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Uncovering dominant ideology: an action research project aimed to uncover dominant ideology to enact culturally relevant pedagogy in the classroom
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Content
Uncovering Dominant Ideology: An Action Research Project Aimed to Uncover Dominant
Ideology to Enact Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in the Classroom
by
Michelle L. Hulley
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
August 2022
© Copyright by Michelle L. Hulley 2022
All Rights Reserved
The Committee for Michelle L. Hulley certifies the approval of this Dissertation
Brad Ermeling
Artineh Samkian
Julie Slayton, Committee Chair
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2022
iv
Abstract
This study examines my leadership enactment as the teacher on special assignment at PS 44. To
provide a comprehensive examination of my leadership enactment, I deconstruct my use of a
holding environment and curricular structure in relation to a grade level team of teachers. My
action research question was: How do I engage teachers to critically reflect on their ideology and
practices to ultimately enact culturally relevant pedagogy? I collected jottings, fieldnotes,
descriptive reflections, and documents developed in my role as the teacher on special
assignment. I found that I was able to move my participants from having a lack of awareness to
coming to an awareness of the importance of their identity and culture and their students’
identity and culture in relation to their lessons. Thus, I was able to help them take the first steps
towards cultural competence. I also uncovered the ways that I engaged my participants in their
learning and the ways I inadvertently hindered their learning throughout the study.
v
Dedication
To my family. Thank you for your encouragement, patience, and love.
To my friends. Thank you for your support, guidance, and unwavering belief in me.
To my colleagues. Thank you for participating in my study and giving me the opportunity to
grow as an educational leader and teacher. I hope to serve you well.
vi
Acknowledgements
To my committee: Dr. Julie Slayton, Dr. Artineh Samkian, and Dr. Brad Ermeling.
I am grateful and thankful for all the ways you have helped me to slow down, question,
confront, and re-learn throughout this process. I appreciate all the discussions, readings and
support you shared with me to push me in my thinking and help me grow as an individual and
educator. I am forever grateful I chose this concentration and for all the ways I have changed
because of it.
vii
Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... v
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ vi
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. ix
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. x
Historically Entrenched Inequity ........................................................................................ 5
Context .............................................................................................................................. 11
Role ................................................................................................................................... 14
Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 17
Adaptative and Culturally Responsive Leadership ............................................... 19
Holding Environment ............................................................................................ 26
Adult Learning Interactions .................................................................................. 27
Critical Reflection ................................................................................................. 33
CRP ....................................................................................................................... 33
Outcomes .............................................................................................................. 35
Research Methods ............................................................................................................. 35
Participants and Settings ....................................................................................... 36
Actions .................................................................................................................. 38
Data Collection and Instruments/Protocols .......................................................... 45
Data Analysis ........................................................................................................ 47
Limitations and Delimitations ............................................................................... 50
Credibility and Trustworthiness ............................................................................ 51
Ethics ..................................................................................................................... 53
Findings ............................................................................................................................ 55
viii
Collective Progress Towards Cultural Competence ............................................. 55
My Growth .......................................................................................................... 100
Afterword ........................................................................................................................ 104
Takeaways from Analysis ................................................................................... 105
Continued Growth ............................................................................................... 105
Continuing the Work ........................................................................................... 110
References ................................................................................................................................... 112
Appendix A: National Assessment of Educational Progress Data 2019 .................................... 120
Appendix B: Local School Site CAASPP Data .......................................................................... 121
Appendix C: Local School Site California Dashboard Data ...................................................... 124
Appendix D: PS 44 Annual Survey Data .................................................................................... 126
ix
List of Tables
Table 1: Planned Actions with Teachers 40
Appendix A: National Assessment of Educational Progress Data 2019 120
Appendix B: Local School Site CAASPP Data 121
Table B1: CAASPP Scaled Score Ranges 121
Table B2: Local School District’s CAASPP Data 122
Appendix C: Local School Site California Dashboard Data 125
Table C1: California Dashboard Coloring System 124
Table C2: Local School District’s CAASPP Data 125
Appendix D: PS 44 Annual Survey Data 126
x
List of Figures
Figure 1: School Site Demographics 12
Figure 2: Conceptual Framework 19
Figure 3: Day 1 Agenda 63
Uncovering Dominant Ideology: An Action Research Project Aimed to Uncover Dominant
Ideology to Enact Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in the Classroom
I was born and grew up in a White neighborhood in Orange County, California, and
subsequently was enrolled in our neighborhood suburban school district. The school system I
attended was, like all school systems in the United States, founded on White ideals and
knowledge was measured by the White values that have been adopted (Ahern, 1976). I was born
with a Polish and German heritage that is a part of the majoritarian story upon which this country
was built. I possess certain opportunities and benefits simply because I am White (Solórzano &
Yosso, 2002). I am a White cisgendered female. Therefore, demonstrating White values came
naturally and I found immediate success in school. Being successful in school from an early age
led me to enjoy the time I spent in classrooms. I was having fun in elementary school and
announced at a very young age that I wanted to be a teacher so I could be in a classroom forever.
At the time I would have attributed my success purely to my passion and love for learning but
looking back now I know our school system is designed for White students to succeed and I
benefited greatly from that.
While my success in school remained constant over my childhood years, my family
structure and our financial stability did not. My father was an educated individual who went to
the University of Southern California, but he was also an individual with an alcohol and
gambling addiction that would eventually tear our family apart. My father left my mother, who
only had a high school degree, to raise three children. Our lifestyle quickly changed. My
mother’s lack of a college degree, despite her strong work ethic, led her to never finding a job
with a salary large enough to support our family. I watched the myth that education is the
gatekeeper (Coleman, 1966) and believed that the key to my financial stability in the future
2
would be obtaining a college degree. I knew I needed a stable career and I wanted to do
something that I enjoyed.
I pursued my childhood dream of becoming a teacher for multiple reasons. To begin, I
wanted to provide an education to students as I thought education was the key to success in our
country. In addition, I believed that teaching would be a stable career path for myself. I made the
decision to go to college, get a degree in education and psychology, and then enter a teaching
credential program once I graduated.
As I entered college, I saw how our country valued higher education as a means to
success and for the first time I began to see the differences in life experiences based on race. In
college, I became friends with the peers I met from various organizations and teams I was
involved in. Many of my friends were not White and we frequently shared stories of our
upbringings and experiences. This was when I first recognized my skin color and the
opportunities it provided me. I heard stories about their parents who were more educated than my
mother but were not offered jobs they were qualified for or paid equally to their White
counterparts. Many of my college friends had been called racial slurs growing up. Even on our
college campus my friends would frequently get stopped by campus security to be questioned
about where they were going or coming from if it was late at night, where I was never stopped or
pulled aside. Our skin color was what made us different.
Before college, I had never thought about the experiences of people who did not look like
me as I had internalized many aspects of dominant ideology growing up, in particular White
supremacy. Brookfield (2019) describes White supremacy as a worldview that believes White
people should retain the most power as they are superior in their intellect, decision making, and
emotional regulation. White people, including me, have a harder time recognizing White
3
supremacy in action as they work to keep the power they have by maintaining the status quo
(Brookfield, 2019; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). In college, I came to a nascent understanding of
my internalization of White supremacy, as I began to acknowledge that my White identity
mattered in society.
With this nascent understanding of my internalization of White supremacy, I graduated
college and entered a teaching credential program. During my program, I also began to wonder
how I went through a K-12 school experience that did not acknowledge the power that came with
being White as we all lived in a White neighborhood, were taught by all White teachers, and read
books with White children as the main characters. This type of teaching rooted in White values
keeps White people deemed superior and thus maintains the existing racial hierarchy in our
nation (Anderson, 1988; Spring, 2016). Through my credential program, I learned of culturally
relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), which I was taught would combat this type of
teaching rooted in White supremacist values. My teaching programmed focused on the tenet of
cultural competence (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and more specifically on how to align our
curriculum so that it was reflective of the students in our classrooms. While this was a step
forward in pushing back against White supremacy in our classrooms, we did not take the step of
interrogating our own identities. Thus, I graduated from my credential program and found a
teaching job, with a nascent understanding of the impact of my White identity and the belief that
matching my curriculum to be reflective of my students’ identities was the answer to good
teaching. Without acknowledging my White positionality and privilege in the classroom, as
Picower (2009) suggests, I upheld White supremacy through my classroom curriculum and
instruction.
4
Three years later, I joined a doctoral program for education. As a result of my doctoral
studies, my understanding of what it meant to be a teacher changed from the one I held my first 3
years of teaching. I now believed that teaching was the work of creating learning opportunities
that utilized students’ funds of knowledge, gave equitable access to the curriculum, raised critical
consciousness, and upheld high expectations for all (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Moll et al., 1992). It
was about creating a curriculum that questioned the current social order instead of reproducing
the system. By doing all these things, I could equip students with the critical consciousness they
would need to critique what maintains the status quo and improve their academic outcomes and
opportunities. However, my implementation of the learning opportunities above would be
insufficient if I did not recognize my complicity within the system and make internal changes
that would lead to external changes that push against White supremacy and the current social
order (Brookfield, 2017; Milner, 2010). This was when I learned how critical reflection
(Brookfield, 2010) was the piece I was missing, as it was the act that would support me in the
interrogation of my White identity. Critical reflection could move me to a deeper understanding
of my perpetuation of White supremacy. I started my journey towards critical reflection during
my doctoral program, yet this will always be an ongoing pursuit as White supremacy was and is
the rain I stand in, to this day (Kendi, 2019).
As I had been interrogating my understanding of good teaching and my own perpetuation
of White supremacy through my doctoral studies, I hoped to do the same with my colleagues
through my action research study. I wanted to guide them through the process of reflection to
support the ultimate goal of creating learning opportunities that would benefit students from
historically marginalized communities, not just our White students. I recognized this work would
not be done overnight; therefore, I believed in the emergent strategy. The emergent strategy
5
explains that large systems of change will occur through small interactions (Brown, 2017).
Therefore, I hoped to have meaningful small interactions with teachers about their own identities
and instructional practices during my action research study that would lead to critical reflection
and ultimately opportunities for students to learn that were grounded in the tenets of culturally
relevant pedagogy.
Historically Entrenched Inequity
The common school in America was created as a place to achieve commonly held
educational goals (Oakes et al., 2018). However, these educational goals were determined by
White men in power who valued moral truths, cultural certainty, nationalism, capitalism,
Protestant Christianity, and viewed children as “empty vessels” to be filled with knowledge
(Oakes et al., 2018; Spring, 2016). It was illegal to educate students from historically
marginalized communities, making these schools for White students only (Spring, 2016). With
these beliefs as their foundation, they created a school system where White students were
grouped by age and ability and the subjects taught were mathematics, geography, literature, art,
grammar, and history (Oakes et al., 2018). The textbooks utilized to teach these subjects sent
heavy-handed political messages and moral indoctrinations that maintained the existing racial
hierarchies that were in their benefit (Oakes et al., 2018).
Once students from historically marginalized communities were allowed to attend school
they were segregated from their White counterparts and given fewer resources (Spring, 2016).
When students from historically marginalized communities were allowed to be in the same
classroom as White students, the academic curriculum did not change. Cultural differences in
students were unaccounted for as they assimilated students of color into a Eurocentric society
and forced them to abandon their cultural backgrounds (Anderson, 1988; Spring, 2016).
6
Therefore, what was considered knowledge in school was based on a student’s ability to
demonstrate the adoption of the White values and that laid the foundation for the American
schooling system (Ahern, 1976).
As the American schooling system continued, it became clear that it produced
tremendous inequities for students from historically marginalized communities. The Coleman
Report documented the schooling system as broadening the educational gap for students over the
years, instead of closing it (Coleman, 1966). At this time, the school system had no way of being
monitored and student outcomes were not a focus. Students were leaving school with their
educational outcomes more dependent upon their race and background, then when they had
started (Coleman, 1966). The educational gap was widening as students attended school and
something needed to change.
To create more equitable learning opportunities for students from historically
marginalized communities state standards were introduced, accompanied by standardized testing
(Oakes et al., 2018). These assessments focused on reading and mathematics. While this was a
step towards monitoring the school system to improve the learning conditions for students from
historically marginalized communities, it inadvertently created a curriculum that only focused on
reading and mathematics. Many of the learning opportunities created for students ignored all
other aspects of education as the results of these assessments were used to determine a school’s
performance, judge teachers’ effectiveness, and levy sanctions on schools (Oakes et al., 2018).
When these assessments were administered, they did not consider cultural differences in
students (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001). What was considered knowledge in these assessments
was rooted in Eurocentric White ideas of knowledge that did not encompass what counted as
knowledge for students from historically marginalized communities. This created an over-
7
representation of students of color in “low achieving groups,” simply because the assessments
given did not value their cultural knowledge (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001).
The assessment reports are denoting an already existing social hierarchy, where White
students received high test scores and historically marginalized students received low test scores,
which implied that White students were smarter. Asian students frequently received high test
scores as well, which is further used to “prove” White supremacy as it is reasoned that the test
accurately measured performance as another racial group scored as well as their White
counterparts (Chou & Feagin, 2015). This “model minority myth” is used to maintain the
existing social hierarchy while also creating the illusion that Asian students are free from
prejudice and racism, when they are not (Chou & Feagin, 2015). If a teacher had not interrogated
their understanding of what was considered knowledge in our education system or their
assumptions and biases about historically marginalized students, they would use the racialized
test scores to confirm the reigning assumption that schools were working properly and all
students were performing to their biological and social potential (McDermott et al., 2009).
Grounded in their personal assumptions about students, teachers created learning opportunities
based on what they thought their students could and could not do (Gay, 2018). The national and
state data aggregated by race implied that students of color could not learn at high levels
compared to their White counterparts. This had implications in the majority of classrooms as
teachers would create learning opportunities aligned with this idea. Only those teachers who had
done the work of uncovering their own biases and assumptions were positioned to push against
the dominant ideology of White supremacy that White students were superior (Ladson-Billings,
1995).
8
The following were examples of assessment data that teachers would view as they
thought about and created learning opportunities for their students: The table in Appendix A
presents national data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Report
Card in 2019. This report measured student success in reading and mathematics in Grade 4
across the nation. It broke the assessment results down by percentage of students who were
advanced, proficient, basic, and below basic. Students in the advanced and proficient categories
were deemed to be competent in the knowledge in that subject area and were considered to be
prepared for the upcoming grade level. Students in the basic and below basic categories were
considered underperforming in those categories. The results show that Black and Hispanic
students had large percentages in categories that were considered underperforming, which were
titled below basic and basic, while a majority of White and Asian students were in categories that
were meeting the criteria to be considered proficient or advanced (National Assessment of
Educational Progress, 2019).
California state data aligned with national trends. California administered the California
Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) yearly to students in Grades 3
through 8 and Grade 11 in reading and mathematics. In addition, students in Grades 8 and 11
took a standardized science assessment. CAASPP assessments were reported using a scaled
score that was reflected in a category of not meeting, nearly meeting, met, or exceeding state
standards. Table B1 denotes the scaled score ranges that connected to the categories of not
meeting, meeting, nearly meeting, met, or exceeding standards. Table B2 contains scaled scores
and categories for third- through sixth-grade students by race. In all grade levels, White and
Asian students met or exceeded state standards, except for sixth-grade mathematics where White
students were categorized as nearly meeting. Black and Hispanic students never met the criteria
9
to be considered proficient in any subject area in Grades 3 through 6. Every category was nearly
met or did not meet state standard requirements.
The test scores above reinforced a cultural deprivation mindset where teachers viewed the
differences in cultural capital in the home and communities of low-income and historically
marginalized students as the major factor that explained their low academic achievement (Gay,
2018). Due to this mindset rooted in White supremacy, teachers reproduced opportunity gaps as
they did not hold high expectations or asset-based mindsets when teaching students from
historically marginalized groups (Milner, 2010). They would not provide the proper scaffolding
support and then students were retested based on measures of White knowledge and blamed for
their lack of success. Teachers were also susceptible to stereotyping students based on their
academic achievement instead of caring for the whole child by recognizing each student as an
individual (Bartolomé, 2009; Milner, 2007).
To combat a cultural deprivation mindset and internalized beliefs about student abilities,
teachers need to critically reflect on their own biases and assumptions (Brookfield, 2017; Milner,
2010). Critical reflection is vital as White supremacy is internalized by our educators and
maintained through their teaching practices (Bartolomé, 2009). Competing commitments to the
system are tangible as many White educators benefit from the system in place and unexamined
biases can hinder progression (Kegan & Lahey, 2009). Once White educators acknowledge that
they have their own White culture that affects how they view the world, they are ready to
examine their attitudes towards non-White cultures and ethnic groups. Without critical reflection
and an active pursuit against White supremacy in education, White teachers are maintaining
existing racial hierarchies through their classroom instruction and practices, which makes any
10
attempt at altering teaching practices for students from historically marginalized communities
superficial (Brookfield, 2017; Picower, 2009).
Through critical reflection, teachers will be able to explore alternative ways to teaching.
The current teaching practices based on White supremacy which are rooted in Eurocentric
worldviews and cultural norms are so deeply ingrained in how we educated our children that it is
rarely considered that there may be other effective ways of teaching and learning (Paris & Alim,
2017). Critical reflection would support the enactment of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP),
which combats traditional school practices centered in White supremacy (Ladson-Billings, 1995,
2014).
The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that by 2029 the student
demographics will be 44% White, 28% Hispanic, 15% Black, 7% Asian, 6% two or more races,
and 1% American Indian and Alaska Native. (NCES, 2020). With an increasingly diverse student
population, CRP is needed. Culturally relevant pedagogy views cultural differences and funds of
knowledge of students from historically marginalized communities as assets to make learning
encounters more relevant and effective (Gay, 2018; Paris & Alim, 2017). When implemented
CRP could ensure that students who have been historically marginalized received a quality
education (Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris & Alim, 2017). However, its use can be
superficial if the internal work of uncovering and examining personal biases is not present in a
teacher’s practice (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017; Ladson-Billings, 2014).
11
Context
I was employed by Public School 44 (PS 44, a pseudonym), which was situated within
the suburbs of Orange County, California. The median household income in 2019, was $105,126,
and the median housing price was $838,000 (U.S. Census, 2019). Across the street from PS 44
were houses that fell within and above the median housing price, in addition to two affordable
housing complexes built for families who earned less than half of Orange County’s median
household income, which created a student body from various socioeconomic backgrounds
(ICLT, 2021). Students ranged from transitional kindergarten to sixth grade, with an
approximated student population of 1,079.
As seen in Figure 1, the student population was 61.4% Asian, 16.9% White, 7.7%
Hispanic, 4.8% Filipino, 1.1% Black, 0.4% American Indian, and 0.1% Native Hawaiian. Thirty-
six point five percent of the student body was English language learners, 20.3% were
socioeconomically disadvantaged, and 7.3% of students were living with disabilities (California
Dashboard, 2019). It could be classified as an urban characteristic school district where teachers
needed to be equipped to work with students from a large array of academic, linguistic,
psychological, social, and emotional needs (Howard & Milner, 2014).
12
Figure 1
School Site Demographic
In addition to standardized assessment data, my district administered an annual survey to
collect data on the teacher, student, and parent experience at school. The annual survey data
showed a different campus where students and teachers had varying perspectives on the school
climate. The school climate portion of the survey data is found in Appendix D. It showed that
overall teachers believed the campus was safe and welcoming to all students, while the student
data showed that a majority did not enjoy coming to school, they were stressed, and did not think
they were treated with respect. However, this survey was not valued by the teachers and
administration at PS 44 as it did not relate to the core subjects of reading or math. It was not
publicly acknowledged and not used to alter teaching or school practices, although it gives
relevant information to the student experience on campus.
School Site Demographics
White Asian Hispanic Filipino Black American Indian/ Native Hawaiin
13
In the hallways, I had overheard teachers talking with deficit mindsets about students.
They were complaining as to why children did not make eye contact and that they needed to
learn the “American way.” In team meetings, students who were struggling academically were
described as “not caring about their education or schoolwork” and parents were “not involved
enough to care.” Many thoughts were framed with a school-centric viewpoint (Khalifa, 2018).
