit, 2006; Zeichner et al., 1998). My experience is evidence that we need to first show pre-service teachers the basics of leadership: emotional intelligence, the process of personal transformation, and how to build relationships even with the most difficult person. I held all the “right beliefs,” yet I turned to immature, sophomoric, and, quite frankly, fearful behavior when success did not come. The difficult circumstance public education faces in North Philadelphia proved a catalyst to reveal my frailties and now wisdom as to why we must focus on the preparation of preservice teachers’ character before we have them engage in politically tenuous topics (e.g., affirmative action). As one of my favorite spiritual teachers likes to emphasize: balance first! In the following section, I describe the context of the school, the neighborhood, and my experience as a Latino, male, and self-identified social justice educator. The story provides an example of how an educator with the right intentions still exhibited behaviors teacher education typically attributes to white teachers. The intention is to argue for a change in how teacher education prepares preservice teachers to become quality educators to all children, particularly those with the most challenges in their lives. The story of evidence here is not to argue against preservice teachers’ enrollment in critical social foundation course work. Rather, a tale of caution and reflection to influence the prioritization of emotional intelligence, leadership, and well-being. North Philadelphia Julia de Burgos K-8 school is located in the heart of North Philadelphia on 4th and Lehigh Avenue and serves a predominately Puerto Rican community. The school also educates a 96 sizeable Dominican community and a smaller percentage of African American students and an even smaller number of white and Asian students. The demographic landscape of the Kensington area in North Philadelphia once thrived as a largely Irish and Polish immigrant community before deindustrialization in the 1950s. Until the 1950s, Kensington represented a working-class community built on the textile industry and iron and steel during the early 1950s. People would work and live in the same area given the availability of work. Everything changed after the 1950s as deindustrialization lead to significant population loss, high unemployment, and the abandoning of homes in the neighborhood. As Irish and Polish transitioned out of the area, Puerto Ricans began moving into the neighborhood during the late ’60s into the 1970s to transform the neighborhood’s cultural landscape from primarily European to now Puerto-Rican and Dominican. Unfortunately, new jobs did not come forth after the original factories closed. Regrettably, the lack of jobs created economic depression for the neighborhood’s new residents. With time, Kensington, North Philadelphia became notorious as the highest volume of the drug trade in the country (Percy, 2018). I can still remember my boots stepping over the empty vials on the sidewalk as I made my walk from the train stop to the entrance of the school. In the early 90s, people referred to Kensington as “the Badlands.” A recent New York Times article describes Kensington as “the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast. Addicts come from all over, and many never leave” (Percy, 2018). The picture below is from said New York Times article. It shows the dire state of the situation and the problem not being Puerto Rican. 97 Figure 3 Drug Usage in the Kensington Neighborhood Many people outside of North Philadelphia believe that the local residents, principally Puerto Ricans, make and perpetuate the culture of drug use when a wider and much more diverse group of people come from outside of North Philadelphia and Philadelphia itself to participate as much, if not more, than the local community in the drug-use culture. I vividly remember one cold winter morning when three different cars over a span of no more than five minutes drove up to a specific middle part of the block to have them extend their hand out in an arguable – to the best of my sight – a drug trade. Notably, all the cars carried New Jersey license plates. Yet, drugs are often referred to as a Kensington, North Philadelphia, and Puerto Rican problem. Worse, I 98 personally view drug-use as a mental health issue. Still, the illegality of drugs often brings violence and destruction to create an unstable environment for my students to know, observe, and experience. On one occasion, the school ordered a “code red” when a group of individuals held a shoot-out right before lunch adjacent to the school. During a “code red,” the school locks all the doors, and we close our classroom doors and go under our desks away from the windows until we hear the situation is clear. A few of my students saw the start of the shoot out before the call of a “code-red” as we huddle away from the windows. It’s a different world that the majority of Americans don’t understand, appreciate, will ever come to know, or even understand. The violence is too much. One student had his house shot nine-times overnight. I don’t know the reason, but the experience revealed that my experience of a Latino did not resemble that of my students as I first thought. Yes, we share a language, music, and religious traditions, but I grew up in a white suburb. In many ways, I hold more in common with a white preservice teacher from an archetypal suburb than my Puerto Rican and Dominican students, given