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Towards ideological clarity: an action research project on the role of a teacher in unearthing unconscious bias to embrace culturally relevant pedagogy
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Content
Towards Ideological Clarity:
An Action Research Project on the Role of a Teacher in Unearthing Unconscious Bias to
Embrace Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
by
Mayra Delgado
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education
May 2024
© Copyright by Mayra Delgado 2024
All Rights Reserved
The Committee for Mayra Delgado certifies the approval of this Dissertation
Artineh Samkian
Akilah Lyons Moore
Julie Slayton, Committee Chair
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2024
iv
Abstract
This study examines my leadership enactment as a third-grade teacher while at a KIPP SoCal
school. My action research question was: How do I engage four elementary school teachers in
Boyle Heights to examine their unconscious biases that guide their teaching practice with an eye
toward embracing more culturally relevant practices? To understand my role, I collected jottings,
fieldnotes, and descriptive reflections from observations conducted in my grade-level context. I
found that I was unable to move my participants toward ideological clarity because of
organizational and internal constraints that limited our ability to have meaningful discussion.
However, I did discover and understand my role in affirming discourse routines that maintained
our conversation at a surface level and hindered the learning of my participants.
v
Dedication
To my mom and dad, who immigrated to this country seeking opportunity for their children, I am
proud to be your daughter.
To my brothers, Thomas, and Martin, thank you for walking with me.
vi
Acknowledgements
To my committee: Dr. Julie Slayton, Dr. Artineh Samkian, and Dr. Lyons-Moore.
Thank you for your patience throughout this undertaking. Your reminder to focus on the
process rather than the outcome helped me to slow down and understand my role in leading
instructional change.
To my colleagues: Beth, Jycell, and Illy.
In you all I have found sisterhood within an institution not designed for us. From the latenight study sessions when we were still online during the days of Zoom learning to the
encouraging conversations when morale ebbed and flowed, thank you for being a steady source
of support throughout this program.
vii
Table of Contents
Abstract...........................................................................................................................................iv
Dedication........................................................................................................................................v
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................vi
List of Tables..................................................................................................................................ix
List of Figures..................................................................................................................................x
Historically Entrenched Inequity.......................................................................................10
Context ..............................................................................................................................12
Role....................................................................................................................................17
Conceptual Framework .....................................................................................................19
Organizational Conditions and Structural Constraints..........................................23
Adaptive Leadership and Andragogy with Teachers ............................................25
Teachers and Dominant Ideologies.......................................................................32
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Ideological Clarity, and our Teaching.................34
Research Methods .............................................................................................................35
Participants and Setting .........................................................................................37
Actions...................................................................................................................41
Data Collection and Instruments/Protocols...........................................................47
Data Analysis.........................................................................................................51
Lilitations and Delimitations.................................................................................54
Credibility and Trustworthiness............................................................................56
Ethics.....................................................................................................................58
Findings.............................................................................................................................59
Structural Constraints Limited Quality of Discourse ............................................59
Conditions Limiting Reflective Discourse ............................................................78
viii
Regulating Distress to Turn Towards Practice......................................................91
Afterword ..........................................................................................................................98
Where I Stand ........................................................................................................99
Retrospective Takeaways....................................................................................100
Continuing the Work ...........................................................................................102
References ...................................................................................................................................104
ix
List of Tables
Table 1: Actions in Internalization Meetings 41
x
List of Figures
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework 21
Figure 2: Internalization Agenda Template 64
Figure 3: Completed Internalization Agenda 68
1
Towards Ideological Clarity: An Action Research Project on the Role of a Teacher in
Unearthing Unconscious Bias to Embrace Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
I am a first-generation, college-educated, heterosexual, cisgender woman who is a United
States citizen. My parents are both Mexican immigrants and my first language is not English. I
grew up in a working-class community, and I am the only one in my family to have attained
credentialing through 4-year institutions. My ways of knowing come from the intersections of
my identity. Moreover, my relationship with the U.S. schooling system—as a student, a teacher,
and a leader—drives my interest in understanding how adults critically reflect and my role in
supporting them to examine their unconscious biases so they may embrace culturally relevant
pedagogy.
I was interested in understanding how adults interrogate their teaching practices because I
was once a student in the school district and community in which I taught. During my formative
years, I unconsciously internalized the dominant narrative of upward mobility and meritocracy
through the messages I received from my family and my teachers. Once I became a teacher, I
telegraphed a similar narrative to my students because I did not examine my own beliefs. The
messages I unconsciously internalized impacted my teaching practice in ways that reproduced
the status quo for historically, racially, and ethnically minorized students. Therefore, I was
interested in understanding my role in supporting adults to examine their own beliefs in relation
to their teaching practices because it was important to me that we didn’t perpetuate unexamined
ideologies.
As a child, I received messages from my parents that affirmed the ideologies of
meritocracy and upward mobility because of their experience with poverty and minimal formal
schooling. Higher education and education reflect colonial ideologies (Patel, 2015). Further,
2
Patel (2015) says that education is viewed as way to level the playing field, “meaning that while
children may be born into differential environments education can enable individuals to
transcend the scripts of those environments” (p. 5). My parents’ wish for our family was for their
chosen migration to bring about opportunity for their children to “swim upstream” and
“transcend” the environment they were born into. To begin with, my parents immigrated to the
United States 35 years ago seeking opportunities that would change their life of poverty. In their
native town of Tilzapotla, Morelos, my parents briefly experienced formal schooling due to
financial constraints their families faced. For them, opportunities to focus solely on school were
limited. As the eldest children in their respective families, it was their responsibility to
financially contribute to their families. For example, at 11 years old my dad failed fifth grade and
stopped attending school altogether because his family’s priority was ensuring they had money
for food. Rather than go to sixth grade, my dad recounted his experience with tilling sugarcane
and maize in the mountains alongside my grandpa to help provide for their family of 10. Having
experienced only a few years of schooling in his home country, in the U.S. my dad labored as a
parking attendant, working countless hours, often 7 days a week. Estudia, para que no tengas
que tabajar como yo, was his mantra for my brothers and me. In every anecdote my dad shared,
he emphasized a desire for his children to prioritize schooling in ways that he had not been able
to.
Being the second oldest in her family of six women, my mother also had limited
opportunities to prioritize schooling and communicated a belief in education to help her children
transcend the environment she had been born into. For example, my mom graduated from high
school and enrolled in an agricultural and ocean sciences program. Because the program that she
enrolled in was two hours away from the remote village she grew up in, she encountered the
3
challenge of financing housing in a major city. Due to financial and geographical constraints, she
withdrew from school after the first semester. This was her last experience with formal
schooling. When my parents did immigrate to the U.S., my mom stayed at home to raise my
brothers and me. My parents mourned for their home country, raising my brothers and me in
their native language and teaching us their traditions, but on the other side of their mourning, in
their eyes, was possibility and opportunity. So, they raised my siblings and me to believe in this
dominant narrative of upward mobility. Having faced barriers in her own educational experience,
my mom prioritized our education. Without hesitation, she attended every parent-teacher
conference. Diligently, she took notes during conferences and assemblies and sought out
resources to support our learning at home, despite the language barrier she faced. For example, in
response to our teachers encouraging more reading at home, my mom ensured we had access to
books. One instance of this was our weekly walks to the local library. Because she did not yet
know how to drive, nor did we have a second car, on Saturday mornings my brothers and I
would pile into a stray grocery cart we’d find along Tweedy Boulevard as we walked to Leland
R. Weaver Library to check out books for the week. It is this example, along with countless other
moments, that I can pinpoint as giving shape to my understanding of the importance of
education. This is because my parents believed in education’s ability to provide alternate
opportunities than they had. So, through their words and actions my parents emphasized the
importance of education.
It was also important to my working-class parents that they encourage my high
achievement in school because of their perception of the relationship between high achievement
and access to opportunities. This led me to believe in the myth of meritocracy. Bartolomé (2008)
defines meritocracy as, “a form of society in which educational and social success is the outcome
4
of ability and individual merit” (p. xvi). In my parents’ view, high achievement would facilitate
access to university-level education and opportunities to employment beyond the opportunities
that were available to them given their limited formal schooling. Moreover, as a form of
encouragement my parents often cited their life of poverty as justification for their sacrifice in
choosing to migrate to a country not their own. When they did this, they communicated the
message that to make their sacrifice worthwhile, I needed to be persistent about my education.
Therefore, my mom and dad’s experience with poverty and limited schooling informed my
understanding of the importance of education and shaped my relationship with schooling. As a
student in Southeast Los Angeles (SELA) in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD),
I heeded the encouragement of my parents. In my parents’ eyes, my teachers were examples of
success. Because my teachers were college-educated and held professional licensure, my parents
instructed me to listen to their advice and emulate them. After all, my parents’ dream was for me
to attend a 4-year university because for them it represented a path toward success and upward
mobility. At school, my teachers encouraged academic success and described college as the only
path to success. For example, during my junior year in high school I ran to the college center at
the behest of my English teacher. My English teacher was a cisgender, White male from the
Midwest who spoke candidly about the limited opportunities available to our SELA community
in contrast to the opportunities available to the “schools across town.” His emphasis was on
schools with access to resources, for he described the access the parents “across town” to
facilitate access for their children. His emphasis was on the matter-of-fact nature with which
those parents could buy the thousand-dollar SAT preparatory course for their children. He
contrasted their ability with the ability of the parents at our school. The implication was that at
our school, the college center offered only 12 spots and parents were unlikely to prioritize the
5
course for their children. According to him, it was in our best interest to guarantee a spot in the
course since our families were not in a financial place to choose this experience for us. So, I
recall running to the college center after class and enrolling in the course. Although at the time
my grade point average was 3.8, I felt compelled by his description of the SAT prep course. At
the time, I had already taken a practice SAT test and knew that my PSAT scores were neither
“college-worthy,” nor could my parents afford an SAT prep course on their own. So, I believed
my chances for college were dependent on the course. I took the course and felt proud when my
PSAT scores reflected an increase, moving me from feeling hopeless to hopeful at the possibility
of being college-bound. At that time, I attributed my success on this test to my hard work and
determination. After all, I had physically run to show that I was worthy of a spot and dedicated
after-school hours to improving my test scores. I believed I had increased my chances to being
admitted to a four-year university and felt delighted to be on a path of opportunity for success.
This example demonstrates how I internalized the narrative of meritocracy and used this belief as
a driving force in my pursuit of education.
Additionally, I was driven to understand how teachers interrogate their teaching
practices and my role in facilitating their reflection because of my experience as a firstgeneration college student. Two things happened during my first year at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA) that disoriented me and informed my interest in understanding
how teachers examine their unconscious bias and examine their teaching practices. Brookfield
(2010) describes a disorienting dilemma as “an event that points out a discrepancy between
assumptions and perspectives that explain the world satisfactorily and what happens in real life”
(p. 224). The first instance of disorientation was when I was struck by the academic barriers that
historically, racially, and ethnically minoritized students face in institutions of higher education.
6
At UCLA, I struggled with the reality of being a first-generation college student at a
Predominantly White Institution (PWI). After my first semester, I struggled to reconcile the idea
that I belonged at UCLA because of the remedial Math and English classes I had to take. I also
struggled with a sense of belonging because, throughout elementary, middle, and high school I
had been identified as academically gifted, but at UCLA, I was getting Cs and Ds and struggled
to excel in my classes the way I had in my formative years. I felt the overwhelming pressure of
navigating a PWI with a vague, if any, understanding of the coursework I was taking within the
context of a major of study. I also struggled to navigate the bureaucracy of a large campus,
which led me to turn inward and not seek out resources to help improve my grades. This shook
my confidence and cast doubt on my ability to attain success. I turned to my older brother,
Thomas, for advice. I informed him that I would be withdrawing and attending a community
college instead of staying at UCLA. In our conversation, I never named any of the pressure I felt
because I recall feeling like a fraud, only playing at being smart. Similarly, I never voiced any of
these stressors with my parents, as I thought for sure that they would think of me as fraud, too.
My brother discouraged me from withdrawing and cited my admission into UCLA as a reason
for me to persevere. I recall being driven by the belief that my merit had gotten me to this place,
and it was merit that was going to see me through. I believed the messages I received from my
family and teachers about higher education were true and reconciled that the solution to my
struggles would be to work harder and prove to myself and others that I deserved to be there. In
this way, my reality as a first-generation college student was driven by the dominant ideology of
meritocracy.
The second instance of disorientation came when I was struck by the financial barriers
that historically, racially, and ethnically minoritized students face in institutions of higher
7
education. For example, four of us from my high school had been admitted to UCLA, but only
two of us went on to graduate from UCLA. What I became increasingly aware of during my first
year there was how expensive it would be to pay for school. To supplement my financial aid
package, I worked full time throughout my 4 years there. However, my classmates, two of whom
were undocumented, could neither receive financial aid packages nor could they legally work to
supplement the costs of tuition and housing. As a result, my classmates withdrew from the first
semester of classes and didn’t return at all. We were four students from SELA who all received
messages from our high school teachers about the access and opportunities a college path could
provide. We all believed in the power of higher education to move us beyond the life
circumstances we had been born into, yet despite our hard work there were financial barriers that
limited that trajectory for my classmates. At the time, I didn’t question the financial barriers that
stood in their way, I simply remember thinking that they didn’t want “it” enough. Meritocracy
was what—unbeknownst to me—I held in my mind as the reason for my success. Yet it was this
instance that, upon reflection, highlighted the discrepancy between my assumptions about higher
education and, as Brookfield (2010) describes, “what happened in real life” (p. 224). These
examples show how I believed in both the myth of meritocracy and the formal promise of
education to facilitate upward mobility. This is what I understood education to be, the power I
believed education could hold. I was drawn to this action-research dissertation because being in
the Leading Instructional Change concentration at the University of Southern California (USC), I
grappled with ideas of meritocracy and upward mobility. It was during my course of study that I
became more aware of how I have, in the past, conflated hard work with institutional privilege.
Moreover, my experiences as a student growing up in a working-class community in
SELA and as a first-generation college student at UCLA gave shape to my practice as a teacher,
8
which played out in problematic ways. Within my role as a teacher, I telegraphed ideologies
about meritocracy and upward mobility to my students. Ideologies are beliefs that help explain
the social order (Bartolomé, 2008). Moreover, Senge (2006) says that our theories determine
what we measure. In my classroom practice, I measured success according to a White gaze. Paris
and Alim (2014) explain that a White gaze compares historically, racially, and ethnically
minoritized students against White middle-class norms. This meant that I held a belief in
education’s power to facilitate upward mobility for historically, racially, and ethnically
minoritized students. I also communicated to my students a belief in meritocracy. When I began
this study, it was my seventh year as a classroom teacher, and I was concurrently enrolled in the
EdD program USC. While being enrolled in the program, I experienced a third moment of
disorientation, where I began to see the linkages between macro-level variables of society and
the micro-level variables of a classroom context in relation to beliefs about meritocracy and
upward mobility. As a classroom teacher, I taught in San Jose, San Francisco, and Boyle
Heights. I served each community demographically composed of historically, racially, and
ethnically minoritized students, which included Black and Brown students. Each community
reflected the faces of my brothers and friends. As a teacher in each of these cities, I represented
myself to my students and their families as someone who was an example of the opportunity that
arose from high achievement, narrowly defining success as evidenced by a college-education. I
offered my experience as proof that if I could do it, so could they. In this way, I perpetuated a
belief in upward mobility, that through hard work, one attained success. In my classroom
practice, I measured success based on the ideology of meritocracy, that students could prove
their intelligence through their hard work and high scores on a standardized test. For instance,
over the course of my tenure at my current school in Boyle Heights, I found myself “teaching to
9
the test.” By teaching to the test, I focused on a school-centric definition of learning, and with
this definition of learning I focused on the “bubble kids,” I focused on compliance, and I focused
on an assessment as an indication of learning. I now understand that, by focusing on a
standardized test as a demonstration of learning, I held a deficit orientation toward my students
and problematized individual students for not “achieving” according to a belief in meritocracy.
Because I taught students whose demographic characteristics and life experiences mirrored my
own, this third disorienting dilemma came into focus since teaching at my school. First, I
realized that determining learning through a standardized assessment placed responsibility for
students’ success exclusively on one instrument. It said that all students should be able to
produce evidence of knowledge and/or skill in the same way, according to the same timeline, and
according to an instrument that might not be culturally relevant. Second, defining success as
evidenced by a college education that could facilitate upward mobility was a harmful ideology to
perpetuate because it dehumanized students who went on to pursue other career pathways. Third,
I realized that blaming a student for their lack of high achievement failed to account for how
institutional factors played a role in privileging some and marginalizing others, therefore
reproducing the status quo. For these reasons, my goal was to apply my new understandings to
my work as a leader in the context of my setting because high achievement does not happen in a
vacuum. Moreover, my goal was to promote these understandings with my peers who also
internalized harmful ideologies. The tension I experienced from grappling with ideas of
meritocracy and upward mobility and knowing I had also telegraphed those same ideologies to
my students was another example of how I was driven to understand my role in initiating critical
reflection, so that teachers at my school site could interrogate their own teaching practices.
10
Historically Entrenched Inequity
An education debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006) is owed to racially and ethnically minoritized
students. Racism is the root of education like it is the root of our nation (Spring, 2016). This is
because the history of our country’s founding includes acts of genocide, enslavement,
segregation, and deculturalization—to name a few—based on the premise that racially and
ethnically minoritized communities are inferior (Spring, 2016). Historically, economically,
sociopolitically, and morally, the institution of education has been injurious to historically,
racially, and ethnically minoritized students and the quality of their education (Ladson-Billings,
2006). Moreover, in the United States formal education created structures for White power and
domination of Black and Native peoples (Givens & Ison, 2023). For instance, Anderson (1988)
describes how between 1800 and 1835, legislation in the Southern states made it a crime to teach
enslaved children to read or write. Moreover, the U.S. Congress made it illegal for Native
Americans to be taught in their native languages (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Similarly, in 1906 the
San Francisco Board of Education established separate schools for Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean children (Spring, 2016). Furthermore, the Lemon Grove incident, described in Mendez
V. Westminster, details the way schools excluded Brown children and kept them from a highquality education (Ladson-Billings, 2006). These examples illustrate a deficit in the quality of
education that racially and ethnically minoritized students received. In each of these instances,
there is a policy or law that legitimized the belief that racially and ethnically minoritized students
did not belong in spaces where high-quality education was being provided.
Ladson-Billings (2006) describes how this debt, and in the long-term, deficit, has
consequences for the type of education that students receive and the type of lives that they lead.
Exclusion from schools, forced assimilation, deculturalization, and removal of communities from
11
their native land, therefore, have amassed disparities in education that are reproduced in
classroom spaces. These examples highlight that, as a society, we owe a great debt to racially
and ethnically minoritized students. Rather than recognize that debt, as a society, we created a
paradigm that argues that racially and ethnically minoritized students are failing (Oakes et al.,
2018). This paradigm further reinforces the narrative that racially and ethnically minoritized
students are inferior and don’t deserve a high-quality education (Ladson-Billings, 2006). More
specifically, the paradigm of the achievement gap compares the achievement of racially and
ethnically minoritized students on standardized assessments with their White counterparts
(Ladson-Billings, 2006). The paradigm of the achievement gap is problematic because it
compares students based on a deficit view of racially and ethnically minoritized students. After
creating tremendous inequity for racially and ethnically minoritized students, as a society we
created accountability measures to address the “failure” of these students.
