Date of Award
Summer 8-22-2022
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)
Department
Education: Curriculum and Teaching
First Advisor
Jody N. Polleck
Second Advisor
Melissa Schieble
Third Advisor
Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz
Academic Program Adviser
Marshall George
Abstract
Schools in the United States continue to dramatically under-educate students with marginalized identities. Although professional development for teachers regularly fails to develop the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and commitment needed to interrupt educational inequities and ensure all students thrive, scholarship on teacher learning has identified promising practices such as critical inquiry groups for social justice which can foster teachers’ capacity to interrupt inequitable instructional practices and school policies. (Gorski & Dalton, 2020; Manfra, 2019; Peters, 2016). The three manuscripts in this dissertation explore the experience of a CIG comprised of seven teachers working in an urban elementary school that serves multiply marginalized students. The first manuscript employs Sealey-Ruiz’s (2021) six components of racial literacy development as a framework to analyze how the CIG teachers’ racial literacy supported them to interrupt racism on interpersonal and systemic levels. The second manuscript traces one white teacher’s trajectory from savior toward accomplice, focusing on three major shifts in his perception of his students and families and his conception of the role of a teacher for equity. The third manuscript describes how the CIG teachers inspired each other to think critically about how service-learning projects could either further or interrupt deficit perspectives. Each manuscript concludes with recommendations for designing justice-oriented professional learning spaces.
Recommended Citation
Friedman, Tanya E., "Building Racial Literacy Through Relational Trust, Teacher Solidarity, and Antiracist Praxis" (2022). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/943
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Elementary Education Commons, Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons