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Cultivating critical reflection: an action research study on teaching and supporting district intern participants through critical reflection

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Cultivating Critical Reflection: An Action Research Study on Teaching and Supporting
District Intern Participants Through Critical Reflection
by
Amy Noel O’Neal

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

December 2022

© Copyright by Amy Noel O’Neal 2022
All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Amy Noel O’Neal certifies the approval of this Dissertation

Alan Green
Julie Slayton
Artineh Samkian, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2022

iv
Abstract
This study examines my leadership enactment as the coordinator of a teacher preparation
program. To provide a comprehensive examination of my leadership through instruction, I will
deconstruct the process of moving from a teacher-centered educational environment into a
positive learner-centered climate which allowed the intern participants to begin to investigate the
ways they were holding certain biases and assumptions personally and with their students. My
action research question was: How do I teach and support my intern participants to reflect on
how their unconscious biases shaped by deficit ideologies of their students guide their practice so
as to develop their critical consciousness? I collected jottings, fieldnotes, participant reflections,
and documents developed for the study sessions. Through data review in the first part of the
study, it was evident that I needed to step back and facilitate andragogical moves to ensure a
learner-centered climate. Once established, the intern participants engaged in dialogue where
they began to make new meaning of their beliefs and understandings by sharing experiences
from their teaching contexts.

v
Dedication
To my husband and son, I could not have achieved any of this without your love, support, and
most importantly, patience and laughter.
To my parents, I am beyond grateful for your love and support. Thank you is never enough.
To my intern participant volunteers, this happened because of you. I am humbled by your
wisdom and passion.

vi
Acknowledgments
What an amazing journey this has been, but there is no way I could have done it without
the support of some amazing and special people. I must thank my family who endured my
endless hours of studying/work times during weekends, summer, and holidays or anytime I was
not working or sleeping; the phrase “thank you” does not seem adequate for the support, time,
and unwavering wisdom and insight. To my brilliant study partner, Kristi Jacobs, without whom
getting to this point would never have happened. I wish we could have totaled the amount of
time we spent together in the last three years laughing, crying, and most importantly writing our
dissertations. I gained not only a friend, but a non-blood sister. Thank you for everything. Thank
you, Rossier School of Education, for the program that would forever change my life for the
better. There are no words to express how grateful I am. To the following institutions of caffeine:
Able Coffee Roasters in Fullerton, Flying Goat of Garden Grove, The Mugs in Walnut,
Sanctuary Coffee in Claremont, a thank you for the hours of wifi and coffee drinks that powered
me through long writing sessions. Finally, and most importantly I am so very grateful for my
dissertation committee: Dr. Slayton, Dr. Green, and my chair, Dr. Samkian. I am so thankful for
your support, wisdom, and guidance, with my dissertation journey, and with life in general.
Anytime I need to solve critical problems, the three of you are in my head, guiding me as I
practice critical reflection and work to better myself for the future of education.

vii
Table of Contents

Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... v
Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... vi
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. ix
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. x
Background of the Problem ................................................................................................ 4
Context ................................................................................................................................ 9
Situating Self in Context ................................................................................................... 11
Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 14
Critical Reflection ................................................................................................. 17
Deficit Ideologies .................................................................................................. 30
Mechanisms for Action ......................................................................................... 32
Andragogy............................................................................................................. 34
Adaptive Leadership ............................................................................................. 38
Anticipated Change ........................................................................................................... 41
Short-Term Change ............................................................................................... 41
Intermediate Change ............................................................................................. 42
Long-Term Change ............................................................................................... 43
Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 44
Research Methods ............................................................................................................. 45
Participants and Setting..................................................................................................... 46
Participants ............................................................................................................ 46
Setting of Actions ................................................................................................. 48

viii
Actions .............................................................................................................................. 49
Data Collection and Instruments/Protocols ...................................................................... 52
Observational Fieldnotes ...................................................................................... 53
Documents and Artifacts....................................................................................... 54
Data Analysis .................................................................................................................... 55
Limitations and Delimitations ........................................................................................... 56
Credibility and Trustworthiness ........................................................................................ 58
Ethics................................................................................................................................. 60
Findings............................................................................................................................. 62
Part I: Action and Reaction ................................................................................... 63
Finding 1: Starting With Teacher-Centered Instruction and the Journey
Out......................................................................................................................... 64
Part II: Areas of Growth and Reflection ............................................................... 88
Finding 2: Creating a Learner Centered Climate .................................................. 89
Finding 3: Intern Participants and Transformative Learning .............................. 104
Afterword ........................................................................................................................ 122
Implications of the Study on My Personal Life .................................................. 122
Implications of the Study on My Professional Life ............................................ 123
References ................................................................................................................................... 129
Appendix A: Session Learning Objectives ................................................................................. 135