The paradigm of the achievement gap exacerbates inequities when it filters down from
politics to schools. From 1980 to 2001, there was a push at the state and federal levels to improve
instruction by way of stringent accountability measures (Mehta, 2013). This was a period during
which there was increased standards-based reform, Republican and Democratic convergence
around federal legislation, and ultimately, increased institutional responsibility. More
institutional responsibility was ordained without providing schools the support they needed to
accomplish the outcomes laid out by laws like the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in
1970, then the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act in
2015 (Oakes et al., 2018). All these laws primed the public to see the failing scores of racially
and ethnically minoritized students as a deficit in the students, only to be solved through higher
standards and accountability (Mehta, 2013). This paradigm resulted in educators assigning blame
12
to the communities whom they served by exhorting accountability from students to achieve
(Ladson-Billings, 2006). This is a problem for all students because accountability measures are
rooted in capitalism, racism, and the goal of educating two distinct groups of students —the elite
and the masses (Oakes et al., 2018). Tuitt (2018) reminds us that “there are some instances when
a law (pedagogical decision) is just on its face and unjust in its application” (p. 9). Just
application of accountability measures would recognize that an education debt has led to an
education deficit (Tuitt, 2018). Just application would recognize that to conflate achievement
with rigorous academic work is dangerous and further reproduces inequities for students who do,
indeed, work hard but have institutional barriers denying their achievement (Tuitt, 2018). In my
context, the problem of practice was the way accountability measures at my school site drove
instruction because teachers extrinsically motivated students to achieve on standardized
assessments according to beliefs about meritocracy and upward mobility.
Organizational Context
At the time of this study, I worked within the KIPP network of schools. The KIPP
network operated to serve low-income students through tuition-free education (kippsocal.org).
The espoused theory of the organization said that we taught children to develop academic and
character strengths that would enable them to lead choice-filled lives (kippsocal.org). A choicefilled life, as it was defined by the organization, was one where students demonstrated high
achievement and therefore could choose to attend a 4-year university or be ready to pursue a
career of their choice (kippsocal.org). In recent years, the national leadership team reevaluated
our organization’s purpose in driving our mission. In 2020, our purpose now stated, “the purpose
of education is liberation” (kippsocal.org). During our recurring professional development, the
organization both at the national and regional level acknowledged that society viewed racially
13
and ethnically minoritized students through a deficit lens, and as an organization, we engaged in
book studies at the school site level to unearth our personal biases. For example, at each schoolsite conversations about race were a recurring part of professional development sessions, titled
“Raising Our Critical Consciousness” (ROCC). During the 2020–2021 school year, we read So
You Want to Talk About Race? by Ijeoma Oluo. During the 2021–2022 school year, we read
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and you by Ibram X. Kendi. Despite our organizational purpose
shifting, our conversations about race did not filter down to our everyday practice in schools and
as teachers. Despite our ROCC sessions, I believe a deficit view of racially and ethnically
minoritized students was expressed in our schools through our instruction and the curriculum we
enacted because our beliefs remained unexamined.
The dominant narrative we enacted was shaped by the organization’s belief that
standardized assessments determined whether students were learning and achieving. This belief
was palpable at different levels of the organization stemming from the words and actions of
regional leaders down to the leadership teams at each school site. For example, region-wide data
dives dubbed “Strong Start” were the kick-off to each school year. Every August, we gathered as
a network of schools for a day of data analysis. On this day, we examined the academic data of
our students by listening to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) present on the data of our region
as disaggregated by each school site. When the CEO offered her keynote, she telegraphed an
urgency to improve student achievement data, a message that filtered down to each school’s
leadership team. Within my school, for example, there were quarterly data dives that resembled
the “Strong Start” session in which the school leader presented on the academic data of the
students at my school as disaggregated by grade level. During the sessions, teachers would
reflect and create an action plan for small group intervention and spiral review to be
14
implemented within a week. In this way, the organization and school leadership teams created
urgency for teachers to drive student achievement through an emphasis on standardized
assessments. Correspondingly, there was high surveillance of teachers in our organization. One
example which demonstrated high surveillance of teachers were our internalization meetings and
the protocol for the meetings. Every week grade-level teams met to internalize the lessons for an
upcoming week. For the meetings, there was a protocol for internalization. The protocol included
a robust agenda bound by time and items to be discussed. Administrators set expectations for the
completion of the internalization agenda and joined meetings to ensure the protocol was enacted
in the way it was intended. Along with high surveillance of teachers, school leaders
communicated inflexibility with instruction in preparation for standardized assessments. For
instance, something that happened often, was that administrators encouraged teachers to modify
the day’s schedule to include more test prep. By pushing for more test prep, teachers internalized
and fostered a culture of high performance on standardized assessments within their classrooms
that left little room for error. As such, teachers deemphasized the importance of Science or
Social Studies to make room in a day’s schedule to allow for more test prep in English and Math,
the subjects for which standardized assessments were administered. A focus on high
performance on assessments singularly measured whether students could reproduce the learning
they had acquired. Enacted teacher practices went unexamined in the context of our ROCC
sessions and internalization meetings. Moreover, in our discussions about data, if students were
not meeting or exceeding the standards, then they were not learning. For instance, a common
practice was that teachers focused on “bubble kids” during testing season. School leaders drove
this practice by outlining which students the test had identified as having performed proficiently
when compared against the performance indicators on standardized assessments. The goal then
15
was for teachers to prioritize the “bubble kids” during the weeks leading up to a test. The
students who were far below mastery were given review worksheets, but it was the small group
of “bubble students” who received extra attention and resources during the pre-testing season. In
this case, teachers privileged some students and marginalized other students. In this way, our
school reproduced the social structures and inequities that existed to keep racially and ethnically
minoritized students from accessing quality education.
Therefore, the problem of practice within my organizational context was that teachers
held unconscious biases that drove our curriculum in deleterious ways. These biases, when left
unaddressed and unexamined, reproduced the inequity that students must adhere to a White
standard to be successful (Bartolomé, 2004). According to the most recent KIPP Academy
Renewal Charter Petition submitted in 2019 (for the term of July 2020 through June 2025) out of
the 456 students enrolled, 97% of students identified as Latinx. Moreover, our staff was
composed of teachers whose racial and ethnic identities reflected those of our student population.
It must be stated then that racially and ethnically minoritized teachers are not immune to
negative ideologies and deficit views of their students (Alfaro & Bartolomé, 2017). Furthermore,
Alfaro and Bartolomé (2017) argue that teachers who work with students from similar
backgrounds internalize negative rhetoric about racially and ethnically minoritized students
because they believe in the social order of things. For instance, where we, as racially and
ethnically minoritized teachers, all held power was that most, if not all of us, had bachelor’s and
master’s degrees. This positionality unconsciously affirmed the belief that the social order
worked. We all worked hard, and we all had the credentialing to support the belief that hard
work merited success. Therefore, teachers advocated for achievement as measured by a White
standard because in our personal experiences, meritocracy worked in our favor. Bartolomé
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(2004) states that this internalized racism begets an intolerance for cultural funds of knowledge
because the White standard is deemed superior. I experienced that teachers at my school did not
use students’ funds of knowledge in the curriculum nor their instruction.
Bartolomé (2004) argues that successful teachers counter dominant ideologies that have
filtered down from the mainstream culture and into the schools of racially and ethnically
minoritized students. In my organizational context, each teacher’s understanding of our
organizational purpose of “liberation” was expressed differently in their internalization of the
curriculum and their teaching practice. Because teachers had internalized the dominant ideology
of meritocracy and upward mobility, their internalization of “liberation” was not to leverage
students’ funds of knowledge. Bartolomé (2008) discusses how teachers uncritically accept this
status quo and blame academic failure on students themselves. In their instructional practices,
teachers emphasized compliance through a behaviorist approach to learning. A behaviorist
approach to learning rewards compliance and punishes noncompliance. I had experienced that
teachers encouraged students to work hard and show “grit.” In my context, students showed grit
by “tracking the teacher,” using their test-taking strategies, and by reaching academic
benchmarks. Teachers rewarded this behavior and compliance by giving students Positive
Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) points and raffle tickets. Additionally, I experienced
teachers threatening students with punishment (by taking away PBIS points) when students did
not show compliance. To reiterate, teachers at my school did not use students’ funds of
knowledge in the curriculum nor their instruction. Moreover, the organizational structures
present at my school site limited the ability for teachers to translate our newly established
purpose of education from theory to action. Therefore, the work to challenge the status quo
remained, and that was where I came in.
17
My Role
My role, when I undertook this study was that of a third-grade teacher and English
Language Arts (ELA) planner for our grade-level team. As an ELA planner, I created the
curriculum for our team to implement within their respective classrooms. For this reason, I was
in a position of influence on the curriculum we enacted. In my teaching practice, there was
evidence that I also internalized dominant ideologies from mainstream culture. A belief in
dominant ideologies numbed me into a routine, convinced me that I was in competition with my
colleagues, and led me to create a stressful environment for my students. I, too, was complicit in
reproducing the historically entrenched inequity that students were “falling behind” according to
standardized assessments. I was complicit in rewarding compliance and punishing
noncompliance. This ideology communicated to the students that their success was up to them
alone (Bartolomé, 2008). Moreover, I telegraphed to my colleagues that they, too, should focus
on compliance and mastery of skills when I led the internalization of our curriculum in our
synchronous planning time. Before undertaking this study, I didn’t want to continue reproducing
the status quo, and this desire served as another reason that drove my interest in this actionresearch study.
My area of interest throughout this research study was, broadly, how people critically
reflect. From an andragogical perspective, I was interested in understanding how adults
examined their unconscious biases. More specifically, and from a pedagogical perspective, I was
interested in how teachers facilitated learning for elementary-aged students, in an urban context,
that was rooted in liberation. I was interested in how, within my role as an ELA planner, I
initiated critical reflection alongside my grade-level team. We were a team of five, with four of
us being cisgender Latinx and Chicanx General Education teachers and one Black American
18
Special Education teacher. We varied in our experience as Latinx, Chicanx, and Black
Americans in the United States, with three of us being first-generation Latinx folks, one teacher
who was a second-generation Chicanx, and one teacher who identified as Black American. Our
experience also varied from 3 to 18 years of teaching experience. Despite how our life
experiences varied, we shared a passion for teaching and learning within a community all of us
called home. Logistically, each teacher planned a respective subject area for the rest of the team
to implement in their classrooms. Together we internalized lessons and unit assessments in
anticipation of teaching by reading lessons independent of one another, completing prework
before our weekly meetings and coming together during internalization meetings to share best
practices in our respective pursuit to best support all our students.
My goal during this action-research study was to help develop the racial and cultural
knowledge of self and students that would allow me and my colleagues to 1) acknowledge that
teaching had racist roots and was political, 2) recognize that every person had an unconscious
bias that needed to be addressed, and 3) move toward embracing pedagogical choices with the
needs of all learners in mind given these realities. The question that guided the research study
was: “How do I engage four elementary school teachers in Boyle Heights to examine their
unconscious biases that guide their teaching practice with an eye toward embracing more
culturally relevant practices?”
In the ensuing sections, I narrate the conceptual framework that explains my theory of
change. Following the conceptual framework narrative, I present the action-research methods
that explain who participated in the study, what my actions were, and what my data collection
and analysis methods entailed. This will be followed by my findings and retrospective
takeaways. Together, these parts explain how I addressed my research question. More
19
specifically, this dissertation will show my role in unearthing unconscious bias within my school
site to ultimately embrace cultural competence as one tenet of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
(CRP).
Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework is a synthesis of what Maxwell (2013) describes as “the
system of concepts, assumptions, expectations, beliefs, and theories that supports and informs
your research” (p. 39). The conceptual framework, shown in Figure 1, is a revised construction
that shows my understanding of the concepts and the relationships between them based on the
literature I have reviewed, my experiences within my organizational context, my thought
experiments, and in-the-field research I conducted (Maxwell, 2013). It is a model for my theory
of action that I drew upon to guide this action-research study. More specifically, it details what I
learned from my in-the-field experience in relation to my goal of helping teachers examine their
practices with an eye towards culturally relevant pedagogy. While in the field, I did not make
progress towards the goal of moving learners towards critical reflection, yet I strengthened my
awareness of self in relation to that goal by enacting one behavior of adaptive leadership, getting
on the balcony. While I desired to move my learners toward critical reflection and ideological
clarity, it is not desire alone that enables learners to critically reflect. I learned from this actionresearch study that a leader must be conscious of the context in which they operate. Moving
forward, I will utilize my current theory of action to initiate progress towards my long-term goal
of moving learners toward critical reflection. My subsequent work will continue to inform
changes to my theory of action.
My current theory of action draws upon elements of adaptive leadership, andragogy,
critical reflection, and one tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy, which is cultural competence. I
20
learned from my in-the-field experience that these elements are situated within the context of my
organization. The conceptual framework details how it is my responsibility to employ behaviors
of adaptive leaders and enact elements of andragogy to guide third-grade teachers to examine
their internalized racism, complex positionality, and unconscious biases so that their knowledge
of dominant ideologies helps them embrace alternative practices that are consistent with
culturally relevant pedagogy. Kholi (2019) argues that teachers who have ideological clarity, or
who are critically conscious, understand inequity and can act against oppressive elements from
society. In this action-research study I, as an adaptive leader, employed an adaptive behavior,
known as getting on the balcony, to step out of the fray from the in-the-field research and reflect
on my own role in this action-research study. I still believe that it is my responsibility to enact
andragogical moves with teachers to promote critical reflection about structural power and
inequity to help them move toward embracing cultural relevant pedagogy, but it is not an aspect
of my theory of action that I was able to enact during my in-the-field research. In the following
section, I describe in detail the concepts, how they relate to each other, and how my theory of
action for this study evolved.
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Figure 1
Conceptual Framework
This conceptual framework situates my theory of action within a school’s context and its
organizational conditions. It draws on elements of adaptive leadership, andragogy, critical
reflection, and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). A school’s context and its organizational
conditions enable peer learning communities to move toward teaching or away from practice
(Horn & Little, 2010). Adaptive leadership mobilizes people to tackle challenges and thrive
during the disequilibrium (Heifetz, 2009; Northouse, 2019). Andragogy considers adulthood a
time of growth during which the developmental diversity of individuals can be used to support
and challenge the complexity of teaching for social justice (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano,
2017). Critical reflection is a process of examining how individuals are positioned with power to
take informed action and challenge hegemonic structures and practices (Brookfield, 2010).
Culturally relevant pedagogy responds to the cultural, social, political, and cultural needs of
students (Khalifa et al., 2016). More specifically, Ladson-Billings (1995) defines culturally
22
relevant teaching as a pedagogy of opposition, where teachers are committed to the collective
empowerment of racially and ethnically minoritized students. Together, the elements in this
framework illustrate what I would need to be true for the enactment of my theory of change to be
successful.
In Figure 1, change is represented as both an ongoing process of critical reflection and a
product of critical reflection. Brookfield (2010) calls for teachers to examine their assumptions
about power to understand how it shows up in a classroom. Additionally, Brookfield (2010)
states that by understanding the assumptions that frame our beliefs and actions, teachers can
critically begin to see dimensions of their practice that they have overlooked. As an ELA planner
and third-grade teacher, I wanted and still want the other third-grade teachers I work with to
approach our teaching with ideological clarity. Alfaro and Bartolomé (2017) say that ideological
clarity is a practice where teachers critically evaluate their practice “to better recognize how the
culture of the dominant class becomes embedded in the hidden curriculum that silence[s]
students” (p. 14). My goal was and remains for us to examine the complex nature of our
positionalities and interrogate our teaching practices for alignment to one tenet of culturally
relevant pedagogy so that we uncover whether our belief systems uncritically reflect those of the
dominant society and understand how these are reflected in our instructional choices. The tenet
of culturally relevant pedagogy that I continue to focus on is cultural competence. Therefore, my
goal was and continues to be that, as Rodgers (2002) encourages, we examine ourselves and
embrace cultural competence in our pedagogies based on the understanding of ourselves that
emerge. What I learned from my in-the-field experience was that these elements are situated
within a school’s context. I, as a leader in the space, was constrained by my school’s
organizational conditions and this impacted the quality of the discourse that surfaced. My
23
learners, too, responded to the behaviors that I promoted based on my enactment of our
internalization protocol and the conditions that we had been socialized into within our context.
Though I did not move learners toward ideological clarity, I still believe that it is my
responsibility to engage learners in critical reflection to move them towards ideological clarity.
In the following section, I will further explain the elements of my conceptual framework
based on how it evolved. First, I will describe the organizational conditions that need to be in
place to move teachers toward practice. Second, I will concretize adaptive leadership and
andragogy within my role as a third-grade teacher and ELA planner for my grade-level team.
Third, I will detail the dominant ideologies that have filtered from society down to me and my
colleagues. Fourth, I will crystallize the elements of critical reflection I drew from. Finally, I will
explain how, within my role as a teacher and content planner, I believe it is important to pair
critical reflection with cultural competence so that teachers can move away from pedagogies that
reproduce the status quo and, instead, embrace alternative practices that are consistent with
culturally relevant pedagogy.
Organizational Conditions and Structural Constraints
A school’s social, technical, and organizational conditions enable peer learning
communities to move toward teaching or away from practice (Horn & Little, 2010). This is
because the social and technical structures within an organization dictate whether a problem of
practice can be examined through a technical lens or through an adaptive lens. While in the field,
I found that there were conditions that limited my ability to engage the learners in reflective
dialogue. There were structural constraints within my organization that limited how I engaged
my learners to examine an adaptive problem. Structural constraints are rigid structures, rules,
and procedures that schools implement to hold teachers accountable to improving academic
24
performance (Elmore, 2002). Moreover, organizational conditions are norms of collaboration, a
focus on students and their academic performance, and mutual accountability for student growth
and success (Horn & Little, 2010). Leaders create or limit opportunities for teachers to learn and
improve their teaching practices based on the reciprocity of conditions and conversational
routines, or moves, they employ (Horn & Little, 2010). In peer-learning communities, teachers
will signal or make explicit references to problems of practice, and I believe that an
organization’s conditions allow participants to examine a problem of practice through an
adaptive lens and move toward that discussion of practice, or conversely, and to the detriment of
teacher learning, default to technical solutions and move away from a discussion of practice.
Turning toward teaching refers to teachers treating the shared character of a problem as the
starting point for a conversation (Horn & Little, 2010). Turning away from teaching refers to
when teachers limit themselves to expressions of sympathy or reassurance, or when teachers
move directly to advice before moving on to other more instrumental tasks (Horn & Little,
2010). My theory of action has evolved to take assessment of a school’s context because of the
importance of the social, technical, and organizational conditions of an organization and its
impact on the work of the individuals who operate within it. Weis and Fine (2012) refer to this
concept as critical bifocality, an act of viewing problems of practice through a bifocal lens.
Furthermore, viewing a problem of practice through a bifocal lens requires researchers “to
examine how specific contextual elements operate on actors to produce outcomes” (Weis & Fine,
2012, p. 177). Therefore, my conceptual framework now includes a school’s context because of
the inextricable nature of the local context with its relationship to its actors. As such, I now
understand a problem of practice with consideration for the organizational conditions in a local
context and its relationship with the learners in a space. In doing so, I argue that this can support
25
my ability to engage learners in critical reflection so that they will interrogate their beliefs and
adopts culturally relevant pedagogy.
Adaptive Leadership and Andragogy With Teachers
I contend that, by drawing on elements from adaptive leadership and andragogy, leaders
work toward co-constructing a brave space where learners can confront their discriminatory
ideologies that are revealed in their instructional choices as teachers of racially and ethnically
minoritized students. While in-the-field, I did not co-construct a brave space with my learners,
yet I still believe in the importance of a brave space and have retained elements of adaptive
leadership and andragogy in my conceptual framework because I believe they are important to
help learners move toward critical reflection. First, I will define elements of adaptive leadership
that are necessary to enact moving forward. Second, I will name the characteristics of a brave
space. Third, I will detail the andragogical moves that, with consideration for the context of my
organization and its social, technical, and organizational conditions, I will build upon in my work
beyond this research study.