the specific experience of their neighborhood. A few of my colleagues and I did our best to bring the students’ culture into the classroom. For example, my mentor teacher and I would take the students down the block to the local panderia as an incentive for our students to get their parent information forms signed and returned. I would always walk through the neighborhood blocks adjacent to the main avenue to say high to the students as I walked to the train station and become visible in the area. I also frequented the local corner store after school to buy lunch and chat with the students who would sometimes hang around. Regarding curriculum, I made changes to lesson plans to make the material culturally relevant or at least accessible to their lives. (I will discuss my curriculum 99 adaptations in greater detail in the following paragraphs). North Philadelphia is a challenging environment that my students sadly and unfortunately needed to encounter and traverse. Even those away from drugs, violence, and unemployment still felt the ramifications of the conditions. Nonetheless, as I learned through my first year as a teacher, you must focus on the light, the positive, the good, and find as many ways to be successful for yourself and the students. We can’t rid ourselves of the world’s challenges, but we can always grow, build, and expand what is right for the individual and the collective. I deliberately decided to imagine, perceive, and allow possibilities instead of my continual mindset of complaints and blame as a way to remove the challenges before. Simply, I relied less on my intellect and began to trust, allow, and become emotionally centered. The Original Intention I held many left-leaning, social justice political beliefs when I entered the classroom as a first-year teacher. My belief in social justice started at my alma mater, the University of San Francisco - a Jesuit institution. My interest and commitment grew as I read Peter McLaren and his emancipatory education theory, Jeff Duncan-Andrade’s book on hip-hop pedagogy, and engagement with students in Oakland. Yet, all the right social, political intentions did not make up for the shortcoming in my character and subsequent performance as a middle school math teacher. I entered the classroom with bold expectations and a strong identity as a social justice believer. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand or anticipate the pragmatic challenges required to reach any meaningful accomplishment at Julia de Burgos. I held all the correct social-political beliefs according to the tenets of critical social foundation courses. Still, my response, interaction, and overall performance as a teacher fell short of my aspirations and beliefs about what I could and needed to accomplish in the classroom. I wanted students to learn but also 100 become critical of their world. I wanted them to see how we use math to study our world and use what we learn to make our smart decision for a more humane and just world. My being angry, frustrated, annoyed, and blaming my students for the shortcomings in my classroom was not my definition of success. Math Curriculum The year still relatively new, I didn’t have much trouble, but that quickly changed once October arrived. In the first month, I did augment our curriculum and even enacted what I termed a social justice lesson plan – a lesson I’m still proud of today. The curriculum at the time for math came from Britannica Encyclopedia, Britannica Mathematics in Context: Tracking Graphs. The book didn’t have the traditional layout of a math book: you start with a concept, there are example problems, and then a series of practice problems that start from simple and basic to more advanced and eventually word problems, as an example. Instead, the math book - and that’s a very generous label, math book – introduced a concept and then went into language heavy world problems. I immediately knew this wasn’t going to work given the number of students who spoke English as their second language to varying fluency levels. Additionally, the word problems did not provide enough computational practice to help students understand the mechanical nature of mathematics to help students grasp the conceptual and vice-versa. I thus modified the curriculum but was reprimanded by the administration for the changes I made. (I later learned a colleague in the 7th and 8th grade group also made similar adaptations but not to the same extent I had)! At the time, because our schedule changed several times a year, both years I worked at the school, I taught a gender-mixed class of two sixth grade cohorts, one seventh grade cohort, and a third and final group of sixth-grade special education students. Each class group had about 101 26-30 students, with the special education class just over twenty students. In that first month, I took the lesson objectives and made a social justice curriculum. The curriculum called for us to learn different types of graphs: bar, frequency, and box-and-whiskers. I asked the students to collect data about where and how often they noticed graffiti in their neighborhood. We then took their data and compiled and learned about the different types of graphs. I then asked students a range of questions. A few questions purely mathematical: what the mean is, the median, and the mode, and a few questions that extended the lesson into conversations about social justice. For example, do you feel differently about graffiti in different settings? The