ix
List of Tables
Table 1: Levels of Reflection ........................................................................................................ 25
Table 2: Intern Participant Information ........................................................................................ 48
Table 3: Description of Action Cycles .......................................................................................... 50
Table 4: Session 1: Participant Reflections .................................................................................. 84
Table 5: Participant Speaking Percentage by Session .................................................................. 93
Table 6: Action Research Questionnaire Responses .................................................................. 102

x
List of Figures
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework ................................................................................................. 15
Figure 2: Rodgers’s Reflective Cycle ........................................................................................... 19
Figure 3: Screenshot: Lesson Plan Script for “Circle of Objects” ................................................ 70
Figure 4: Screenshot: Lesson Plan Script for Norms/Guidelines Review .................................... 72
Figure 5: Screenshot: Lesson Plan Script for “I Am From” Activity ........................................... 74

1
Cultivating Critical Reflection: An Action Research Study on Teaching and Supporting
District Intern Participants Through Critical Reflection
I have never liked being told that I could not do something. In fact, that statement
angered me so much that I usually got hurt trying to prove the nay-sayers wrong. I am
embarrassed to say that one time, I rolled an off-road vehicle down a rocky embankment and
broke my ankle trying to prove that I could do it just like the men could. This visceral reaction to
being told something is not possible translated into my professional life when I started working
with “my” students. Someone once told me that my eighth-grade special education students
could not do the lesson that I had planned because they were “too low.” No one called my
students “low!” I was angered because I believed that I held high expectations for my students,
and felt this comment was an attack on my students’ capabilities. Who was she to determine my
students’ abilities? I was so disheartened at her deficit mindset. Why did she think that it was
alright to tell my students that they could not do something?
It becomes a bit of a different memory when I layer in what I have learned about inequity
and marginalization as a graduate student at University of South California (USC). This is where
I addressed my years of complicity with White supremacy and deficit ideologies. First, let me
address my positionality. I am an educated middle-class cisgender White woman. My skin gives
me privileges that I am embarrassed to admit that I never thought about before my time at USC.
According to Saari and Bell (1993), “White privilege operates in subtle insidious ways and
works to oppress students of color” (p. 147). I never held a mirror up to the benefits of my White
privilege, so one could say that I perceived it as a way of life. Moving through life completely
oblivious to my privilege, I naively assumed that the treatment I received by educators was the
way in which everyone experienced their education.

2
I could now see the colorblindness that surrounded me as I reflected on my memories as a
young new substitute teacher for the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE). I took a
position as an alternative education substitute teacher where I was given the opportunity to teach
a long-term position in a locked group home facility. I had no idea what alternative education
meant. I nervously, yet excitedly taught the high-school grade boys’ ward for about eighteen
months. This was a lock-down school meaning that most of the young people who lived on the
campus were in and out of juvenile halls. Because the students were “in the system” the courts
placed them at this facility. Alternative education, in the context of my experience, included
public schools supported by the county that provided education services to students who were
not enrolled in district K–12 settings. I was grateful that I was able to work in many settings for
the OCDE program such as community day schools for secondary students working to earn the
credits to graduate or a triage school that provided interim education to students pulled out of the
home due to abuse and/or neglect. The caseload of students changed daily, as this group of
students were awaiting placement with family or in the court systems.
Of the various experiences I had in OCDE, the longest substitute position was the one in
the locked group home. Before the student was enrolled at this group home, we, as part of the
support team, would have to read the students’ intake files. The students’ intake files were tragic
and heartbreaking, because the histories of these young people were that of crime, abuse, and
neglect. It made me so sad, and yet I was able to go home to my family and a warm meal and a
great job waiting for me the next day. The months grew longer and more depressing with each
new student we enrolled. Looking back now, I realized that as time went on, I yearned for a
position in a district that resembled one like the one in which I was raised where people looked
more like me. I was a product of the perpetuation of White dominance and complacency, living