The adaptive leader is not a savior, but rather, someone who helps people confront
adaptive challenges (Northouse, 2019). Northouse (2019) distinguishes a technical challenge
from an adaptive challenge. A technical challenge is a problem that a leader can solve through
their expertise and existing organizational procedures (Northouse, 2019). Conversely, an
adaptive challenge does not have an easily identifiable solution, nor can it be solved through
routine organizational procedures (Northouse, 2019). Instead, an adaptive problem is a challenge
because the organizational members must change their priorities, beliefs, roles, and values to
implement a solution (Northouse, 2019). Moreover, an adaptive challenge requires the leader to
work with organizational members to name the problem and implement a solution (Northouse,
26
2019). Beyond this research study, I still believe in the importance of the elements of adaptive
leadership. In my theory of action, I have retained elements of adaptive leadership to mobilize
people to tackle adaptive change and help them thrive during the disequilibrium that comes with
changing one’s beliefs and values (Heifetz, 2009; Northouse 2019). The elements of adaptive
leadership that I continue to believe are important are what Northouse (2019) calls getting on the
balcony, identifying the adaptive challenge, and regulating distress.
Northouse (2019) describes getting on the balcony as a metaphor for stepping away from
the organizational activity and chaos of a situation to get a clearer view of reality. Getting on the
balcony requires that I look at the bigger picture to understand what’s going on (Northouse,
2019). During the action-research study, I was able to get on the metaphorical balcony by
participating in grade-level meetings with my colleagues as both a participant and an observer.
This also meant that I stepped away to reflect about our grade level in the context of the
messages we received from our school leadership team. Following the meetings, I wrote down
my reflections about how I understood the dynamics of adaptive change to be playing out and
found that organizational conditions constrained us from approaching problems of practice
through an adaptive lens. During my study, I often stepped away from the fray of being in-thefield and reflected on my own role in enacting change.
Another adaptive leadership behavior I still believe in but did not enact is what Northouse
(2019) describes as identifying the adaptive challenge. Identifying the adaptive challenge will
require that I work with my colleagues and share the responsibility for identifying and accepting
the proposed change. While I was able to get on the balcony and recognize my own role in
enacting change, I did not arrive at a place where I was able to share the adaptive challenge with
my colleagues. This is because context is important. Within my context, there were
27
organizational conditions that prevented my learners and me from operating through anything
but a technical lens. Northouse (2019) describes the patterns that signal that adaptive change is
necessary. The first pattern Northouse (2019) describes is if there is a gap between espoused
values and behavior. Another pattern that signals adaptive change is necessary is if there are
competing commitments within an organization (Northouse, 2019). A third pattern to recognize
before initiating adaptive change is if organizational members do not speak the unspeakable
(Northouse, 2019). By getting on the balcony, I recognized that unearthing our unconscious
biases was challenging and adaptive work. I invited my colleagues to be participants in the study,
but I was limited by both structural and internal constraints. The structural constraints of time
and an agenda superseded naming the importance of our shared responsibility for us to challenge
our assumptions and pedagogical choices that did not best serve our students. My own internal
constraints like my own sense of self and self-efficacy also limited my actions because of the
fear of cultural suicide. As a result of the organization’s structural constraints and my own
internal constraints, my learners responded to the conditions into which they had been socialized.
Despite the constraints I was limited by, my theory of action continues to include this element of
adaptive leadership.
A third adaptive leadership behavior that I continue to believe is important to helping
mobilize teachers to consider alternative teaching practices is what Northouse (2019) calls
regulating distress. Regulating distress is defined as a leader’s ability to help others recognize the
need for adaptive change while helping those engaged in change keep the distress they may feel
within a productive range (Northouse, 2019). During my study, I did not regulate the distress of
my participants, and most importantly, found that I struggled to regulate my own distress.
Northouse (2019) argues that stress is inherent in change because of our psychological need to
28
maintain consistency. Northouse (2019) says that a holding environment is necessary to regulate
distress. A holding environment is a shared space where leaders can leverage the shared norms,
processes, relationships, and common history to attend to issues for adaptive change to occur
(Northouse, 2019). To regulate distress, I intended to create a holding environment within our
grade-level meetings to begin the dialogue for adaptive change to occur, yet I was not able to
create such a space. Regulating distress is a behavior of adaptive leaders that remains in my
conceptual framework because I ultimately want to create opportunities where we examine our
dominant ideologies and create a holding environment where trust abounds. Regulating distress
is central to that goal.
To help manage the disequilibrium that is inherent in adaptive change, adaptive leaders
foster a brave space with their learners. Arao and Clemens (2013) encourage leaders to help adult
learners co-construct a brave space rather than a safe space. They define a safe space as one
where participants are engaged and express themselves because there are discussion guidelines
that ensure their safety to do so (Arao & Clemens, 2013). They argue that a safe space is in
opposition to conversations where issues of power, privilege, oppression, and identity are the
focus (Arao & Clemens, 2013). In this study, identifying and challenging what teachers value,
believe, and assume about racially and ethnically minoritized students and students’ ability to
learn was a goal of mine. While in the field, I did not co-construct a brave space with my
colleagues. However, I continue to believe in its importance and have retained this element in
my conceptual framework. A brave space inspires courage in the face of conflict (Arao &
Clemens, 2013). Co-constructing a brave space is not just a prelude to learning but working
towards it is part of the process of learning (Arao & Clemens, 2013). In such a space,
participants seek to decenter dominant narratives through a collective understanding that civility
29
can restrict participation, so participants agree to explore content that is out of their comfort
zones (Arao & Clemens, 2013). For adaptive change to occur, as an adaptive leader, I recognize
that in my future work, I must leverage the relationships with my colleagues for us to feel safe
when engaged in critical reflection, and I also recognize that safety in our conversations will
reproduce the status quo. It is necessary, therefore, that I promote a brave space. To make my
long-term goal of engaging teachers in critical reflection, I will work towards co-creating a brave
space with my colleagues where we will examine how our identities reproduce privilege and
oppression so that we may also interrogate our instructional choices and embrace alternative
practices.
Based on my in-the-field experience of working with adult learners, I have retained
the elements from andragogy in my conceptual framework to help adults manage the change
process in my future work with them. Andragogy considers adulthood a time of growth (DragoSeverson & Blum DeStefano, 2017). Andragogy emphasizes self-knowledge and critical
reflection as integral to transforming ourselves and to championing the learning of all students
(Drago-Severson & Blum DeStefano, 2017). Andragogy uses a constructive-developmental
theory to approach how adults learn and develop (Drago-Severson & Blum DeStefano, 2017).
This theory contends that leaders can help adult learners grow to examine internalized
assumptions by offering supports and challenges based on knowledge of how adult learners
orient themselves to learning. Moreover, Drago-Severson and Blum DeStefano (2017) contend
that leaders must couple knowledge of the developmental capacity of adult learners with critical
inquiry to support and challenge adult learners so that they can reframe internalized values,
assumptions, and beliefs about teaching and learning. As I move forward in my work, I will draw
on constructive-developmental theory to help support and challenge the complexity of the work
30
we do as teachers by 1) using evidence I have of the adult learners in my context and 2) drawing
on this knowledge to move us towards critical reflection (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano,
2017).
Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano (2017) argue that there are four ways of knowing:
instrumental, socializing, self-authoring, and self-transforming. The instrumental knower is
oriented towards right and wrong and has not yet developed the ability to fully take on another’s
perspective (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017). The socializing knower is concerned
with no “universal” way to live, learn, lead, or teach. The self-authoring knower is invested in
others’ feelings and cannot be overrun by them. Finally, the self-transforming knower is
grounded in their philosophies and systems of beliefs while continuing to be open to further
reflection (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017). While in the field, I did not approach my
research with the learners’ ways of knowing in mind, as I was often too overwhelmed by my
own distress. However, I have retained this element in my conceptual framework because I
believe that for leaders to move learners towards critical reflection, they must consider a
learner’s orientation to learning. Moving forward I will use previous conversations with my
colleagues as evidence of the type of learners I believe them to be. Based on this knowledge, I
will offer supports and stretches for growth to move us towards critical reflection. According to
Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano (2017), there are also scaffolds that leaders can use to help
adult learners make stretches for growth. The scaffolds I will use include modeling and
questioning to encourage critical reflection. There are supports and challenges I can enact as I
work with adults to 1) examine our assumptions about students, teaching, and learning and 2)
embrace culturally relevant practices that honor the entirety of the identities of the students we
teach.
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I did not engage my learners in the process of critical reflection. While I did model
turning towards teaching by describing my practice, it was at a level that was insufficient to be
discussed in the findings. However, as I move forward, I posit that the change I am trying to
facilitate requires that I model and encourage critical reflection about our underlying
assumptions, ideologies, and pedagogical choices. Critical reflection is a process of examining
how individuals are positioned with power to take informed action to challenge hegemonic
structures and practices (Brookfield, 2010). My goal is to use critical reflection paired with the
conditions of critical inquiry as an andragogical tool to enact change. Mezirow (2003) names the
skills and sensitivities needed to engage in critical inquiry. Emotionally intelligent sensitivities
such as an open mind, regulating distress, and learning to listen without premature judgment are
some of the sensitivities I will draw on to move our dialogue from inquiry about our underlying
assumptions to critical reflection (Mezirow, 2003). My conceptual framework has evolved to
include regulating my own distress as one of the skills needed to engage learners in critical
reflection. Further, by being empathetic to my colleagues’ orientations to learning and moving
our dialogue towards critical reflection, I will help teachers examine the complex nature of their
positionality because our positionalities are inherently shaped by what we value, believe, and
assume about teaching and learning. I will also model and encourage dialogue where teachers
will describe current teaching practices for evidence that they are culturally relevant. In the
future, I will help adults stretch themselves by promoting the conditions where we can
interrogate the power inherent in our daily practice so that we can embrace alternative practices
consistent with culturally relevant teaching.
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Teachers and Dominant Ideologies
While in the field, I did not lead teachers to examine their dominant ideologies. However,
I still believe that this behavior of adaptive leaders is central to my goal of moving learners
towards ideological clarity. I argue that dominant ideologies serve to reproduce the status quo.
Ideologies refer to the framework of beliefs held by individuals to justify an existing social order
(Bartolomé, 2004). Senge (2006) argues that ideologies are derived from “leaps of abstractions”
that happen when our minds “abstract from concrete particulars” and leap to generalizations (p.
178). Ideologies, however, do not exist in a vacuum. That is because ideologies exist at the deep,
psychological structure of an individual’s personality based on individual needs, drives, passions,
and the changing conditions of society (Senge, 2006). Moreover, ideologies are dangerous when
they 1) justify asymmetrical power relations, 2) create meritocratic explanations for the social
order, 3) shape deficit views of students of color, and 4) create romanticized notions of the
dominant culture (Bartolomé, 2004).
Historically, racially, and ethnically minoritized students have not been treated well in
educational institutions (Bartolomé, 2004). There are several explanations for this mistreatment.
First, teachers and administrators often believe that a student’s ethnicity and socioeconomic
status warrants lower prestige to justify the mistreatment of students of color. Second, Bartolomé
(2004) argues that teachers and administrators have internalized the myth of meritocracy to
justify why minority groups are at the “bottom” and Whites are at the “top.” Meritocracy is the
belief that “educational and social success is the outcome of ability and individual merit” (Jary &
Jary, as cited in Bartolomé, 2004, p. XVI). Third, teachers and administrators carry deficit
models that are a result of viewing students of color as lesser than (Bartolomé, 2004). Fourth,
teachers and administrators carry internalized racism that drives them to make their students of
33
color more like White students (Bartolomé, 2004). Together, these ideologies incline teachers to
drive instruction in harmful ways that serve to affirm the status quo—that White is superior, that
there is a preferred knowledge to aspire to, and that students should assimilate. Based on
evidence from my interactions with my colleagues, I argue that these are the beliefs that my
colleagues and I have internalized in the deep, psychological structures of our minds.
These ideologies give way to unconscious bias that —when unaddressed and through our
instruction—convey to our students that they should aspire to a White gaze. Measuring students
according to a White gaze means that teachers make the mistake of measuring students against
White middle-class norms, which perpetuates the status quo of the achievement gap (Paris &
Alim, 2014). Further, Paris and Alim (2014) argue that this fallacy gives teachers a filter with
which to view racially and ethnically minoritized students, specifically naming that this filter is
one of contempt and pity. By treating students as inferior, teachers do not provide instruction that
aligns with students’ needs or funds of knowledge (Paris & Alim, 2014). During my in the field
experience, I was limited by organizational conditions, structural and internal constraints and did
not move my learners to examine their unconscious bias. In the following section, I will explain
how I drew on elements of adaptive leadership and andragogy. Although I wanted to but did not
work toward a brave space where my colleagues and I unearthed our discriminatory ideologies
and unconscious biases, I have retained this concept in my conceptual framework. That is
because I still believe that by working toward a brave space and by engaging in critical
reflection, my colleagues will begin to see the linkages between the macro-level variables of
society that impact the micro-level variables in our classrooms so that 1) they are better
positioned to challenge dominant ideologies that filter down to their instruction and 2) rather
34
than defaulting to instructional choices that reproduce the status quo, instead they embrace
alternative instructional practices that are culturally relevant.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Ideological Clarity, and Our Teaching
When looking to make change, a leader helps adult learners examine the complex nature
of their positionality and interrogate their teaching practices for their consistency with cultural
competence as a tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy. I did not help the adult learners in my
context to either examine their positionality, or to interrogate their teaching practices. However, I
have retained the element of critical reflection in my conceptual framework because it is in line
with my theory of change. That is because culturally relevant pedagogy is a pedagogy of
opposition, where teachers are committed to the collective empowerment of racially and
ethnically minoritized students (Ladson-Billings, 1995). More specifically, culturally relevant
teachers have a raised consciousness about attending to students’ academic success and utilizing
students’ funds of knowledge as a vehicle for learning (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Ladson-Billings
argues that culturally relevant pedagogy rests on three criteria. To embrace culturally relevant
pedagogy, teachers must help students experience academic success, develop their cultural
competence, and develop their critical consciousness to challenge the status quo (LadsonBillings. 1995).
In my future work, I will focus on cultural competence. Teachers who embrace culturally
relevant pedagogy and focus on cultural competence utilize students’ culture and funds of
knowledge as a bridge to learning (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Additionally, Ladson-Billings argues
that teachers who embrace cultural competence draw from community-based epistemology, or
ways of knowing, to bridge school learning. Moreover, Ladson-Billings (1995) says that to
35
maintain cultural competence, teachers should allow students to express themselves in ways that
students feel comfortable to help bridge home language and secondary discourse.
My long-term goal is to move the adult learners in my context towards ideological
clarity. While I did not accomplish that during my in the field experience, I have retained this
concept in my conceptual framework. Ideological clarity refers to the process whereby
individuals deepen their consciousness of the social, political, economic, and cultural realities
that shape our lives to recognize hurtful ideologies in our pedagogies and challenge them in our
classroom practices (Bartolomé, 2004). Furthermore, Bartolomé (2008) asks the question, “what
are the characteristics of educators who have increased their understanding of ideology, and what
effects does it have on their teaching?” (p. XII). When teachers can examine the assumptions and
beliefs behind their choices, they can understand the linkages between dominant ideology and
the variables in the micro-level classroom (Bartolomé, 2004). I contend that one characteristic of
educators with ideological clarity is that they can be critically self-reflective. I have learned that I
need to model and encourage critical reflection, and I need to encourage us to describe our
classroom practices more explicitly.
I, as the leader in the space, promoted conditions and structures for the adult learners in
my context that moved us away from critical reflection. Despite this outcome, my theory of
action calls for us to challenge assumptions, interrogate our practices, and make meaning of our
classroom experience to guide future action both for ourselves and students that is guided by
culturally relevant pedagogy.
Research Methods
Classrooms are neither ahistorical nor are they apolitical spaces. Rather, the forces and
structures from wider society are inevitably thrust into classrooms (Brookfield, 2010). This study
36
focused on how I attempted to initiate critical reflection amongst three adult learners in my
school context. As explained in my conceptual framework, change occurs as both an ongoing
process of critical reflection and as a product of critical reflection. Teachers’ ability to be
critically self-reflective about their beliefs, assumptions, and actions and how they impact
students and learning is necessary to embrace culturally relevant pedagogy. When I undertook
the study, I contended that by providing the conditions where critical reflection could occur, I
would help the adult learners in my context move toward ideological clarity and embrace
culturally relevant pedagogy. As a result of my study, I still believe those conditions need to be
in place to support critical reflection and that it is my responsibility as an adaptive leader to push
against organizational and internal constraints to create those conditions when they do not exist
or support critical reflection.
As a result of the study, I learned about where I was positioned with my development
toward ideological clarity and culturally relevant pedagogy. Drago-Severson and Blum
DeStefano (2017) posit that adults have developmental orientations. These orientations have
implications for how adults understand what it means to teach racially and ethnically minoritized
students with regard for students’ funds of knowledge and potentialities. I originally planned to
leverage my having a racialized experience, which lent itself to advocating for us to get at the
root of educational inequities. At the time of the study, I identified how I’d internalized beliefs
about meritocracy and education’s ability to facilitate upward mobility. Being a student in the
Educational Leadership (EDL) program allowed me to question where these ideologies came
from and how my actions reproduced said ideologies in the context of an elementary classroom.
As I learned from and with my colleagues, I systematically reflected on my predispositions that
37
facilitated or impeded the development of ideological clarity of the other adults in my context for
them to embrace culturally relevant pedagogy.
When I undertook the study, our whole school was engaged in recurring professional
development sessions intended to raise our critical consciousness. I believed that my colleagues
viewed me as someone passionate about our collective critical consciousness. Our whole school
was engaged in the work of raising our critical consciousness, yet there were three teachers
within my grade-level team whom I believed were willing to systematically engage in the change
process with me. From conversations we had about our professional and personal contexts, they
were open to engaging in critical reflection so we could begin to understand our complex
positionalities and to interrogate whether our teaching practices were culturally relevant. I
wanted to understand my role in creating the necessary conditions for us to engage in dialogue
that could help move us toward ideological clarity and our ability to embrace cultural
competence as a tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy. For this reason, I engaged in qualitative
research, where I worked to understand the social phenomena of my context. More specifically, I
engaged in action research, which is a research methodology available to practitioner-scholars.
Lochmiller and Lester (2017) define action-research as an orientation to education research in
which practitioner-scholars identify a problem of practice in a local context and use the research
to identify a possible solution. I undertook this study to understand my role in mobilizing others
to understand the problem of practice within my context. This brings me to the participants and
setting of this action research study.
Participants and Setting
My study occurred at my school site during the Spring quarter of the 2022–2023 school
year. For this action-research study, I employed a purposive sampling approach. Maxwell (2013)
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argues that a purposive sampling approach is appropriate where the setting, persons, or activities
are selected intentionally to provide information that is relevant to the research question.
Furthermore, Maxwell (2013) identifies that purposive sampling is critical for testing the theories
that originated the study. A purposive sampling approach was appropriate to gain insight into my
specific context where three teachers were positioned to reproduce or challenge the status quo.
My entry point into the research was by way of our internalization meetings, where we engaged
in shared planning and discussion on a weekly basis.
Participants
In this study, I examined my role in helping four teachers critically reflect on their
positionalities and to see the link between said positionalities and their teaching practices.
