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Change Agents: Empowering White Female Preservice Teachers Through Dialogue and Counter-Narrative

This dissertation represents an attempt to uncover, understand, and unmake the structure of racism and its place in Master Narratives of education. This dissertation presents a counter-narrative to Master Narratives of meritocracy, Whiteness, and monologue by addressing two primary research questions: (1) What might dialogic teacher education that prepares a teacher to see the classroom as a site for social change look like? and (2) How might I, as a teacher educator and dialogue facilitator, develop teachers to see the classroom as a site for social change?
I define the Social Context (Chapter 2) of this projects counter-narrative by defining Master Narratives of Meritocracy. I continue with a Theoretical Context (Chapter 3) that describes methods and tools for countering Master Narratives of Whiteness. I situate this project in a larger Academic Context (Chapter 4), describing how other researchers in the field of Multicultural Teacher Education are combating racism in education. I continue with this projects Methodological Context (Chapter 5), a detailed description of how this counter-narrative arose from a dialogue circle with five preservice teachers, thereby countering Master Narratives of Monologue.
In Chapters 6 and 7, I recount a narrative that runs counter to these Master Narratives, a counter-narrative that is relational, critical of Whiteness, and dialogic; this narrative includes stories of the participants and myself and our individual racial identity developments, as well as the story of our dialogue circle as we investigated race and racism, ways racism appears in society, and methods for fighting racism in the P-12 classroom. In Chapter 8, I conclude with implications for theory by problematizing the conceptions of colorblindness and stereotypes. In the area of practice, I propose a possible foundation for talking about race with preservice teachers and provide possible resources for learning to dialogue. In the area of research, I problematize the conception of homogeneity among White female preservice teachers and the possible influence diversity in the classroom has on a teachers willingness to address social justice issues.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-06302009-150423
Date08 July 2009
CreatorsLaughter, Judson Crandall
ContributorsDr. H. Richard Milner, Dr. Robert Jimenez, Dr. Marcy Singer-Gabella, Dr. Lucius Outlaw, Jr.
PublisherVANDERBILT
Source SetsVanderbilt University Theses
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-06302009-150423/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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