3
and thriving in spaces where we never had to open our eyes to alternative, less desirable life
circumstances. Never, until now, did I realize that so many of my teaching practices were
continuing to perpetuate the same inequities initiated by my dominant White forefathers.
With more teaching experience under my belt, I was offered a position in the middle
school of my young complacent dreams. In my head, I wanted to be back to an educational
setting that had all the idealized events that I enjoyed in my youth like football games, dances,
and graduation. The students and staff looked like me, and the district was situated close to
where I had attended. The school was “high-performing,” as labeled by the standardized test
scores. Consequently, I came to this district position very smug with my alternative education
experience. I had taught the “bad boys” and was extremely proud of that. I am now sad to say
that I wore it like a badge of honor. It reminded me of so many Hollywood movies that show
White women as heroic liberal warriors who will save students of color from failing (Vera &
Gordon, 2003). It is an ego-boosting act that portrays the White woman as fearless and self-
sacrificing teacher in a classroom where the students cuss at them and struggle with academics.
In my mind I had my students’ best interest at heart. Yet I continued to perpetuate the negative
treatment of students who have been historically and systematically marginalized with an
education designed by the dominant culture where White privilege and power are engrained in
the American educational system (Shealey et al., 2005).
Thinking about it now, I can admit that the students I taught all those years deserved a
better teacher. They needed someone who could fight with a critically conscious glove. Although
I did have high expectations for my students, they were shaped by a narrow standard, one that
expected students to assimilate to norms set by a school system not made for them but made to
change them. I exhibited what Valenzuela (1999) called “aesthetic care” rather than “authentic

4
care.” I continued to blindly work in a system that encouraged the act of putting groups of
students in boxes, such as “low- and high-performing” or “learning disabled.” These boxes and
labels were created and continuously upheld by a predominantly White middle-class teaching
force indoctrinated with White saviorism (Matias, 2016). Young teachers, like myself, were
ready to “sacrifice,” “give back,” and work with historically and systemically marginalized
students to supposedly close the achievement gap. Unfortunately, our efforts were futile and only
served to make us feel better about ourselves, to collect badges of honor for being able to work
with the “bad kids.”
Background of the Problem
White supremacy continued to perpetuate racial domination into the world of American
education by determining that the dominant culture received the better-quality education. The
beliefs established in colonialism continued to permeate modern-day society. Postcolonial
domination occurred in simple ways, through hegemonic control, the discourse of power and
knowledge (Milner & Lomotey, 2013). This discourse of power and knowledge, specifically as it
related to education, demonstrated the deliberate miseducation of anyone outside the postcolonial
hierarchy (Seawright, 2014). Even when attempts were made to introduce a multicultural
education, when led and controlled by Whites, and in the absence of collective struggles to
dismantle the apparatus of White supremacy, multiculturalism reproduced dominant racial/racist
ontologies, epistemologies, and practices, very often in disguise (Berry, 2014). Educators tended
to see Whiteness as the norm and consequently the academic, behavioral, and social skills of
students of color were constantly compared with those of their White peers (Blanchett, 2006).
García and Guerra (2004) argued that deficit thinking permeates society; schools and teachers
mirrored these beliefs.

5
Teachers, operationalizing their Whiteness, are usually unaware that they have a racial
identity and often deny that they are part of a racial hierarchy allowing them to be blinded by
their group membership (Picower, 2009). Teachers’ life experiences socialize them into
understandings of race and difference, and they negotiate these understandings through their
ideologies. These ideologies are often shaped by deficit mindsets that are maintained and enacted
in a variety of ways. First, it has been found that teachers enter the classroom with life
experiences that influence the ways they make sense of race and difference (Picower, 2009).
Identity markers such as their religion, class and ethnic affiliations influence teacher ideologies.
For instance, using White ethnic identities, many teachers uphold the dominant ideology of
meritocracy to perpetuate the myth that through hard work and perseverance, anyone can
experience the American dream (Picower, 2009) without considering the structural barriers that
determine who is or is not able to “make it.”
A second deficit mindset stems from teachers’ hegemonic understandings, which refers to
their internalized ways of making meaning about how society is organized. Milner (2012) said
that a teacher’s notions of normality, where racialized and cultural “others” are viewed as
negative, could be the result of these engrained hegemonic understandings. Fear and deficit
construction of historically and systematically marginalized groups of students and their families
are two prevalent hegemonic understandings often experienced by White teachers (Picower,
2009). Picower (2009) went on to say that teachers express a sense of anxiety when involved
with students of color, brought on by stereotypes from earlier experiences or influences by their
family and the media. The second group of hegemonic understandings are deficit construction of
urban schools, historically and systemically marginalized groups of students, and their families.