Teachers utilized the high standardized test scores to confirm that their teaching was effective
and to place the blame back onto the students. They were completely ignoring students’ lived
experiences in school. Students’ cultures, backgrounds, and races were rarely brought up in
conversation around curriculum and instruction. Instead, a colorblind approach was taken where
the notion of race was rejected, and cultural conflicts emerged as teachers’ ways of knowing
were grounded in Eurocentric worldviews that did not match students’ cultural backgrounds
(Milner, 2010). Teachers had succumbed to the myth of meritocracy believing that students
could do better if they tried harder and they ignored the social and political contexts of
education.
In other words, PS 44 was a microcosm of the larger national landscape of data presented
previously. At PS 44, 61.4% of the student population was Asian, who were consistently meeting
or exceeding performance criteria on state assessment data. The rest of the test scores were
distributed among the White, Hispanic, and Black students on campus. Teachers at PS 44 used
the high-test scores of our Asian population to reinforce the idea that they were doing a good job
educating their students. This reinforcement for their teaching allowed them to ignore whether
they were creating meaningful learning opportunities for their students or if all of their students
were equally benefitting academically. Teachers were believing in the myth of meritocracy and
the model minority myth, as they vocalized how students could do better if they tried harder and
14
they used their Asian students as examples for their expected school behavior and performance.
The “model minority myth” groups Asian students together, which ignores the variances in the
population and also puts more pressure on all Asian students to conform to White expectations
(Chou & Feagin, 2015). Simultaneously, teachers ignored school climate data where over half of
the student body felt they were stressed on campus and about half did not feel comfortable
making mistakes. Half of our population was Asian students and based on the school climate
data they were feeling the pressure to perform at high levels to meet their teachers’ expectations.
Teacher expectations were grounded in White supremacy; therefore, they were expecting their
Asian students to conform to White ideals, along with the rest of the student body as they used
their Asian students as exemplars for all other students in the classroom.
Their cultural deprivation mindset was apparent, as they were looking for conformity to
their expectations grounded in White supremacist ideals. The use of CRP would push against the
continual marginalization of students. It would empower teachers to critically reflect on their
ideologies and how their internalization of dominant ideology and hegemonic narratives affect
their classroom curriculum and instruction. It would also allow for students to be academically
successful while maintaining cultural integrity and developing a critical consciousness to critique
and transform the cultural norms, values, and institutions that maintain social inequities (Gay,
2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995, Paris & Alim, 2017).
Role
At the time of this study, I was the teacher on special assignment at my school site. I
worked closely with our administrative team as we managed the school site and led the school
through new initiatives and goals. I had the opportunity and ability to walk through teachers’
classrooms daily and work closely with our staff to better their teaching practices through
15
coordinating our intervention programs and student study teams. I was also the staff professional
learning community (PLC) coordinator. Through this role I had the opportunity to engage with
each teaching team on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
Through the PLC team meetings and observations, I had noticed that very few teachers
discussed the ways they enacted the curriculum or the instructional moves they used in the
classroom. Most conversation was focused on the curriculum itself, with the teacher moves taken
out of the conversation. Many teachers stuck to the timeline in the district purchased curriculum
and had tracked their students into homogenous learning groups. A large majority of teachers
were intolerant of diverse cultures and stated that students needed to learn the “American way”
to be successful in school, which demonstrated their internalization of White supremacy and how
they were looking for all students to conform to their White expectations. Teachers did not talk
about race or cultural backgrounds, their own or their students. A few teachers would use the
language of culturally relevant pedagogy as they referenced their heroes and holidays projects
that they implemented in their classrooms. Many teachers would use deficit mindsets with their
students from historically marginalized communities who did not meet proficient test scores.
They would point to their inability to do work or that they did not have a supportive home
environment, as their justification for the student not learning. There was minimal reflection
happening on campus. When any reflection did occur, the teacher was not reflecting on how their
own actions or identity impacted the situation. They were only considering the students and the
curriculum as the reflection components that mattered.
As the teacher on special assignment, I was in a position of influence. I could continue to
foster my own abilities to critically reflect as I worked towards uncovering the ways in which I
perpetuate White supremacy through my own actions, while simultaneously starting to engage
16
the PLC teams I worked with in the act of critical reflection to ultimately engage in culturally
relevant practices in their classrooms. Beginning with myself, I needed to remember that I was
operating on a White worldview. I was born from a Polish and German heritage. I was a part of
the majoritarian story that this country was built upon. I possessed certain opportunities and
benefits simply because I was White (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). As I studied how I supported
teachers at my school site to engage in critical reflection, my White worldview had the potential
to lead me to unintentionally perpetuate White supremacy and further the educational debt by my
ability to be blind to White supremacy in action (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Milner, 2010). I had to
grapple with the fact that my work would be done with colleagues, many of whom were White,
where I might be biased in my leniency to analyzing their perpetuation of White supremacy
because I understood their White subconscious ideology. I was positioned to see them as good
people, but that did not mean they were not perpetuating the system.
Furthermore, I could use my experiences of uncovering aspects of my own White identity
to foster discussion around my colleagues’ identities during our meetings as a step in the
direction of critical reflection. Engaging in conversations around our identities could promote
discussion of how our identities are inclusive of our cultures, which then could be extended to
understanding of how our identities and our students’ identities mattered in the classroom. This
would lay the foundation for engaging in the CRP tenet of cultural competence. As developing
critical reflection and creating learning opportunities grounded in the tenets of CRP, was a large
task, I could take small progression steps with my PLC teams to get there. Thus, the goal of my
action research was to address the following question: How do I engage teachers to critically
reflect on their ideology and practices to ultimately enact culturally relevant pedagogy?
17
In the remainder of this dissertation, I will discuss my conceptual framework and data
methods, followed by my findings and retrospective takeaways. All together this will describe
how I addressed my ability to engage teachers to critically reflect on their ideology and practices
to ultimately enact culturally relevant pedagogy.
Conceptual Framework
This conceptual framework showcases my theory of action in education that encompasses
the systems, assumptions, beliefs, expectations, experiences, and theories that I drew upon to
guide my action research study (Maxwell, 2013). My framework offers a way to graphically see
the system of interrelated and interdependent parts that surrounded my research study and how I
am situated amongst them (Coghlan, 2019).
My conceptual framework, shown in Figure 1, is a revised construction based on what I
learned from my in the field experiences and relevant theories central to accomplishing my long-
term goal of supporting teachers to critically reflect on their practices to ultimately engage in
culturally relevant pedagogy. While in the field, I made progress towards my long-term goal as I
moved my learners towards cultural competence as they came to an awareness of the importance
of their identity and culture and their students’ identity and culture in relation to their lessons.
Moving forward I will be utilizing my current theory of action to continue progress towards my
long-term goal. This subsequent work will continue to inform any changes to my conceptual
framework in the future.
As seen on my conceptual framework, I currently believe it is my responsibility as the
teacher educator to engage in adaptive and culturally responsive leadership to foster a holding
environment with my learners. The type of holding environment that I foster will bind the type of
adult learning interactions that are possible. As I want my learners to internalize the disposition
18
of deep learning, I need to create a holding environment that fosters adult learning interactions
that promote the uptake of deep learning. I believe this is done by engaging with my learners in
the critically reflective process of inquiry as stance. Through the critically reflective process of
inquiry as stance, my learners will deepen their ability to critically reflect and internalize
culturally relevant pedagogy which will promote a disposition of deep learning and lead to
opportunities for students to learn that are grounded in the core tenets of CRP. This is all
encompassed with my school context, which is located within society and the historical events
and local, state, and federal policies influence the school setting, thus affecting teacher
ideologies, practices, and student outcomes (Anyon, 2014; Bronfenbrenner, 1977).
In the following section I will further describe how my conceptual framework has
evolved because of my in the field experiences (see Figure 2). I will begin by contextualizing
adaptive and culturally responsive leadership and then the holding environment. I will end by
contextualizing the critically reflective process of inquiry as stance that will deepen my learners’
ability to critically reflect and internalize CRP.
19
Figure 2
Conceptual Framework
Adaptative and Culturally Responsive Leadership
While in the field, I did not deploy all aspects of adaptative and culturally responsive
leadership. I regulated distress from my learners. However, I did not get on the balcony to
critically reflect, protect leadership voices of historically marginalized communities, or give the
work of critical reflection back to the people. I will explain each component in greater detail
below. However, I still believe this leadership approach is central to my ability to accomplish my
long-term goals as my school site needs to adapt and adjust its beliefs about students from
historically marginalized communities and their subsequent actions in our classrooms. Therefore,
I have chosen to retain adaptative and culturally responsive leadership in my current theory of
20
action. Adaptive leadership focuses on how the leader builds capacity in others to adapt to new
challenges within the organization (Heifetz et al., 2009; Northouse, 2016). Culturally responsive
school leadership focuses on the unique leadership behaviors that promote an inclusive and anti-
oppressive school environment for historically marginalized communities (Khalifa, 2018). I will
continue draw on the strengths of adaptive leadership, while also recognizing that it is limited by
its colorblind approach. Colorblindness is a type of discrimination in which race is
unacknowledged and “raceless” explanations are used for race-related affairs (Bonilla-Silva,
2015). This new form of racism arises through subtle, institutional, and almost invisible acts
keeping White supremacy alive and thriving. Therefore, I merged aspects of culturally
responsive leadership into the adaptive leadership components. I am first going to describe
adaptive leadership and then extend my description to include culturally responsive leadership.
Adaptive leadership is needed when people within an organization need to adapt or adjust
their priorities, beliefs, or habits to their changing environment. It is a follower-centered
approach to leadership and focuses on how the leader supports others to do the work that is
needed (Heifetz et al., 2009; Northouse, 2016). Six core leadership behaviors define adaptive
leadership: get on the balcony, identify the adaptive challenge, regulate distress, maintain
disciplined attention, give the work back to the people, and protect leadership voices from below
(Northouse, 2016). Adaptive leadership will support my long-term goals as I am still working to
create change at my school site with how my teachers view their teaching practices to adjust their
beliefs, priorities, and habits to ultimately create learning opportunities for students that are
grounded in the tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy.
Accompanying adaptive leadership, culturally responsive school leadership promotes an
inclusive school environment for historically marginalized students. Culturally responsive school
21
leaders center inclusion, equity, advocacy, and social justice in their actions. Four core
leadership behaviors define culturally responsive school leadership: promotes critical self-
reflection in self and others, develops culturally responsive teachers, promotes a culturally
responsive and inclusive school environment, and engages with students, parents, and indigenous
contexts (Khalifa, 2020). A culturally responsive school leader needs to be knowledgeable about
culturally responsive practices and create a space to work towards reforming the school
curriculum and instruction. (Khalifa, 2018).
As I continue to support teachers in creating a more inclusive school environment, I will
use a combination of adaptive and culturally responsive school leadership, which I call adaptive
and culturally responsive leadership. I continue to define adaptative and culturally responsive
leadership as a leadership approach that focuses on mobilizing the followers and community in
the pursuit of creating an inclusive school environment. Diverse community perspectives and
cultures are valued and seen as good. The leader moves in and out of being an observer and
participant to get on the balcony to find greater perspective in the moment that considers race,
gender, class, and dominant ideologies that may be present. They engage in constant critical
reflection for themselves and promote critical reflection in others as a way to support the
internalization of culturally relevant pedagogy. It is not leader-driven, but rather a collaborative
effort by everyone in the organization. The leader mobilizes the team members to do the work
and builds capacity in others to change while supporting them through the process.
During my study, I focused on three components of being an adaptive and culturally
responsive leader: getting on the balcony to engage in critical reflection, protecting leadership
voices from below by listening to all voices, and giving the work of critical reflection and action
back to the people through the critically reflective cycle of inquiry as stance. However, I did not
22
engage in all three of these components while in the field. Despite not engaging in all three
components, I do believe they are important to bring forward into my current conceptual
framework as they will support me in accomplishing my long-term goal. In addition, I am adding
the component of regulating distress as an essential part of adaptive and culturally responsive
leadership based on my in the field experiences. In the following section, I will further describe
each of these four components.
Get on the Balcony to Engage in Critical Reflection
Getting on the balcony is a metaphor for finding a larger perspective during a challenging
situation (Northouse, 2016). When a leader is on the balcony, they are looking at the dance floor
below and watching the dynamics through different lenses. Given my integration of culturally
responsive leadership into adaptive leadership, I argue that looking at the dance floor involves
taking a step back, moving back and forth in scenarios as a participant and observer to see the
struggles of individuals involved and the overall intentions of the group, separating emotions
from overall goals, and considering how race, gender, identity, power, culture, and dominant
ideology are showing themselves on the dance floor below (Northouse, 2016; Khalifa, 2018). I
also argue that getting on the balcony to look at the dance floor below is done through critical
reflection.
Reflection is a cyclical process started by recalling an experience with rich and complex
details to consider alternative viewpoints or responses to move into action (Rodgers, 2002).
Taking the time to slow down for reflection and analyze an experience encourages teachers and
leaders to make thoughtful and logical decisions, also referred to as intelligent actions (Rodgers,
2002), as opposed to reactionary responses to scenarios. Reflection is turned critical when it calls
into question power relationships and hegemonic assumptions or dominant ideologies
23
(Brookfield, 2010). Ideology is a framework of thought that is constructed or held by individuals
in society that serves to sustain relations of domination. Dominant ideologies, or hegemonic
ideologies, are frames of thought that reflect the dominant class’s values and interests to justify
and maintain the existing social hierarchy that is working in their favor. Dominant ideology is
typically accepted as the way of doing things in society and is seen as “normal” (Bartolomé,
2009). At the core of change for social and educational transformation is the ability to recognize
our complicity within the system to make internal changes that lead to external actions that push
against dominant ideologies and the current social order (Brookfield, 2017; Drago-Severson &
Blum De-Stefano, 2017; Milner, 2010). This recognition and push against dominant ideologies is
done through critical reflection. I continue to define critical reflection as, the process of
describing an experience in detail with the explicit goal of uncovering and challenging
hegemonic practices and assumptions and taking intelligent action.
During my study, I did not get to a place where I could get on the balcony and engage in
critical reflection, as I was grappling with my own competing commitment to sustaining White
supremacy as a socializing knower (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017) who prioritized
others’ feelings and emotional states that were grounded in White supremacist ideologies, which
hindered progress towards our overall goals for the study. This espousal of White supremacy that
occurred during my study reinforced my need to get on the balcony, as getting to a place where I
could recognize how power and dominant ideologies were present with my learners and myself
could have led to more pushback on these thoughts. To this end, I will use quiet time to ask
myself the following questions: How am I engaging in adaptive and culturally responsive
leadership? How does my positionality affect my leadership? How are my choices affecting my
learners? How are my choices informed by power, race, ethnicity, dominant ideology, or
24
hegemonic assumptions? How am I doing what I have always done? How am I doing something
different in the ways that I am leading my learners? Therefore, getting on the balcony to
critically reflect remains in my conceptual framework as I work towards my long-term goal of
engaging teachers in the act of critical reflection to ultimately create learning opportunities for
students grounded in the core tenets of CRP.
Protect the Leadership Voices From Below
Protecting leadership voices from below is listening to the ideas of people who may be at
the fringe, historically marginalized, or even deviant from the group or organization (Heifetz et
al., 2009; Khalifa, 2016). It requires that the leader relinquishes control and is comfortable
upsetting the majority by insisting on listening to voices who have not been heard. These
conversations can be held in group spaces or convened privately, based on the situation
(Northouse, 2016).
During my study, I worked with a group of learners who all identified or presented
White. I am White myself, therefore I relied on literature to include alternative voices and
perspectives form historically marginalized communities. I did this on two occasions, however
White supremacist ideology was prominent through our conversations about the literature pieces
I provided and as we moved forward to connecting theory to our practices. As a socializing
knower (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017) I was not comfortable upsetting the White
majority that was present. As I was working with a group who all identified as White, I did not
have leadership voices from below to protect. However, as I move forward with my long-term
goal, I plan on expanding my interactions to a larger group of teachers, which will include White
teachers and teachers from historically marginalized communities. As my learners over time will
change, I will need to ensure that I am protecting leadership voices from below.
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Give the Work of Critical Reflection Back to the People
Giving work back to the people requires that the leader monitors the impact they have on
others (Heifetz et al., 2009). This requires empowering others to do what they think is best in
circumstances when they feel uncertain, expressing belief in their ability to problem-solve,
encouraging them to think for themselves, and knowing when to step back and let others do the
work (Northouse, 2016). It requires leaders create the right conditions for teachers to engage in
professional learning about culturally responsive teaching and to collaborate with teachers to
build their capacity in creating an inclusive environment with diverse community perspectives,
input, and action (Khalifa, 2016).
During my study, I gave “the work” of uncovering their identity that encompassed their
culture and its impact back to my learners. As I move forward with my long-term goal, I need to
progress to give “the work” of critical reflection back to my learners, which will allow them to
interrogate their ideologies and practice through the lenses of power and dominant ideologies
with the intent of acting differently. To make my long-term goal of critical reflection possible, I
need to pushback on my learners’ thoughts that are rooted in dominant ideology. Teachers who
engage in reflection have a greater level of self-awareness about the nature and impact of their
teaching through the lenses of power and dominant ideology. that creates more opportunities for
professional growth (Brookfield, 2010; Larrivee, 2008). I plan to foster this growth of critical
reflection through the critically reflective process of inquiry as stance. I will explain this further
in the inquiry as stance section below. Engaging in a critically reflective process will not only
deepen their ability to critically reflect, it will also support the internalization of CRP, as a
teacher who is critically reflective creates more opportunities for professional growth (Larrivee,
2008).
26
Regulate Distress
Based on my experiences of giving identity work back to the people, I recognized that a
holding environment needed to be created. The creation of a holding environment was a way to
regulate the distress of my learners as they grappled with new ideas, therefore I have added
regulate distress as a component to my adaptive and culturally responsive leadership approach.
When looking to make change, a leader needs to help their learners keep their stress at a
productive level, so they are not too overwhelmed by the inevitable challenges that come with
change (Northouse, 2016). Regulating this distress is done through the creation of a holding
environment. While I was in the field, I was working to change my learners’ understanding of
cultural competence (Ladson-Billings, 1995) by first recognizing that they themselves had an
identity that encompassed their culture and that their identity and their students’ identities
mattered in the classroom. To engage my learners in this process, I created a holding
environment where they could tackle this new learning. Therefore, by creating a holding
environment for my learners, I was working to regulate their distress. I will further my
description of creating a holding environment in the section below.
Holding Environment
Based on my experiences in the field, I have learned that adult learning takes place within
a holding environment, which I have added to my conceptual framework. A holding environment
establishes an atmosphere where people can feel safe tackling difficult problems, but not so safe
that they avoid the problems all together (Northouse, 2016). The holding environment is the
components that must be in place for adult learning to occur. The components include freedom,
democratic participation, equality, reciprocity, and the ability to assess evidence effectively,
27
make and understand relevant arguments and develop critical judgement (Mezirow, 1991). The
holding environment accounts for varying levels of readiness to take up these learning
components. A holding environment is experienced differently by all learners and can range on a
continuum from weak to safe to brave (Arao & Clemens, 2013). The quality of the holding
environment is dependent on whether these components articulated by Mezirow (1991) are
present. An effective holding environment includes all components, thus creating a brave space
(Arao & Clemens, 2013). The absence or inconsistency of some, if not all, of the learning
components above destabilizes the environment and can move it into a safe or weak space. The
holding environment hexagon has a thicker border around the edge, as the type of holding
environment that gets created, will bind the type of adult learning that is possible.
During my study, I created a safe holding environment where my learners built trust with
each other as they uncovered aspects of their identities for the first time. As I move forward with
my long-term goal, I need to create a brave holding space that will support the critically
reflective process of inquiry as stance and through this process my learners will deepen their
ability to critically reflect and internalize CRP.
Adult Learning Interactions
My learners are visually seen as the “teachers” on the conceptual framework. I use the
word “teachers” as I will continue to work with more than one adult at my school site. As I move
forward, I will continue to work with the six teachers with whom I conducted my study and I
will also work with other teachers at my school site, whom I have not started to engage in this
work yet. While the number of teachers may differ between scenarios, my framework and
understanding of how adult learning occurs remains the same. In addition, I placed another
teacher in a dashed hexagon connected to the teachers. This is to represent that there are other
28
teachers present in the lives of the teachers with whom I am working. However, I was not
actively engaging all of them while I was conducting my study and as I move forward many of
the teachers at my school site have friendships with teachers at other school sites where I do not
work. Even though I do not have contact with those teachers, they will still play a role in the
learning development of my research participants, as learning is done in community with others
(Eaker et al., 2002). I do not want to negate the fact that there will be other adult influences on
my learners’ learning process, therefore I have placed them in a dashed hexagon to represent
their presence. Other teachers being present in the lives of the teachers I am working with was
true during my study and remains true as I move forward with the work.