Moreover, I explored my role as an adaptive leader who set out to promote a brave space where
critical reflection could occur. I drew on andragogical elements to understand how four adults
oriented themselves to learning. I engaged four of my adult colleagues who had yet to unearth
problematic ideologies about meritocracy and upward mobility. Drago-Severson and Blum
DeStefano (2017) shed light on the opportunities to simultaneously support adult learners and to
stretch themselves to teach for the empowerment of racially and ethnically minoritized students.
They provide a typology of orientations, or ways of knowing, that could help me locate where
the adult learners in my context were in their development. Four of the participants, including
myself, were involved in our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee at work, which
reflected an openness to assess our beliefs, opinions, and assumptions. The fifth participant was a
Special Education teacher and started joining our grade-level for synchronous planning time for
the first time during the 2022-2023 school year. Even so, my colleagues varied between
instrumental, socializing, and self-authoring ways of knowing.
39
Darla was a Latinx, cisgender woman who was born and raised in Boyle Heights. The
2022–2023 school year was her fourth year teaching, and she expressed wanting to better
understand what it meant to teach for liberation. She was also our grade-level chair and
expressed goals for being a school leader someday. She was passionate about bilingual education
and ensuring our students had pathways and opportunities for success in life. Despite professing
a value for diversity and inclusion, her external behaviors reified her unconscious bias towards
beliefs about meritocracy and upward mobility. She could be described as wavering between
instrumental and socializing ways of knowing because she oriented strongly to concrete rules
and right ways of teaching. For instance, it was clear that interpersonal acceptance was important
to her, and she disengaged from conflict if it threatened her relationship with the school
leadership team.
Charlotte was a Chicana, cisgender woman who was a second-generation student with
experiences that informed her sense of what was right for racially and ethnically minoritized
students. The 2022–2023 school year was her 18th year in education. From our conversations, I
believed that she wanted to challenge dominant narratives about meritocracy and upward
mobility. However, her use of deficit language about our students reflected discriminatory
ideologies. I believed that when she spoke about students and blamed them for their low
performance on standardized assessments, she was unaware of how her unconscious bias gave
shape to her beliefs. She could be described as orienting towards an instrumental way of
knowing because she implemented what Ladson-Billings (2014) describes as a superficial notion
of culturally relevant pedagogy. Additionally, she generalized her experience and worldview as
applicable to everyone. When threatened with conflict, she displaced blame and was dismissive
of others’ experiences and perspectives.
40
Hector was a Latinx, cisgender man who was a first-generation student and part of the
LGBTQ+ community. From our conversations, Hector understood the marginalization of racially
and ethnically minoritized students because of his personal experiences. At the time of the study,
it was his fourth year as a classroom teacher. Hector could be described as orienting toward a
self-authoring way of learning because he was able to take on other perspectives without being
overrun by them.
Bob was a Black American cisgender man who was part of our Special Education team at
our school site. Prior to undertaking the study, Special Education teachers did not join our
internalization meetings. However, at the beginning of the 2022–2023 school year my leadership
team made a change to include them as part of the internalization discussion. Because this was
my first year working closely with Bob, I had limited information to describe his orientation to
learning. By the time I undertook the study, Bob could be described as orienting toward a
socializing way of knowing because he understood that there was not one universal way to teach.
I engaged Darla, Charlotte, Hector, and Bob during our grade-level meetings, as we all
taught third grade and discussed lesson plans together during a shared planning period. During
our internalization meetings, my efforts were focused on collecting data on myself in relation to
them. I evaluated how and whether I provided the necessary conditions for us to engage in
critical reflection. I intended to use critical reflection to help us unearth our assumptions and
understand if and how we engaged in practices that were consistent with one tenet of culturally
relevant pedagogy (i.e., cultural competence). This is because I sought to better understand my
actions as a leader who enacted change within my specific context. I will discuss this more in my
findings section.
41
Setting of Actions
I engaged my four colleagues during our weekly internalization meetings. I designed my
action research study in three cycles where I could initiate critical reflection with my colleagues
during our synchronous planning time. Each cycle lasted 4 weeks, where I conducted in-the-field
research for 3 weeks and stepped out of the field during the fourth week. The stakeholders in this
study were the third-grade teachers and a special education teacher with whom I worked and
who expressed predispositions towards romanticized notions of meritocracy and education’s
power to facilitate upward mobility. Our meetings were formal and bound by our organizations’
prescribed protocol for our shared planning time. As the ELA planner for our grade-level team, I
led the internalization process. When I initiated the study in 2022, state mandated Covid-19
restrictions loosened, and we initially returned to a hybrid model of learning. By the time I
undertook the research in February 2022, we returned to an in-person model of learning, yet
some restrictions still applied to staff gatherings. This meant that meetings happened in a hybrid
fashion with some internalization meetings taking place over Zoom and some taking place in
person. These meetings were the appropriate location for me to implement the actions because
during this time we shared best practices, explained how a lesson drove students’ understanding
of a skill, and our conversations revealed what we believed about students. As it turned out, I did
not help create the conditions necessary for adults to be critically reflective and for them to
embrace teaching practices consistent with culturally relevant pedagogy. This brings me to the
actions I undertook in the action-research study.
Actions
Consistent with my conceptual framework, I understood that I could enact change
through an ongoing process of critical reflection. That is because I contended that change
42
happens as an ongoing process of and as a product of critical reflection. I captured evidence of
my progress through jottings, fieldnotes, and reflections that were meant to be critical but instead
were mostly descriptive reflections. For example, I looked for evidence of progress in the weekly
jottings I wrote during our internalization meetings. After each meeting, I watched the audiovisual recordings, cleaned up the audio transcription, and I wrote up descriptive fieldnotes that
captured the observations I made during our synchronous internalization time. To supplement the
jottings and descriptive fieldnotes, I also wrote reflections after each observation over the course
of 3 months. In total, I wrote 6 reflections. Table 1 captures my actions within the setting for this
study.
Table 1
Actions in Internalization Meetings
Cycle 1
Presence in Experience: Learning to See
Timeline Action
Researcher
Teacher and ELA
content planner
Setting Progress
Indicator
Data
Week 1 Objective:
Invite
stakeholders
into the change
process.
I invited
participants into
the change
process via
synchronous
discussion.
Meeting
took
place
over
Zoom.
Teachers
consented to
participating in
the actionresearch study.
Jottings
during the
meeting
Descriptive
fieldnotes
after
meeting
Descriptive
Reflection
Week 2 Objective:
Position self as
facilitator and
learner.
I framed the
research
opportunity as
something in
line with
something
Meeting
took
place
over
Zoom.
Teachers made
explicit
reference to
problems of
practice.
Jottings
during the
meeting
Descriptive
fieldnotes
43
bigger than us
given our critical
consciousness
work.
after
meeting
Descriptive
Reflection
Week 3 Objective:
Initiate inquiry
as stance
approach to
internalization
meetings
I modeled naming
my beliefs
about students
and learning.
I asked guiding
questions to
discuss beliefs
about learning.
Meeting
took
place
over
Zoom.
Teachers turned
toward
problems of
practice and I
constrained
their responses.
Jottings
during the
meeting
Descriptive
fieldnotes
after
meeting
Descriptive
Reflection
Week 4 Out of the field I wrote an analytic memo after speaking to my
dissertation chair.
Analytic
memo
Critical
Peer
Cycle 2
Presence in Experience: Learning to See
Timeline Action
Researcher
Teacher and ELA
content planner
Setting Progress
Indicator
Data
Week 5 Objective:
Examine
positionality
by considering
macro and
micro variables
of the
classroom.
I modeled
centering
students in our
reflection about
teaching.
Meeting
took
place
over
Zoom.
A teacher found
me outside of
the
internalization
meeting to
share his ideas
for centering
students’ funds
of knowledge in
our lessons.
Jottings
during the
meeting
Descriptive
fieldnotes
after
meeting
Descriptive
Reflection
Week 6 Objective:
Examine
positionality
by considering
macro and
I used the
internalization
protocol as it
was by asking
Meeting
took
place
in
person.
I constrained
discourse by
shutting down.
Jottings
during the
meeting
44
micro variables
of the
classroom
the questions
that were on it.
Descriptive
fieldnotes
after
meeting
Week 7 Objective:
Examine
positionality
by considering
macro and
micro variables
of the
classroom
I attended to
student learning
in the previous
week’s lesson by
thinking aloud.
I asked guiding
questions to
attend to student
learning in the
previous week’s
lesson.
Meeting
took
place in
person.
Teachers express
deficit thinking.
I constrained
discourse due to
fear of cultural
suicide.
Jottings
during the
meeting
Descriptive
fieldnotes
after
meeting
Descriptive
Reflection
Week 8 Out of the field
Cycle 3
Ideological Clarity and Embracing Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
Timeline Action
Researcher
Teacher and ELA
content planner
Setting Progress
Indicator
Data
Week 9 Objective:
Discuss and
normalize
problems of
practice to
slow down our
teaching
practice.
I modeled
signaling a
problem of
practice and
described it to
turn toward
practice.
Meeting
took
place in
person.
Teachers
normalized and
took up the
problem of
practice.
Jottings
during the
meeting
Descriptive
fieldnotes
after
meeting
Descriptive
Reflection
Week 10 Objective:
Discuss and
normalize
problems of
practice to
slow down our
teaching
practice.
I modeled
signaling a
problem of
practice and
described it to
turn toward
practice.
Meeting
took
place in
person.
Teachers
approached the
problem of
practice
through a
technical lens.
Jottings
during the
meeting
Descriptive
fieldnotes
after
meeting
45
Week 11 Objective:
Close out the
research study
and give the
work back to
the teachers.
I thanked
participants for
having taken
part in the
study.
Meeting
took
place in
person.
Teachers
reflected on
what
participating in
the study meant
to them.
Jottings
during the
meeting
Descriptive
fieldnotes
after
meeting
Week 12 Out of the field
Adaptive leadership emphasizes the characteristics of the leader-follower dynamic; in this
case, the leader invites followers to participate and share in the change process because adaptive
challenges cannot be easily resolved through one person’s expertise nor organizational
procedures (Northouse, 2019). I engaged participants at the start of the action research study by
identifying the adaptive challenge and naming it for the participants. For instance, I invited
Darla, Charlotte, Hector, and Bob to participate in the change process by introducing my study
and explaining the change process. First, I mentioned that the change process looked at my
teaching, how dominant ideologies were expressed in my teaching pedagogy and planning. Next,
I explained why they were the ideal participants for this study citing their membership of the DEI
committee at our school and their passion for teaching for liberation. Third, I cited that the
change process asked us to examine how the situational challenge of teaching for liberation has
an adaptive nature underlying it, so the responsibility for tackling this sort of change process
benefited from our partnership.
Moreover, it was important that I enact the conditions necessary for adult learning to take
place. When I undertook the study, I used our synchronous planning meetings as a holding space
where I attempted to regulate distress during the undertaking of adaptive change. I used our
shared planning meetings as a space where my colleagues and I intended to use the ELA lesson
46
plans to reflect about our teaching practices. Though I modeled asking guiding questions and
turning toward my own teaching practice, I did not model this in a way that was sufficient to turn
my participants toward asking themselves questions about their own practice. Therefore, it was
insufficient to warrant a discussion in my findings. Using the weekly topics of discussion
detailed in Table 1, I facilitated conversation amongst my colleagues. During Cycle 1, I invited
the participants into the change process. During the first observation, I framed the research as an
opportunity to engage with something bigger than ourselves. In the second and third observations
I asked guiding questions to attend to student learning, but the rigidity of our internalization
protocol yielded insufficient time for us to dig meaningfully into discussion. During Cycle 2, I
modeled centering our students in my reflection about teaching but in a manner that was
inconsistent with the goal of my study, which was to support adults to also center students in
their own practice. I used the internalization document as it was intended, and this meant that I
covered the material in superficial ways. I also asked guiding questions to attend to student
learning but was constrained by time to allow for participants to do the same. During Cycle 3, I
modeled signaling a problem of practice, and I thanked the learners for their participation in the
study.
Furthermore, Drago-Severson and Blum DeStefano (2017) encourage leaders to provide
supports and stretches for growth that help adult learners reassess internalized beliefs and
assumptions. In this action research study, when I stepped out-of-the-field, I reflected on the
andragogical supports and stretches for growth I could provide adults to help them be critically
reflective. At the time I undertook this study, my out-of-the-field reflections did not translate to
my actions while I was in-the-field. As I will describe further in my findings, I was paralyzed by
47
fear and succumbed to both structural and internal constraints that turned the discussions we did
have away from practice.
During the action-research study, I used weekly jottings, descriptive fieldnotes, and
critical reflections as a way of metaphorically “getting on the balcony” to capture evidence
of how I enacted elements from adaptive leadership, andragogy, and how that moved us toward
embracing culturally relevant pedagogy. The process of getting on the balcony also informed
each next cycle of action.
Data Collection Instruments/Protocols
Throughout the study, I was a complete member of my organization while engaging in a
self-action study. Coghlan (2019) suggests that insider researchers develop a spirit of inquiry in
familiar situations where things are taken for granted. In this study, I engaged first-person
reflective skills. At the time of the study, I attended to and questioned my taken-for-granted
assumptions. I also engaged second-person reflective skills where I sought to understand how I
could develop collaborative inquiry with my four colleagues. For this reason, I collected data
through personal jottings, descriptive field notes, and critical reflections. These sources of data
helped monitor my progress toward helping teachers develop ideological clarity and toward
embracing cultural competence. In the next section, I will further explain my approach to data
collection throughout this study.
Observations
Because I was the primary instrument in this action research study, over the course of the
three research cycles, I participated in and observed nine internalization meetings that were each
40 minutes long. I captured these observations in jottings, descriptive fieldnotes, and audiovisual recordings.
48
Jottings
While I was in the field I wrote weekly jottings, for a total of nine notes. The jottings
were weekly notes that I captured in a separate document during our synchronous meetings.
These jottings were detailed, low inference notes intended to help me document what was going
on in the setting of actions. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) cite the researcher’s purpose as a guide
for what to observe. As a result, I observed the participants with an emphasis on communication
and changes in their interactions. For example, I captured jottings of the interactions between the
participants and me and wrote down observer’s comments about the subtle factors that were
symbolic. I specifically focused on my colleagues and our conversations and interactions as they
were happening, and in my jottings, I paraphrased what they said during each meeting. Further, I
captured notes about team members’ body language on Zoom. For instance, in my weekly
jottings I captured details like physical cues while on Zoom or in person and captured what was
not said or what did not happen. Finally, I wrote down observer comments that captured my own
thoughts and behavior as the meetings happened. Because my role was that of an insider
researcher, I affected the scene in which I participated and it was important that I captured this in
my weekly jottings, too (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). For example, I wrote down jottings about my
role as researcher and participant and the power dynamics that played a role in each meeting.
Descriptive Fieldnotes
The weekly jottings that I captured became descriptive fieldnotes. Bogdan and Biklen
(2007) advise that after returning from observation, the researcher writes out what happened.
Moreover, Bogdan and Biklen (2007) call these descriptive fieldnotes. In these descriptive
fieldnotes, I captured a more detailed, verbatim account of the course of inquiry. After writing
jottings during each meeting, I watched and listened to the audio-visual recordings and analyzed
49
the transcripts. I cleaned up and included the audio transcription in the descriptive fieldnotes. I
wrote the descriptive fieldnotes weekly, upon returning from observation of interactions. Over
the 3-month period, I wrote nine descriptive fieldnotes while I was in-the-field. Because I was
the instrument as an action-researcher, it was of particular interest that I included in the
descriptive fieldnotes jottings on my frame of mind as an observer. I wrote down things like, “I
felt flustered that this was cutting into the time” and “I felt resigned that this time was supposed
to be an opportunity to reflect but instead it’s about compliance.” Therefore, the descriptive
fieldnotes included the cleaned-up version of the audio transcription and my jottings.
Documents and Artifacts
I generated one type of document for this action-research study. The document I
generated was descriptive reflections.
Descriptive Reflections
Jay and Johnson (2002) provide a typology of reflections and differentiate between
descriptive, comparative, and critical reflections. Descriptive reflections are those that describe a
problem of practice, a bias, and/or a feeling (Jay & Johnson, 2002). Comparative reflections are
those that consider different frames of reference and compare those perspectives with one’s own
to gain new insights (Jay & Johnson, 2002). Critical reflections consider a problem of practice
through multiple perspectives and integrate new meaning to reframe a problem of practice (Jay
& Johnson, 2002). Moreover, critical reflections are unique because they seek to answer whether
an individual can consider the implications of the matter at hand and establish a new perspective
to guide future action while addressing power and positionality.
Over the course of the meetings, I was attuned to myself, how I was feeling, and how I
was able to enact the elements of adaptive leadership, andragogy, critical reflection, to promote
50
cultural competence as a tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy. I attuned to how I was feeling by
writing weekly descriptive reflections. The type of reflections I wrote were a combination of
descriptive and comparative, with most of them being descriptive reflections. At the time I
undertook the study, I wrote six descriptive reflections over the course of 3 months. All six of the
reflections were written while I was in the field. To write these reflections, I referenced the
jottings and descriptive fieldnotes that captured how I enacted the elements from my conceptual
framework. By writing descriptive reflections, I tuned into how I facilitated the experience for
the adult learners in my context with the intention of moving them to attain ideological clarity
and embrace culturally relevant pedagogy. In my descriptive reflections, I became attentive to
context. For example, after my first week in the field I reflected on structural constraints and
wrote, “I felt frustrated that Darla said we needed to complete [the internalization document]
simply for audit purposes and didn’t necessarily connect the internalization process to how it
helps us change or challenge our teaching practice or impact student learning.” In another
descriptive reflection, I became attentive to interrelationships. For example, I wrote:
As I’m reading over the jottings and observer comments, I do think that I felt the weight
of having someone from our admin team observe our meeting. I’d talked through this
study and my actions with her, but I also felt that she wanted to ensure that I wasn’t
deviating from the internalization protocol.
Finally, in my reflections I also became attentive to how I took in other perspectives and allowed
those perspectives to inform my future action. For example, in a comparative reflection I wrote,
An admin team member pointed out that I have a relationship and trust with the team
that I can tap into so that Charlotte isn’t offended if I ask open-ended questions. Something I
51
think about is how her orientation to learning can be defensive since she does have 15 plus years
of experience, and instead of welcoming suggestions, sometimes she can view input as critique.
While I intended to write critical reflections to guide future action, I did not achieve that
in the reflections I wrote. In the next section, I will describe how I engaged in data analysis.
Data Analysis
Merriam and Tisdell (2016) state that the goal of data analysis is to make sense of the
data. Further, Bogdan and Biklen (2017) make a distinction between interpretation and analysis.
When I undertook this action research study, I engaged in both interpretation and analysis. Data
interpretation refers to in-the-field speculation and development of ideas in relation to the
concepts in the framework, literature, and research question (Bogdan & Biklen, 2017). Analysis
refers to “working with the data, organizing them, [and] breaking them into manageable units”
(Bogdan & Biklen, 2017, p. 159). For this action-research study, I used a cyclical approach to
data analysis that included 3 weeks of in-the-field deductive interpretation followed by 1 week of
out-of-the-field inductive interpretation for a total of three cycles of analysis. More specifically, I
was in the field for 3 weeks at a time, and out of the field for 1 week during each cycle of data
collection over a 3-month period. After the 3-month period, I began my inductive interpretation,
or data analysis.
During the 3 weeks while I was in the field, I engaged in interpretive analysis. For
example, I used the jottings, descriptive fieldnotes, and descriptive reflections I generated to
speculate on my hunches. For instance, during the first cycle of research I wrote in my observer
comments about constraints such as audits and compliance and my feelings about how they
impacted my ability to facilitate reflection. These hunches were deductive and grounded in the
conceptual framework that outlined my theory of action for this study (Bogdan & Biklen, 2017).