objective wasn’t to disapprove or approve the act or prevalence but to get students to understand how math can help us study, think and reveal our world. Perhaps not a quintessential social justice lesson but an honest endeavor to have students see education beyond a performance expectation. In retrospect, I still would make the same steps. Although reprimanded, the experiment would prove the last time I would modify the curriculum to such an extent, and the last time, unfortunately, I ventured to bring in elements of social justice in the classroom. I would have received a formal “write-up” from administration had I continued to adapt the curriculum. The remainder of the first year came to represent a period of personal transformation, consistency in my response to classroom management, and the overall creation of stability in the classroom. In my second year, I found myself assigned to science and social studies during the first half of the school year, and implemented a scripted curriculum during the first two hours of the day as part of a district wide initiative to reach adequately yearly progress. During the first hour, we taught math and the second-hour literacy from a scripted curriculum. By scripted, I mean that we read from the book, asked a question, and then tapped the book for students to respond. If they got the answer correct, we read the text in blue. If students responded incorrectly, we read the text in 102 black, repeated the question, tapped the book once more. The scripted curriculum took place during the first half of my second year as a centerpiece of Dr. Arlene Ackerman’s attempt to help schools that underachieved. Dr. Ackerman served as superintendent for Washington D.C., then San Francisco, and finally in Philadelphia (Schudel, 2013). Her leadership did not come without controversy, and Philadelphia proved no different. In addition to the remedial scripted curriculum, the district bought a new math curriculum that resembled a more traditional model that did not require modification compared to the Britannica series. Additionally, I found myself focused less on the curriculum and more on creating a healthy and productive climate in the classroom with a balanced personal life. I still adapted questions or took concepts and applied the ideas to what students could access and relate. For example, I would use the same word problems but change the names and settings to mirror their world. I wouldn’t categorize such moves as culturally relevant, but I felt that at least these minor changes would make the task representative of their world. As I shared, my first month ran relatively smooth with minor distractions and difficulties, but that would change as October began. Initial Response October came in with the escalation of behavior issues and my lack of emotional stability. Four fights occurred between October and December. Students always know where and what they can get away with, and I played the role of the first-year teacher who easily becomes frustrated and distracted with misbehavior. Hence, no surprise, I witnessed so many physical fights in my classroom, one of which occurred between two female students – a rare event in our building. At first, I verbally bedevil with students as they refused to the line-up, became boisterous in the hallways, or their continual complaints about each other. In retrospect, much of 103 the behavior wasn’t anything unique or particular. To compound the issue, I didn’t keep a healthy balance between work and the rest of my life. I often stayed up late on tasks that didn’t impact or didn’t make of practical use. For example, I would over-script a lesson to minute detail to have the lesson derailed in the first ten minutes. I also didn’t organize student work very well and waited until the end to enter grades. I experienced stress and anxiety that I hadn’t before, and I dreaded going to work—far from a healthy start! The imbalance created unnecessarily long hours and frustrations that I emotionally displaced on students – almost as an overstretched parent unjustifiably does to their children. I would often resort to demands, ultimatums, threats of consequence, or raise my voice in anger, all of which students shrugged off, joked about, or ignored only to the irritation of my ego. One morning, I distinctly remember that I came to work with little sleep, and I yelled at the students for their noise level as we walked up the steps. To which the student responded with, “someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.” I spent the majority of fall and winter days in total frustration, dismay, anger, and overall unpleasant mood. The classroom experience resembles little to nothing of what I held in mind when I decided to teach as a profession. Quickly, the desire for an engaging, passionate, and rigorous learning environment began to feel like a distant memory. Each day felt more and more like a daily exercise to “get through” and less of a dynamic and creative space for teacher and student alike--the idea of what I believe every classroom should feel as. In my unaware and frustrated state, I naively decided to displace my responsibility (e.g., blame) on the students, their parents, and their local community. I wanted everyone to adapt to my personality, my way of doing things, and adjust to my temperament. I did not understand or know about emotional intelligence, how relationships drive momentum, and high expectations must come with an equal measure of support by the