I, as the teacher educator, engage with the teachers through adult learning interactions.
Adult learning interactions are comprised of both the formal and informal conversations and
interactions between the teachers and me (Dobrowolska & Balsley, 2017). Improving student
learning happens through the improvement of the skill and knowledge of educators (Elmore,
2002). Improving an educator’s skill and knowledge requires a plan of action that is based on an
adult learning theory and views adult learning as a continuous process, not a singular event
(Elmore, 2002). My theory uses the critically reflective process that is inquiry as stance coupled
with Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano’s ways of knowing typology (2017) alongside
Warford’s zones of proximal teacher development (2010). I believe that by scaffolding learning
opportunities my teachers will be able to engage with this critically reflective process of inquiry
as stance, thus deepening their ability to critically reflect and increasing their internalization of
CRP. Through this process deep learning will occur. I will also be growing in my ability to
become a deep learner as the inquiry as stance critically reflective process does not create a top-
down or bottom-up theory of action, but rather a democratic one where all participants are
29
learning from each other and working together towards educational transformation (Cochran-
Smith & Lytle, 2009).
Deep learning is a worldview where our understandings of the world are only temporary,
all experiences are not just reacted too, but fully engaged with as they are subject to constant
inspection and the inevitable disquietude is welcomed as it is what leads to efficacy in the world
(Wergin, 2020). During my study, we did not get to a place where deep learning occurred.
However, I have kept my previous theory of how to promote deep learning central to my
framework as I am continuing to work towards disrupting the ways in which my learners make
sense of their work with their students through their ability to critically reflect and ultimately
create learning opportunities grounded in the tenets of CRP.
I define adult learning as an iterative process that is done in community with others as
knowledge and practice are continually questioned and challenged in the critically reflective
process of inquiry as stance to create educational and social change. All adult learners are on
their own trajectory working individually and collectively while being supported with
appropriate scaffolds to grow in their development of critical reflection and internalization of
culturally relevant pedagogy. Below I will go into further detail on the three main components of
my adult learning theory: inquiry as stance, critical reflection, and CRP.
Inquiry as Stance
Adult learning is grounded in an inquiry as stance model where the teachers and I will
work together in a critically reflective cycle to generate new knowledge as we all continually
question the ways knowledge and practice are constructed, evaluated, and used to participate in
educational and social change individually and collectively. This way of looking at adult learning
repositions practitioners at the center of educational transformation by capitalizing on their
30
collective intellectual capacity when working in collaboration with others (Cochran-Smith &
Lytle, 2009). I visually represent the inquiry as stance critically reflective cycle as the words
“knowledge” and “practice” with circular arrows, to showcase the cyclical pattern of generating
and questioning knowledge and practice. I also recognize that inquiry as stance is not a format
for lesson planning, it is rather a disposition towards the world. I have chosen this disposition
and model as it compliments being a deep learner. Inquiry as stance is a continual process of
making current situations problematic (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009), in the same way that deep
learning is an outlook on the world in which all understandings are under constant inspection
(Wergin, 2020), as both theories work to make social change.
During my study, I did not get to a place where my learners took up an inquiry as stance
disposition, thus I did not develop deep learners. Instead, I lesson planned for my learners with
an inquiry as stance critical reflection cycle as the inspiration for the construction of our time
together. We generated new knowledge by looking at current theory that pushes against
dominant ideology and compared it with our own teaching practices. Through this process my
learners laid the groundwork for critical reflection and the adoption of the cultural competence
tenet of CRP. As I move forward with my long-term goal, I still believe the critically reflective
process of inquiry as stance to be an important component to my framework as it will support me
in developing deep learners who have developed their ability to critically reflect and have
internalized CRP. Below I will describe my current theory for scaffolding learning opportunities
for my learners so they can engage with the critically reflective cycle of inquiry as stance.
Uncovering a Learners Ways of Knowing and ZPTD
Learning with others requires awareness of my current knowledge and understanding, as
well as the teachers with whom I am working. Uncovering a learner’s ZPTD and ways of
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knowing requires looking at their external actions, practices, and behaviors, as well as their
internal mindsets, beliefs, and understandings (Warford, 2010). During my study, I drew on
Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano’s ways of knowing typology (2017) to uncover my
learners’ development, although I did not use what I learned to create any scaffolds. Drago-
Severson and Blum-DeStefano’s ways of knowing typology utilizes a constructivist viewpoint to
understanding our “often unconscious dispositions that guide our thinking, feeling, and acting in
relation to our own and others’ identity, our work, and societal demands” (Drago-Severson &
Blum-DeStefano, 2017, p. 460). Understanding participants’ ways of knowing allows for more
appropriate learning opportunities and conversations to occur. Four of my learners were
instrumental learners and two moved between instrumental and socializing. I also uncovered
how I am a socializing knower (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2019). As I move forward
with my study, I will continue to use this typology to uncover my new learners’ ways of
knowing. I also aspire to move out of being a socializing knower and into a self-authoring and
self-transforming knower.
To uncover my learners’ areas for growth, I will be drawing upon Warford’s (2010)
zones of proximal teacher development (ZPTD). ZPTD is like the zones of proximal
development (ZPD) for students. ZPD represents the distance between what a student can do
independently to what they can do with assistance (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). ZPTD mirrors
this idea by creating space for a teacher to reflect on their practice while using the teacher
educator as a scaffold for change (Warford, 2010). During my study, I did not attend to my
learners’ zones of proximal teacher development as I did not first establish what they could do
with assistance to reach the end goal of engaging in the critically reflective cycle of inquiry as
stance to deepen their ability to critically reflective and internalization of CRP. Instead, I only
32
established where they were as learners on the ways of knowing typology (Drago-Severson &
Blum-DeStefano, 2019). I looked at the group as a whole and determined my next steps without
taking into account the end goal and what could be accomplished with assistance. However, I am
bringing this component forward into my current conceptual framework as I believe scaffolding
for my individual learners needs to occur for them to make growth.
When both theories are being utilized, they will work in tandem as they both provide
valuable insight on how to scaffold my support and instruction for teachers to works towards
deepening their ability to critical reflection and promoting the internalization of CRP to
ultimately lead to learning opportunities for students that are grounded in the core tenets of CRP.
Appropriately Scaffolding Learning Opportunities
After understanding participants’ ways of knowing and what their potential is with
support, I can create appropriate scaffolds within their ZPTD to support their development.
During my study, I did not scaffold for my learners. However, I believe this is an important
component to my conceptual framework, as scaffolds need to be created to meet a learner where
they are in their development to support their growth. As I move forward with my long-term
goal, I will be providing scaffolds as I draw on my learners’ prior knowledge, connect their
experiences to expert knowledge in research, use guiding and prompting questions to promote
analysis, and provide opportunities for them to process new knowledge in relation to their
practice through the critically reflective process of inquiry as stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
2009; Warford, 2010). The creation of these appropriate scaffolds and supports will be designed
and carried out within the adult learning interactions that are promoting the critically reflective
process of inquiry as stance. I will go into greater detail below on how the inquiry as stance
33
critically reflective process will support my learners’ ability to critically reflect and internalize
CRP.
Critical Reflection
I did not get my learners to a place where they became critically reflective. As one step
towards that process, I engaged them in uncovering aspects of their identity that encompassed
their culture and recognizing that their identity and their students’ identities mattered in the
classroom. However, as I move forward, I have kept the goal of developing critically reflective
learners and I believe this goal is supported through the inquiry as stance critically reflective
process which I have also kept in my conceptual framework. The inquiry as stance critically
reflective process supports my learners in confronting their knowledge and practice in relation to
dominant ideology which will promote critical reflection. During my study, I focused on the
dominant ideology of White supremacy. I started with this specific dominant ideology as it is the
most prevalent at my school site as almost all our teachers present and act as White, while
working with students who are not White. As I move forward, I will continue with the focus on
confronting the dominant ideology of White supremacy as we interrogate our knowledge and
practice through the critically reflective process of inquiry as stance. As time progresses, I will
incorporate other dominant ideologies that present themselves, such as heteronormativity and the
patriarchy into our interrogation of our knowledge and practices.
CRP
Through the process of critical reflection, a teacher can uncover that the ways they have
been teaching are not productive for their historically marginalized students (Brookfield, 2010).
Through the critically reflective process of inquiry as stance, we will be interrogating our
knowledge and practice to critically reflect, while also taking up new ways of thinking about our
34
knowledge and practice that are grounded in the tenants of CRP. CRP combats traditional school
practices centered in White ideology. There are three core tenets: academic success, cultural
competence, and critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Using the work of Gay (2018),
Khalifa (2016), Ladson-Billings (1995, 2014), Milner (2010), Paris and Alim (2017), and
Valenzuela (1999), I define CRP as a space created from three core components: academic
success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. Academic success is shown when
teachers hold high academic and behavioral expectations, co-create definitions of success with
students, and build trusting relationships with students. Cultural competence is demonstrated by
having educational opportunities grounded in students’ lived experiences and cultural identity.
Their being is affirmed as teachers work towards helping students build a sense of identity within
themselves and their community. critical consciousness is raised as cultural norms, values, and
institutions that maintain social inequities are critically analyzed with the hopes of making
societal change. Academics is not seen as a one-size-fits-all, but rather it is a place to co-create
knowledge with students, who are seen as complex humans with diverse backgrounds who bring
value, knowledge, and experiences that drive the curriculum and goals of the classroom.
During my study, I focused on the tenet of cultural competence. I started with one tenet
as my learners were coming in with no previous knowledge of CRP. I followed Warford’s (2010)
belief that there is a zone between what learners can do independently and what they can do with
assistance. While I did not attend to my learners’ ZPTD during my study, I knew that my
learners had no previous experience and that it would be unreasonable to tackle all three tenets at
once. I also knew that all of my learners presented and acted White, which frequently led to
cultural conflicts (Milner, 2010) in the classroom. Therefore, I started with the tenet of cultural
competence. As I move forward with my long-term goal, I will continue my work with my
35
current learners, and I will be adding new learners. I will follow the order of starting with
cultural competence, moving to academic success, and then the last tenet of critical
consciousness. I will end with critical consciousness as working through cultural competence
and academic success will leave time for me to develop my learners’ critical consciousness
before they can develop it within their own students.
Outcomes
All components on my conceptual framework work in tandem to create opportunities for
students to learn that are grounded in the core tenets of CRP. However, prior to seeing learning
opportunities grounded in the core tenets of CRP, I will see changes in my learners’ discourse
and lesson planning. These do not have a dedicated spot on the framework, as I believe they live
within the adult learning interactions where we are engaging in the critically reflective process of
inquiry as stance around our knowledge and teaching practices. It is through those conversations
that growth can be seen in my learners and overtime it will translate into learning opportunities
that utilize students’ funds of knowledge, gives equitable access to the curriculum, raises critical
consciousness, and upholds high expectations for all (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Moll et al., 1992).
Research Methods
This study focused on how I created a holding environment to support teachers in
uncovering aspects of their identity and building an awareness that their identity and their
students’ identities mattered in the classroom. This study was guided by the following research
question: How do I engage teachers to critically reflect on their ideology and practices to
ultimately enact culturally relevant pedagogy?
36
Participants and Settings
My action research study occurred during the Fall and Winter 2021-2022 trimesters at my
school site, PS 44. I used a purposeful non-probability sample as the participants were not
random, but rather were chosen based on specific criteria that related to the research question to
gain the most knowledge from the qualitative study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The participants
were teachers at my school site who worked with students. This research question stemmed from
observations and my role at my school site. While it was convenient in nature to use research
participants close in proximity, it was also purposeful as I was aiming to disrupt teachers’ current
teaching practices to ultimately move them to experiment with new approaches (Johnson &
Christensen, 2017). My sphere of influence with teachers was specific to the teachers at my
school site as I had the ability to frequently engage in dialogue with these educators. Thus,
participants and site selection were from my current school site, which created a more purposeful
sample as opposed to strictly convenient.
Participants
As shown in my conceptual framework, I engaged with classroom teachers for my study.
I worked with an elementary grade level team that was composed of six teachers. The team
included Olivia, Zoey, Stella, Addison, Natalie, and Violet. All team members presented and
acted White. The number of years as a classroom teacher on this grade level ranged from 6 to 39
years of classroom experience. The grade level team met twice a week in a team planning
meeting and as a professional learning community (PLC).
According to Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano’s (2017) ways of knowing typology,
there are four ways of knowing: instrumental, socializing, self-authoring, and transformative.
Four of the teachers, Olivia, Addison, Natalie, and Violet, could be described as instrumental
37
knowers. Instrumental knowers are described as seeing the world in black and white and have
concrete ideas of the “right” way to do things. Two learners, Stella and Zoey, could be described
as instrumental knowers who shifted into socializing knowers at times. Socializing knowers can
co-construct realities but strongly orient to others’ viewpoints, assessments, and thoughts. Stella
and Zoey readily vocalized how they would not disagree with someone, just so they could keep
the peace, even though they had a different viewpoint or idea. Their back and forth shifts from
instrumental and socializing led them to stay silent when White ideology was being espoused
and occasionally agree with the conversation as they would share similar internalized White
ideologies. However, there were times when Stella would vocalize her different viewpoints on
how there were many interpretations of what occurred in the world based on our unique cultures
and experiences. Zoey would vocalize a similar mentality, but only privately in a one-on-one
setting with me and her. In whole team settings, the conversations stayed colorblind and
complicit with dominant ideology.
All team conversations were colorblind as race was never mentioned in conversation.
This was how the group typically operated. Team planning meetings would be around what parts
of the district adopted curriculum would be utilized for the upcoming week. The personalization
that happened to the curriculum was seen through their PLC work where they analyzed student
data for mastery of learning targets through core subject assessment results. It was focused on
what the students could learn to do better, as opposed to the effects of their identity on how they
were delivering the lesson. They had superficial notions of CRP, as they viewed it to teach a
“heroes and holidays” lesson or do a unit on geography to discuss where students came from
around the world as it related to their social studies standards.
38
As the teacher educator, I was a socializing knower. Therefore, the expressed thoughts
rooted in White supremacist ideology were not pushed against as the group was composed of
instrumental knowers who shared the same ideology or a socializing knower who prioritized her
feelings by staying silent. My goal of my study was to engage my learners in critical reflection to
ultimately enact culturally relevant pedagogy. With the prominent presence of White supremacist
ideology, I ultimately engaged my learners in uncovering aspects of their identity and how it
mattered in their classrooms as a step in the direction towards becoming culturally competent
and critically reflective. I will discuss this more in my findings section.
Settings of Actions
I originally intended to explore how I supported teachers in their ability to critically
reflect on their practice to ultimately create learning opportunities for students that were
grounded in the tenets of CRP. Due to internalized White supremacy, I took a step in this
direction as I investigated how I created a holding environment that supported my learners in
uncovering aspects of their identity, inclusive of their culture, and built an awareness around the
role their identity and their students’ identities played in the classroom. I utilized the grade
level’s PLC time to conduct my study. My study had three cycles. Each cycle lasted
approximately 4 weeks. In each cycle we met twice as a group for a 50-minute meeting. We met
once in the first week and once in the third week of the 4-week cycle. The last week I was out of
the field conducting in the field data analysis.
Actions
Consistent with my conceptual framework, I understood that providing opportunities for
students to learn that were grounded in the core tenets of CRP required critical reflection about
our teaching practices. However, I also understood that all learners varied in their ways of
39
knowing and readiness to take on this task, which required short-term goals in pursuit of the
long-term goal and a holding environment that would make accomplishing these goals possible
(Belenky & Stanton, 2000; Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017; Warford, 2010).
Therefore, I needed to create a holding environment that would support uncovering aspects of
our identity and how our identities and our students’ identities mattered in the classroom, as one
step towards the CRP tenet of cultural competence and critical reflection. As a result, I designed
my action research study in three cycles.
1. Unpacking identity and the role of the teacher
2. Continuation of unpacking identity and the role of the teacher
3. Extending identity to practice
As a teacher on special assignment, I helped my learners engage in literature and activities that
uncovered aspects of their identity while building trust amongst each other to create a holding
environment that supported this work. As we moved through the study, we extended our
previous work to our personal experiences as I normalized the discussion of our teaching
practices. We built off our previous work of uncovering aspects of our identity to discuss how
our identities and students’ identities mattered in the classroom. Table 1 outlines the interactions
I had with my learners and the data I collected for each cycle of study.
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Table 1
Planned Actions With Teachers
Cycle Type Objectives and activities
Before study
Action researcher
Objective:
Communicated how group meetings would support the overall purpose of the study
TOSA
Week 0
Individual
meetings
I posed questions that elicited responses about who they were as
learners
I followed up by asking them to share their goals for the study
Probed around how or why they had decided upon their focus area
Sent an email with expectations for the activity that would occur the
week after
Progress indicator I developed a more specific understanding of where each learner was in relation to their
location in the DS-BD typology
During study
Cycle 1:
Unpacking
identity
and the
role of the
teacher
Action researcher
Objectives:
Teachers would build trust with each other as they started to discuss aspects of their
identity
Teachers would uncover their identity and recognize that it influences their actions
Literature: Hammond (2014)
Teacher educator moves: Modeled being honest by sharing about my identity, modeled
active listening, utilized literature to support uncovering aspects of their identity,
posed written guiding questions about the literature or activity to elicit aspects of their
identity
TOSA
Week 1
Group meeting
An activity that introduced teacher identity
Circle of objects
Cycle Type Objectives and activities
Guiding questions for the activity
What is it?
How does it represent your identity?
How does this shape your work as an educator?
What are some things we learned about each other that we would
like to learn more about?
Co-created norms
Week 3
Group meeting
Introduction of Zarretta Hammond’s culture tree
Guiding question: What resonates with you and what would you like
to discuss?
Shared out
Week 4
Out of the field
Progress indicators
Teachers were vulnerable with each other as they shared parts of their identity
Teachers actively listened as others share their identities
Teachers communicated aspects of their identity
Documents/ artifacts: agendas (2)
Observational data: Jottings during meetings (2), fieldnotes (2), descriptive reflections (2 in
the field and 1 out of the field)
Cycle 2:
Unpacking
identity
and the
role of the
teacher
Action researcher
Objectives:
Teachers would build trust with each other as they started to discuss aspects of their
identity
Teachers would uncover their identity and recognize that it influences their actions
Literature: Hammond (2014)
41
Cycle Type Objectives and activities
Teacher educator moves: Modeled being honest by sharing about my identity, modeled
active listening, utilized literature to support uncovering aspects of their identity,
posed written guiding questions about the literature or activity to elicit aspects of their
identity
TOSA
Week 5
Group meeting
Revisited ground rules
Revisit culture Tree
Guiding questions
Surface culture:
How did your family identify ethnically or racially?
Where did you live - urban, suburban, or rural community?
What is the story of your family in America? Has your family been
here for generations, a few decades or just a few years?
Were you the first in your family to attend college? If not, who did -
your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents?
What are some of your family traditions - holidays, foods, or rituals?
How would you describe your family’s economic status - middle
class, upper class, working class, or low income? What does that
mean in terms of quality of life?
What family folklore or stories did you regularly hear growing up?
Who were the heroes celebrated in your family and/or community?
Why? Who were the antiheroes? Who were the “bad guys”?
Shared out
Week 7
Group meeting
Week 7
Revisited culture tree
Guiding questions
Shallow/ deep culture
What did your parents, neighbors, and other authority figures tell
you respect looked like?
What messages did you get about intelligence? Did you grow up
believing it was set at birth? Did you believe it was genetic?
Did you believe some groups were smarter than others?
42
Cycle Type Objectives and activities
What did you learn about “doing school”? Was it a place where
your culture was comfortable?