52
When I was out of the field during the fourth week of the first cycle, I met with my dissertation
chair, discussed with her the constraints I experienced, and wrote an analytic memo. In the memo
I wrote,
This is a concept that is implied in my conceptual framework but is not as explicit or
detailed as some of the other concepts in my conceptual framework. I have made this
change because given the first session of Cycle 1 of data collection, we discussed and
found that the time constraints of my grade-level meeting times do not allow for fleshing
out the action plan in a timely manner.
An analytic memo is meant to record decisions that are made in the analysis of data (Harding,
2013). By consulting my dissertation chair and by writing an analytic memo, I pivoted in my
actions due to the emerging constraints that limited my ability to enact the elements of my
conceptual framework. Writing an analytic memo allowed me to speculate on the structural
constraints that limited my actions.
At the time I undertook the study, I looked for evidence of ideas to help me understand
where I was in terms of enacting the elements that I originally intended to draw on to enact
change. For example, I wrote in a reflection,
In looking at my conceptual framework, my goal of using elements from adaptive
leadership—where I turn over the work to them—is at the forefront of my mind when I
go into the meetings. I’m positioning myself as a facilitator and learner and feel that I’m
not just telling them what the lesson plans are. However, I do wish I would ask more
open-ended questions.
While I was in the field, I regularly reviewed my descriptive fieldnotes and descriptive
reflections to pursue leads into the next cycle of data collection. One instance in which I did this
53
was in the reflection before ending the first cycle of research. I wrote, “I think our time spent
discussing the lesson plans is showing that we are reflecting. I’m not sure that we are critically
reflecting just yet.” This cyclical approach helped me interpret my enactment of the elements in
the conceptual framework that guided this study.
Moreover, out of the field analysis took place alongside the third Dissertation in Practice
course while I was in the EDL program, and I continued with analysis for another calendar year.
During this phase of the action-research project, I worked with the data by organizing my
jottings, descriptive fieldnotes, and descriptive reflections. I engaged in a process of precoding
the data, and I generated a priori codes. Those early codes were grounded in my conceptual
framework and some examples are “brave space,” “critical reflection” and “deficit orientation to
learning.” Precoding the data meant that I engaged in the process of reading, questioning, and
engaging with the data before formally engaging in the coding process (Ravitch & Carl, 2021).
Then I began the coding process and undertook an open coding approach. For example, I
highlighted the verbatim transcripts in the descriptive fieldnotes and tagged them with
descriptive labels such as, “competing commitments,” “not regulating personal distress,”
“absence of presence,” and “covering the material.” Coding entails organizing the data by
labeling it with descriptive or inferential labels (Ravitch & Carl, 2021). I assigned descriptive
labels to the data at first. Then I collaborated with my dissertation chair and engaged with the
data in a dialogic way. Together, we analyzed my data by looking at the descriptive fieldnotes
and descriptive reflections along with the descriptive labels to deepen my understanding of the
data. After doing this I began to assign inferential labels to my data, and this resulted in emergent
codes. By immersing myself in coding the data, I was able to create code definitions and a code
set. I then added all my codes to a codebook. The codes in the codebook were, “discourse
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routines,” “praise,” “indirect critique,” “constrain the response of the speaker,” “not regulating
personal distress,” “absence of presence,” “covering the material,” “turn toward teaching,”
“turning away from teaching” and “getting on the balcony.” When I undertook the data analysis
process of creating a codebook, I also developed a routine for writing analytic memos to step
back and think conceptually and reflectively about the data (Harding, 2013). In one analytic
memo, I contemplated my data, and I wrote,
Based on the empirical codes, the space in which I am enacting the elements of my
conceptual framework is one where my coworkers (as the learners) and I (as the leader)
perform reflection and keep discourse at a surface level of analysis.
I wrote a total of four analytic memos during my out-of-the-field analysis that aided in my
understanding of how I supported the adult learners in my context. Finally, I brought together
codes from different categories based on their typicality in my codebook and created the
conceptual themes that lent themselves to the findings I landed on (Harding, 2013). Based on
these revelations, I added the concept of organizational context to my conceptual framework to
aid my understanding of the conditions that need to be in place to support critical reflection. I
will unpack this further in my findings section to explain the relationship between the different
parts of the data.
Limitations and Delimitations
In this self-action study, there were limitations and delimitations that are important to
name, as they limited the progress I was able to make. Limitations are things in the study that I
could not control. Delimitations are things in the study that, on the one hand, I did control
because I was responsible for the methodological choices in the study. Put another way,
delimitations are the ways in which I acted in response to the limitations of the study.
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Limitations
As shown in my conceptual framework, change happens as an ongoing process of critical
reflection and as a product of critical reflection. When I undertook the study, I proposed that I
would enact change by helping adult learners critically reflect and see the linkages between the
macro-variables in society and the micro-variables within our classrooms so that they could have
ideological clarity and embrace culturally relevant pedagogy. A limitation of the study was that I
was a novice researcher, and this was my first attempt at initiating critical reflection alongside
adult learners. I originally planned to help adult learners by providing supports and challenging
them to make stretches for growth that allowed them to be critically self-reflective. However, I
could not control for contextual and structural factors, such as time and agendas, that interfered
with our time together. The rigidity of the organizational protocols in place for teachers to reflect
impacted how I supported the adult learners in my context. Our enactment of the internalization
protocol at my school site often turned us away from teaching rather than towards teaching.
Another limitation that impacted the progress I was able to make were the power dynamics
present in the setting of my actions. My dual role as researcher and participant impacted the
conditions of the setting and resulted in the absence of a true holding environment where we
could surface meaningful discussion.
Delimitations
One example of a delimitation is that I bound the study with the number of participants.
Bounding the sample to my four colleagues was logical to the context that productively
constrained the study. Another delimitation was what I did as a novice researcher. When I
undertook the study, I managed dual roles. I assumed the role of researcher and colleague to my
participants, and I encountered power dynamics within my dual roles that constrained the study.
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This was because as a novice researcher, I stepped into unfamiliar territory, and despite wanting
to provide stretches for growth, I felt the weight of the power dynamics and did not initiate the
brave conversations I originally planned for. For instance, I defaulted to behavior that
unintentionally constrained the learning opportunities that could exist for my peers. This is
because given the structural constraints I encountered, my own discomfort of pushing against
those constraints preserved the beliefs that as adults we had internalized. In my actions, I
intended to work toward co-constructing a brave space that required us to be willing to step into
the discomfort of challenging the status quo, and I responded to the limitations of the study with
inaction.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
The concept of validity in qualitative research refers to the credibility of an interpretation
and conclusion (Maxwell, 2013). For this study, I enhanced the credibility of the research by
accounting for the possibility that my interpretations could lead to invalid conclusions. I used
three strategies to maximize credibility in the study. More specifically, I collected rich
descriptive data, triangulated my interpretations with other data and theory, and consulted critical
peers. For example, I collected rich descriptive data to maximize the credibility of the research
by recording the meetings and cleaning up the verbatim transcription of the audio-visual
recordings. Maxwell (2013) names that rich data is a product of detailed and descriptive note
taking. The jottings and descriptive fieldnotes I took allowed me to capture concrete actions and
events, and I systematically kept and organized the documents I generated in order to routinely
refer to them in my data analysis. Another way I maximized credibility was by triangulating the
emerging findings using multiple sources of data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). During my
analysis, I referred to the data from my jottings, descriptive fieldnotes, and descriptive
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reflections, and I read these documents in light of theories. This meant that I would go back to
the literature and before coding the data, I would define my concepts and compare my data
against the literature. Finally, I consulted a critical peer as a strategy to maximize credibility.
Consulting a critical peer meant that I sought out feedback from my dissertation chair while in
the EDL program to ensure that I was not basing my interpretations on my interests but rather on
what the data was telling me. I minimized the possibility that I misinterpreted the data by using
my dissertation chair as a critical peer, which meant that I met with my dissertation chair on a
biweekly or monthly basis to engage in dialogic analysis.
To enhance the trustworthiness of the research, I named my biases. As I was the primary
instrument in this action-research study, my biases about the topic of research could not be
separated from the study, and it was these biases that shaped what I saw and interpreted.
Maxwell (2013) cites reflexivity as important for the researcher to acknowledge that they are part
of the social work that he or she studies. As a teacher who wanted the best for the students at my
school, I was biased in having been complicit in the past. During the research, I offset my biases
by engaging in systematic reflexivity. One way I engaged in systematic reflexivity was by
writing descriptive reflections while I was in-the-field and analytic memos once I was out-of-thefield. I wrote descriptive reflections and analytic memos to show me if I inadvertently or
intentionally shaped my colleagues’ experiences. As it turned out, I shaped my colleagues’
experiences by constraining their responses, and this was evident in the descriptive reflections I
wrote where I often referenced my own distress with being limited in how I enacted the elements
from my conceptual framework. Systematic reflexivity was a strategy that helped me to see 1)
where I was biased and 2) when this kept me from enacting the elements in my conceptual
framework. I used this strategy to help provide trustworthiness to the research.
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Ethics
My role within the organizational context was as a teacher and ELA planner. My
coworkers, who were the research participants, were my friends. One way that my relationship
with participants could have coerced them into participating was through their wanting to help
me out of kindness towards our friendship. My colleagues were good people, who made
curricular decisions based on good intentions. When I planned for the data collection activities,
there was the possibility that they would feel uncomfortable because of the nature of the research
question, which sought to unearth unconscious bias and internalized racism. Moreover,
participant discomfort could surface from the difficult conversations that I originally planned for.
Topics like race, culture, and teacher pedagogy were concepts that could elicit vulnerability and
discomfort. As it turned out, I did not initiate those difficult conversations, but it was my ethical
responsibility to bring those difficult conversations to light while mitigating participant
discomfort.
One strategy I utilized to reduce harm to participants was to collaborate with them
throughout the research process. In the framing of the study, I named their voluntary
participation. Lochmiller and Lester (2017) state that researching with ethical considerations
means that research is always designed with respect to the participant. For this reason, my ability
to establish trust and open dialogue was imperative. Furthermore, Dei (2005) argues that it is
crucial for there to be collaborative work with local communities to establish said trust. Because
I planned to use a purposive sampling approach, I described the anonymity of the study. To
maintain their anonymity, I used pseudonyms throughout the study. Furthermore, I informed
participants that they had a right to withdraw from the study without penalty. Similarly, I
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obtained participants’ permission to record and informed them that data collection would be kept
anonymously and stored safely.
Finally, designing and conducting the research with ethical considerations in mind was a
process that was not static, and I revisited the ethics of the research throughout. Again, the
research participants were my colleagues and friends. The power dynamics included me
researching from a privileged position. By excluding the participants from the research process, I
risked further marginalizing them. I included the participants in the research process by
collaborating with them and inviting their voluntary participation, revisiting their desire to
participate, and finally by seeking to disseminate the findings of the research in a manner that
was relevant and meaningful to the participants.
Findings
In this next section, I will discuss the findings that emerged from this action-research
study in relation to my question. I will discuss my progress toward supporting adult learners as
well as how I grew in my practice.
Structural Constraints Limited Quality of Discourse
Structural constraints are rigid structures, rules, and procedures that schools implement to
hold teachers accountable to improving academic performance (Elmore, 2002). In the face of
structural constraints within my organization, I maintained participants’ discourse about teaching
at a surface level and was unable to move us towards examining our unconscious biases that
guided our teaching practice with an eye towards embracing cultural competence. In my
conceptual framework, I argued that I, as an adaptive leader, would facilitate a holding
environment for my colleagues and me to bravely interrogate our teaching practices for their
alignment to culturally relevant pedagogy. Northouse (2019) identifies a holding environment as
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a “a structural, procedural, or virtual space formed by cohesive relationships with people that
allows groups to function with safety” (p. 293). I identified our weekly grade-level meetings as
the holding environment where I could facilitate discourse that would move us towards
embracing more culturally relevant practices. However, I was unable to facilitate a holding
environment within our weekly meetings for a couple of reasons. I was unable to facilitate a
holding environment because of structural constraints and my own internal constraints that
moved us in the opposite direction of deep discourse. In this section, I will discuss how, during
these weekly meetings, the type of discourse I facilitated remained superficial due to the
structural constraints of an agenda that comprised our internalization protocol.
The agenda comprised a key part of my organization’s internalization protocol, and it was
a structural constraint that drove me to maintain participants’ discourse about teaching and
learning at a surface level. Structural constraints are rigid structures, rules, and procedures that
schools implement to hold teachers accountable to improving academic performance (Elmore,
2002). In my organization, the internalization protocol consisted of pre-thinking, a 40-minute
weekly meeting, and an agenda. In anticipation of our meetings, we were expected to complete
the pre-thinking by looking at two lesson plans for an upcoming week and digest the ELA
lessons in anticipation of teaching for the following week. Therefore, we were expected to
complete the pre-thinking outlined in the internalization agenda and come prepared to the
meetings to discuss the ELA lessons for the following week. During an internalization meeting,
20 minutes were allocated to a discussion of ELA lesson plans and 20 minutes were allocated to
a discussion of Math lesson plans. Per the internalization protocol, we completed an agenda with
guiding questions meant to help me facilitate the discourse about upcoming lessons. This
protocol was a process that is reminiscent of what Elmore (2002) references as the work of
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teachers in public education when it is driven by accountability systems. For instance, Elmore
(2002) describes how accountability systems drive the work of teachers where teachers are
meant to engage in the sustained improvement of practice yet are bound by rigid structures that
don’t allow for the improvement of practice. The reason the process is reminiscent of the
accountability systems referenced by Elmore (2002) is because of how the existing structures
within my organization’s internalization protocol—a time and space to engage in the knowledgein-practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999) conception of teacher learning–were designed to
resist learning rather than to cultivate it. While we had both the virtual and procedural space to
engage teacher learning, that is part of what contributes to a successful holding environment, we
lacked the cohesive relationships that allowed us to function with safety because the structural
constraints pushed us away from the trust needed to engage in deep discussion. Furthermore, the
agenda constrained me from being able to unearth discourse that turned participants’ eyes toward
cultural competence. To start, my organization’s internalization protocol followed the
knowledge-in-practice conception of teacher learning, which Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999)
argue is when peers in a community probe the practical knowledge of teachers’ practice to reflect
on and deepen their own knowledge to improve learning interactions. Although the questions
outlined in the internalization agenda were aligned with the knowledge-in-practice conception of
teacher learning, it was the cognitive demand of the agenda (and the time we were given to
answer the questions) that limited my ability to turn participants’ eyes toward embracing cultural
competence. An assumption of our internalization protocol was that during our recurring
meetings, we had ample opportunity to reflect on and examine our knowledge of teaching that
could lead to improvement of practice. Consistent with Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999), this
was the structure to make explicit the knowledge needed to improve practice. Yet, the agenda did
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not support the reflective work required for me to either engage the teachers on my grade-level
team to examine their unconscious biases or turn an eye toward culturally relevant practices.
Similarly, the structural constraint of the agenda pushed against my ability to facilitate a holding
environment where this kind of discourse was possible.
A second structural constraint that impeded my ability to turn our eyes toward culturally
relevant discourse was the time allotted to answering the questions on the internalization
template. More specifically, it was the assumption that within our time allotted to internalize we
could adequately complete the internalization protocol with sufficient time for reflection on
practice that impacted my beliefs about the discourse that was possible. Consistent with
Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999), the knowledge-in-practice conception of teacher learning was
present within our organization’s internalization process. For instance, the agenda listed
questions like “What other curricular supports could be built into the lesson to address unfinished
teaching/learning and to address student misconceptions?” Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) say
that the knowledge-in-practice conception of teacher learning depends on the expertise of
teachers to bridge formal knowledge and practical knowledge to act. The questions on the
agenda had the potential to serve as an example of how the knowledge-in-practice conception
could take the knowledge of experienced teachers and, ideally, seek out the immediacy and
practicality of what teachers faced day-to-day to take thoughtful action. In theory, the
internalization protocol should have lent itself to discourse whereby we examined our teaching
practice. The virtual space we shared through Zoom was dependent on cohesive trust, so that
participants could function with safety and share honestly. The way I enacted the internalization
process, however, drove our relationship between knowledge and practice, and I constrained our
discourse so that we did not turn toward embracing culturally relevant practices. This is because
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I, as the leader in the space, internalized beliefs about the discourse that was possible. The
messages I received from administrative members about completion drove my behavior and this
was evident in the type of questions I posed and the way I responded to my colleagues when they
answered questions during our meetings. I understood the expectation to be that we complete the
internalization process in a 20-minute time frame, and I approached our discourse during our
weekly meetings in a manner consistent with compliance and completion. This meant that I
approached our discourse during our weekly meetings in a manner consistent with compliance
and completion rather than discourse that was generative. I yielded to a superficial discussion
that did not look at teaching practice, and this impacted the holding environment I was trying to
facilitate. Rather than facilitate a holding environment where trust abounded, the structural
constraint of time eroded the trust required for us to dig deep into discourse about teaching and
learning.
Intended Enactment of the Internalization Protocol and Holding Environment
Over the course of the action-research study, what I intended to do versus what I enacted
was consistent across all the internalization meetings I facilitated. Throughout the actionresearch study there were nine internalization meetings. I intended to use my organization’s
internalization protocol to facilitate a holding environment and drive participants’ relationship
between knowledge and practice. In my theory of action, I identified elements such as the myth
of meritocracy and beliefs about upward mobility that teachers ought to examine to embrace
cultural competence. In my conceptual framework, I identified the weekly meetings as a holding
space during which I could surface discourse to move us from reflection towards critical
reflection. I also intended to use our weekly meetings as an opportunity to slow down our
teaching and interrogate our teaching practices for their alignment to cultural competence,
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knowing that the internalization protocol required us to reflect on our teaching. In anticipation of
teaching I, as the ELA planner for the third-grade team, developed lessons for the team to teach.
As mentioned, once I developed those lessons, I shared the lesson plans and accompanying
materials with the team so that everyone could access the materials with sufficient time for
preparation. Everyone on our grade-level team was expected to read the lesson plans and engage
in pre-thinking about the internalization agenda questions so that we could come prepared to
discuss the topics on the internalization agenda. As such, the internalization process presumed
pre-thinking. Although pre-thinking was the expectation, there was no accountability for having
done the pre-work. Furthermore, the internalization protocol was constrained by the agenda and
time. This is because to meet in a 20-minute period and get out one’s thoughts, reconcile the
ideas with a group, and co-construct meaning with a group is a cognitively demanding process
that requires more than 1 minute per agenda item. Figure 2 is the internalization agenda template
with questions that were intended to guide our discourse on a weekly basis. We used the same
agenda template for every meeting. It is a robust document that was meant to be completed twice
(to account for two lessons) in a 20-minute period.
Figure 2
Internalization Agenda Template
Weekly Internalization: 2 high leverage lessons internalized by team
Lesson information:
Topic:
Standard and Objective: What grade level standards are covered in this lesson? What is the
objective of the lesson?
Criteria for success: Exit ticket: Complete the exit ticket to better understand the objective.
What is an exemplar response? What do students need to do to demonstrate mastery?
Key points, strategies and vocabulary to emphasize: General overview of what students will
be doing in this lesson. To meet the objective, what will students need to understand and do?
Key Points:
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Strategy:
Vocabulary:
Unfinished Teaching/Learning: What other curricular supports could be built into the lesson to
address unfinished teaching/learning and to address student misconceptions? (supports
should support the rigor in the lesson and not change/lessen it)
Differentiation: Are there any parts of the lesson that require extra time spent or additional
scaffolds? What scaffolds or accommodations will you provide for students with IEP’s & EL’s?