educator. In sum, at that moment in life, I decided to unfairly lean on 104 blame and judged those I served to help explain and justify my shortcomings as an educator. In short, my comport mirrored that of what teacher education aims to rid of: teachers with deficit views and paradigms about students, their families, and communities. I stood as a social justice- minded teacher but exemplified the opposite. Most of my students weren’t difficult to manage as I came to find during the second half of the year and my second year. I erroneously relied on threats and emotional manipulation to try to coherence compliance. Yes, a few I could not reach and made life difficult, but the majority I could build a relationship, trust, and engagement, as I found out after my first year. The difficulty in the beginning part of my first year came from my inability to deescalate, not take students’ behavior personally, and keep a focused eye on the lesson. In other words, I didn’t and couldn’t control my emotions. I reacted to circumstances. It wasn’t until the latter part of the year that I learned to read my emotions and respond and not react. I can’t say students did anything remarkably different from what is typical of all students – their desire to distract, buy time, or get away from a required task. Distractions could mean the need to sharpen the pencil several times in a class, as happened in my classroom. With experience, you realize how to circumvent and prevent a lot of issues. For example, transitions! Transitions represented one of the ways students tend to derail the flow of a class very easily. I learned to have the lesson’s objective on the board and clear instructions before students entered the classroom to avoid delays or interruptions. I learned to better prepare with materials available, extra supplies of pencils and set routines to avoid unnecessary questions. Early on, I would overreact to small infractions. I could not accept how underprepared my students came to class. Their behavior did not align with my beliefs and experience of what a student should represent and how they should behave. I resisted through my frustration and anger. I did not 105 accept the circumstance to then find a solution. In end, my overreaction gave the students a clue that they could easily derail a lesson and aggravate the rookie teacher. At first, at least during my first month, I felt frustrated, but I kept my emotions relatively balanced. As we entered further into the fall, I resorted to tactics by other male teachers in school who taught middle school years and attempted to mirror the yearn reprimand I witnessed by my mentor teacher. At one point, the instructional lead teacher for the school came in during a moment of frustration to help “talk to the students” after I restlessly tossed the dry erase marker towards the rail of the dry erase board as to say, “I’ve had it!” I was at my wit's end. I did everything I could to “control” them--the students--but the more I tried to control them, the less cooperative they became, and in turn, the more frustrated and angrier I became! At first, I tried “scaring,” scolding, and “toughness” with the students, but such tactics rarely worked, if ever. To a certain extent, I resorted to the tactics of my father and the other male teachers in the building. The approach did not mirror my authentic self. I’m glad such an overly punitive and aggressive approach did not work! Other teachers in the building continued with the method, but I found they struggled just as much as anyone else! In hindsight, the best teachers carried a very easy but direct and authentically powerful demeanor. Again, except for the fights, much of the students’ misbehavior could have been avoided with proper preparation, better transitions, clear directions, a balanced work cycle, and an honest intention to build relationships. In retrospect, I believe I saw the students as a means to an end. The represented the means to fulfill my identity as a social justice educator. I wasn’t necessarily concerned about them as much as a desire to have my identity proven right! 106 Initial Release I benefited from the grace of a personal mentor in the building—Mr. Rodriguez—who coached and sympathetically listened to my justified and unjustified rants during the first fall months. I also leaned on my classroom mentor teacher, who taught across the hall who would debrief with me after a school day. She would suggest I implement behavioral systems that rewarded positive behavior – I didn’t listen at first. I just wanted to argue that my experience wasn’t right. I preferred being right over being productive. Now, I did have moments of success during those four months, like the moments when I would let Danny into the classroom when he got kicked out of Mrs. Shultz's room. Danny, the eldest of two, regularly found himself in trouble in other classrooms. At home, he endured physical abuse and, unfortunately, observed the sexual assault of his mother. (A year later, Danny came by to say thank you for the space I gave him in my classroom when other teachers “kicked him out”). That said, the dark outweighed the light during those early days. I wanted the run, manage, and exist in the classroom as I demanded. I wanted authoritarian rule. I’m not sure how but I somehow decided to enroll in an adult soccer league during the middle part of November. The soccer league served a saving grace, more than I ever imagined. The physical activity gave me enough of a psychological