Shared out
Week 8
Out of the field
Progress indicators
Teachers were vulnerable with each other as they shared parts of their identity
Teachers actively listened as others share their identities
Teachers communicated aspects of their identity
Teachers acknowledged that their identity encompassed their culture
Documents/ artifacts: Instructional guides (2)
Observational Data: Jottings during meetings (2), fieldnotes (2), descriptive reflections (two
in the field and one out of field)
Cycle 3:
Extending
identity to
practice
Action researcher
Teachers would recognize that their identity influenced their teaching practices which
influenced student learning opportunities
Teachers would understand that a teacher was the conduit through which curriculum was
designed for students
Literature: Milner (2010)
Teacher educator moves: Built on prior knowledge, application- used their real-life lesson
planning to understand how their identity and students’ identities mattered in the
classroom
TOSA
Week 9
Group meeting
Read Milner’s cultural conflicts
Guiding questions:
What are some potential cultural conflicts that you have
encountered in your life?
How did you identify the conflict as cultural?
What did you do to address the conflict?
Shared out
43
Cycle Type Objectives and activities
Week 11
Group meeting
Teachers brought in a lesson plan and used the guiding questions
below to discuss their lessons
Guiding questions:
Describe your lesson.
Who are you in relation to your students?
Do you share cultural values or do your cultural values differ?
Whose culture is represented in this lesson and how?
How does your lesson align with or reject Milner’s idea of
cultural conflicts in the classroom?
Thinking about what Milner was advocating for in his article, if a
cultural conflict occurred in your lesson how would we resolve
it?
Shared out
Week 12
Out of the field
Progress indicators Teachers acknowledged that their culture does not match their students’ cultures
Teachers made connections between their identity, practice, and student learning
opportunities
Teachers began to recognize that what they brought into the classroom is more of a
reflection of themselves as opposed to a reflection of their students
Documents/ artifacts: Instructional guides (2)
Observational Data: Jottings during meetings (2), fieldnotes (2), descriptive reflections (two
in the field and one out of field)
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45
Data Collection and Instruments/Protocols
The purpose of this study was to investigate how I engaged teachers in developing the act
of critical reflection and promoting the use of culturally relevant pedagogy in their teaching
practices. Specifically, I was looking for how I engaged my learners in uncovering aspects of
their identity and recognizing their identity and their students’ identities mattered in the
classroom, as a step in the direction towards critical reflection and developing the cultural
competence tenet of CRP.
As the action researcher, I was the primary instrument for data collection and data
analysis (Maxwell, 2013). I collected data through documents and artifacts as well as
observational data. For documents and artifacts, I created agendas and instructional guides. For
observational data, I created jottings, fieldnotes, and descriptive reflections. These data sources
combined provided insight into my progression towards developing critically reflective teachers
who created learning opportunities for students grounded in the tenets of CRP by engaging my
learners in identity work as a step towards cultural competence. In the next section, I will further
explain each data collection approach.
Documents and Artifacts
I did not use already available documents or artifacts for my study. Instead, I generated
meeting agendas and instructional guides. For the first two group meetings, I used agendas that I
passed out to my learners. For the remaining group meetings, I stopped the use of agendas for
my participants. I chose to abandon the use of an agenda for my learners as the physical act of
passing out a paper with our scheduled activities for the day, placed me as the holder of
knowledge and took away from Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s (1999) idea of a learning
environment where the co-construction of knowledge was possible. Therefore, I created an
46
instructional guide for our group meetings that I kept to myself, which allowed me to structure
our time together, while also leaving space for flexibility if our learning took us elsewhere. Both
the agendas and instructional guides organized our time together and guided our conversations.
Effective learning opportunities are focused on a well-articulated mission or purpose and can
maintain focus (Elmore, 2002).
Observational Data
As I was the primary research instrument for my study, I conducted insider action
research. Therefore, I was participant in my meetings at the same time I was observing the
interactions that were occurring (Herr & Anderson, 2015). Observations took place during this
grade levels weekly PLC time. Overall, I conducted six observations that were each 50 minutes. I
conducted these six observations by taking jottings. From the jottings, I created fieldnotes and
then descriptive reflections.
Jottings. During every group meeting, I jotted down notes about my observations. Jotting
notes can help a researcher remember the experience or scenario for better recall later (Coghlan,
2019). I used the meeting agenda or instructional guide as a place to jot. In my jottings, I
captured notes about the setting, time, verbatim language of teachers, teacher behaviors, accounts
of specific events or activities, and my behavior (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). As I did not record
my group meetings, my jottings served the purpose of aiding in the creation of fieldnotes.
Fieldnotes. After each group meeting, I utilized the jottings written on the agenda or
instructional guide to aid in the creation of fieldnotes. My fieldnotes included enough detailed
descriptive for another reader to feel that they were there seeing what I was seeing. They
included a written account of the setting, participants, dialogue, activities, and behaviors of the
participants, and what I was doing (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I recognized that the subjectivity
47
in fieldnotes can never be removed, therefore I committed to Bogdan and Biklen’s (2007)
recommendations of transmitting as many details about the moment as possible, including
verbatim language by participants to separate myself from the data collected. These fieldnotes
aided in the writing of my descriptive reflections as it provided a written recount of my group
meetings that I could reference back to as I would now include my internal thoughts and
interpretations of the observation.
Descriptive Reflections. I utilized my jottings and fieldnotes to write a total of nine
descriptive reflections during my study. I wrote three descriptive reflections per cycle. One after
each group meeting, making a total of two while I was in the field, and one out of the field to
make a total of three per cycle. I utilized Jay and Johnson’s (2002) work on defining descriptive
reflections as I asked myself the following questions: What was happening? Was this working,
and for whom? How was I feeling? What was I pleased about? What did I not understand? These
descriptive reflections provided insight into my ability to create a holding environment and
engage my learners in uncovering aspects of their identity and then extending their identity work
to their classroom teaching.
Data Analysis
According to Merriam and Tisdell (2016), the purpose of data analysis is to make
meaning out of the data that has been collected. This is where I, as the researcher, took the
various components of data to discover how they were related and worked together for the
overall goal of the study. In my study, I collected jottings, fieldnotes, and descriptive reflections,
alongside the agendas and instructional guides. Together the analysis of these data sources
provided insight into my ability to create a holding environment that supported teachers in
48
uncovering aspects of their identity to apply how their identity and their students’ identities
mattered in their classrooms.
Action research is cyclical in nature (Coghlan, 2019; Herr & Anderson, 2015). Due to the
cyclical pattern, data analysis occurred while I was in the field during my study and when I left
the field after I had finished collecting all my data. My study was 12 weeks long. I had three
cycles that lasted 4 weeks each. For the first 3 weeks I collected data and worked with teachers.
For the fourth week, I was out of the field, but continued the study after I had finished my 1
week out of the field. During this 1 week, I wrote analytic memos. An analytic memo is a written
document where I reflect on the current data that I have to uncover emerging themes (Bogdan &
Biklen, 2007). I used my jottings, fieldnotes, and descriptive reflections to write analytic memos.
In my analytic memos, I used a priori codes along with their corresponding definitions derived
from my conceptual framework (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Some of the a priori codes included
CRP, dominant ideology, critical reflection, adaptive and culturally responsive leadership, and
adult learning moves. The presence or lack of connections to the a priori codes assisted me in
understanding how I was engaging with my conceptual framework and how the pieces interacted
with each other. I was looking for how the concepts and their definitions, the a priori codes I
have created, are reflective of, consistent with, or divergent from what I was seeing in the data.
For example, when I went out of the field after Cycle 1, I began to recognize that my
codes were too large and how I had not yet engaged my learners in CRP or critical reflection.
Additionally, the analytic memos documented my thoughts as a researcher and how I made sense
of what I was learning from my action research cycle. As all my cycles were dependent upon one
another, this changed the course of my second cycle as I continued to engage my learners in
identity work as opposed to pushing forward to the connection to practice. It also made me more
49
attentive to the type of dominant ideology that was being espoused, White supremacy, and how I
was responding. I speak more to this in my finding section. Moving into my next cycles I also I
narrowed my a priori codes to further investigate how I was engaging within my conceptual
framework. Some of the narrowed a priori codes included, cultural competence, naming identity,
naming race, questioning, modeling, White supremacy, and reflection.
My out-of-the-field analysis began after my third cycle. During this phase, I utilized all
data collected to draw conclusions about my ability to make change within my work context. I
used the previously mentioned a priori codes along with open coding to create emergent codes.
To aid in this analysis I also used a variety of analytic tools (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to find
perspective within my data. Specifically, I utilized making comparisons and drawing on personal
experience as I coded my data. Some of my emergent codes included: hesitation, nervousness,
stress, vulnerability, and honesty. The lack of a code indicated where my actions fell short in my
conceptual framework and the addition of an empirical code revealed elements that were missing
in my original conceptual framework. I added all my codes to a code book. The use of a code
book helped me recognize the typicality of my actions and allowed me to aggregate my ideas
until they lent themselves to the findings I landed on. For example, when I added the emergent
codes above to my code book, they were similar in nature as they were all feelings, therefore I
put them together to create the theme of holding environment. Based on this new revelation, I
added holding environment to my conceptual framework and my understanding of how I was
interacting with my learners. I speak more to this in my findings section. Additionally, in my out
of the field analysis I continued with my analytic memos there were described above. In total, I
wrote three analytic memos in the field and three analytic memos out of the field that aided in
my understanding of how my actions impacted my learners’ growth.
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Limitations and Delimitations
Throughout my study there were limitations and delimitations that hindered the amount
of progress I could make and what I could learn from my study.
Limitations
As this was action research, my study was bound within the context of my workplace. I
worked with a limited number of participants, seven, including me, which limited my ability to
generalize. However, generalizing my study was not a goal of mine, as I chose to conduct action
research. My study could be used for transferability though. During the study, I worked in a
public school in Orange County, California as a teacher on special assignment. Working in my
own environment presented ethical dilemmas as I was managing the role of a colleague and a
researcher. I already had close relationships with my participants, so separating myself from the
study was challenging. As I had previous relationships with my colleagues, there was a
possibility that they were worried about how they might have been perceived based upon their
answers or they were hesitant to engage in reflection upon themselves and their teaching
practices. Thus, they may not have been forthcoming with their responses in our meetings. Their
willingness to engage in this process bound what I was able to accomplish or learn from my
study.
Lastly, as a novice researcher and leader I was limited in my leadership skills. I had a
theoretical understanding of leadership and andragogy which I had not put into practice before.
Delimitations
Being a novice leader was also a delimitation to my study. The choices I made interfered
with the progress I was trying to make with my participants. I was hesitant to engage in
conversations around White supremacy and push back on my colleagues’ thoughts. I was also
51
limited in my ability to see my decisions and actions in the moment, as well as the quality of the
discourse I could promote. Being a novice leader, also limited my ability to scaffold for my
learners and interrogate my own practices. I also created a delimitation as I chose to conduct my
study through our regularly scheduled 50-minute PLC meetings for 3-months. This limited the
potential of our discourse and how far we could get in each meeting.
Being a novice researcher was also a delimitation to my study as the choices I made as a
researcher interfered with what I could learn from the study. I made choices as I gathered,
analyzed, and understood data that constrained what I was able to learn about what I had
accomplished. I also created a delimitation as I chose specific participants. I believed these
participants would support my research study and engage in the action research process with me.
However, there may have been other colleagues willing to participate that would have been
beneficial to the study.
The limitations and delimitations constrained what I was able to accomplish in my study
and what I was able to learn about what I had accomplished.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
For the purposes of this study, I referred to credibility as how closely the research
findings match reality and why my results could be trusted. I referred to trustworthiness as how
consistent the reported results were with the data collected and why I was able to be trusted as
the instrument of data collection (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I conducted a qualitative study that
was rooted in human experience. I used my experience of supporting teachers and the teachers’
experience of uncovering their identity in relation to their practice as a step towards cultural
competence. I was striving for catalytic validity as I was looking for change in myself and the
research participants I was working with (Herr & Anderson, 2015). As other colleagues and I
52
were the primary instruments of data for this study, our experiences and interpretations of reality
varied. To honor this variation of interpretations, multiple measures to increase credibility and
trustworthiness were taken into account for the complexity of human behavior to “present a
holistic interpretation of what [was] happening” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 244).
To keep the study credible, I triangulated by using jottings, fieldnotes, descriptive
reflections, agendas, and instructional guides. These were all vulnerable to self-reporting bias,
therefore paying attention and mediating my subjectivity throughout my study was vital (A.P.
Cheater as cited by Peshkin, 1988; Maxwell, 2013). As previously stated above, I used jottings
for data collection. In my jottings, I noted participants’ verbatim dialogue. By having their words
written down I was not synthesizing or summarizing their experience for them. I was
representing these moments in time using their voices, instead of mine (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007).
Thus, I created space between me and my data set. In my fieldnotes, I carried over their verbatim
dialogue that I had written down in my jottings. I also noted observer commentary in my
fieldnotes. Observer commentary was the space for my thoughts about the setting, participants,
and activities to be listed (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). By noting my personal commentary in an
observer comment section, I created space between myself, my feelings, what I thought was
happening in the situation, and how I was interpreting the events and the data. Having my
personal commentary on the side created a more accurate representation of the scenario as my
interpretation was absent. I carried the verbatim dialogue and observer commentary into my
descriptive reflections.
As I was the primary research instrument, this study was prone to researcher bias, which
could threaten the trustworthiness of the study. I assumed multiple roles as I researched: The role
of a researcher and my role as a teacher on special assignment. This was a positive as I had
53
knowledge of my school site, but it also hindered me as I occasionally ceased to question our
practices as I had grown comfortable in the organization (Coghlan, 2019). I was also a
socializing knower which caused me to not fully follow through on my actions for fear of what
my colleagues would say. In both roles, I brough my biases and assumptions about my
workplace, participants, and data that I was collecting.
To address these threats, I met with my dissertation chair on a bi-weekly or weekly basis
throughout my data collection and into data analysis. Brookfield (2017) and Milner (2007)
suggest that discussing our actions and subsequent data with a critical partner or advisor will
allow another person to ask questions, express concerns, and engage with suggestions and
feedback about our actions and analysis to support us in illuminating our own biases and
assumptions that we are unable to see. By including my chair, I minimized the impact of my
subjectivity to create a data set that was free of my interpretation.
I also kept a detailed audit trail that accounted for the research methods, procedures, and
decisions that occurred during the study. This audit trail would be available to be analyzed by
others for how I derived my research findings based on the decisions, questions, and reflections
that I encountered (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Ethics
To prevent harm to research participants, I needed to ethically consider how I may have
been unintentionally mistreating participants in the process of conducting this study. As the
researcher, I needed to ensure that participants had given consent to participate, no harm was
done to them, and their identities were protected. As Lochmiller and Lester (2017) suggested
participation in this study required informed consent and prior to consent they were given a
detailed participation sheet with a description of the research study and their rights as research
54
participants. As Glesne (2011) suggested, potential participants were made aware of any aspects
of research that might affect their well-being, that participation was voluntary, and that they may
rescind their participation at any point. In addition, I also made participants aware that this was
not an evaluative process as I work closely with our administration team on campus.
As this study was conducted within my workplace, uncovering participants’ identities
through the disseminations of my findings would be easier for staff. The dissemination of
findings could potentially harm participants reputation at my school if the findings derived from
my research are considered not desirable to them or my colleagues. To combat this, pseudonyms
have been used to protect participant identity. However, fictitious names do not always protect
identity as they could be uncovered through simple online searches of my workplaces. To
respond to this challenge, I held our group meetings in places with closed doors and low-traffic
areas to secure less visibility. In addition, all of our PLC teams on campus met on a weekly
basis. Therefore, meeting with this team was not out of the norm which made it harder to discern
which grade level team I was working with. Participant data was also stored in a locked file
cabinet or uploaded to my password secured google drive account. Prior to uploading
documents, participant identifiers were erased and the google drive was logged out of each night
on all accounts to prevent others from gaining access.
In this study, teachers were uncovering aspects of their identity and relating them to their
classroom experiences. To support this process, I utilized language that was familiar to research
participants to aid in comprehension and understanding (Robinson & Leonard, 2019). There was
potential that I could misconstrue a participant’s responses and therefore induce harm by
attributing statements about their thinking that were not true. To combat this, I also viewed
participants as creators of knowledge and not simply subjects of the study (Dei, 2005).
55
Just as I needed to be careful that my participants were not perpetuating White supremacy
in their understanding of findings, I needed to ensure that I was not as well. Unconscious data
finagling can lead to improper dissemination of findings that perpetuate the researcher’s biases
(Gould, 1978). I was working within my school site and may have been biased towards wanting
to protect teacher and school reputations by reporting positive findings. To combat this, I
remained reflective and worked closely with my dissertation chair as a critical advisor
(Brookfield, 2017) to support the illumination of my own biases and assumptions throughout my
analysis and dissemination of findings.
Findings
In this section, I discuss my findings in relation to my research question: How do I
engage teachers to critically reflect on their ideology and practices to ultimately enact culturally
relevant pedagogy? This section will answer my research question in two parts: my progress and
areas I grew in my practice.
Collective Progress Towards Cultural Competence
Over the course of my 3-month study, my learners made movement towards cultural
competence as they came to an awareness of the importance of their identity and culture and
their students’ identity and culture in relation to their lessons. The long-term goal for my learners
would be a more comprehensive internalization of culturally relevant pedagogy in all three
tenets: academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings,
1995). I chose to start with cultural competence and its two characteristics: creating a space
where students can maintain cultural integrity and using culture as a vehicle for learning
(Ladson-Billings, 1995). However, many adult learners have not developed the capacity to
uncover their underlying assumptions or engage in reflective discourse (Belenky & Stanton,
56
2000) that would be needed to become a culturally competent teacher. The teachers in my study
all presented and acted White and began as colorblind practitioners who were focused solely on
finding evidence of student learning that did not examine their role or consider their students’
race and culture. This lack of consideration led to thoughts rooted in dominant ideology and
hegemonic assumptions as it was accepted as the “normal” way of conducting and planning their
lessons in the classroom (Bartolomé, 2009).
Therefore, prior to moving my learners to a place where they could begin to work
towards my definition of cultural competency, they needed to recognize that they themselves had
an identity that was representative of their culture and that their identity played a role in the way
they made sense of who their students were and how they were taught. Simultaneously, they had
some consciousness around the fact that their students had identities and they had not done much
to understand the importance or role of their students’ identities in the way they were thinking
about their lessons.
Consistent with my conceptual framework, I pursued supporting the development of
critically reflective practitioners by creating an environment that supported the type of discourse
that would promote deep learning. Deep learning is a worldview where our understandings of the
world are only temporary, all experiences are not just reacted too, but fully engaged with as they
are subject to constant inspection and the inevitable disquietude is welcomed as it is what leads
to efficacy in the world (Wergin, 2020). Becoming a critically reflective practitioner, would
support them in calling into question how power relationships, hegemonic assumptions and
dominant ideologies played a role in their classroom teaching (Brookfield, 2010). Being a
critically reflective practitioner was a part of deep learning, as the act of constant critical
reflection is the welcoming of the inevitable disquietude that comes from inspecting the power
57
relationships and dominant ideology that are present (Brookfield, 2010; Wergin, 2020). I pursued
deep learning as I was working to disrupt the ways in which my learners made sense of their
work with their students.
According to Wergin (2020), encompassed within deep learning is the idea of
transformational learning. Deep learning is a state of being, where transformational learning is a
moment in time that disorients and alters our outlook on the world (Wergin, 2020).
Transformational learning states we are all active constructors of knowledge who can become
responsible for the procedures and assumptions that shape the way we make meaning out of our
experiences (Belenky & Stanton, 2000; Mezirow, 1991). To learn deeply, one must have
experienced transformational learning as well; therefore, I pursued deep learning knowing that
transformational learning would occur as I worked to disrupt the way the teachers made sense of
their work with students to ultimately replace it with a state of consistent critical reflection.
To pursue deep learning with my participants, a holding environment was needed. A
holding environment establishes an atmosphere where people can feel safe tackling difficult
problems, but not so much that they avoid the problem all together (Northouse, 2016). A holding
environment that supports deep learning requires certain learning conditions to be in place. Ideal
learning conditions include freedom, democratic participation, equality, reciprocity, and the
ability to assess evidence effectively, make and understand relevant arguments and develop
critical judgement. Implied within these learning conditions is the need for a reasonable amount
of mental and physical health of the learners, as well as the acceptance of others with different
perspectives and social cooperation (Mezirow, 1991).