• IEP’s :
• EL’s :
Model: Which part of the lesson will you include explicit modeling/think aloud? What will you
model? Choose one team member to do a teach back/rehearsal of the model for the team to
practice clarity. Provide both affirming and constructive feedback “When you did ______ the
impact was______. Next time maybe try this_______. “
Guided Practice: What part of the lesson will students have the chance to practice while you
closely monitor understanding? What type of monitoring will you use to check for
understanding of all students? White boards, aggressive monitoring, etc.? How will you
provide feedback to students during the lesson?
•
Student Discourse: What will students discuss or participate in group work during the lesson?
•
Independent Practice: What problems will students practice at the end of the lesson before
the exit ticket? What will students need to know by the end of the lesson?
•
As demonstrated in Figure 2, the blank template had nine sections that needed to be
addressed during a 10-minute discussion. Thus, each section could receive no more than 1
minute of time if the entire agenda was to be covered. Moreover, each section contained a
substantive topic for teachers to discuss. Starting with the Standard and Objective, the
expectation was that we would have co-constructed our understanding of the standards to be
covered, in response to the statement, “What grade level standards are covered in this lesson?”
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Further, the document listed questions like, “What is the objective of the lesson?” which would
require more than a minute (even if teachers did come prepared for the discussion) so that we
would have co-constructed our understanding of the objective. In accordance with the
knowledge-in-practice conception of teacher learning proposed by Cochran-Smith and Lytle
(1999), my organization’s internalization protocol followed a constructivist image of knowledge,
which would have required ample time for us to co-construct our understanding of the key
learning during this shared planning time. The next section titled Criteria for Success asked,
“What do students need to do to demonstrate mastery?” which presumed that teachers had
engaged in the pre-thinking about the exit ticket, or when teachers had not engaged in the prethinking, this section demanded more than 1 minute to create an exemplary response on demand.
Further, the question in the next section of the agenda asked, “To meet the objective, what do
students need to understand and do?” and was further broken down into three sections to discuss
the key points, vocabulary, and strategies to emphasize. This section presumed that teachers
would already know the key points, vocabulary, and strategies to emphasize and given the time
frame allotted, would report out ideas rather than slow down and co-construct meaning. As such,
the intended internalization process, which was meant to seek out the practical knowledge of
teachers, became constrained by the amount of time we were afforded for discussion. Moreover,
the fourth section asked teachers to deconstruct standards and reflect on the impact Covid-19 had
on instruction because it asked teachers to consider the curricular supports needed to address
unfinished teaching considering disrupted learning. Having never taught through a pandemic
before, this section of the agenda required further elaboration and deepened conversation for us
to unpack the type of scaffolding we could provide. Yet the deliberate reflection that could have
happened was automatically reduced when one considers how much time was allotted for each
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section. Furthermore, the fifth section of the agenda asked about differentiation and scaffolding.
It asked, “What scaffolds or accommodations will you provide for students with IEPs or ELLs?”
This part of the agenda presumed that teachers knew the accommodations necessary for every
student in their classroom, and that given the time allotted for the discussion, can remember this
off-the top of their head without referencing student snapshots. The sixth section in the agenda
tasked, “Choose one team member to do a teach back/rehearsal of the model for the team to
practice clarity.” A teach back which, if executed with fidelity, was to include feedback that was
both affirming and constructive. This section demanded more than 1 minute if it was to be
executed with fidelity. Continuing with the seventh section of the agenda, the next questions
about guided practice presumed that teachers would have engaged in pre-thinking as well.
Otherwise, it demanded that teachers thoughtfully consider formative data-gathering practices on
demand and to do so within 1 to 2 minutes. The eighth section of the agenda asked teachers to
consider student discourse in response to the question, “What will students discuss in group work
during the lesson?” Finally, the ninth section of the agenda was meant to close out the discussion
with teachers reflecting on the question, “What will students need to know by the end of the
lesson?” Despite having intended to use the context of our grade-level meetings as a holding
environment that could be the source of teacher discourse to turn our eyes toward culturally
relevant practice, I was constrained by the structure of the agenda and time because it was
cognitively infeasible to engage in the discourse that could have led us to build trust, slow down
and describe moments of practice in order to turn our attention toward culturally relevant
practices. Consistent with Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999), the knowledge-in-practice image of
learning that was implicit in our internalization protocol was constrained by the agenda and
time.
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Enactment of the Internalization Protocol and Holding Environment
In my theory of action, I named elements from adaptive leadership and andragogy that I
would draw upon to facilitate a holding environment that was dependent on trust and cohesive
relationships for me to move dialogue from reflection towards critical reflection so participants
could examine our teaching practices for their alignment to cultural competence. One example of
how I enacted the internalization process, that was representative of my enactment of the
internalization protocol across the nine observations, was the transcript excerpt and the
completed agenda that are included to reveal the quality of the discourse that I facilitated during
our meeting. The transcript is from the second observation during the first cycle. It is
representative of how I was unable to facilitate a holding environment across the nine
observations and instead reveals how I maintained participants’ discourse about teaching at a
surface level due to a lack of trust. It also reveals that I was unable to move us towards
examining our unconscious biases that guide our teaching practice with an eye towards
embracing more culturally relevant practices. During Cycle 1, the second meeting took place on
Zoom with each person in their own classroom. The excerpt shows how structural constraints
such as the agenda and time drove my own behavior as I facilitated the conversation during our
meetings. It also reveals the behaviors that the participants had been socialized into performing.
Originally conceived as a teacher community of experts coming together to reflect on practice,
the internalization agenda and time drove my behavior so that I turned the dialogue in the space
away from us looking at our teaching practice. It also drove the behavior of the participants
because they responded to my enactment of the internalization agenda. Figure 3 is the completed
agenda that accompanied the dialogue from the transcript below. Each section had been filled out
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and five out of nine sections were completed by copying and pasting directly into the agenda
from the original lesson, marking a priority of completion rather than discourse.
Figure 3
Completed Internalization Agenda
Weekly Internalization: 2 high leverage lessons internalized by team
Lesson information: Thursday 01/24/2022
Text Structure–Compare and Contrast
Standard and Objective: What grade level standards are covered in this lesson? What is the objective
of the lesson?
• Objective - SWBAT compare and contrast two texts on a similar topic by using a venn diagram and
referring to the text for details
• Standard - RI.3.9 Compare and contrast the most important points and key details presented in two texts on the
same topic.
Criteria for success: Exit ticket: Complete the exit ticket to better understand the objective. What is
an exemplar response? What do students need to do to demonstrate mastery?
• CFS: Look at students’ Venn diagrams. Do they correctly identify similarities and differences?
Key points, strategies and vocabulary to emphasize: General overview of what students will be
doing in this lesson. To meet the objective, what will students need to understand and do?
• Key Point
o Good readers compare/contrast texts (or topics) to grow their knowledge on similar
topics
• Strategy
o Using a Venn Diagram to organize notes/details
• Vocabulary
o Compare, contrast, Venn Diagram, similarities, differences
Unfinished Teaching/Learning: What other curricular supports could be built into the lesson to
address unfinished teaching/learning and to address student misconceptions? (Supports should support
the rigor in the lesson and not change/lessen it)
• Emphasizing importance of note-taking
Differentiation: Are there any parts of the lesson that require extra time spent or additional scaffolds?
What scaffolds or accommodations will you provide for students with IEP’s & EL’s?
• IEP’s: Pre-filled annotations
• EL’s:
Model: Which part of the lesson will you include explicit modeling/think aloud? What will you model?
Choose one team member to do a teach back/rehearsal of the model for the team to practice clarity.
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Provide both affirming and constructive feedback “When you did ______ the impact was______. Next
time maybe try this_______. “
• Model think aloud:
o Read passage fluently without stopping
o This passage discusses two topics, Sam and Buster. That is what I’m comparing and
contrasting. → write two topics down on venn diagram
o When I compare, I say what is the same between the two topics, this information goes in the
middle of the Venn diagram
§ go back to text, skim it and jot details down
§ dogs
§ brown with white spots
§ wet nose
§ collars
§ happy
o When I contrast, I say what is different
§ go back to text, skim it and jot details down
§ Sam
§ small, small ears, blue collar, knows many tricks
§ Buster
§ large, big ears, green collar, knows 1 trick
Guided Practice: What part of the lesson will students have the chance to practice while you closely
monitor understanding? What type of monitoring will you use to check for understanding of all
students? White boards, aggressive monitoring, etc.? How will you provide feedback to students during
the lesson?
• CFU: What was my expert thinking? What did you see or hear me do?
o When you compare, you say what is the same and when you contrast you say what is different
• Read the second text fluently without stopping
• Invite students to identify the two topics→ jot them down at the top of the Venn diagram
o The best pet and Things to Consider
• Give students two minutes to find what is different→ jot down on one side and then the other of the
Venn diagram
o Daschunds are great pets
o think carefully about owning daschunds
• Give students two minutes to find what is the same→ jot down in the middle of the Venn diagram
o both about dachshunds
Student Discourse: What will students discuss or participate in group work during the lesson?
• Discussing similarities
• Discussing differences
Independent Practice: What problems will students practice at the end of the lesson before the exit
ticket? What will students need to know by the end of the lesson?
• students will complete the rest of the worksheet independently
• monitor students as they work to address misconceptions
At the start of the meeting, I sent the documents, lesson plans and slides to the chat and
started the meeting.
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M: If there are changes that need to be made to the ELA lesson, I feel like I’m in a
really good place in terms of planning, where if we need to make changes, it
won’t be like a burden, at this point. So, if there’s anything from this week that or
the lesson that we’re going to internalize that needs edits please feel free to make
suggestions, all of that good stuff. So today we’ll be internalizing Thursday, the
compare and contrast lesson and first off, I just wanted to ask like, how has the
experience been for the compare and contrast lessons that we’ve already done up
until this point, what do you all, what do you all think?
C: I think that they’ve been really great. I know like when we had first started off,
like it started off nice and slow and it was like very visual for my kids and they
really, really enjoyed that. They were able to like the examples that you had given
them with like the school bus and, like the car and stuff like that, like they were
able to find a lot of similarities and then to find like their differences and stuff
they and then like as the progression has happened, like, we’ve been like pushing
them to like that next level thinking where they’re able to see, “Okay, what is this
one have, what is this one, have now let me look what did they have in common?”
and I think like, now, because it’s the passages they’re able to see okay this fact
that I wrote down for this one. And this fact they’re not the exact same words but
they mean the same thing, so now they’re making that connection with like their
context clues. And this fact they’re not the exact same words but they mean the
same thing, so now they’re making that connection with like their context clues.
So, it’s helping them not just with the actual Venn diagram and comparing and
contrasting but really like looking and diving into “What are you reading, like
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what does it mean?” So, like my kids that are at grade level and above, they really
like pushing themselves and so I’m like they’re understanding that I feel like a lot
more.
M: Great. Any other thoughts, let me check the chat.
A (from the chat): The gradual release supports their conceptual understanding, before
getting into comparing more complex topics.
M: Excellent.
D: Just something to emphasize that Charlotte mentioned was that sometimes like
what they have as a similarity it’s, it’s different words that kind of mean the same
thing so like lots of words that are like synonyms I wouldn’t even say synonyms.
They’re just related in some way, and I think, yes, like are at least my big push in
Hawaii is getting them to think What does this word mean? What does it mean?
Why does the author choose this word? And relating it back to like the main topic
or main idea so it’s very helpful very helpful.
M: Right. Hector, Bob, any other comments around compare and contrast?
H: Yea I mean I like your approach in terms of like the simplicity of the images
from the previous lessons I didn’t get to teach. The most recent one, because I
was out those 2 days, but from before I feel like students have been like getting,
like, the terminology down. Like compare means like things that are similar,
contrast that one they get a little more stuck on, but they at least know of
compare means two things that are similar, then the other word must mean that
things are different. So that has really helped in their like foundational
understanding of what, like, what we’re doing.
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B: The only thing I would add as a support would help would be if you found the
time to just like pre-annotate a couple of the passages for like the struggling
readers so that they aren’t like spending all that time trying to find a specific
detail. If you would, like, just underline or highlight some of the important details,
then it’s a little bit easier for them to find, then I think that will help. Because it’s,
just like the passages are getting longer and longer so if they’re, you know, just
struggling to even, like, read it then that just becomes a barrier to them like
focusing on the scale of compare or contrasting.
End of transcript
At the beginning of the meeting, when I said, “If there are changes that need to be made to the
ELA lesson, I feel like I’m in a really good place in terms of planning,” I communicated that my
feelings, not our teaching practice, were the focus of our time together. In doing so, I prevented
the creation of a holding environment that was dependent on trust because, from the beginning of
the meeting, I established the type of discourse that we would have. In this case, it was discourse
that tiptoed around my feelings about the lessons I’d written, rather than participants’ teaching
experience and its impact on learning. Northouse (2019) argues that an adaptive leader orients
others to deal with change and creates a holding environment to allow participants to function
with safety. When I said, “It won’t be like a burden, at this point” (emphasis added), I
inadvertently described that in the past, their feedback had been burdensome to my workload. By
saying this, I reproduced the type of environment I created in our previous meetings where
participants were familiar with us superficially covering the curriculum, where I moved
participants through the material, and we did not become present enough in our practice to slow
down and describe our teaching practice. For me to facilitate a holding environment where we
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could examine our teaching practices with an eye towards embracing more culturally relevant
practices, it required that I foster trust in the space where we could speak candidly. It required
my own bravery and to challenge the surface-level environment I’d facilitated in our previous
meetings.
When I said, “I just wanted to ask…how has the experience been for the compare and
contrast lessons that we’ve already done up until this point? What do you all, what do you all
think?” I focused on the participants’ experiences of the lesson “up until this point.” This is a
problem because by focusing on participants’ experience of the lesson, we ignored the purpose
of the internalization process, which was to examine our teaching practices for us to move
towards culturally relevant pedagogy. In my conceptual framework, I named that we would
move from reflection to critical reflection and interrogate our teaching practices by engaging in a
structured process of reflection. Our weekly meetings were a structured time and virtual space
for us to see and describe students’ learning. When I asked, “What you all think?” I asked a
general question that did not require that participants think about a specific moment of practice. I
asked for a general impression covering a lot of time “up until this point.” As such, I set the
expectation that I was interested in their general impression covering a lot of time, “up until this
point.” Rodgers (2002) argues that to see student learning, teachers must describe in detail
moments of practice before analyzing and responding. By asking “What do you all, what do you
all think?” I asked for a general impression that could be answered with a “good” or “bad,” and
not for them to slow down and provide evidence of their teaching of the compare and contrast
lessons they had taught. Again, this reproduced a virtual space where we superficially talked
about teaching rather than engage in brave discussion. As the leader in the space, I responded to
the structural constraints of the organization and to my own internal constraints and maintained a
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surface-level discussion of our teaching practice, not of student learning. Similarly, the
participants responded to my behaviors as the leader in the space and to the organizational
conditions and did not describe student learning either.
When Charlotte responded, “I think that they’ve been really great” she was providing a
response consistent with the nature of the question I asked, given that I asked for their general
impressions of the lessons. She participated by answering what was asked of her, which
contributed to the type of environment already present, one where trust was not present for
participants to speak candidly. I, as the leader in the space, presented the problem of practice as a
technical challenge, one that Northouse (2019) defines as having an identifiable solution, yet
what was required of me was to encourage the participants to identify the adaptive challenge in
our practice and for me to express my belief in their ability to engage with the problem of
practice. Further, when Charlotte continued with “I know like when we had first started off like it
started off nice and slow,” her response was consistent with my general question as she offered a
general statement of “they’ve been really great.” In doing so, she focused on an opinion of her
practice not of student learning. When Charlotte went on to describe that “as the progression has
happened, like, we’ve been like pushing them to like that next level thinking…” I did not ask her
to provide evidence of her teaching practice that would show that the lessons were pushing
students to “a next level of thinking.” Here, I did not push the participants’ capacity to think
critically about her practice nor did I develop their capacity to consider what her example could
be informing us about student learning. Without a holding environment where trust was present,
the type of discourse that I generated was superficial. When Charlotte said, “my kids that are at
grade level and above, they really like pushing themselves and so I’m, like, they’re
understanding that I feel like a lot more” Charlotte was crediting the lesson with having enabled
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students to compare and contrast, which came across as too good to be true. Again, Charlotte
provided a general impression of her teaching practice that was consistent with the question I
asked at the onset of the meeting. Here, we did not interrogate our teaching practices for their
alignment to cultural competence. Moreover, I accepted at face value what Charlotte said when I
replied with “Great.” Student learning was completely absent from our conversations because of
how I responded to both structural and internal constraints and participants responded to my
conversational moves based on their socialization within the space. To reiterate, this prevented a
holding environment where trust overflowed because if I was reticent to interrogate and probe,
then the expectation I communicated to the participants was that they could avoid interrogating
their own practice, too.
When I asked, “Any other thoughts?” I did what Horn and Little (2010) describe as
turning away from practice because, again, I asked the team for their general impressions about
the lessons, rather than inviting Charlotte to slow down moments of her teaching practice that
may be allowing students to understand “a lot more.” Moreover, when Allison typed in the chat,
“The gradual release supports their conceptual understanding” she was providing a general
statement of teaching that was not supported with examples of teaching practice. When I
responded with “Excellent” I continued to keep dialogue at a surface level because I did not ask
her to provide an example of the teaching practice that was consistent with her statement. This
shows that, again, I accepted at face value what Allison, an administrator who was not
implementing the lessons, just shared. In my conceptual framework, I also named that we would
examine the complex nature of our positionality, which would require us to move away from the
land of nice and, as Arao and Clemens (2013) encourage, “honestly struggle with challenging
issues” (p. 138). In accepting at face value what an administrator just shared without further
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probing, I enabled a space where discussion about teaching and learning was shallow and
without consideration for power dynamics and our role in that reproduction. Further, when Darla
said
like at least my big push in Hawaii is getting them to think What does this word mean?
What does it mean? Why does the author choose this word? And relating it back to like
the main topic or main idea so it’s very helpful very helpful
she was carefully and indirectly indicating that the lesson was imperfect, making an indirect
appeal to problems of practice. This was an opportunity to invite Darla to slow down her practice
and describe why they were looking at vocabulary so closely in a compare and contrast lesson,
but I did not follow up with questions to probe further.
When I said, “Right. Hector, Bob, any other comments around compare and contrast?” I
disregarded her perspective and what it could have contributed to our shared understanding of
teaching practice. Moreover, when I asked, “any other comments around compare and contrast?”
I telegraphed to the team that what I was interested in were comments about teaching that, when
they were shared, I would gloss over and move the conversation along for the sake of procedure.
This reproduced the lack of holding environment. When another team member said,
The only thing I would add as a support would help would be if you found the time to
just like pre-annotate a couple of the passages for like the struggling readers so that they
aren’t like spending all that time trying to find a specific detail
he cued to a problem of practice and made a direct appeal for feedback. I could have asked him
to describe why those supports were necessary, I could have asked him to say more about the
struggling readers and what the students in the Special Education setting were experiencing. Yet,
I didn’t ask probing questions of any kind. This lack of probing reproduced the environment
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where participants could not share openly. Instead, I said, “Got it, let me make a note to myself
really quickly.” When I said, “Got it,” I stamped that the type of discourse I was interested in
was one that was surface level where the solution to problems of practice was for me to make a
note of it for my own reference. I approached problems of practice as technical challenges rather
than adaptive challenges we could describe and define more specifically. When I said, “Thank
you all for that feedback that is really helpful to keep in mind” I conveyed that when it came to
problems of practice, all that was needed to improve practice was to “keep [it] in mind.” This is
problematic because, at the onset of the research, I set out to have four teachers in Boyle Heights
interrogate their teaching practices for alignment to culturally relevant pedagogy and turn an eye
toward embracing cultural competence, yet I did not facilitate a holding space where trust was
present. As demonstrated in the transcript, I impeded the quality of the discourse because,
structurally, I was constrained by the robustness of the agenda and the amount of time we were
afforded to complete it and as such, I facilitated a space that was lacking trust and where I
consistently asked general questions that kept dialogue at a surface level and did not turn
participants towards practice.
