Return to search

Let's Get Real. Revealing Racism Is Ugly and Uncomfortable| A White Teacher's Microaggression Autoethnography

<p> Racial microaggressions are present in daily classroom interactions between White teachers and students of color. White teachers, however, may be oblivious to the types of racial microaggressions they exhibit and how they perform them in their classrooms. Using autoethnographic research methods, this study seeks to expose implicit racial bias into explicit moments of teacher decision-making, transform dysconscious racism into conscious and concrete thoughts, and interpret previously unseen racist acts into seen and recognizable activities. The study asks the following research questions: (a) When and how do I permit my racial microaggressions to emerge and transgress in my classroom? And (b) In what ways, if at all, can a White teacher use autoethnography to detect and examine her racial microaggressions toward her students of color? Later, the study explores the ways in which critical self-reflexivity might promote an evolving anti-racist teaching identity. </p><p> The researcher, a classroom teacher, gathered data using daily reflective self-observations, daily reflexive field note journals, and periodic videotaping of her practice. She commenced the study with an introductory culturegram positioning her racial and cultural self-identity and concluded it with a final self-interview to complete the data-gathering. The researcher categorized each microaggressive event by form, medium, and theme using Sue&rsquo;s (2010b) &ldquo;Taxonomy of Microaggressions.&rdquo; Findings reveal (a) uninterrogated Whiteness dominates all aspects of the researcher&rsquo;s classroom, extending from her teaching to her White students&rsquo; behaviors and (b) transitional time, non-academic teacher talk, and other unstructured time remain especially hazardous for students of color in terms of receiving teacher-perpetuated racial microaggressions.</p><p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10623321
Date16 March 2018
CreatorsGuertin, Julie Keyantash
PublisherLewis and Clark College
Source SetsProQuest.com
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typethesis

Page generated in 0.0017 seconds