However, as suggested by Belenky and Stanton (2000), these learning conditions assume
that all learners are ready to participate in the learning environment above without accounting for
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where learners are in their own development of engaging in critical reflection that encompasses
an understanding of their race, ethnicity, and identity. Learners come into a space with varying
meaning making systems or ways of knowing that alter how they understand the world around
them (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017). The support of each adult learner in their own
development is unique, based on what the learner can do independently and what support is
needed to move them into a more complex way of knowing (Drago-Severson & Blum-
DeStefano, 2017; Warford, 2010). Therefore, a holding environment is constantly negotiated as
the readiness of all learners to take up the ideal learning conditions varies based on their
individual learner typologies and the space can be calibrated to support the movement of a
learner into a more complex way of knowing (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017;
Warford, 2010). A holding environment is experienced differently by all learners and can range
on a continuum from weak to safe to brave (Arao & Clemens, 2013). The extent to which it is
brave is predicated on Mezirow’s (1991) learning conditions being present. The absence or
inconsistency of some, if not all, of the learning conditions above destabilizes the space and can
move it into a safe or weak space.
A safe space allows learners the opportunity to engage in conversations that disrupt their
thinking by pushing them to explicitly state and contemplate their race, ethnicity, and identity. At
the same time, it hinders the amount of disruption that can occur. It can recenter dominant voices
and allow people to hide behind their ideas as there is little pushback of any thoughts rooted in
dominant ideology. In this learning environment learners trust each other, ground rules for
conversations are set, and participants are willing to participate in the conversation without fear
of attack or ridicule (Arao & Clemens, 2013). In a brave space, the elements of a safe space are
present. In addition, a brave space pushes against hegemonic and White supremacist ideas and
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discomfort, risk, and bravery are present as old ways of thinking are being replaced with a new
understanding and outlook (Arao & Clemens, 2013). A brave space constitutes the holding
environment where deep learning is possible as the discomfort of a brave space is the
constructive disorientation that is seen through the constant inspection of experiences, which
requires the ability to push back on thoughts and ideas rooted in dominant ideology (Arao &
Clemens, 2013; Wergin, 2020). A brave space still needs to take into consideration a learner’s
Zone of Proximal Development and each learner’s way of knowing (Drago-Severson & Blum-
DeStefano, 2017; Warford, 2010). Consistent with Belenky and Stanton (2000) and Drago-
Severson and Blum-DeStefano (2017), learners are likely to vary in their openness to risk taking
and bravery that is present in the discomforting aspect of a brave space. Therefore, a brave space
needs to be calibrated for individual learners as affective filters will go up based on different
levels of readiness or sensitivities. Hesitancy to confront White supremacy and dominant
ideology will hinder the creation of a brave space, thus hindering deep learning.
Conditions for Learning: Safe Space
The type of holding space that I needed to create so that my learners could engage in
deep learning was a brave space. The extent to which the space was brave or safe was going to
dictate what was possible in the learning environment. I landed on the creation of a safe space.
The quality of the space put boundaries around the type of discussion and level of disruption that
was possible. In my study, hesitancy to engage in conversations that confronted White
supremacy was present on both my and my participants’ part. This hesitancy created a safe space
for our holding environment.
I will discuss below the creation of our safe space in the context of Cycles 1 and 2 where
I focused on the first component of cultural competence: creating a space where students can
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maintain cultural integrity. A prerequisite to this component was that teachers needed to have an
awareness of their own identity that was representative of their culture and that their identity
played a role in the way they made sense of who their students were and how they were taught.
Having a safe space enabled my learners to examine their practice in ways that were not
colorblind, and it created enough disorientation for them to build an awareness of their own role
in their classroom, inclusive of their race and ethnicity. Simultaneously this safe space impeded
any pushback on ideas rooted in dominant ideology, which limited the amount of deep learning
that could occur.
I created a structure that enabled a safe space as teachers deepened their trust with each
other and with me. These lessons focused on theory in literature and examining our identities
disconnected from our practice. We publicly named parts of our identities through Brookfield’s
(2019) object activity and Zaretta Hammond’s (2014) culture tree, which connected us to our
lives outside of the classroom and who we were as individuals. The disconnect from practice
supported the deepening of trust that built a safe space as these conversations were not
interrogating their practices or how their identities could be detrimental to the choices they made
in their classrooms.
In Cycles 1 and 2, I had four sessions. In each session I used an agenda to outline our
time together. The agenda I will describe below is representative of the agendas that were used
through Cycles 1 and 2. They contained guiding questions, learning outcomes, and a breakdown
of our activity for the day, which revolved around Brookfield’s (2019) Circle of Objects or
Zaretta Hammonds (2014) Culture Tree. I will explain below how I created a safe space
throughout Cycles 1 and 2, by deepening trust between us, so participants were able to speak
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without the fear of attack or ridicule as they built an awareness of their own role in the classroom
that was inclusive of their identity.
Deepening Trust. I defined trust to be the firm belief in the ability of someone to be
reliable and honest (Oxford Languages, n.d.). Demonstrating the ability to be honest and reliable
occurred through communicative action that encompassed both the speaker and the listener. The
purpose of communicative action in the context of my study was to understand what others
meant and to be understood ourselves as we spoke openly about our identities, that was inclusive
of our race and ethnicity, in pursuit of seeing our impact on classroom teaching. This is only
possible if both the speaker and listener agree to reciprocal expectations about their behavior to
create the optimal conditions for discourse (Mezirow, 1991).
As this group was already meeting weekly prior to my study, there was a level of trust
that was already built. The communicative action that was present was superficial as
conversations were limited to student achievement and our daily teacher to do lists, which
required minimal risk in the level of honesty we shared, and the fear of judgement was not
present as conversations were kept colorblind. This colorblind approach to teaching led cultural
conflicts to go unrecognized. Cultural conflicts (Milner, 2010) with my learners and their
students occurred frequently as our students were from historically marginalized communities
and all of my learners presented and acted White. To combat this, I invited participants to deepen
their trust by being honest with each other about their identities in exchange for their willingness
to listen attentively to each other’s experiences. The learner sharing needed to agree to share
their unfiltered truth that was free from the pressure of others. On the other hand, the listener
needed to agree to being open to other perspectives and points of view by being respectful
listeners and ceasing judgement in the process; as well as accepting of others as equal
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participants in discourse by being counted on to be an active listener who would not diminish the
speaker’s thoughts or marginalize them for what they had shared (Mezirow, 1991). The sharer
exchanged their honesty for the reliability of the listener and simultaneously the listener agreed
to exchange their reliability for the other person’s honesty. Through communicative action
learners could participate freely in the conversation without fear of attack or ridicule (Mezirow,
1991). I am first going to talk about how I created the intended trust building activity. Then I will
talk about how I enacted the activity.
Intended Activity. Drawing from Brookfield and Hess (2021), I chose the Circle of
Objects activity with the intention that individuals would bring an artifact that had personal
meaning for them that represented them and their identity. Brookfield and Hess describe the
Circle of Objects as an activity that works to help people talk about their backgrounds or family
history with pride while breaking the expectation that Whites often have that they need to
confess their apparent racism. He describes how the group should gather in a large circle and
each person shares one at a time. I adapted this work by adding guiding questions with the
intention of creating communicative action between the sharer and the listeners to build trust in
addition to beginning the journey of exploring our identities. I provided the learners with
questions to help guide their thinking and set the expectation that they would be sharing as well
as listening to their peers’ responses. The learner interactions that ensued from responding to the
questions promoted a level of honesty amongst the group as they were sharing something
personal about themselves. Simultaneously these interactions promoted reliability as the listener
proved they were open to hearing another person’s perspective and would not diminish or
marginalize them in the process. Figure 2 shows my Circle of Objects activity outline.
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Figure 3
Agenda
As demonstrated on the agenda in Figure 2, I intended to allot 25 of the total 45 minutes
of time that we would spend together for this activity. While I allotted 50% of the overall time to
this activity, I did not attend carefully enough to considering how much time it would take for
me to model the activity, have six people answer the first three questions, and then leave space
for an open discussion. Ultimately, this had limitations on how much we could accomplish
together.
Prior to the meeting I had already asked the learners to complete a task. They were to
bring in an object that had personal meaning for them and represented them and their identity to
our first meeting. If they brought in an object to this first meeting, it would demonstrate how
they could be counted on to follow through on a task and cease or reduce the likelihood of any
judgement they had about discussing their identity as the bringing of an object showed their
willingness to participate in the activity.
I planned on modeling how I spoke about my object in relation to my identity first to
begin the communicative action of sharing honestly about myself and listening reliably. I
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intended to lay the foundation for this back-and-forth exchange by taking a risk and sharing my
truth first. I had the confidence that the rest of the group could be counted on to be active
listeners who would be open to my perspective, withhold judgement, and not diminish my
thoughts in the process in exchange for my honesty that was free from the coercion of others and
the distortion of self-deception. Then I would ask everyone else to take up that process to
supplement and strengthen this back-and-forth communicative action of sharing honestly about
their identity and listening reliably.
The agenda had four questions to guide the learners through this process. The first three
questions were all intended to promote the communicative action of sharing honestly about their
identity without the fear of ridicule by simultaneously expecting listeners to listen reliably by
withholding judgement and not diminishing others’ ideas or perspectives (Mezirow, 1991). The
first question asked, “What is it?” This question was used as a scaffold to support the learners to
enter the conversation. It gave a starting point for their sharing as they would be taking a risk by
revealing part of themselves through the object they chose to bring. They would be making a
statement that gave insight into the value they place on physical objects, and it would expose
some aspect of who they are in the world and how they make sense of it. The second and third
question of “How does it represent your identity” and “How does this shape your work as an
educator?” continued to push the sharer into communicative action by requiring them to decide
again how much of themselves they were willing to share in their answer. They had to venture
out and depend on the others to be reliable. The listeners in the room, whether they had an
opinion or not, needed to actively listen, withhold judgement, and not marginalize them for what
they have shared. Trust is being deepened through the communicative action of exchanging their
unfiltered honesty for judgement free listening.
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The final question “What are some things we learned about each other that we would like
to learn more about?” held the listener accountable to being a reliable partner in conversation.
The listener would have actively listened during the conversation to recall other’s experiences
and inquire upon their ideas in a respectful manner that was free of judgement. The listener
needed to showcase an interest in the topic and prove that they were attentive to the sharer’s
thoughts.
Enacted Activity. In the enactment of this activity, all questions were given to
participants through an email prior to their arrival at our first meeting. This was meant help
participants decide how unfiltered they wanted to be in their response by giving them time to
choose how much of themselves they were willing to share with the group. I then reiterated the
activity at the start of the meeting to reinforce how I could be counted on to make a space where
communicative action was possible, which would allow them to come with honest responses that
expressed their truth. Communicative action is strengthened based upon the degree to which a
learner shares honestly with the group (Mezirow, 1991). Trust is deepened when a strong
communicative action exchange is present.
In return, five learners brought an object, and one learner brought an idea. The fact that
they all came with items, or an idea, was an indication that they had confidence that I would
follow through on the creation of a space where communicative action around their identities
was possible, as they all came prepared to share something. The excerpt below shows how I set
the stage for communicative action by creating a space for honest responses to occur and
showing that I could be a reliable listener and follow through on that commitment.
M: Thank you for being here, I’m excited for our journey together. During each
meeting I’ll have an agenda for all of us.
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I read the guiding questions from the agenda.
M: Each agenda will have guiding questions that will shape our time together for that
day. Positionality is how you are positioned to see the world and a quote that
resonates with me the most is “We see the world as we are not, as it is.” With that
being said, we kind of want to share a little bit about ourselves. This is the activity
I previously emailed you about called Circle of Objects. I have done this at USC
before and I learned a lot about other people in the process and I am excited to do
it together today.
By indicating that “Each agenda will have guiding questions” to “shape our time,” I was
demonstrating that my learners could rely on me to provide a structure to our conversations. The
guiding questions put boundaries around our discussion and would position them to enter the
conversation in a way that would promote the type of discourse that could elicit the constructive
disorientation that I was intending to create. Simultaneously, I laid the foundation for
communicative action to occur. I telegraphed how I could be reliable to provide a structure to our
conversation and in return they would be answering the guiding questions, which would be
sharing their thoughts and answers to the group. This would be the start of a communicative
action exchange of being a reliable listener in exchange for the other person’s honest answers to
the guiding questions that uncover an aspect of their identity.
In sharing the quotation, “We see the world as we are, not as it is,” I established my
belief that we each brought our background and personal experiences into the way we interpreted
the world. Through the language “we are,” I was pointing back to us in the room as well as us
collectively, as members of society and by extension, that our background and experiences
informed the way “we [each] see the world.” I juxtaposed this idea with the language “not as it
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is,” which pointed us to the idea that there was some objective truth in the world that was
contrasted with our personal worldviews. Implied within this juxtaposition is the idea that our
worldviews would differ from the worldviews of others which could create differences in
opinions or conflict. By saying “we kind of want to share a little bit about ourselves” I
communicated how our differences in worldviews would be shown as we “share… about
ourselves” because our experiences affected our understanding of the world around us. I couched
this quotation in two connected statements, “Positionality is how you are positioned to see the
world” and that the quotation I was going to share “resonates with me” to contextualize the idea
that our beliefs are the result of our identity (positionality), that I was aware that there might be
discomfort that emerged from our sharing our different experiences, and that I would be a
reliable listener who would not judge others for their differences in opinions and perspectives. I
was supporting communicative action as I was being honest in sharing that our conversation
might lead to conflict, while also telegraphing that I would actively listen and not judge
(Mezirow, 1991) our different responses to the guiding questions. When I pointed my learners
back to the email “about [the activity] called Circle of Objects,” I reinforced that I could be
trusted to not put them on the spot for an immediate answer they might not have been prepared to
share.
In addition, I modeled the activity first to begin the exchange of sharing honestly and
actively listening. I took a risk by pushing honesty first, as I shared openly about my
experiences, free from the coercion of others, with the hope that the learners would be active
listeners and would not judge me in the process. I then passed off this conversational exchange
of honesty about their experiences for reliability to be taken up and strengthened by participants.
I then took out my cycling shoes from the lululemon bag that I carried them in.
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M: These represent how I like to work out. Some of you already know some of my
background growing up, but for those of you that don’t, I loved to dance. Dancing
was not just an activity I did with my friends, but it is how I learned to cope with
everything around me. I mention how my dad was an alcoholic growing up and
my parents went through a difficult divorce when I was in middle school. … My
current workout is mostly cycling. I use it as a way to regulate my stress and calm
my nerves. I mention how these experiences growing up have shaped my work as
an educator because I am empathetic towards my students who are going through
a divorce…. Having such an estranged relationship with my father from such a
young age has also caused my outlook on men to change. I notice that when I
work with families and families who are going through divorce, my natural
instinct is to villainize the father because of my experiences growing up. I always
have to remind myself that not all men are bad including the fathers of the
students that I teach.
By saying “Some of you already know some of my background growing up, but for those of you
that don’t,” I was signaling that I had previously placed my trust in some members of the group
that they would not judge me because of my background, and I was extending that trust to the
rest of the group. I then demonstrated that I believed they would listen to me without judging me
when I shared how “I loved to dance” as it was the thing that helped me “regulate my stress and
calm my nerves” that was the result of the fact that “my dad was an alcoholic growing up and my
parents went through a difficult divorce when I was in middle school.” I held up my cycling
shoes and added how “my current workout is mostly cycling” and that has replaced my dancing
as my coping mechanism. Through my recounting of my relationship between dance, cycling,
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my parents, and the way I had learned to handle difficulties I had faced, I was completing the
communicative action cycle of sharing honestly about an aspect of my identity in exchange for
my colleagues’ reliability to not judge me for what I had shared.
In my statement, “I notice when I work with families and families who are going through
divorce, my natural instinct is to villainize the father because of my experiences growing up,”
I invited my participants to actively listen and withhold judgement as I revealed a bias
(villainizing) I held towards the fathers of the students I taught because of my own early life
experiences. I also introduced the idea that it was possible to have an awareness of one’s biases
and to address them directly by reflecting on them when I said, “I always have to remind myself
that not all men are bad including the fathers of the students that I teach.” Thus, continuing the
communicative action cycle of sharing honestly about how my identity as a child of divorce has
affected my outlook on the parents in my classroom.
When I stopped speaking, my learners showed how they had engaged in communicative
action by reliably listening and how they varied in their readiness to complete the communicative
action exchange of sharing honestly about their identity with the group. Addison was the first
learner to voice her hesitation.
A: I am not going after that.
V: She has had a lot of practice.
O: Well, I’ll add onto what you said.
Z: I was just about to say the same thing.
No judgmental statements were made in response to my sharing, which showed that the listeners
in the group engaged in communicative action by actively listening and withholding judgement
while I was speaking. Addison’s statement “I am not going after that” could have been signaling
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her hesitancy to engage in the sharing honestly portion of communicative action. Violet’s
statement “She has had a lot of practice” suggested that she engaged in communicative action by
actively listening to Addison’s previous comment as her statement was in direct relation to
Addison’s reservation to share. Implied in Violet’s statement simultaneously were her own
reservations of engaging in the other portion of communicative action, which is sharing honestly
with the group about her identity as her statement, “[I have] had a lot of practice,” was a
potential justification for why her description of her identity would not be as detailed or personal
as mine was. Olivia’s statement “Well, I’ll add onto what you said” and Zoey’s statement “I was
just about to say the same thing” implied that they were ready to engage in sharing an aspect of
their identity with the group as they were going to add onto or extend my previous thoughts in
some way. Their desire to share first could also serve as evidence of their own anxiety to share
with the group as sharing first could be a way to get their sharing over with quickly so they
would not have to think about what they would reveal to the group for too long while they were
listening to their peer’s responses. The communicative action exchange continued as Olivia
shared her thoughts first with ambivalence.
O: I wanted to bring rosary beads, but they broke in the car. … I grew up in a family
where my parents were also divorced. My mom was a really strong figure. I didn’t
have a relationship with my dad at first, but that has ebbed and flowed as I have
grown up. I have become empathetic to students going through divorces and
students who get picked on because that was my experience growing up. Well to
wrap in why the rosary beads matter, I frequently attend church and that has
helped teach me what it means to be a better person. I try to take what I learn on
the weekend services of being kind and give my students little nuggets without
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mentioning the words faith, but I try to pass on what I learn about being kind. Tag
Zoey, you’re it.
Olivia’s statement, “I wanted to bring rosary beads, but they broke in the car” seemed to be
signaling her ambivalence to sharing honestly as she was inviting the group to not judge her in
the process by giving her reasoning for having an idea as opposed to a physical object in hand.
She explained why she was not fully prepared, which implied that her response might not be as
deep or personal as mine was. Despite her ambivalence, she kept the communicative action
exchange alive as she shared parts of identity that could be considered personal such as her
“parents [being] divorced” and her lack of a “relationship with [her] dad …. that has ebbed and
flowed.” Her invitation to participants to not judge and actively listen while she shared personal
information was the communicative action exchange in pursuit of building an awareness around
her identity. While this exchange was present, it was not strong as her ambivalence to sharing
honestly about her worldview was present. By saying she attended “weekend services” and
passed on “little nuggets without mentioning the words faith” to her students she suggested that
she was hesitant to name her faith and feared that it would not be accepted in conversation. She
chose to use “what I learn about being kind” and “little nuggets,” language that was stripped of
her religious affiliation, thus making it a non-religious statement. I interpreted her words as a
way for her to avoid judgement about who she was. Her idea that she held “little nuggets” about
“what it means to be a better person” and “about being kind” depict her internalization of
Eurocentric worldviews that suggest her Christian religion is the objective truth for “being kind”
and “a better person,” which ignores the idea that there are other worldviews and beliefs, thus
marginalizing historically marginalized students (Bartolomé, 2009; Bonilla-Silva, 2015; Milner,
2010). These statements devoid of religious affiliation telegraph her way of infusing dominant
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ideology into her classroom in non-religious ways and suggest her efforts to escape judgment
about her identity and her teaching practices that stem from her religious affiliation. Her
statement “Tag Zoey, you’re it,” passed off the conversation, implying that she reached her limit
on being open and honest with the group about aspects of her identity and she was ready for it to
move onto someone else as she did not leave space for a conversation to occur. Zoey thrust
herself into the communicative action exchange as she shared honestly with the group about her
identity, despite flippant remarks made by others.