Conditions Limiting Reflective Discourse
Horn and Little (2010) ask the question, “How might talk among teachers supply
opportunities for professional learning and account for improvements in teaching?” (p. 182).
This question, in some ways, bears similarity to the question that I intended to answer through
my research (“How do I engage three elementary school teachers in Boyle Heights to examine
their unconscious biases that guide their teaching practice with an eye toward embracing more
culturally relevant practices?”). When given the opportunity to meet with participants in an
organizational context, I intended to guide the participants to examine the nature of our
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positionality as teachers as well as to interrogate our teaching practices for their alignment to
cultural competence.
As I discuss in my conceptual framework, the practices that support learning in peer
learning communities are emotionally intelligent sensitivities that support the conditions for
critical reflection to take place. I draw on Horn and Little (2010) to advance the conversational
routines that allow for teachers to reflect on and learn from problems of practice. Additionally, I
draw on Horn and Little (2010) to discuss the constraints that impact discourse about teaching
and learning. For professional learning communities to make progress in schools, Horn and Little
(2010) refer to the social, technical, and organizational conditions that must exist (Horn & Little,
2010). Additionally, Weis and Fine (2012) argue that critical bifocality is central to
understanding problems of practice. They argue that a commitment to bifocals, is a committed
attention to structures and lives (Weis & Fine, 2012). This means that in seeking to understand
the social phenomena of my context, I could not separate the organizational conditions of my
context from its relationship with its participants. In the previous section, I asserted that I was
limited by the social and technical conditions in my context. More specifically, I did not foster
trust within my grade level team for us to engage in dialogue about student learning despite
having cohesive relationships within our grade level team. Additionally, the technical conditions
within my context, such as the absence of a holding environment, limited my ability to guide
participants to engage in any dialogue about student learning as well as our ability to reflect on
our teaching practices. In the previous section, I found that there were structural constraints that
prevented me from creating conditions for the participants to interrogate their teaching practices
for their alignment to cultural competence. Similarly, the participants responded to my behavior,
and this maintained discourse at a surface level. Thus, further reproducing the conditions of the
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space. In this section, I will speak to the organizational conditions, such as discourse routines,
that limited me from co-generating reflective dialogue with the participants in my context. I will
also speak to the relationship between participants, my behavior, and the organizational
conditions of the space.
Horn and Little (2010) suggest that for workplace groups to prove generative for
learning, there are organizational conditions that must be present. The conditions that Horn and
Little (2010) recommend be in place for teacher groups are norms of collaboration, a focus on
students and their academic performance, and mutual accountability for student growth and
success. Furthermore, they specify that within teacher groups there are conversational routines
that create and sustain learning interactions. Horn and Little (2010) refer to these conversational
routines as moves, or turns of talk, that shape learning interactions so that teachers turn toward
teaching. The conversational routines that Horn and Little (2010) assert contribute to the
organizational conditions for teachers to make sense of teaching are: normalizing, turning toward
teaching, and specifying, revising, and generalizing a problem of practice. Consistent with Horn
and Little (2010), I intended to leverage organizational conditions during our weekly
internalization meetings to promote professional learning because I believed that the participants
shared values, such as a belief in students and a desire to improve practice that I could leverage
to promote reflective dialogue. Rather than promote the conditions to turn toward teaching, I
normalized conversational routines, or moves such as covering the material, praise, indirect
critique, and a turning away from teaching. The participants responded to the routines they were
socialized into and that I reinforced, and this was revealed in our surface level discourse.
Moreover, I did not promote the conversational routines that were necessary to improve teacher
practice. Rather, I promoted conversational routines that inhibited and constrained dialogue.
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Therefore, another finding that emerged from the research is that I maintained participants’
discourse about teaching at a surface level and we did not examine our unconscious biases that
guide our teaching practice with an eye toward embracing more culturally relevant practices due
to the conversational routines that I fostered during our shared planning time. This was a result
of the interactions between the individuals (participants) and the system (our organization).
One example of how I fostered conversational routines that pushed participants away
from critically reflective discourse is evident in the transcript from the third meeting I facilitated
during my first cycle of research. This example is from my third observation and is
representative of the conversational routines I employed across all nine observations. Our third
meeting was held over Zoom, as Covid-19 restrictions and protocols were still in place, with
every team member in their respective classroom. At the start of the meeting, I shared the
internalization documents that the participants were familiar with. The digital documents
included the internalization agenda—with the same guiding questions for us to answer in a 20-
minute span of time—and the ELA lesson plans created by me and that had been shared a week
prior in anticipation of this meeting and of teaching. The learning objective we discussed during
that week’s meeting was helping students determine the main idea of an informational text.
Consistent with Rodgers (2002), I planned to engage the participants in a structured process of
reflection using the internalization process already set in place through my organization. In my
theory of action, I intended to use that week’s meeting as one where I would support participants
in “learning to see” our practice and position ourselves to take an inquiry as a stance that allowed
us to reflect on our practice. Rodgers (2002) describes “learning to see” as a reflection process
whereby teachers slow down by describing carefully and in detail their teaching practice. The
reason I intended to draw from Rodgers’s (2002) reflective cycle was for us to attend to what
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was happening in our practice rather than what we wished was happening. In my action plan for
the first cycle of research, I wrote supplemental questions that I intended to use in conjunction
with our internalization agenda’s guiding questions. These were questions such as, “I’ve been
wondering about this thing in my practice, and it’s been making me think about the way we do
this” to slow down our practice and describe our practice more explicitly.
The transcript reveals the quality of our discourse. It reveals conversational routines that I
promoted and that participants responded to that prevented us from slowing down our practice
and describing it. It also reveals the absence of a discussion of students and their learning.
Start of the meeting I sent the documents, lesson plans and slides to the chat and started
meeting.
M: So, we are internalizing next Wednesday’s lesson “determine the main idea by
using details to explain their thinking.” As you can see, next we have making an
inference. I figure that’s not a standard that we hit necessarily in ELA, but I know
in talking to Ana inferences are coming up with science, and so she was asking
me like have they seen it in ELA? Or just like in third grade in general, so it’s a
pretty like straightforward lesson, and I’m just going to try to spiral that in here
and there. Just because I initially had two context clues lessons and I figured we
didn’t need two of those. Then Tuesday’s determine main idea, Wednesday
compare and contrast very similar to how we did it today starting with like a mini
passage then going deeper into two different passages and just like comparing
contrasting using the Venn diagram. Then on Friday, that’s when you dive a little
bit more into using the chart where you check off the boxes. So, it’s the main idea
lesson I think, similar to what we did with the compare and contrast lesson last
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week. I wanted us to think about when students have to use main idea in their
lives, like as 8-year-old, 9-year-old’s. Why is this relevant to them? So, I’m
thinking about, “What are your thoughts around like, activating prior knowledge
when it comes to this type of skill? Because right now, I have “an informational
text gives us information about a topic, we’re going to read and understand
informational texts in ELA both writing and the literacy block” right so it’s very
non-kid friendly. So, what are your thoughts around, like when do they have to
use the main idea?
As evidenced by the transcript above, I did not promote the conversational routines necessary to
move participants to interrogate their teaching practices. At the start of the meeting when I said,
“So we are internalizing next Wednesday’s lesson ‘determine the main idea by using details to
explain their thinking’” I told participants the content of upcoming lessons. I did what Rodgers
(2002) refers to as covering the material by moving participants through the activity of
internalizing. Rather than engaging in the practice of internalizing the lessons in the way that the
organization intended, through a knowledge-in-practice approach, I moved participants away
from the possibility of engaging in discourse about student learning. By covering the material, I
constrained teachers from engaging and contributing to the discussion. Then when I said, “As
you can see, next we have making an inference. I figure that’s not a standard that we hit
necessarily in ELA,” I made a broad assumption of the type of curriculum that was necessary for
our students. I neither slowed down our practice nor did I move us toward practice. Again, I
covered the material, assuming that the participants were participating and learning. Rather than
move us toward practice this moved us away from practice because I did not invite participants
to contribute and explore what I meant or the standard’s significance to students and their
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learning. Consistent with Horn and Little (2010), I exerted my role in a way that closed off
discussion because I treated the problem of practice as mine alone to solve without allowing
participants the opportunity to further specify the problem. In that instance, I limited our capacity
for teacher talk in the service of student learning because I did not foster an in-depth interaction,
which Horn and Little (2010) argue is necessary for professional learning opportunities.
Furthermore, when I said, “So it’s a pretty like straightforward lesson, and I’m just going to try
to spiral that in here and there,” I reinforced the conversational routine of covering the material. I
excluded the participants from the dialogue we could have shared. Moreover, through my words,
“It’s a pretty straightforward lesson” and “I’m just going to spiral that in here and there” and “I
figured we didn’t need two of those [lessons]” I communicated to the participants that the
evidence from their own teaching practice was unnecessary to our conversation. To reiterate, this
covering of the material speaks to the conditions of the type of space I created, it reveals the
quality of our discourse, which remained superficial, one that is the antithesis of what both
Rodgers (2002) and Horn and Little (2010) describe as contributing to reflective communities
that work towards improving practice.
Additionally, I prevented participants from engaging in critical reflection because in our
shared space I promoted conversational routines where we primarily gave superficial praise,
indirect critique, and turned away from a discussion of our teaching practice. For instance, when
I said, “So it’s the main idea lesson I think, similar to what we did with the compare and contrast
lesson last week” I reinforced a routine where my opinion stood as a general truth without the
need to invite in other viewpoints and experiences. This limited participants from surfacing or
taking up any problems of practice. In this case, when I said, “Similar to what we did last week”
I defined the boundary of our conversation, which was to talk about instruction at a surface level.
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Rodgers (2002) argues that reflection ought to invite community into the conversation for there
to be an array of perspectives to reflect on practice. Likewise, Horn and Little (2010) maintain a
similar idea, that for teacher talk to be substantive, the conversational routines must support
teachers to take up expressed problems of practice. Moreover, when I said, “I wanted us to think
about when students have to use main idea in their lives, like as 8-year-old, 9-year-old’s. Why is
this relevant to them?” I elicited participants’ opinions about the significance of our teaching as
opposed to making explicit our teaching practice, as Rodgers (2002) encourages. By eliciting
participants’ opinions about our students, I prevented them from making sense of our teaching.
Then, when I said, “So I’m thinking about, ‘What are your thoughts around like, activating prior
knowledge when it comes to this type of skill?” I once again focused on participants’ opinions
about what was best for students. This is a problem because rather than challenge the teachers in
the room to describe their practice, I encouraged them to cite their opinions about the lessons I
wrote. Consistent with Horn and Little (2010) we walked through the lesson to enable us to
anticipate problems of practice “implicated by particular features of the lesson” (p. 207). Yet, I
did not open conversation for participants to contribute. Instead, I asked a second question, “So,
what are your thoughts around, like when do they have to use the main idea?” In doing so, I
communicated to the participants that I was pressed for time and was not sincerely interested in
whether they contributed to the conversation or not. This speaks to the quality, or lack thereof, of
our dialogue. Horn and Little (2010) encourage expressing problems of practice, while also
acknowledging the need for conversational routines to encourage a taking up of expressed
problems of practice where participants further specify, revise, and generalize to principles of
teaching. Instead of doing this, I signaled to participants that in walking through a lesson during
our internalization protocol I was more interested in what Horn and Little (2010) refer to as
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telling and showing, which they argue constraints reflection. In this way, the conversational
routine that I promoted turned participants away from practice rather than toward practice. This
shows that the interaction between the organization and its members was reciprocal. The
organization presented constraints, I responded to the constraints through my enactment of the
internalization protocol, and the participants responded to the conditions into which they were
socialized.
Participants responded to the conditions they were socialized into and despite them
making appeals to problems of practice, the conversational moves that I promoted I limited their
ability to critically reflect. The transcript from the same meeting continues below and reveals
how participants responded to conversational routines that prevented us from slowing down our
practice and describing it.
B: When I think about this particular one and try to make it relevant to them my first
thought is in what context, do they interact with a story the most, and I think for
that age group it’s mostly like games or movies. When I think like you know it’s,
that’s never going to be like a super important thing for them to understand
because you know it’s a lot of times it’s just like for their enjoyment. For me
we’ve played like UNO and it’s like what is like what is the point of what we’re
doing like it’s whoever gets rid of the cards and that’s where we started it’s like
what like the way that I’ve thought about it is what’s the whole point of like what
we’re doing right now. And I think that’s the one way that it’s made sense to
them. So much of it is like inferential comprehension, which is just like a struggle
in general, that’s what I think about is like what, where would they when, when
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do they interact like with a story or something that has a main idea. And I think
those are those are two areas that they might.
For instance, when Bob said, “When I think about this particular one and try to make it relevant
to them my first thought is in what context, do they interact with a story the most, and I think for
that age group it’s mostly like games or movies” he was reflecting on when students utilize main
idea in their everyday lives. He was in this case, trying to specify, or interpret his thought process
when teaching “main idea” to a small group of students. In doing so, he was turning toward
teaching. Then when he said, “When I think like you know it’s, that’s never going to be like a
super important thing for them to understand because you know it’s a lot of times it’s just like for
their enjoyment,” Bob provided his own opinion of the skills he deemed necessary for students to
master the concept of main idea. Furthermore, he simplified the skill when he said, “For me
we’ve played like UNO and it’s like ‘what is like what is the point of what we’re doing?’ and he
tried to understand the skill from a student’s point of view. He went on to describe the skill from
a student’s perspective when he said,
Like it’s whoever gets rid of the cards and that’s where we started. It’s like the way that
I’ve thought about it is, ‘what’s the whole point of like what we’re doing right now?’
And I think that’s the one way that it’s made sense to them.
In this instance Bob likened the skill of finding the main idea to a card game by contextualizing
the student experience within his small group sessions. Bob specified the problem of practice by
interpreting the events from one of his small-group sessions. Further, he signaled a problem of
practice when he said,
So much of it is like inferential comprehension, which is just like a struggle in general,
that’s what I think about is like ‘What? Where would they? When? When do they interact
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like with a story or something that has a main idea? And I think those are those are two
areas that they might.
In this instance, Bob signaled a problem of practice that was worth exploring through
conversation with the other participants in the space. After all, Horn and Little (2010) argue that
talk is generative in peer learning communities when it centers problems of practice while also
having the conditions and conversational routines to support said discourse. When Bob said, “So
much of it is inferential comprehension, which is just like a struggle in general,” he signaled
trouble in his teaching practice that I could have probed him to describe more explicitly, to do
what Horn and Little (2010) call revising. Bob also signaled a deficit view of students by
minimizing both the importance and the rigor of the skill we were discussing. Where culturally
relevant pedagogy is concerned, our positionality as teachers was worth naming in that instance.
Yet, I reproduced the conversational routines limiting our ability to turn toward culturally
relevant practice. Instead, I defaulted to praise when I responded with, “I definitely agree with
that.” In doing this, I limited our possibility for discourse that could have turned our eyes toward
culturally relevant pedagogy because I normalized Bob’s experience in the classroom but
constrained his response with my own anecdote of teaching.
M: I definitely agree with that, last week um, I was thinking very much the same Bob
right? So, I asked them, “Like tell me what happens in the movie?” And then, a
student started to tell me, and he just gave me a few specific details, and so I said
“Okay, those are great details about the story. But I want to know what is the
author’s message about the movie?” like “what, what did, what does the author
want you to know?” and that’s when they were able to, another student answered
right, and they said “Everyone has a special gift” something along the lines right?,
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even though, like in the case of—what’s the main character’s name —Mirabelle
she doesn’t have the magical gift, she still has something to share with the world
with their family with their community, so I think, keeping in mind something
that you know about your students that they’re really into, um, is a great way to
like hook them maybe it’s a game, maybe it’s a video game that they know um to
really like hook them into why we’re learning about main idea right? We have to
be able to tell someone an author’s message about a movie, we have to, you
know, when we read a text tell me about the text, what is the author’s message
about the text that you’re reading? So, I think that made the key points for the
main idea last week a little bit more sticky and then I’m hoping it will help you all
with next week’s main idea lesson.
In the transcript above I continued by adding my own experience of teaching the concept of main
idea, and by doing so, I did what Horn and Little (2010) refer to as normalizing where I supplied
reassurance that this problem of practice is one that I faced in the classroom, too. I said, “I was
thinking very much the same, Bob.” By saying this I reinforced the conversational routine where
probing for the improvement of practice was considered taboo. When I praised Bob, I reinforced
the conditions in our space that our teacher talk was limited to platitudes. This is contrary to the
brave space I intended to enact as one of the elements from my theory of change because to coconstruct a brave space would have required us to give up our former conditions (Arao &
Clemens, 2013). The safe space where we remained was contrary to the conversational moves
that support opportunities for teachers to learn. This speaks to the relationship between the
organizational conditions and the individuals within the system. Moreover, when I provided my
own account of teaching main idea, I told the participants what they should be doing in their own
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practice, which closed off opportunities to turn toward teaching. This was evident when I said,
“So I think, keeping in mind something that you know about your students that they’re really
into, um, is a great way to like hook them.” By telling participants what to do in their own
instruction, I once again covered the material and did not allow participants the opportunity to
interrogate and evaluate my own practice for its consistency to culturally relevant pedagogy. I
went on to say, “We have to be able to tell someone an author’s message about a movie, we have
to, you know, when we read a text… tell me about the text, what is the author’s message about
the text that you’re reading?” In this example, I once again defaulted to telling and showing
teachers what to do as opposed to engaging them in discourse. When I said, “That made the key
points for the main idea more sticky” and “I’m hoping it will help you all,” I turned participants
away from teaching by giving them quick fixes. Horn and Little (2010) argue that principles for
teaching should not be cast as tips and tricks. In that instance, I provided the participants with a
“tip” to improve their practice without the opportunity for any of the participants to specify and
interpret how students made sense of my instruction. This closed off my own and participants’
ability to examine our unconscious biases that guide our teaching practice with an eye toward
embracing more culturally relevant practice. This was a pattern in the conversational routines I
enacted that was consistent throughout not only this meeting, but also the eight other meetings in
this action-research study.
Throughout the remainder of the meeting, the transcript reveals that I covered the
material three more times, I praised the participants two more times, and I turned away from
teaching three more times. The moves that I defaulted to and that shaped learning interactions
included covering the material, praise, indirect critique, and turning away from teaching. The
organizational conditions, such as discourse routines, that I promoted limited me from co-
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generating reflective dialogue with the participants in my context. The participants in my
context, accordingly, responded to the conditions that were promoted. As I moved throughout the
remainder of the action-research study, the conversational moves that I employed did not change
Therefore, the conditions I created across the nine observations limited the discourse that was
possible.