release of the emotional valve to get me to winter break and, eventually, to what I describe as: a reorientation to life. Months later, in talking to Mr. Rodriguez, he mentioned his concern for my well-being and ability to finish the school year. As he stated, “I didn’t know what was going to happen!” The outside activity brought balance and life outside of students, my commute, long hours, and frustration. It provided a different experience in life, a moment away and time to let matters settled. I believe 107 the league helped settle my nerves to an eventual reconciliation of my performance over the winter holiday break! A Renewal of Spirit Change is never painful, only the resistance to change is painful - Buddha I spent the winter break in reflection. I knew something had to change, but what precisely, I wasn’t sure. I returned to the classroom in early January, still confused but a lot less tense. Quite frankly, I’m not precisely sure what caused the change, but I adopted a more relaxed approach to how I managed the students by the second week in January. In part, I didn’t want to feel exhausted, overworked, or yell, unlike myself anymore. I did not want to argue, scold or fight anymore. I didn’t want to unnecessarily escalate my emotions. I started to prefer a less controlled classroom in exchange for progress, flow, and a more unaffected day at work. This isn’t the ideal move as a teacher, but it proved much more productive than my draconian reactions from the fall months. Before I knew it, students began to “move along” without my prodding. In hindsight, the fun in getting Mr. Najarro frustrated dissipated as I didn’t react to their creative and impersonal subordination. The subtler energy I carried helped change everything about my classroom experience, and unknowingly at the time, who I would become to represent today. That is to say, a student of eastern philosophy, religion, and metaphysics who endeavors for a joyous and fulfilling spiritual experience. My classroom experience started to change more drastically once I began to read a verse from the Tao Te Ching each morning before I caught the “L” train to North Philadelphia. Tao Te Ching - the title of the book - literally means the “way” and is commonly thought of as one of the wisest books ever written. Lao-Tzu is the Chinese sage who wrote the book and famously pen the now infamous saying, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” At the time, 108 Taoism represented a complete reorientation to life and its inherent challenges. I grew up in a very traditional Central American Catholic household where hard work, toughness, and rules meant everything. In other words, flexibility, inquiry, and grace did not present themselves as common themes in my childhood. The characterization suggests that I grew up in an unloving household or without any spiritual guidance. Quite the contrary! But life carried heavy emotions of survival as an undocumented immigrant. I still remember being in front of a federal judge in a Los Angeles County courthouse as our family waited to hear if we earned the right to stay in the country or if we would have to move back to Nicaragua. The stern take allowed my success in school but in no way did I understand the emotional intelligence required to lead a team, let alone children. Everything I heard from my parents and family members centered on doing well in school and the achievement of economic success in life. My parents risked everything to bring my siblings and I to the U.S. during a tumultuous time in Nicaragua that involved war, too many deaths, poverty, and rationed household goods by the government. Hence, how I understood life revolved around weighty emotions, particularly when compared to many of my childhood classmates, of which many came from white middle to upper-middle-class backgrounds. And as a young brown child, I learned to fight for everything as I grew up in a white conservative town. Hence, the idea or notion of “The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world” by Lao-Tzu represented a world I did not know existed. Unfortunately, I did not understand what a soft, caring approach can make to one’s professional, personal, and social ascension. Instead, a group of rowdy and playful middle school kids from North Philly revealed what I arrogantly forget to practice in the most difficult of times: compassion! 109 I quickly understood that success in the classroom came through meaningful teacher- student relationships as I softened my approach while still holding students accountable. Relationships became an important part of my work. For the first time, I laughed with my students in the classroom! I began to put aside all the pressures of test scores and adequately yearly progress. Of course, I wanted their success, but I knew children also require guidance and support to achieve in as many aspects of life as possible, a philosophy contrary to the singular focus of “academic progress” via standardizing test scores. In the end, my classes all made adequately yearly progress for the two years I taught sixth and seventh-grade mathematics—a noteworthy accomplishment given the start I experienced! I also did well to involve myself in extra-curricular activities with the students to help build relationships and find joy in my work. I made a point to attend all the 7th and 8th-grade dances—a fun and rich experience observing the students making their way into adolescence. I also helped Mr. Rodriguez plan, organize, fundraise, and