Z: I resonate with that also because my parents are divorced, and I didn’t have a
good relationship with my mom or dad for a period of time. I am now close to my
mom. The object I brought is my phone.
V: That’s your generation. (Flippant tone)
Z: I brought it because it has pictures of my family. When I think of my family I
only think of my mom, sister, and brother. I am also empathetic to students of
divorce because I know how they feel so I want to help them. I spent many years
in therapy and learned that unlike M, I never developed healthy coping strategies.
In fact, I developed very unhealthy strategies and that is what pushed me to get
therapy years later. This impacts my class because I spend a lot of time with
students focusing on the need for SEL because it’s what I wished I had when I
was younger to help me cope better.
A: Well, I’ll go next. I don’t really have a sad story to tell though.
V: You are allowed to be from a healthy family relationship. (Flippant)
Zoey’s statement that she “resonate[d] with that,” was in direct connection to Olivia’s
description of her own parents’ divorce, signaling that Zoey was engaged in communicative
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action by actively listening to Olivia and connecting the statement to aspects of her own identity.
She also demonstrated her willingness to be vulnerable with the others in the group as she
indicated that she “didn’t have a good relationship with my mom or dad for a period of time,”
exposing the family difficulties she had experienced. Implied in her willingness to share this
information is that she trusted the others in the group to listen to her without diminishing her
experience and this part of herself. Violet’s response, that “That’s your generation,” although
flippant, did not dissuade Zoey from continuing to share her experiences with her family, again
signaling that Zoey believed members of the group were engaged with her in communicative
action where she could tell them aspects of her identity and they would listen without judgement
in return. Stella continued communicative action as she shared willingly with the group despite
reservations of others at how vulnerable she was being as she discussed part of her identity.
S: I’ll go next. I brought a hat, not just because I am getting older and need shade but
because I also like exercising. I walk every single day whether it be a family
member or a friend or a coworker. Walking is my way of making connections
with others. This relates to my job as an educator because I had a strong
connection to a few other my teachers. In particular my sixth grade teacher. My
mom passed away when I was in sixth grade and my teacher came to visit my
mom before her passing and was with me at her funeral and that has stuck with
me ever since.
She gets tears in her eyes.
S: Sorry I did not mean to tear up.
O: Wow M, look at what you’ve done. This is like a therapy session.
M: All at 9:30 in the morning. (Playful/ upbeat tone)
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S: When my mom passed away I tried to just cover up her sadness and was oddly
embarrassed by it. I didn’t want my classmates to know that my mom had passed
away. My teacher was the person that helped me put my feelings into words and
describe what I was going through. This relates to her teaching because she tries
to make a connection with her students because that connection was so big for her
growing up and so impactful.
Olivia’s statement, “Wow M, look at what you’ve done. This is like a therapy session”
illuminated her potential ambivalence as it implied that she was uncomfortable with the amount
of vulnerability that was present as Stella teared up when she shared about her “teacher [coming]
to visit [her] mom before her passing.” The interjection could have been a way to pull the group
away from the topic as an attempt to not further the conversation due to the uncomfortable
feeling of the listener (Brookfield, 2017). Stella’s statement “When my mom passed away, I tried
to cover up my sadness and was oddly embarrassed by it” signaled that despite the hesitation of
sharing part of her identity that came from Olivia, she jumped back into communicative action
around her identity, implying that she trusted everyone to continue actively listening to her and
ceasing judgement as she shared personal information that exposed painful parts of her
childhood. Stella’s statement, “This relates to [my] teaching because [I try] to make a connection
with [my] students” lacks an awareness of the role her race and ethnicity play in how she
interpreted her childhood experiences in relation to her classroom teaching.
Established Trust. The communicative action exchange of sharing honestly about
aspects of their identity and listening without judgement continued, thus deepening the trust
amongst my learners and me. This deeper level of trust supported conversations around their
identities that were inclusive of naming their race and ethnicity. One instance in which this
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deeper level of trust is evident is from the beginning of Cycle 2 when we were looking at Zaretta
Hammond’s (2014) Culture Tree. While I recognize that trust is determined day by day (Arao &
Clemens, 2013), as how we feel about others is variable, this example depicts the typical level of
trust that was replicated throughout the remainder of the 3-months of my study. The Culture Tree
is a visual that creates an analogy between a tree and the different aspects of a person’s culture.
During this meeting, we were revisiting the Culture Tree document with the purpose of looking
at the idea of surface culture. The idea of surface culture built off and overlapped with our
previous work in Cycle 1. At the very beginning of our time together I posed these questions to
them and gave them 10 minutes to think about their responses and take notes if they were
inclined to do so, before I opened the conversation up to the group.
• How did your family identify ethnically or racially?
• Where did you live—urban, suburban, or rural community?
• What is the story of your family in America? Has your family been here for
generations, a few decades or just a few years?
• Were you the first in your family to attend college? If not, who did—your parents,
grandparents, or great-grandparents?
• What are some of your family traditions—holidays, foods, or rituals?
• How would you describe your family’s economic status—middle class, upper class,
working class, or low income? What does that mean in terms of quality of life?
• What family folklore or stories did you regularly hear growing up?
• Who were the heroes celebrated in your family and/or community?
• Who were the antiheroes? Who were the “bad guys”?
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I gave participants the questions while we were together, where in previous iterations I had
emailed the questions ahead of time so that they would be prepared. My action demonstrated my
belief that more trust had been built because I did not think they needed advanced time to
prepare for our conversation anymore. Instead, I gave them 10 minutes to look over the questions
and told them to take notes if they wanted too and that they should share what they were
comfortable with sharing, which is me communicating how I believed this to be a trusting space
where they would receive what I was offering. After the 10 minutes was up, I asked if anyone
would like to go first and mentioned how they only need to share what they were comfortable
sharing with the group. Immediately after my question, Zoey jumped in.
Z: My dad was born in England and my mom is actually half Native American half
Irish. My grandma is 100% Native American. My grandma does cultural things
from her Native American heritage, but my own family actually took more after
my dad’s English side. We do his family tradition of poppers at Christmas.
A: Poppers! My family does that too because my mom is from England.
Z: We always loved the poppers and as a kid I just remember being so excited. We
celebrate Easter. We have only gone on one big family vacation. When we did my
mom had to work an extra job to afford it and then we all went on this family
cruise to Alaska. That is about it. We don’t really do a lot of cultural things.
Zoey’s immediate uptake of the activity signaled her reciprocal trust in me as she demonstrated
that she did not need the questions in advance. She was comfortable with the conditions that I
had established, which was evident when she responded to the questions honestly, giving us
insight into her identity.
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Implied in Zoey’s willingness to jump into the conversation immediately with her
statement, “My Dad was born in England and my mom is actually half Native American half
Irish” is that she trusted everyone enough to not judge her as she shared a part of her identity that
was inclusive of her ethnicity, something she had not done previously. Addison’s statement,
“Poppers! My family does that too because my mom is from England” signaled how she was
actively listening as her comment was in direct relation to Zoey’s previous statement of her
family tradition of “poppers at Christmas.” Implied in Addison’s immediate uptake of the
conversation was that she trusted the group to not judge her or diminish her thoughts as she
jumped into the conversation around her identity, when she was previously hesitant to engage in
communicative action around her identity. Zoey’s ending statement “That is about it. We don’t
really do a lot of cultural things” telegraphed how although she was sharing cultural aspects
about herself, she might not be internalizing that her ethnicity and her family traditions were a
part of her culture. Communicative action around our identities continued as I pushed our group
to think more critically about what constitutes culture.
M: I find it very interesting how you say, “We don’t do a lot of cultural things” and
then you mentioned Christmas and Easter. I think growing up surrounded by
people who celebrate the same holidays as us, we start to think that Christmas and
Easter are not a part of our culture, but they actually are. That was an awakening
moment for me, when I began to realize that these holidays, I celebrate are a part
of my own culture.
S: It’s like very specific cultural aspects stand out to us. Our students come with all
these different things that they do, which are a part of their culture and it gets hard
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to see that we do things that are a part of our culture because they feel normal to
us.
By saying, “I find it very interesting how you say, ‘We don’t do a lot of cultural things,’” I
demonstrated that I was actively listening to Zoey’s responses. The language “I find it very
interesting” telegraphed I was not judging her statements, and rather that I was coming from an
inquisitive standpoint. By stating “and then you mentioned Christmas and Easter,” I began
pushing the level of trust that was present in our communicative action exchange by pointing out
the contrasting ideas offered by Zoey of not doing “cultural things” with her statements that her
family had the tradition of celebrating both Christmas and Easter, two holidays that carry strong
cultural traditions. My statement, “I think growing up surrounded by people who celebrate the
same holidays as us, we start to think that Christmas and Easter are not a part of our culture, but
they actually are” juxtaposed the way I made sense of my White identity with the way Zoey was
making sense of her identity when I said, “these holidays I celebrate are a part of my own
culture.” Stella thrust herself into communicative action by sharing her insight that it was easier
to see our students’ cultures as it was “these different things that they do” and we had a hard time
seeing our culture as “they feel normal to us,” which is a similar idea to my previous comment.
Her statement signaled that she was actively listening as it was in direction relation to my
comment about not recognizing aspects of our White culture. It also demonstrates that she
believed the group to be reliable to not judge her as she shared her unvarnished thoughts about
how she saw a difference in how we all viewed our students’ cultures versus our own. The
communicative action exchange was quickly picked up by Olivia who shared honestly about her
own ethnicities and pulled in the idea that the holidays she celebrated were a part of her culture
based on our previous conversation.
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O: My grandpa was born in Spain and my mom is White. … I grew up with my dad’s
parents, so my grandparents on my dad’s side. My grandparents on my mom’s
side passed away. My mom’s dad had an alcoholic problem, so she didn’t want us
around any of them, so we were really only around my dad’s parents. They
celebrated all of the holidays with mariachis and all of the Spanish food like
tamales. We celebrate Christmas and Easter, which I guess is our culture. It felt
very family oriented, and my grandma played a large part in that. She always said
you need to go to church. She was a really big Catholic. She would say you need
to believe. You need to have the faith. That’s kind of where I started my own faith
journey.
Olivia’s statement, “My grandpa was born in Spain and my mom is White” demonstrates the
immediate uptake of the conversation as she jumped right in and began speaking without
hesitation. She engaged in communicative action around her identity as she named her race and
ethnicity as Spanish and White. Olivia demonstrated that she was actively listening or at least
skimming the questions as her responses were reflective of the questions that asked about family
ethnicity and family traditions. Olivia had previously appeared ambivalent to joining the
communicative action exchanges around our identities. In this example, she did not hesitate as
she shared more personal information about her childhood including her “dad’s … alcoholic
problem” and explicitly stating her religious journey starting in the “Catholic” church, which she
previously kept non-identified. These statements telegraphed that Olivia felt enough trust in the
group to not judge her for her experiences or thoughts as she shared more openly about her
identity than she did prior. Olivia’s statement, “We celebrate Christmas and Easter, which I
guess is our culture” signaled how she was actively listening as she took an idea from our
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communicative action exchange above and altered her thoughts as she said, “I guess,” which
implied that she was changing what she would have thought if she was not listening beforehand.
The communicative action exchange strengthened as Stella jumped into the conversation and
demonstrated her deeper level of trust with the group as she opened up about her identity.
S: I actually grew up in Barstow. I identify as half Mexican half White. I was always
speaking Spanish and I felt Mexican. We had a very tight knit group of family,
and we all took care of each other. My grandmother would watch me before and
after school as my parents went to work. I went to the church right next door to
my house. We knew everyone in our community. I really only spoke Spanish at
that time. You would never know that my dad is White with blond hair and came
from Kentucky because we all spoke Spanish. I loved my Mexican heritage
growing up. We made tamales and we would all cook together. I played the piano
every weekend at our church. I really felt that family connection. Then my mom
passed away when I was in high school and then one year later, I moved with my
dad to La Mirada, which was a shock. It was the first time I noticed that all
service jobs workers were Mexican, which wasn’t what it was like where I grew
up. Where I grew up there were Mexicans that were doctors and doing other
things and I came here and noticed that they were only in service jobs such as
house cleaners or car workers. I felt like I was for the first time coming into this
White world and it was almost like a transition of two worlds. I started adopting
what was around me and basically fell into White culture. I feel like I’m Mexican
on the outside, but now White on the inside. I never totally fit in in La Mirada.
My dad is White and blonde, and he re-married someone that was White and
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blonde, and I was over here with darker skin not looking like the people around
me. I felt like I was a part of two worlds. Leaving behind my Mexican heritage
and now acting more White.
V: How was your dad’s transition?
S: Well, my dad grew up in Kentucky. He hated his dad though and he ran away at
18. He met my mom and fell in love and then fell in love with her dad. He still
calls her dad the greatest man that ever lived. He really just embraced the culture
and began to learn Spanish and did all the things that the family did. He
celebrated their holidays and spoke their language. He’s like the opposite of me.
He was Mexican on the inside and White on the outside.
M: Have you carried on any of the traditions or parts of your Mexican culture?
S: My husband and I just talked about this actually. I’ve left a lot of those behind
and am kind of starting to bring some of those back into my life.
Stella’s statement, “I actually grew up in Barstow” demonstrates that she prepped the group to
hear information that they would not be expecting by using the language “I actually,” which
implied that what she was about to say was not what someone would think about her unless she
has opened up and shared this information willingly. Stella shared “I identify as half Mexican
half White,” implying that she trusted the group to not judge her as she pushed forward with
communicative action around her identity by sharing her ethnicity. Stella’s statement, “I was
always speaking Spanish and I felt Mexican” signaled how she no longer believed herself to be
Mexican as she used the past tense language of “felt.” Implied within this idea is the assumption
that to feel Mexican, you must be speaking Spanish. Another language assumption is named as
Stella said, “You would never know my dad is White with blonde hair because we all spoke
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Spanish.” Through this statement Stella named the assumption that certain languages belonged
with certain skin colors as opposed to someone who presented one ethnicity and behaved a
different ethnicity, like her father. Stella continued thrusting herself into communicative action
as she shared more personal information about her “mom pass[ing] away.” She had previously
shared about this experience and with the deeper level of trust that was present, she pushed
further into communicative action as she shared how moving after her mom’s passing altered
how she viewed her own identity. Through the statement, “Where I grew up there were
Mexicans that were doctors and doing other things and I came here and noticed that they were
only in service jobs such as house cleaners or car workers” Stella was potentially telegraphing
how society was racist against historically marginalized communities and how this was
disorienting for her as she experienced “Mexicans [as] doctors” who were now “only in service
jobs” as she was “coming to the White world.” Implied within this statement is the disorientation
of how she would now view herself as she identified as Mexican and was now seeing how
Mexicans were treated in a “White world.” Stella’s statement, “I started adopting what was
around me and I basically fell into White culture” signaled how she acknowledge the
assimilation that occurred. Her understanding of what it meant to be Mexican, confronted with a
“White world” that told her a different story, pushed her to assimilate in response and she
acknowledged that experience. Stella reinforced that idea of this assimilation through her
statement “[I left] behind my Mexican heritage and now [acted] more White” leaving her to feel
“Mexican on the outside, but now White on the inside.” Implied within her willingness to share
this personal information about her relationship with her identity is the idea that she trusted the
others in the group to listen to her without diminishing her experience and this part of herself as
she shared without hesitation.
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Violet’s statement, “How was your dad’s transition?” demonstrated how she was actively
listening to Stella’s response above. She was showing that she cared by asking a following up
question, although the question was about the father and not Stella, and the question was vague
as it could be referring to multiple experiences. Stella’s response, “He really just embraced the
culture and began to learn Spanish and did all the things that the family did” telegraphed the
strength of the assumption that it was not acceptable to present one ethnicity and behave a
different ethnicity as that was what the “transition” must be referring too, as opposed to the
father’s transition back to White culture after having embraced a Mexican culture. Stella’s
description of her father’s experience as he “hated his family” and “embraced the culture” of her
mom by “celebrat[ing] their holidays and [speaking] their language” could have been signaling
her belief that a person’s culture could change. It did not have to be static and based solely upon
one’s race. The idea that one could present one ethnicity and behave a different is reiterated
through her statement “He was Mexican on the inside and White on the outside,” which is “the
opposite of [her]” connecting back to her previous comment that she was “Mexican on the
outside and White on the inside.” Stella engaged in communicative action as she was vulnerable
by sharing her own experiences and assumptions while she revealed her relationship to her
identity by trusting everyone to not judge her experiences in return.
Limitations: Safe Not Brave Space
As a person living in this country, I have internalized many aspects of dominant
ideologies. While I have internalized many aspects of dominant ideologies, such as patriarchal
and capitalistic ideology, I was more attuned to my internalization of White supremacy which
Brookfield (2019) describes as a worldview that believes White people should hold the most
power as they are superior in their intellect, decision making, and emotional regulation. I am a
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White Female. As suggested by Morgan (1996), my White race carries power, and my female
gender carries marginalization. On Sonya Renee Taylor’s (2021) ladder of bodily hierarchy, my
White race puts me close to the top and my female gender puts me beneath White males. The
closer to the top of the ladder, the more our White supremacist society values those bodies and
with that stature comes power and privilege in society. White people, including me, have a
harder time recognizing White supremacy in action as they work to keep the power, they have by
maintaining the status quo as they distance themselves from conversations around race, which
prevents any pushback of White supremacy (Brookfield, 2019; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).
My hesitancy to disrupt and engage in conversations around White supremacy pushed us
to a safe space instead of a brave space where assumptions and biases are interrogated in order to
assess evidence effectively, make and understand relevant arguments, and develop critical
judgement (Arao & Clemens, 2019; Brookfield, 2017; Mezirow, 1991). I was fearful to enter a
space of disruption as I am a socializing knower who prioritizes others’ feelings and internal
states over my own (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017). The consequences of pushing
back against White supremacy ideology could have committed me to cultural suicide
(Brookfield, 2017), as my colleagues might have viewed me as betraying them or thinking that I
was better than they were. Therefore, I ended up complicit with the system and perpetuating
White supremacy as I stayed silent and solidified the creation of a safe space.
While the safe space supported my learners to uncover aspects of their identity, it also
recentered dominant voices and maintained White supremacist ideology, making critical
reflection impossible as it requires calling into question how power relationships, hegemonic
assumptions, and dominant ideologies play a role in our daily interactions (Brookfield, 2010).
The excerpt below is from a conversation around Zaretta Hammond’s Culture Tree (2014) that
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occurred during my second session in Cycle 1, which spurred remarks rooted in White
supremacist ideology that went unacknowledged. In this excerpt I had passed out Zaretta
Hammond’s Culture Tree (2014) and planned to give everyone 5 minutes to look it over. After
just 1 minute Stella jumped right into conversation about the physical appearance of the tree and
what she thought it symbolized. Four minutes later, Violet started the conversation rooted in
White supremacist ideology and two others followed.
V: This (pointing to the culture tree document) is why we are seeing so many
behaviors at school. We are starting to excuse behavior for children and our
discipline is infringing upon their cultural identity and that is why our students are
out of control.
S: Like what is happening in San Francisco. We were going to travel up there for a
weekend and my dad was like you need to look at the news. Do you see how they
are shutting down stores because of all the theft? Apparently, if they take less than
$1,000 you aren’t charged or something like that.
O: It all just seems chaotic.
V: This is what’s happening to our world. The culture that we grew up in is
disappearing because we are seeing other cultures rise up. My belief system is no
longer being tolerated. I can’t wear an American flag, but you can wear whatever
represents your culture on your shirt.
O: When I taught sixth grade students would come in with clothes that are not school
appropriate but would say it’s a part of my culture so you can’t tell me what to
do.
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It fell quiet as everyone looked back at their Culture Tree. Stella spoke next and took the
conversation in a different direction.
Violet’s initial statement was indicative of her internalization of White supremacy, as her use of
the Culture Tree (“This”) in relation to behaviors (“why we are seeing so many behaviors at
school”) implied a belief that non-White culture, translated into lesser and problematic behaviors
at school. While her statements “children” and “our students” are colorblind, they are not color
neutral as implied within the language is her reference to non-White students (“cultural
identity”). Violet was making a connection that non-White students’ cultural backgrounds and
their behaviors and expressions (“behavior for children”) were contrary to a White set of
expectations about how you were supposed to behave at school (“that is why our students are out
of control”). Her desire for assimilation (“our discipline is infringing upon their cultural
identity”) was due to her internalization that White behavior and emotional regulation was
superior (“that is why our students are out of control”) and therefore should be the norm in a
classroom setting.