Regulating Distress to Turn Towards Practice
When I began this research, I set out to understand my role in helping three teachers to
examine their unconscious biases that guide their teaching practices, or in other words, how I
encouraged three teachers to reflect on their beliefs implicit in their teaching practice. Adaptive
leadership, the leadership theory I drew from, is about how “leaders encourage people to adapt”
(Northouse, 2022, p. 285). Moreover, adaptive leadership emphasizes the behaviors of the leader
in relation to the work of the followers (Northouse, 2022). I found that, as the leader in the space,
I dwelled on my own distress and lacked the presence and was reticent to turn discourse toward
teaching and critical reflection. While my learners and I did not examine our unconscious biases
that guide our teaching practices, I believe that throughout this process I strengthened my
awareness of self and ability to step out of the fray and find perspective in the midst of structural
constraints, or what Northouse describes as getting on the balcony. Getting on the balcony is a
behavior adaptive leaders enact to momentarily step away from a situation to see the bigger
picture (Northouse, 2022). Throughout the three research cycles, I strengthened my ability to get
on the balcony, having reflected after each observation and having identified the elements of
adaptive leadership and andragogy that I did not enact.
During each cycle, and after each observation, I wrote reflections once I was able to sit
down and process what I observed. Because I recorded each observation, I cleaned up the
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transcription from each observation’s recording. Reading the transcription of what was said
verbatim allowed me to reflect on what I remembered from each meeting. Typically, I wrote the
reflection 1-2 days post-observation so that my immediate thoughts were fresh in my mind, yet I
was removed from the situation to process the interactions and dialogue. To demonstrate how I
dwelled on my own distress, I have included excerpts from the first reflection I wrote following
the first internalization meeting I had with the participants. To demonstrate how throughout the
course of the three cycles, I strengthened my awareness of self and ability to get on the balcony, I
have included excerpts from the first observation in the third cycle of my research.
Start of the reflection, written after the first observation in Cycle 1.
In our grade level, there are four of us. Darla, Hector, Charlotte, and myself. This
year Bob joins our internalizations as the RSP teacher for our grade-level. Darla holds
positional power while the rest of us do not. I believe Darla and Charlotte waver between
an instrumental and socializing way of knowing while Hector orients towards a selfauthoring way of knowing and Bob orients towards a socializing way of knowing.
As I’m processing how the first meeting went, I felt frustrated that Darla said
point blank that we need to keep our internalization structured and down to 20 minutes
ELA, 20 minutes Math. She designated the scribe roles to herself and Hector since
Charlotte and I lead the content discussion.
I felt frustrated that Darla asked for such a rigid structure. I’m even more
frustrated with myself because Charlotte tried to push back on our need to do things for
the sake of compliance just because the admin team is asking us to do it. She was correct
to ask why must we worry about the internalization document when Kathy (our Assistant
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school leader) had previously said that we don’t have to complete it for the sake of
compliance, especially if our conversation is fruitful as it is.
I felt frustrated that Darla said we needed to do it simply for audit purposes and
didn’t necessarily connect the internalization process to how it helps us change or
challenge our teaching practice or impact student learning. This was a moment for me to
ask the rest of our team to consider something different as well.
If I’m honest we have fallen into a routine, where I, as the ELA planner, just tell
the team what the upcoming lessons are without asking any open-ended questions that
prompt deeper examination. Where Charlotte, as the Math planner, just tells the team
what the upcoming lessons are. As I’m looking at the fieldnotes I know that I was feeling
flustered and frustrated and couldn’t gather myself to validate Charlotte’s frustration,
which I felt as well. I also notice that Hector did not chime in, nor did we invite him into
the conversation by asking open-ended questions. I’m thinking about the next meeting
and how I hope for it to be more collaborative with an opportunity to look at the lessons
and elicit everyone’s input.
End of the reflection.
In my reflection, when I wrote, “Darla holds positional power while the rest of us do not,” I
described the power dynamics within our organizational context. I did so because as someone
who hoped to draw from elements of andragogy and adaptive leadership, I needed to name the
ways in which I was positioned in relation to the participants in the study. Darla was our gradelevel chair, and this was something I was cognizant of both during the observations and that I
named above in my reflection. When I wrote, “I believe Darla and Charlotte waver between an
instrumental and socializing way of knowing while Hector orients towards a self-authoring way
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of knowing,” I reflected on my understanding of the learners in the space and how I, as an
adaptive leader, would help them adapt to approaching our internalization work differently by
examining our unconscious bias. After all, Northouse (2022) describes the behaviors of adaptive
leaders to mobilize the change of learners and I thought it important to reflect on the type of
learners in the space.
When I wrote, “As I’m processing how the first meeting went, I felt frustrated that Darla
said point blank that we need to keep our internalization structure down to 20 minutes ELA, 20
minutes Math,” I recalled feeling frustrated by the structural constraints being imposed on our
work. I experienced a feeling of frustration because I believed Darla was receiving messages
from our administrative team about how to structure our time during internalization meetings.
The feeling overwhelmed me further when I wrote, “I felt frustrated that Darla asked for such a
rigid structure. I’m even more frustrated with myself because Charlotte tried to push back on our
need to do things for the sake of compliance just because the admin team is asking us to do it.”
In this case, another learner in the space signaled the need to do things differently. Yet, I
remained focused on the distress I experienced rather than, as Northouse (2022) describes,
mobilize, motivate, organize, orient, and focus the attention of the learners.
The feeling of frustration overwhelmed me, and I did not regulate my distress to focus the
attention of the participants. I wrote, “I felt frustrated that Darla said we needed to do it simply
for audit purposes and didn’t necessarily connect the internalization process to how it helps us
change or challenge our teaching practice or impact student learning.” Post-observation, I
recognized that the feeling overwhelmed me and created distress that I could not see past. In my
reflection, I understood that I had not been present in my teaching and even less so been attuned
to my learners. For example, I wrote, “This was a moment for me to ask the rest of our team to
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consider something different as well.” Mezirow (2000) writes that transformative learning is an
emotional experience that requires emotional intelligence. During the observation, I certainly did
not turn our attention toward teaching practice, and in my reflection, I recognized my lack of
emotional intelligence that limited me from being able to orient the participants’ attention. I also
wrote, “If I’m honest we have fallen into a routine, where I, as the ELA planner, just tell the
team what the upcoming lessons are without asking any open-ended questions that prompt
deeper examination.” While not immersed in the interaction, I recognized my tendency to default
to covering the material, where I “just tell the team what the upcoming lessons are without
asking any open-ended questions.” Furthermore, I described my distress when I wrote, “As I’m
looking at the fieldnotes I know that I was feeling flustered and frustrated and couldn’t gather
myself to validate Charlotte’s frustration, which I felt as well.” In this case, I reflected on
participants signaling to a problem of practice. Other participants, like Charlotte, made an appeal
to examine our internalization approach. I agreed with the appeal but was overwhelmed by the
constraint being imposed on us to preserve fidelity of the internalization protocol simply because
of audit purposes. In setting out to examine our teaching practices during our internalization
meetings, I encountered structural constraints that as a team we were operating under without
awareness. When confronted with that awareness, I felt stifled and could not regulate my
emotions to move learning of the participants forward. Mezirow (2000) argues that there are
social competencies that are necessary for engaging in reflective discourse. One of those
competencies is self-regulation (Mezirow, 2000). As a leader in the space, I did not model selfregulation, and this impacted my ability to turn discourse toward teaching and critical reflection.
While my learners and I did not examine our unconscious bias that guide our teaching
practices, throughout this process I strengthened my ability to get on the balcony. I have included
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the reflection from the third cycle that I wrote after the first observation to demonstrate how, in
my reflections, I was able to step out of the fray and find perspective.
Start of the reflection, written after the first observation in Cycle 3.
I went into this last meeting, feeling refreshed both physically and mentally. We
had parent teacher conferences and spring break back-to-back, and this allowed me to
take the out-of-the-field week from the second cycle and really step away from the
research for a few weeks to consider how I am enacting the actions in my plan.
I felt the reprieve physically and emotionally in my body because normally I
make an observers’ comment in my field notes where I note that I am feeling anxious,
overwhelmed, feeling the pressure, and during this meeting I did not note anything of that
sort. I was relaxed and felt that I could go into the meeting and eat my snacks while
facilitating “my portion” of the conversation. There also wasn’t the pressure of following
a strict protocol for our meeting.
In my action plan, I pivoted after the second cycle and after reading Horn and
Little’s Routines in Conversation. It felt appropriate to bring in the theory from this
particular reading because most of the context from the PLCs in the reading is very
similar to the context in my workplace. Namely, that here is this well-meaning group of
people who each bring an abundance of knowledge into the space, who all can lean into
conversation, we have documents and procedures and protocols and a solid structure to
conduct the meeting, yet there are things that hold us back from engaging in dialogue that
allow us to turn towards practice.
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One thing I am aware of is that we each are very supportive of each other, and
typically “normalize” a problem of practice when someone shares. Sometimes it feels
like we even go as far as to specify the problem. That’s what this last session felt like.
Where I would like to see myself not feel so powerless in facilitating the conversation is
that on this particular topic, we concluded by giving ourselves grace. We acknowledged
that the assessments are unfair, the way that teachers are evaluated puts pressure on us to
standardize learning, and that then translates into what we prioritize in our teaching. So,
ultimately this does what when it comes to principles of culturally relevant teaching?
Other than our consciousness about the system in which we and our students operate, our
lessons aren’t any more conscious of who the students are. I would like to go into the
next session not feeling so powerless to lead the conversation towards that.
End of the reflection.
Compared to the first meeting in the first cycle of my research, in this observation there was a
contrast in my emotional state. I wrote, “I went into this last meeting, feeling refreshed both
physically and mentally.” Further, when I wrote, “this allowed me to take the out-of-the-field
week from the second cycle and really step away from the research for a few weeks to consider
how I am enacting the actions in my plan” I was conscious of the role that stepping away from
the interactions in my observations benefitted my ability to enact the actions in my plan.
Northouse (2022) writes that getting on the balcony allows a leader to see the bigger picture and
understand what is really going on.
Of the distress that I was used to experiencing during the first and second cycle of
research, I wrote, “I felt the reprieve physically and emotionally in my body because normally I
make an observers’ comment in my field notes where I note that I am feeling anxious,
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overwhelmed, feeling the pressure, and during this meeting I did not note anything of that sort.”
Where my awareness of self was absent during the beginning of my research, towards the end of
my research there was an awareness of my emotional state that didn’t constrain my ability to step
out of the fray and understand how in our meetings I was avoiding the work of turning towards
culturally relevant practice. Moreover, when I wrote, “In my action plan, I pivoted after the
second cycle and after reading Horn and Little’s routines in conversation,” I stood on the
metaphorical balcony and saw how the pieces of our internalization meetings worked together,
and more importantly, how I reinforced them to push us away from examining our teaching
practices. Consistent with Northouse (2022), I stood on the balcony and understood the key
players as well. I wrote, “Namely, here is this well-meaning group of people who each bring an
abundance of knowledge into the space, who all have the ability to lean into conversation, we
have documents and procedures and protocols and a solid structure to conduct the meeting, yet
there are things that hold us back from engaging in dialogue that allow us to turn towards
practice.” Where my emotional distress paralyzed me into inaction, in this reflection, I was
aware of how participants, including myself, reinforced the routines that kept us from turning
toward practice. Finally, I wrote, “Other than our consciousness about the system in which we
and our students operate, our lessons aren’t any more conscious of who the students are. I would
like to go into the next session not feeling so powerless to lead the conversation towards that.”
When I wrote, “other than our consciousness about the system” I continued to get on the balcony
by naming the power dynamics among the key players and the ways we were avoiding the work.
Afterword
In this final section, I will discuss where I currently stand in my practice, my
retrospective takeaways from having conducted action research, how the dissertation has
99
influenced my work since the conclusion of my research, and how it will continue to influence
my growth moving forward.
Where I Stand in My Practice
It has been a journey to look inward as I have stepped away, revisited this project,
stepped away, and revisited this project once more to finalize this action-research. I concluded
my in-the-field research in May 2022. At the conclusion of my in-the-field research, I alternated
between engaging in analysis and stepping away from the final write up of my findings due to
the feeling of paralysis that surfaced having finished the research without having been able to
move my participants toward embracing culturally relevant practices. When my school site
initially took up the work of raising our collective critical consciousness in 2020, I found
resonance with the work the school embarked upon. Publicly, I aligned myself with the espoused
values of the organization by sharing my thoughts in whole-staff PD sessions. In truth, I
underestimated the adaptive and social skills that the work to foster critical reflection amongst
adult learners would require. This is because within the context of a small group, where the
thrust of the work was in moving adult learners toward critical reflection, I found that I was
limited by both the structural constraints of my organization and the internal constraints I
experienced with my own sense of self-efficacy. I was unable to create a holding environment
where I could foster trust to surface meaningful discussion, and this resulted in an ensuing
feeling of paralysis because I was aware of my inability. Through engaging in analysis, I
uncovered the behaviors I did not employ to move teachers toward critically reflective discourse.
As I worked through my data analysis, I also found that despite the structures that limited me, I
did make progress in my ability to practice the adaptive leadership behavior of getting on the
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balcony. Stepping out of the fray to find perspective allowed me to uncover how I reinforced
discourse routines that moved us away from critical reflection.
Retrospective Takeaways
This action research project was my first attempt at helping adult learners examine
harmful ideologies and our teaching practices to consider alternative practices. During the
research study, I was a teacher facilitating conversations alongside other teachers. While I did
not hold positional power, my entry point into the research was wanting to help develop racial
and cultural knowledge of self and others to allow my colleagues to move toward embracing
more culturally relevant pedagogical choices. During my 3-month action study (and the year that
followed), I became aware of my relationship with the work of supporting adult learners to
critically reflect. Adaptive leadership requires an ability to turn the work over to learners so that
they feel beseeched to engage in the work themselves (Northouse, 2022). Prior to beginning my
research, I aligned myself with the beliefs that the organization espoused. For example, one
belief that is consistently referenced by our leadership team is the belief that “the purpose of
education is liberation” (kippsocal.org). It is a belief that I found purpose in, and I felt compelled
to bring the conversations we were having as an organization about race to my grade-level
context. Through the data analysis process, I became aware of the ways that I interacted with the
work that was contrary to the research question I set out to answer. The question that guided the
research study was: “How do I engage four elementary school teachers in Boyle Heights to
examine their unconscious biases that guide their teaching practice with an eye toward
embracing more culturally relevant practices?” My findings revealed the following answers.
First, I became aware of the organizational conditions and legitimate structural constraints that I
faced within the organization in relation to the work of internalized racism and unconscious bias.
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Operating within an organization with structural constraints such as time and agendas allowed
me to uncover how I positioned myself to interact with the work of moving adult learners to
examine our unconscious biases. Second, I became aware of my hesitancy and lack of bravery to
disrupt the discourse routines and conditions we had been socialized into and that I continued to
reinforce with the conversational moves I employed. This resulted in my participants not making
any growth over the course of the action research study. Third, I became aware of my emotional
distress in initiating reflection alongside adult learners. Upon reexamination of my research
question, I did not engage four elementary school teachers in Boyle Heights to examine their
unconscious biases that guide their teaching practice with an eye toward embracing more
culturally relevant practices. Yet, concurrent with data analysis, and with a keen awareness of
my strengths and areas of growth with respect to the work of raising our critical consciousness, I
transitioned into an administrative role and sought opportunities to initiate the work of critical
reflection with more bravery than I demonstrated throughout the action research process.
In December 2022, I interviewed for an administrative role on our school leadership
team, and in January 2023, I transitioned from my role as Third-grade Teacher to Dean of
Students. I pursued the leadership opportunity because I was once a student in the school district
that I taught in, because I grappled with and continue to grapple with the tension I feel about
ideologies I internalized, and because I wished to promote my own understandings with the
teachers I work with in order to disrupt the status quo. This action-research study made clear my
own role in upholding structural constraints and conditions that reinforced discourse routines that
moved teachers away from critical reflection. I pursued the Dean selection process because as a
teacher I believed that there were organizational conditions that limited teachers’ ability to align
our espoused beliefs with enacted actions. One stage of the selection process was a panel
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interview with varying stakeholders from the organization. During the panel interview with the
Chief of Schools, the Director of Leadership Development, and the leadership team at my school
site, I surfaced the constraints that teachers faced in operationalizing our values due to our
internalization structures. Since transitioning to a leadership position, my school has adopted an
ELA curriculum, for which I am the Content Lead. Being in this position allowed me to create a
new internalization structure, which I developed considering the findings that surfaced from this
action-research study.
Continuing the Work
As I move forward, I continue to be interested in how educators critically reflect on their
practice. Being in a leadership role this year has allowed me to take what I’ve learned from this
action-research study and push against structures when those structures constrain teachers and
move them away from reflecting on their practice. For instance, at the beginning of the 2023–
2024 school year I worked alongside my school leadership team to identify our priority work for
the school year. One of our priorities this year is that we will ensure high-quality coaching is
focused on high-quality teaching. Having emerged from the data analysis phase of my research
with a critical lens on our internalization structures, I critiqued the constraints within our
previous internalization protocol. Because of the fear I felt in challenging a longstanding
structure within our organization, I believed it necessary to call into question the constraints that
rendered our internalization practices ineffective. Since then, I have developed a protocol for our
internalization work that allows teachers to create opportunities to hold their practice under
scrutiny and to suggest improvements in teaching practice. More specifically, because this year I
manage and coach the first and second grade teams, I am mindful of the conversational moves I
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employ when I join internalization meetings so that I do not constrain the response of speakers in
a shared space and instead help turn conversations toward teaching.
Moreover, I am uniquely positioned to engage general education teachers, enrichment
teachers, and supporting staff across grade levels Tk–4th to examine their unconscious biases
that guide their teaching practice with an eye toward embracing culturally relevant practices. I
have been able to engage our whole school staff in examining their unconscious biases that guide
their teaching practice during our professional development sessions. For example, our second
priority this year is creating a positive learning environment where all students can thrive by
aligning on our belief in students. What this work has entailed is the leadership team collectively
naming our beliefs about students and working with our school staff to operationalize those
beliefs through academic structures, Positive Behavior Intervention System (PBIS) structures
and our Raising our Critical Consciousness (ROCC) work. Because I now facilitate our internal
professional development sessions about our PBIS and ROCC work, I have fostered conditions
within professional development sessions where safety and trust are integral to engaging in
conversation. Knowing that my theory of action continues to account for a brave space so that
we can interrogate our teaching practices for their alignment to culturally relevant pedagogy, I
carry forward the work from this research by being committed to strengthening my own social
and adaptive skills so that, rather than be driven by fear of cultural suicide, I may be present and
attuned to the work.
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Abstract (if available)
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Delgado, Mayra
(author)
Core Title
Towards ideological clarity: an action research project on the role of a teacher in unearthing unconscious bias to embrace culturally relevant pedagogy
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Educational Leadership
Degree Conferral Date
2024-05
Publication Date
01/02/2024
Defense Date
12/22/2023
Publisher
Los Angeles, California
(original),
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
critical reflection,culturally relevant pedagogy,dominant beliefs,ideological clarity,meritocracy,OAI-PMH Harvest,unconscious bias,upward mobility
Format
theses
(aat)
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Slayton, Julie (
committee chair
), Lyons Moore, Akilah (
committee member
), Samkian, Artineh (
committee member
)
Creator Email
mayradel@usc.edu,mayradelgado1391@gmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113800510
Unique identifier
UC113800510
Identifier
etd-DelgadoMay-12585.pdf (filename)
Legacy Identifier
etd-DelgadoMay-12585
Document Type
Dissertation
Format
theses (aat)
Rights
Delgado, Mayra
Internet Media Type
application/pdf
Type
texts
Source
20240105-usctheses-batch-1118
(batch),
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
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The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright.
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Repository Location
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Repository Email
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Tags
critical reflection
culturally relevant pedagogy
dominant beliefs
ideological clarity
meritocracy
unconscious bias
upward mobility