chaperone Para Duke Vamos1—"To Duke We Go.” Mr. Rodriguez decided to take our students to Duke University during our spring break to expose them to the idea of college. As his mentee, I supported the endeavor as we worked together and made our first trip to Duke for four days. We hustled to get logistical paperwork to the district, information to parents, scholarship money for our less fortunate students, and a website to arrange everything, and of course, making sure 48 students from North Philly arrived and returned safely. Part of my ability to participate in Para Duke Vamos as a chaperone came from my 1 For an inside look on the trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRYEwKnuGsQ&t=202s 110 attending school dances and after school basketball and baseball teams and my relationship with Mr. Rodriguez. I’m not proud of who I was in those early months, but I am pleased about my growth, progress, and personal decision to mature. I’m also extremely grateful for the students and their resistant behavior during those difficult early weeks. If not for their behavior, I would not have come to realize and awaken to my shortcomings—and what I now understand as my own resistant behavior. Equally, if not for the experience, I don’t know if I would have invested in my studying of eastern spiritual traditions as an avenue for guidance, wisdom, and growth. I am a benefactor of the difficult times my students endure as I awaken to my shortcomings. It was through my study of eastern philosophies that I stumbled up on the idea of resistance. As a result, I’m also a much more compassionate person and subsequently concerned with the emotional maturity and development of PSTs as I am their intellectual abilities. More precisely, I have spent considerable time transforming my behavior through the continual study of resistance from spiritual, emotional, and physiological lenses. Discussion I don’t believe I’ve lost my interest in justice and dignity for all people, but I believe my study of religion, spirituality, and metaphysics have drastically changed how I view my participation in the world. First, I don’t believe in identity. As I’ve come to learn, it is the intellect that creates identities, and any challenge to an identity is seen as a personal threat. In spiritual circles, we aren’t an identity since an identity represents the identification with the mind. Additionally, what if you lose your identity. Does that mean you lose who you are? If you identify as a doctor but no longer practice, do you lose who you are? Much is written in the academy in the defense and instruction of identities. In fact, identity is part of the DEI acronym 111 now commonly adopted – diversity, equity, and instruction. I wanted them to fulfill how I intellectually understood myself instead of seeing my privilege and opportunity to teach young people what I enjoy, math. Secondly, I believe my experience highlights the importance of a person’s emotional intelligence and stability beyond any pedagogical or social-political stance. The responsibility to cultivate young people requires a level of grace, patience, humility, and fortitude that is not necessarily spoken of in teacher education. The greatest educators have an ability to remain centered independent of how students attempt to distract or disrupt a classroom. I can still remember the two fifth grade teachers whose classrooms I would pass every day. I never observed them shout, get upset, or rattled in any way. On the contrary, I always saw students hard at work and engaged. There’s a belief one must show “toughness” and be “mean” to control students, especially those from the city. This is far from accurate. Effective teachers come prepared, balanced, and have the ability to deescalate situations! I believe emotional and physiological intelligence around resistance would help many teachers. I struggled early on because I got in my own way, to use a proverbial phrase. I did not want to change what I thought or behaved – nor did I have control over my emotions. I didn’t want to adapt. It wasn’t until I finally felt exhausted with emotions that I surrendered. I stopped using my emotions to manipulate people into control. I used emotions to have a sense of proportion in how I responded to behavior. I even used humor to escalate situations as when Alex screamed “Fuck you, Mr. Najarro” on his way out of the classroom, and I responded with, “I love you too, Alex.” Students chuckled, and we returned back to our lesson. Teacher education spends considerable time on the intellectual preparation of preservice teachers but pays little to no attention to their emotional intelligence. I believe teacher education needs to find a way to help preservice teachers learn to 112 identify, acknowledge, and manage their attitudes. Let them not succumb to blame, judgment, or anger as I – a self-identify social justice educator – decided to rely on. Emotional balance is a matter of maturation and character and much less about social-political belief structures. To end, I don’t represent the white preservice teachers that need to learn about race and racism. I represented the Latino preservice teacher that treated students in an undignified manner, much like we fear of white teachers. I held all the correct social justice beliefs but still reacted to my students in judgment and blame. I was never at fault, I told myself at the start. My story is evidence that mere beliefs are not enough to have teachers treat their students equitably. This story is not in repudiation of conversations of race, racism, or other social-political topics. Instead, the story stands to support and justify the need to help preservice teachers become emotionally aware and responsive. 