Stella’s statement illuminated her internalization of White superiority around emotional
regulation and decision making when she described her fear (“shutting down stores because of
all the theft”) for non-White peoples’ actions, through the proxy language of “they,” as the
reason she cancelled trip (“We were going to travel up there…”). Olivia’s statement, “It all just
seems chaotic” added onto the internalization that non-White people were lesser than their White
counterparts as a non-White being was “chaotic” and should be avoided, as she was validating
Stella’s reasoning to cancelling her trip.
Violet’s ending statement signaled her fear of losing her White power at the top of
society (“The culture that we grew up in is disappearing because we are seeing other cultures rise
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up”) and her desire for non-White people to assimilate to White culture (“My belief system is no
longer being tolerated”) as it is superior. Her statement, “I can’t wear an American flag but, you
can wear whatever represents your culture on your shirt” further implied her internalization of
White supremacy as she considered non-White people not to be American, thus making them
less superior, as wearing an American flag is her culture (“I can’t wear an American flag”) and
not theirs (“you can wear whatever represents your culture on your shirt”).
In this instance I fell quiet as I distanced myself from the conversation and did not push
back on these thoughts. My withdrawal perpetuated White supremacy as I said nothing in
disagreement and solidified the creation of a safe space during our initial time together. I was
complicit in perpetuating a safe space over the next for meetings, which occurred over 8 weeks.
This was one instance in which there was evidence of how our safe space existed and it was
indicative of the kind of conversation that took place over the remainder of our time together.
While we were able to uncover aspects of our identity in this safe space, it did hinder our
learning as we moved forward to turn toward our practice. The limitation that our safe space put
on my progress will be further described in a subsequent finding.
Curricular Structure: Theory Into Practice
For Cycle 3, I actively shifted the curriculum structure to move close to our practice as
we explored how our identities mattered in our classroom lessons from previously having a
structure that was far removed from our practice as we uncovered our identities, unrelated to our
classroom practice, in Cycles 1 and 2. For Cycle 3, I focused on the second component of
cultural competence: Using culture as a vehicle for learning. My learners had some
consciousness around the fact that their students had identities and they had not done much to
understand the importance or role of their students’ identities in the way they were thinking
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about their lessons. A prerequisite for using culture as a vehicle for learning was that teachers
recognized that culture played a role within our classroom lessons. To accomplish this, teachers
would need to normalize the exploration of and turn toward their practice. Normalizing the
exploration of practice is the acknowledgement that practice is not perfect, and problems are an
expected part of classroom teaching, which supplies reassurance and solidarity to teachers (Horn
& Little, 2010). Turning toward practice is when teachers treat the shared and expected (normal)
problems of practice as the starting points for detailed discussions about that specific instance,
which will anchor emergent advice to more general problems and principles of teaching (Horn &
Little, 2010). The ability to carry out such tasks (in our case normalizing the exploration of and
turning toward teaching) varies amongst individuals (Belenky & Stanton, 2000), therefore we
took a step in that direction, which was normalizing the discussion of practice as we
acknowledged that some parts of our practice were good, and some parts of our practice were not
good as we explored the role that culture played within our classroom lessons.
Normalizing the discussion of practice was the vehicle that enabled me to help my
learners explore how our identities and cultures, of ourselves and our students, were seen in our
classroom lessons, as we had previously developed an understanding of our identities and had
built trust with each other. This is like the way Brookfield (2019) explains that a learner is ready
to explore a more complex understanding of White supremacy in their own lives (in our case the
recognition that culture played a role within our classroom lessons) once they have developed a
basic grasp of systemic racism (in our case the acknowledgement of our own identities and
culture as well as our students’) and trust the peers and adults with whom they are learning.
Thus, I normalized the discussion of our practice, as we moved from talking about ourselves and
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our identities through literature to exploring how our identities and our students’ identities
mattered in the classroom by relying on our classroom experiences.
I had two sessions in Cycle 3. In these sessions I abandoned the use of agendas. Instead,
I used an instructional guide for myself. On these instructional guides I had the learning
objectives that I was seeking to achieve and an outline of our time together. The outline
contained a rough time estimate for teacher think time and then time for us to discuss their
experiences. I made guiding questions available, I framed the way I was going to use them, and
then I gave them think time. The framing and guiding questions gave structure to our
conversation to normalize the discussion of our practice, as a step in the exploration of and turn
toward practice, to maintain their agency to alter their decision making in the future (Horn &
Little, 2010). The following example of my framing of the conversations is from the second
session in Cycle 3.
We’ve talked a lot about our individual cultures and today we are extending that
conversation to how we see culture in our classroom lessons. Can we find the
ways in which our culture is shown through our lessons that we plan and enact,
and can we see any evidence of our students’ culture in these lessons? The
guiding questions are meant to help our thinking.
By saying “We’ve talked a lot about our individual cultures and today we are extending that
conversation to how we see culture in our classroom lessons” I was normalizing the shift from
talking about “our individual cultures” to exploring our practice by “extending the conversation
to how we see culture in our classroom lessons.” The language of “extending” signaled an
intention to make examining our practice a routine event. My question, “Can we find the ways in
which our culture is shown through our lessons that we plan and enact, and can we see any
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evidence of our students’ culture in these lessons?” foreshadowed how we would be turning
toward our practice by using the language of “our lessons” and “these lessons,” drawing from
our classroom experience as they related to seeing “our culture” or “our students’ culture.” By
using the language “find the ways...is shown through our lessons that we plan and enact,” I
reinforced the idea that examining our practice was normal. The final statement that “The
guiding questions were meant to help our thinking” implied that our investigation of our practice
would be directed towards the role our identities and our students’ identities played in the
classroom.
I provided the guiding questions below.
• Describe your lesson.
• Who are you in relation to your students?
• Do you share cultural values or do your cultural values differ?
• Whose culture is represented in this lesson and how?
• How does your lesson align with or reject Milner’s idea of cultural conflicts in the
classroom?
• Thinking about what Milner was advocating for in his article, if a cultural conflict
occurred in your lesson how would we resolve it?
To answer the guiding statement “Describe your lesson,” learners would have to turn toward
their practice as they would be describing their own classroom lesson. The questions “Who are
you in relation to your students?” and “Do you share cultural values or do your cultural values
differ?” directed learners to consider their experiences with the students in their classrooms and
the extent to which their values and their students’ values aligned, again asking my learners to
turn toward their experiences in their own classrooms. The questions “Whose culture is
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represented in this lesson and how?” and “How does your lesson align with or reject Milner’s
idea of cultural conflicts in the classroom?” normalized the exploration of our identity in
planning and enacting (“whose culture”) and the possibility that our planning and enacting was
not perfect and that it missed the mark (“is represented … and how? And “lesson align with or
reject Milner’s idea of cultural conflicts in the classroom?”). The last question “Thinking about
what Milner was advocating for in his article, if a cultural conflict occurred in your lesson how
would you resolve it?” explored the problem further, thus turning into practice (“cultural conflict
occurred in your lesson”) and not away. Implied in all these questions was the idea that my
learners had agency to address what was happening in their classrooms. The language of “how
would you resolve it” used in the last question promoted the recognition that this agency existed.
I originally planned on giving them 10 minutes to think about their responses and take
notes if they were inclined to do so. However, after 7 minutes, they had all appeared to finish as
they either put their pencils down or were turning to talk to each other. Therefore, I ended the
think time early and opened the conversation up to the group. I began by modeling my answers
to the questions to normalize the act of discussing an imperfect part of my practice with the
group. Discussing my practice sparked a conversation around the role of culture in our classroom
expectations.
M: I have a science lesson I vividly remember from my first-year teaching. I
remember I was being observed and when the observation was over, I was sure
that the lesson went awful. The kids were talking over each other, they couldn’t
hear the directions and it felt chaotic. I remember I was having them work in
groups. The way I think about culture in this is that I, and the person observing
me, expected the students to be quiet, facing forward, listening attentively, and
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working independently while I maybe pulled a small group, so to have a loud
group activity going did not go down as a great observation. I actually ended up
having to re-do the observation. I think back to how maybe that wasn’t the best. I
might have thought that was only a poor lesson based on what I had as my
expectations of student behavior, which comes from a White perspective, which
might have not been the right answer for what is considered a “good lesson.”
V: But how is that culture? I’m trying to wrap my mind around how them not
listening or understanding directions could be connected to culture?
A: I think it’s in your expectations of what you want from them.
Z: Yes, I agree with the expectation idea.
By saying “I have a science lesson I vividly remember … [that] went awful,” I turned toward my
own teaching practice (“I have a science lesson I vividly remember”), bringing forward a
problem (“[that] went awful”), demonstrating that it was normal to discuss the specific
challenges we faced in our teaching. Through my statement “I think back to how … that was
only a poor lesson [since it was] based on what I had as my expectations of student behavior,
which comes from a White perspective” I normalized how “[thinking] back” or exploring my
practice uncovered how my White identity was impacting my understanding of my classroom
expectations and altered what I considered to be a “good lesson” in my classroom. Implied
within this idea was that we had the agency to change our teaching practices in response to the
new understandings we discovered as we turn toward our practice.
Violet’s question “But how is that culture?” telegraphed her potential disconnect between
how her identity impacted how she viewed her students’ behavior in the classroom and was a
turn away from practice. Her question to “wrap [her] mind around how [students] not listening or
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understanding directions could be connected to culture” was a turn away from practice as it
related to her own understanding (“wrap my mind around”) of culture as opposed to a question
that unpacked my practice. Addison’s statement “I think it’s in your expectations of what you
want from them” combined with Zoey’s statement “Yes, I agree with the expectation idea”
signaled how they used Violet’s previous question as a launching pad for bigger questions for
themselves. Therefore, they continued the turn away from practice as Addison’s language of
“you want from them” refers to a larger “you” in the world, as opposed to referring to me in the
lesson I was discussing.
Violet continued the discussion of practice as she recounted both good and bad parts
about her own incorporation of culture into her classroom lessons.
V: A few years ago, I did a family values survey. I asked them a lot of questions
about their home life and what they believed was important for their student. This
was actually more of an assignment for my master’s program that I am in. I had to
work with an English Language Learner and use the information I knew about
their homelife to guide my instruction. Instead of just asking that one student I
asked my whole classroom. I then used what I learned about that student’s values
to pick books that aligned with their culture and to pick out lessons that the family
thought were important to learn. I also realize I haven’t done that since and it was
probably a good practice.
Z: I am seeing how little I usually put thought into this.
Violet statement, “I did a family values survey” to ask her families “about their home life and
what they believed was important” to help her “pick books [that] aligned with their culture”
normalized a discussion of her practice and that her practice contained some positive (“pick
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books [that] aligned with their culture”) and negative (“I also realize I haven’t done that since
and it was probably a good practice”) aspects. Her statement “pick books that aligned with their
culture” to “guide [her] instruction,” telegraphed how she recognized that students’ culture
should be acknowledged and incorporated into our lesson planning. Her statement “I also realize
I haven’t done that since and it was probably a good practice” extended how it was acceptable to
show weakness in our practice as she acknowledged that her choices in the classroom have
implications as her elimination of her previous practice (“I haven’t done that since’) made her
classroom teaching weaker (“it was probably a good practice”), which was to the detriment of
her students.
Zoey’s statement, “I am seeing how little I usually put thought into this” built off Violet’s
previous comment and illuminated how she was now asking questions about her own practice as
she recognized how absent the role of her identity or her students’ identity was in her approach
to lesson planning and teaching. Zoey did not openly discuss her practice and it would have
required a few follow-up questions for her to elaborate her thoughts. However, my learners were
collectively thinking, as they were directing all their attention by extending or elaborating on
each other’s thoughts, to tend to a deeper investigation of their teaching (Horn & Little, 2010).
This statement also telegraphed some level of discomfort and the beginning stages of a
disorientating dilemma as Zoey recognized that cultural competency in the classroom was
missing from her practice as she has rarely “put thought into this.”
Olivia continued the discussion of practice as she shared about the way in which she
made sense of incorporating her students’ culture into her classroom.
O: I can go next. It isn’t really a lesson, but since we started talking about culture,
I’ve been more aware of it in my classroom and more interested in my students’
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culture and their backgrounds. So, I started doing a morning meeting and I’ve
started off very basic with some simple questions about themselves and giving
them the opportunity to share. Todays was “What’s your favorite food?” I let
them talk about it and listen to their peers. I learned so much about all of the
different types of food that they eat, and they get so excited to share and I know
that I am not the only one learning new things because some of their peers also
start to ask questions or they want to share that they do the same things at home. I
am being very inquisitive with them and genuinely showing more of an interest in
what goes on in their home lives.
Olivia’s statement, “It isn’t really a lesson” but “I started doing a morning meeting” with “simple
questions” that the students answer to learn more about their “culture and their backgrounds”
extended the discussion of practice as she shared a way in which she tried to learn more about
her students’ culture. The language “It isn’t really a lesson” reinforced the idea and the collective
thought that practice was not perfect as she, like Zoey, had not thought about culture in the
context of her lesson planning. While her response lacked a recognition of how her identity was
shown through her classroom lessons, it was a beginning step as she previously was not
acknowledging that her students had identities that differed from her own. Olivia was
recognizing her students as subjects rather than objects (Ladson-Billings, 1995) as she was
“genuinely showing more of an interest in what goes on in their home lives” which was giving
insight into their “culture and backgrounds.”
Limitations
Turning toward practice. My hesitancy to disrupt and engage in conversations around
White supremacy pushed us to not turn toward our practice as we explored how our and our
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students’ identities mattered in the classroom during Cycle 3. In Cycle 3, I had two sessions.
While I intended to turn my learners toward their practice, my framing of the guiding questions
and the guiding questions themselves did not set my learners up to turn toward their practice.
This occurred in both sessions during Cycle 3. The following example of my framing of the
conversations is from the second session in Cycle 3.
We’ve talked a lot about our individual cultures and today we are extending that
conversation to how we see culture in our classroom lessons. Can we find the
ways in which our culture is shown through our lessons that we plan and enact,
and can we see any evidence of our students’ culture in these lessons? The
guiding questions are meant to help our thinking.
My question, “Can we find the ways in which our culture is shown through our lessons that we
plan and enact, and can we see any evidence of our students’ culture in these lessons?” was
intended to foreshadow how we would be turning toward our practice by using the language of
“our lessons” and “these lessons,” drawing from our classroom experience as they related to
seeing “our culture” or “our students’ culture.” However, consistent with Horn and Little’s
observations regarding turning away from practice (2010), this statement did not contain any
remarks or signal how we would be having a detailed discussion and revision of specific
classroom instances. Providing these remarks or signals would have been required if we were
turning toward practice. The question also lacked the idea that the teachers listening should be
listening with the intent to contribute to the conversation of the one specific classroom instance
to allow for emergent advice that generalized the problem.
In addition, the guiding questions that were intended to support a conversation that turned
toward practice were posed in a way that pushed learners to discuss their practice rather than turn
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toward it. The first guiding question I provided was “Describe your lesson.” The guiding
statement, “Describe your lesson” telegraphed how each learner would be talking about their
own experience as they would “describe [their] lesson” with the group. While this would lead the
speaker to turn toward their practice, it did not permit the others in the room to turn toward the
speaker’s practice with them and have a detailed conversation on that one specific classroom
instance. I had six participants and only 50 minutes of time together. It was not possible to have
six conversations that turned toward practice in a 50-minute timeframe. Therefore, by using the
language “Describe your lesson” I gave the impression that everyone will be sharing, which set
up our time together to be a sharing event about individual experiences instead of a turn toward
practice. While we did not turn toward our practice, we landed on normalizing the discussion of
practice as a step in that direction.
Positionality. My hesitancy to engage in conversations that would disrupt and push
against White supremacy enabled us to not look at our positionalities and focus only on identity.
Villaverde (2008) describes positionality as “how one is situated through the intersection of
power and the politics of gender, race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, culture, language, and other
social factors” (as cited by Douglas & Nganga, 2013, pp. 60–61). My fear of how I would be
viewed by my colleagues, as I am a socializing knower (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano,
2017), prevented me from carrying out conversations that were needed to unearth someone’s
positionality and led me to only uncover aspects of their identity. While this could be seen over
the course of my entire study, which was six sessions in a 3-month time period, the identity work
in Cycles 1 and 2 laid a logical foundation for pushing into positionality in Cycle 3. Therefore,
the data below comes from my second session in Cycle 3 where I had the greatest opportunity to
push into positionality. The data consists of my framing of the conversation, the guiding
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questions that I asked, and how I carried out the conversation. I framed the conversation in a way
that came across as identity. I asked some questions that were overtly identity questions and
when a question could tip into a conversation about positionality, I distanced myself and stayed
with an identity topic.
In my framing, the question “Can we find the ways in which our culture is shown through
our lessons that we plan and enact, and can we see any evidence of our students’ culture in these
lessons?” telegraphed how we would be only be looking at our culture (“our culture is shown
through our lessons”). This did not tie our culture, an aspect of our identity, to how our White
culture gave us power and privilege in society that could be seen through our assumptions and
biases in the classroom. I further set us up only to explore identity as I used the guiding questions
below.
• Who are you in relation to your students?
• Do you share cultural values or do your cultural values differ?
• Whose culture is represented in this lesson and how?
• How does your lesson align with or reject Milner’s idea of cultural conflicts in the
classroom?
• Thinking about what Milner was advocating for in his article, if a cultural conflict
occurred in your lesson how would we resolve it?
The questions “Who are you in relation to your students?” and “Do you share cultural values or
do your cultural values differ?” contained missed opportunities to connect our positionality to
how we understood our teaching practices with our students. These questions asked my learners
to consider their experiences with students and the extent to which their values aligned. These
questions could have furthered the identity work that began in Cycles 1 and 2, by connecting
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pieces of our identity to our positionality and our students’ positionality if we considered how
these pieces of our identity (“who are you in relation to your students?”) could differ from our
students (“Do you share cultural values or do your cultural values differ?). They also could have
allowed us to explore how these parts of our identity gave us power and privilege in the world
and what that meant in our classroom settings when we interacted. However, the questions did
not set us up to have this conversation and I did not ask probing questions that could get us there.
I got closer to positionality work as I asked the questions “How does your lesson align with or
reject Milner’s idea of cultural conflicts in the classroom?” and “Thinking about what Milner
was advocating for in his article, if a cultural conflict occurred in your lesson how would we
resolve it?” Both questions asked my learners to consider a cultural conflict, which is described
by Milner (2010) as a conflict that emerges between an educator and student as a result of
culturally grounded and shaped experiences. In the questions above the use of the language
“cultural conflicts” promoted the idea that we could be seeing something in our classroom in a
way that is different than how our students saw it, due to our cultural backgrounds. This question
could have pushed us into a conversation around positionality if I moved us to discuss how our
culture gave us power and privilege in the world and how that affected our interactions in a
cultural conflict. However, when sharing, no teachers incorporated the last two questions into the
description of their lessons, and I did not probe them further to include these aspects. Thus,
keeping our conversation at identity work.
As I did not push my learners to explore their positionality, they were not able to reach a
point of critical reflection. Exploring our positionality would have allowed us to begin
unearthing some of our own biases and assumptions in relation to our worldview, which would
constitute critical reflection. However, throughout the 3-months of my study, my hesitancy to
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engage in conversations that would disrupt thoughts rooted in White supremacy, impeded me
from pushing my learners into positionality work and thus, critical reflection.
My Growth
Over the course of my 3-month study, I became more attentive to my own White identity
and its impact on my interactions with my learners. Preskill and Brookfield (2009) state that
effective leaders are constantly learning as they place learning at the center of their leadership.
They also say that a large component of the commitment to learning is the commitment to
critical reflection on the power and assumptions that are held before, during, and after decisions
are made. My commitment to critical reflection can be seen in my conceptual framework. As I
led my group of learners, I needed to reflect on how my White identity was impacting how I
lesson planned and interacted with my learners. Prior to starting my study, I thought I understood
how my White identity impacted my interactions and decision-making process at work. I knew I
could be hesitant, and I also wanted to believe that despite that hesitancy I would engage in
conversations that disrupted thoughts aligned with White supremacy ideology. When I started
my study, I began to practice critical reflection. To move from reflection to critical reflection,
power relationships and dominant ideologies must come into question (Brookfield, 2010). I
never reached a place where I critically reflected. I created descriptive reflections (Jay &
Johnson, 2002) in which I described what was happening, if it was working, how I was feeling,
and what I was pleased or concerned about. Although they were not critical reflections, my
descriptive reflections helped me uncover the implications of my White identity in my
workplace.