113 Dissertation Conclusion I believe there is humanization element to being a teacher. It’s one-half knowledge. And a second heart. This second piece – that of the heart, is what this dissertation argues more attention is required. Teacher education literature is focused primarily on knowledge. The students need to know more in order to acknowledge their privilege. Yet, teacher educators from this study all voiced different pedagogical strategies that moved emphasized the use of stories and lived experience or art – not knowledge – as an effective tool. Even one of the study’s white participants expressed their decision to tell students they must hold certain beliefs. In no way did the teacher educator really on knowledge. The point being, teacher education, specifically critical multicultural education courses would benefit from a shift of focus from the intellectual development of preservice teachers to the cultivation of emotional awareness, stability and intelligence. 114 APPENDICES 115 APPENDIX A: Pre-Interview Questionnaire Pre-Interview Questionnaire * Required What's your gender identity? * Your answer How do you ethnically identify? * Your answer How do you racially identify * Your answer Do you have any K-12 teaching experience? If so, what kind and for how long? (E.g. elementary, urban, 4 years). * Your answer What's your current professional identity (e.g. grad student, faculty, etc.) * Your answer For how long have you had your current professional identity? * Your answer How many semesters have you taught a critical multicultural themed course? * Your answer 116 APPENDIX B: Interview Protocol 1 - Context • Pre-Interview Questions o What’s your gender identity? o How do you ethnically identify? o What’s your racial identity? o Do you have any K-12 teaching experience? If so, what kind and for how long? (E.g. elementary, urban, 4 years). o What's your current professional identity (e.g. grad student, faculty, etc.) o For how long have you had your current professional identity? o How many semesters have you taught a critical multicultural themed course? • Educational and Professional Background o What is your educational background? o What is professional background? • Teaching Ethos o What is your teaching philosophy? o What do you value in your teaching? • Understanding of CME o What do you view as the primary objective of a critical multicultural education course? o What do you see as your personal objective as an instructor for the course? (Ohito, O, 2016) o How do you define your real as an instructor for a CME course? o How do you know you’ve been successful in the course or in a lesson? • Teaching CME o What has prepared you to teach the course? o What if any influence does your racial identity have in the way you teach the course? o What if any influence does your gender identity have in the way you teach the course? o What discussion topic do you find most difficult to discuss with students? Why do you think students struggle discussing these topics? How do students express their frustration with the material? 2 - How We Perceive Student Resistance • Understanding of Student Resistance o How familiar are you with the term “student resistance?” o How do you understand the meaning of “student resistance,” what does the term imply? o What do you think causes students to resistance? Why do you think students resist, particularly with issues of race, equity, and power? How much and what kind of knowledge do students have about race before entering the classroom? What role, if any, does white privilege plays in explaining why students resist? 117 What’s your understanding of white privilege? o How do you think teacher educators should think about student resistance? • Students Resistance in K12 compared to PSTs o How do you compare student resistance in K12 classroom with that of PSTs? o To what extent should we treat the phenomena as similar or different? 3 - Responding to Student Resistant • Describing Resistance in Classroom o Can you think of an example of a time students’ express resistance in your classroom? o What did student resistance look like in the classroom? • Handling Resistance o How do you handle student resistance in your classroom? [Give scenario] o How do you believe other teacher educators perceive student resistance? o How do teacher educators speak about student resistance in their classroom? o What do you believe helps mitigate student resistance? o What pedagogical framework do you use to justify how you respond to student resistance? o How does the gender or racial identity of student influence how you respond to student resistance? 4 – Improving and Evaluating CME • How successful is the course in achieving its objectives? • What do you believe needs to change in the way we teach CME? • Improving Curriculum o How could the CME curriculum improve? o How can the curriculum change to better respond to student resistance? o To what extent would providing more content knowledge influence the successful outcome(s) of course objective(s 118 REFERENCES 119 REFERENCES Abrams, L. S., & Gibson, P. (2007). Teaching notes: Reframing multicultural education: Teaching white privilege in the social work curriculum. 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