Through my descriptive reflections in my study, I uncovered how I was pushing against
my own commitment to moving into a space where we were going to discuss our identities and
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approach conversations that would uncover internalized thoughts of White supremacy, as I
realized how hesitant I was and how my White identity was affecting my decision-making
process. This realization was a critical step for my leadership as it caused me to discover how I
was perpetuating White supremacy and was more complicit in the system than I originally
thought.
Below is an excerpt from my descriptive reflection at the end of Cycle 1, where I began
to unearth how my White identity was impacting my interactions at work.
I think I am more hesitant to approach these topics than I originally thought. I
think a large majority of it is because I am White. I grew up in a very White
neighborhood and never talked about race or skin color. In class at USC, it is
more natural because I think it will be received better and it is the way we talk. It
is not the way we talk at school and I did not set them up or let them know that
this is what we would be talking about and then I bring in activities that have
them examine themselves. I started the first week with a Brookfield activity called
the circle of objects which asks them to bring in an item that relates to their
identity and then we went over norms. The week after we looked at the Zaretta
Hammond Culture Tree and engaged in a conversation about our initial thoughts
on the picture. The circle of objects went well but everyone’s description was
very colorblind which didn’t lead a conversation about race. The Culture Tree led
to conversations around our race and ultimately ended at a member making a very
loud argument that her culture is being replaced and that the life she used to have
is no longer existent anymore. A thought rooted largely in Whiteness and
dominant ideology. At that moment I was like “this cannot be happening” in my
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head. I kept running through how I couldn’t let this continue, but I was nervous I
could not think of a correct question to counter her thought or uncover the
assumptions that she was holding. I basically froze up because my White
reluctance to talk about race came into play. I think that was felt from multiple
others in the room or they agreed with her because everyone fell silent. Which
also left me not understanding who was in agreement or who was too nervous to
say anything like I was.
My statement, “I think I am more hesitant to approach these topics than I originally thought”
demonstrates how I did not believe I would be this hesitant (“than I originally thought”) to
approach conversations (“these topics”) around White supremacy in our classroom lessons. I also
began to recognize that I act differently in different spaces (“In class at USC it is more natural
because I think it will be received better and it is the way we talk”). For the first time I was
making a conscientious effort to push against White supremacy at my school site and I was
realizing how
I basically froze up … I was not as prepared as I thought to disrupt. … Maybe it is
because I am White and my Whiteness caused me to distance myself from conversations
around race and made me nervous about how I will be perceived
demonstrates how my Whiteness had caused me to “[freeze] up” and “distance myself from
conversations around race.”
As I continued my study, I started to recognize how I was potentially distancing myself
from the conversation because I was more concerned with keeping the rapport with my
colleagues and by doing that, I was validating their feelings rooted in White supremacist
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ideology, which was not my goal. Below is an excerpt from my descriptive reflection at the end
of Cycle 3.
There is only one instance in which I attempted to make myself more vulnerable.
I gave a thought on how our culture is seen through our classroom expectations.
Two other learners had given their ideas before me and then the whole group
turned to look at me as if I needed to validate what they just said and offer some
other idea, even though what I was going to say was aligned to what was
previously said. I felt like I should comment, so I put myself out there and tried to
give a deeper explanation as it felt like Violet was not buying into the first two
answers that were given. However, I feel like I validated her in some ways as I
was saying “I completely understand your confusion” when in reality I was trying
to challenge her idea, that our expectations are not grounded in our culture. I think
there is a balance to be had with rapport with someone and making a space to
challenge thoughts and I am not sure I created that space. I think I strove to keep
my rapport more than to challenge ideas. There were still many instances that I
could have interjected or have come back to ideas. Instead, I let the conversation
move on and later would realize how I probably should have said something. My
lack of confidence also contributed to agreeing with their thoughts and since I am
White, at the end of all of this I am still benefiting from this system so that
pressure to change it might not be as present and I might subconsciously keep the
status quo.
In this reflection, I recognized that over my 3-month study there was only one instance where I
thought I made myself more vulnerable and attempted to push back at a thought rooted in White
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supremacy. While this is growth in my effort to push back, I also recognized how in my response
“I validated her in some ways” reinforced her thought rooted in White supremacist ideology,
which was my not goal. I grew to uncover that one of the reasons I was freezing up or hesitating
to engage in any conversation around White supremacy was my desire to keep rapport with my
colleagues (“I think I strove to keep my rapport more than to challenge ideas”) and how that led
to many missed opportunities to push back (“There were still many instances that I could have
interjected or have come back to ideas”). I also grew to recognize how my Whiteness caused me
to benefit or fit in at my school site and that my Whiteness allowed me to disconnect from my
goal of pushing back against White supremacy (“that pressure to change it might not be as
present”) and that pushed me to “keep the status quo.” Overall, I knew that being White affected
how I pushed back on White supremacy. However, it was not until I started the action research
process, that I began pushing back intentionally for the first time, and thus seeing how my
Whiteness played out at my complicity in my school site. While this is a small step, it is a critical
step for my growth as a leader while I continue to push forward with pushing against White
supremacy.
Afterword
In this final section, I will discuss the retrospective takeaways from conducting my action
research study and the ways these takeaways continue to inform my growth and my future goals
of continuing the work I started in my action research study. This was my first time making an
active commitment to work with a group of teachers on confronting internalized White
supremacy through identity exploration and the impact of our and our students’ identities in the
classroom. While I was able to make progress, I underestimated the implications of my White
identity as I uncovered how I was a socializing knower (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano,
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2017) who was hesitant to engage in conversations that pushed back on White supremacist
ideology. This had implications for my study as it limited what I could achieve in supporting my
learners to critically reflect and become culturally competent practitioners.
Takeaways from Analysis
During my 3-month action research study, I became more attentive to my White identity
as I discovered that my hesitancy to engage in conversations around White supremacy was due
to my desire to keep rapport with my colleagues instead of pushing back on their thoughts rooted
in dominant ideology. While my participants did make growth over the course of my study, my
hesitancy led us to a safe space not a brave space, identity work not positionality work, and
normalizing discussion instead of turning toward practice. I further understood the implications
of my hesitancy to engage in conversations that disrupt White supremacy as I went into data
analysis. Through the data analysis process, I discovered that my hesitancy to engage in
conversations around White supremacy led me to asking zero questions over the course of my
entire study. This was contrary to what I believed during my data collection as there was a
reflection during my second cycle where I pondered if my questioning was effective for my
learners’ growth. While coding conversational data during data analysis, I discovered I never
asked a question and therefore, I did not support my learners in furthering any of their thoughts.
Instead, I created a space where we all took turns sharing with minimal follow up conversation.
Continued Growth
This action research study was my first attempt at supporting a group of adult learners.
During my data analysis phase, I was a teacher on special assignment who supported teachers at
my school site daily and was frequently involved in conversations with teachers where an
internalization of dominant ideology, typically rooted in White supremacist, patriarchal, or
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heteronormative ideology, was demonstrated. Brookfield (2019) suggests that one-way White
people can confront their natural inclination to distance themselves from conversations around
race is to practice being vulnerable and pushing themselves into the discomfort they sense. An
extension of this idea is to be vulnerable when confronting the other ways that we are of the
dominant. For example, Brookfield’s statement above mentions the dominance of White people.
My excerpt below will mention the dominance of cisgendered people. Aligned with Brookfield’s
(2019) idea, I have been practicing how to be more vulnerable by raising questions around the
way positionality and privilege play a role in beliefs and decision making.
For instance, I was involved in a conversation rooted in heteronormative ideology with
two of my White cisgendered colleagues. The conversation was about a Hispanic student who
recently began identifying as a transgender male and they asked us to not disclose this
information to their parents. One of the parents reached out to my colleague and was asking to
meet with them after school about how their student was doing on campus. Prior to meeting with
the parents, this colleague came up to me and one other staff member to discuss how
uncomfortable they felt not disclosing to the parent that their student was identifying as
transgender on campus and that they thought they were lying to this adult if they did not disclose
this information. It was not necessarily a question that they were asking. It was more of a
statement that they believed they would be lying to the parents and that they were unsure that
they would follow through with that because they could not imagine not telling this parent what
was occurring on campus.
I practiced vulnerability in this instance as I was nervous to step into the conversation as
this is a colleague who is in a position of power over me on campus and I was unsure of how
receptive they would be to an opposing viewpoint. As I am still a socializing knower (Drago-
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Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017), I typically do not want to disagree with my peers.
However, in this instance I stepped into the conversation and asked, “How would you feel if you
were this student though? They have divulged information to us and have specifically asked us
not to tell their family, so wouldn’t you be betraying the student’s wishes if you shared that
information on your terms and not theirs?” My colleague responded back by sharing how the
student is just a child though and that their parent has the right to know what is going on. I asked,
Doesn’t the student have rights to share what they would like to share with their parents
and when they want to share that? You and I do not have to tell our parents about our
sexuality as we do not have to “come out of the closet,” so we won’t know what that
experience is like, but I don’t think we should determine when that occurs for someone
else. I would imagine it to be a very personal experience as society has yet to be very
accepting of transgender people, so I would think it would take some courage to share
that information and it’s their information to share, not ours.
My colleague said, “I guess I see your point.” The conversation ended as we all had another
meeting to go to.
Implied in my response (“You and I do not have to tell our parents about our sexuality as
we do not have to come out of the closet”) is the recognition that we were both cisgendered and
this gave us power and privilege in society as “we won’t know what that experience is like”
since we were privileged to not have to go through it. In this moment I was being vulnerable as I
was easing into the idea of positionality, which is something I had strayed away from during my
study. However, the unfortunate circumstance is that I once again kept this a colorblind
conversation as I did not bring up how the student was coming from a Hispanic household and
how their cultural identity might shape how the family took up the child. By keeping the
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conversation colorblind, I ignored this aspect of the child’s identity. I still have work to do in this
area. Even though my study was focused on how our and our student’s identities matter at our
school sites, in this particular conversation, I succumbed to my internalized White ideology and
kept the conversation colorblind as if their cultural identity was not a factor in this situation.
As I am able to reflect on the conversation I had above, I also want to create a more ideal
response to support myself in responding differently when I find myself in a similar scenario in
the future. For the conversation above, I could have said, “This student and their family identify
as Hispanic, and this could have implications on how the family takes us this news about their
child. A family’s cultural background should always be considered when we are discussing what
is happening with our students on campus. What do we know about our Hispanic population that
would be relevant to making the decision to tell this family about their child’s sexuality?” This
response would have acknowledged the cultural background of the student (“This student and
their family identify as Hispanic”) and it also would have left room for my colleagues to ponder
this idea as I ended it with a question, so they could participate in a conversation with me (“What
do we know about our Hispanic population that would be relevant to making the decision to tell
this family about their child’s sexuality?”).
Reflecting on my study, there were also multiple instances in which I ideally would have
pushed back on my colleagues’ thoughts that were rooted in White supremacy. One example
would be the moment a colleague said, “I can’t wear an American flag but, you can wear
whatever represents your culture on your shirt.” During this scenario I froze and did not think of
a response back. If I was able to think of this question in the moment and push beyond my
hesitation I would have liked to interject into the conversation and ask, “Whose culture are you
referring to?” Adding this question in would have created the opportunity for reflection around
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the idea that she was referring to historically marginalized communities’ cultures and that she
was implying that to be American you needed to be White. As I am still growing in my ability to
push back on thoughts rooted in White supremacy, rehearsing my ideal responses and what
important points I want to get across in my conversations, will be a way to help me in pushing
back in the moment by giving me some language to draw upon as I am looking for the words to
say.
In addition to practicing how to be more vulnerable by raising questions around the way
our positionality plays a role in our internalized dominant ideologies, I was an active member in
the professional development planning committee, when I was a teacher on special assignment.
As we were discussing our plan for the upcoming year, I drew on my experiences from my
research study. The committee wanted teachers to be actively engaged in conversation during the
professional learning opportunities and for them to walk away with changes to their teaching
practices. Our district is wanting to see a focus on social justice from each school site in
professional learning. While the general topic of social justice is very broad and does not give a
lot of direction to school sites, I shared how I have been working on supporting teachers to grow
in their cultural competency and how this would be a great topic for us as we have many White
teachers working with students who are not White. I also shared how having these conversations
require a level of trust to be built amongst the group and that working in smaller groups will
most likely develop a deeper level of trust and allow for more conversation. I drew from my
study in which I focused on deepening trust and how I learned that too large of a group prompts
individual sharing, as opposed to a conversation. In addition, I shared how turning toward their
teaching practice is a way to reflect on what they are doing in their classrooms and to have a
conversation around a general problem of practice that could lead to new teaching strategies and
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outcomes. The committee agreed to move the professional learning opportunities to PLC teams
of 5 to 6 teachers as opposed to all 35 teachers together in one room and to provide opportunities
to reflect on their current teaching practices and lessons. As I have recently accepted a new
position as an assistant principal at a new school site, I will no longer be serving on this
professional development committee. However, I know that I will have input on the professional
learning opportunities at my new school site and I plan to draw on my action research study
experience to guide my input and suggestions that I offer.
Continuing the Work
As I move forward, critical reflection is necessary as it will support me to interrogate how
my White identity is impacting my interactions with others. In addition to continuing critical
reflection, I plan to take my long-term goal of developing critical culturally competent educators
to ultimately change their teaching practices and enact culturally relevant pedagogy in the
classroom, to my new school site. To do this I will be starting over with a new staff of teachers. I
will find when their common meetings times are, so that I can join in. For all of the teams I will
lay a foundation of trust, so that we can engage in conversations that turn toward our practice and
discuss how our positionality plays a role in our lesson planning and enactment. To improve my
previous attempt at turning toward practice, I will set the precedent that not every teacher will
share a classroom experience at every meeting. We will be diving deep on specific lessons to
uncover general advice to the problems of practice that occur. To set my learners up for success I
will recreate guiding questions that are more focused on interrogating a single lesson, as opposed
to questions to think about how to share their individual lessons with each other in a roundabout
way. As I have seen the power in analyzing the conversational data from my own study, I will
continue to collect conversational data. This will allow me to look at how my words and actions
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are affecting others’ interpretations and responses in the room as well as their uptake of the
activities that are meant to turn us toward our practice. It will also allow me to see how I am
pushing back on thoughts rooted in dominant ideology or how I am not, which I can use as a
fodder for my critical reflections.
During action research, I have found the benefits of having a critical peer. My
conversations with my dissertation chair provided an opportunity for someone else to help
uncover my own assumptions and biases as I worked towards my end goal. It also helped keep
me accountable towards pushing forward with my goal. As I move forward, I will continue
keeping in contact with many of the peers I have made at USC. I regularly speak to a few of my
cohort members, and I plan to continue our friendships moving forward. We will remain critical
friends, who discuss our end goals and progress towards them, as we hold each other accountable
for continuing the work we set out to do.
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Appendix A: National Assessment of Educational Progress Data 2019
Fourth grade NAEP standardized assessments percentages on achievement level
Subject Race Below basic Basic Proficient Advanced
Reading
White 23 31 33 12
Hispanic 45 32 19 4
Black 52 30 15 3
Asian 19 26 34 20
Mathematics
White 11 37 40 12
Hispanic 27 45 24 3
Black 35 45 17 2
Asian 9 25 40 26
121
Appendix B: Local School Site CAASPP Data
Table B1
CAASPP Scaled Score Ranges
CAASPP scaled score ranges
Grade Full range Not met Nearly met Standard met Exceeded
English language arts/literacy
3 2114–623 2114–2366 2367–431 2432–2489 2490–2623
4 2131–2663 2131–2415 2416–2472 2473–2532 2533–2663
5 2201–2701 2201–2441 2442–2501 2502–2581 22582–2701
6 2210–2724 2210–2456 2457–2530 2531–2617 2618–2724
Mathematics
3 2189–2621 2621–2380 2381–2435 2436–2500 2501–2621
4 2204–2659 2204–2410 2411–2484 2485–2548 2549–2659
5 2219–2700 2219–2454 2455–2527 2528–2578 2579–2700
6 2235–2748 2235–2472 2473–2551 2552–2609 2610–2748
122
Table B2
Local School District’s CAASPP Data
Grade Subject Race Scaled score Meeting the standard
Third
Reading
White 2455 Met the standard
Hispanic 2404 Nearly met the standard
Black 2386 Nearly met the standard
Asian 2480 Met the standard
Mathematics
White 2460 Met the standard
Hispanic 2414 Nearly met the standard
Black 2393 Nearly met the standard
Asian 2497 Met the standard
Fourth
Reading
White 2498 Met the standard
Hispanic 2443 Nearly met the standard
Black 2323 Did not meet the standard
Asian 2528 Met the standard
Mathematics
White 2500 Met the standard
Hispanic 2450 Nearly met the standard
Black 2427 Nearly met the standard
Asian 2542 Met the standard
Fifth Reading
White 2537 Met the standard
Hispanic 2478 Nearly met the standard
Black 2458 Nearly met the standard
Asian 2569 Met the standard
123
Grade Subject Race Scaled score Meeting the standard
Mathematics
White 2528 Met the standard
Hispanic 2470 Nearly met the standard
Black 2446 Did not meet the standard
Asian 2576 Met the standard
Sixth
Reading
White 2553 Met the standard
Hispanic 2498 Nearly met the standard
Black 2477 Nearly met the standard
Asian 2586 Met the standard
Mathematics
White 2550 Nearly met the standard
Hispanic 2485 Nearly met the standard
Black 2457 Did not meet the standard
Asian 2607 Met the standard
124
Appendix C: Local School Site California Dashboard Data
Table C1
California Dashboard Coloring System
California dashboard coloring system
Low performing High performing
125
Table C2
School Site California Dashboard Assessment Reports
School site California dashboard assessment reports
Race Points to standard Assigned color
English language arts
All students 59.5 points above standard
White 42.7 points above the standard
Hispanic 6.4 points below the standard
Black Not reported
Asian 79.6 points above the standard
Mathematics
All students 38.8 points above the standard
White 15.1 points above the standard
Hispanic 32.4 points below the standard
Black Not reported
Asian 73.9 points above the standard
126
Appendix D: PS 44 Annual Survey Data
PS 44 annual survey data
Statement
Percentage that agrees with the statement
Student Parent Teacher
Students feel that
they belong at this
school
77% 86% 98%
Students feel
comfortable
making mistakes
at this school
51% 73% 91%
I/my child feel safe
in all places in
this school
86% 85% 93%
Students treat one
another with
respect
42% 65% 80%
The level of stress
that students feel
is generally low
49% 75% 52%
Students enjoy
going to this
school
67% N/A 95%
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This study examines my leadership enactment as the teacher on special assignment at PS 44. To provide a comprehensive examination of my leadership enactment, I deconstruct my use of a holding environment and curricular structure in relation to a grade level team of teachers. My action research question was: How do I engage teachers to critically reflect on their ideology and practices to ultimately enact culturally relevant pedagogy? I collected jottings, fieldnotes, descriptive reflections, and documents developed in my role as the teacher on special assignment. I found that I was able to move my participants from having a lack of awareness to coming to an awareness of the importance of their identity and culture and their students’ identity and culture in relation to their lessons. Thus, I was able to help them take the first steps towards cultural competence. I also uncovered the ways that I engaged my participants in their learning and the ways I inadvertently hindered their learning throughout the study.
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Creator
Hulley, Michelle L.
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Core Title
Uncovering dominant ideology: an action research project aimed to uncover dominant ideology to enact culturally relevant pedagogy in the classroom
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Education (Leadership)
Degree Conferral Date
2022-08
Publication Date
08/15/2022
Defense Date
07/26/2022
Publisher
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Tag
action research,adaptive leadership,cultural competence,culturally relevant pedagogy,Education,holding environment,OAI-PMH Harvest,reflection,turning toward practice,white supremacy
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Tags
action research
adaptive leadership
cultural competence
culturally relevant pedagogy
holding environment
turning toward practice
white supremacy