6
These teacher deficit ideologies have been shown to manifest themselves in the treatment
of their students, by what Picower (2009) called tools of Whiteness. These tools facilitate the job
of maintaining and supporting the hegemonic stories and dominant ideologies, which continue to
uphold the structures of White supremacy. White teachers use ideological tools or beliefs to
subscribe to the continued hegemonic stories. By dismissing the existence of race or believing
that they, as educators, cannot do anything to change the status quo, many teachers justify
teaching a traditional ethnocentric curriculum (Picower, 2009). Other White teachers use the tool
of “not being able to relate” to groups of students different from themselves to defend their
ineffectiveness in meeting the needs of the students (Picower, 2009). Performative tools of
Whiteness relate to the behaviors of the teachers to protect their beliefs based on their hegemonic
understandings (Picower, 2009). Many teachers remain silent about issues of race which is a
common performative tool of Whiteness. Another example is the glorified nature of teacher-
student relationships as demonstrated in Hollywood films, where the White teacher “just wanted
to help the students.” This tool maintains the cycle of racism by releasing the need for the
teachers to learn the necessary skills that address culture and racism in the classroom (Picower,
2009). These ideological and performative tools of Whiteness had had detrimental academic and
social implications for historically and systematically marginalized groups of students.
Darby and Rury (2018) warned that these pervasive ideologies, or what they called colors
of mind, were operating in schools where a student’s race was the evidence for academic
achievement gaps. The persistent achievement disparities between historically and systemically
marginalized students and White students is what is more commonly known as the educational
debt which is a result of historical, economic, political and moral decisions made by society over
time (Ladson-Billings, 2001). The achievement gap is clearly evident when examining federal,

7
state and district-wide data, where on average White students consistently obtain higher scores
when compared to their non-White peers (Smith, 2021). At the national level, in 2015, the
National Assessment of Education Progress published The Nation’s Report Card, which showed
White students had an average score of 160 compared to 130 for Black students, 139 for
Hispanic students, and 138 American Indian or Alaskan Native students (Smith, 2021). Moving
to the state level, Matheny et al. (2021) from Stanford, stated that the gap between White and
Black students widened by .002 standard deviation points per year, from 2018–2020. The
strongest predictors of increasing achievement gaps were measures of economic inequity and
segregation (Matheny et al., 2021). Achievement gaps have grown most rapidly, on average, in
school districts with high and increasing levels of social inequality and racial segregation
(Matheny et al., 2021). Using 10 years of data, from 2009–2018, in math and language arts from
thousands of school districts, Matheny et al. (2021) showed increasing gaps between White and
Black student scores. The district with the highest increases in segregation had a .10 grade-level
increase in achievement gaps in nine years. The district with the highest decrease in segregation
had a .13 grade-level decrease in achievement gaps (Matheny et al., 2021).
The Stanford Educational Data Archive’s (SEDA) Opportunity Project (2021) reported
data based on standardized accountability tests in math and reading language arts for third and
eighth grade. According to this report, Los Angeles Unified School District showed the average
test scores, for all students across the district, are 1.45 grade levels below the national average.
Breaking down the data by demographic groups, White students were 1.04 grade level above the
national average, Black students –2.32 grade levels below, and Hispanic students –1.83 grade
levels below the national average. This report also showed the gaps between demographic areas.
There was a gap of 3.37 grade levels between White and Black students and 2.87 between White

8
and Hispanic students. So as not to reproduce deficit narratives, these data were presented to
demonstrate the differential outcomes on students based on race. However, the explanation for
this disparity was often wrongly one that reflected a deficit mindset. In other words, rather than
pointing to structural racism as a possible factor for the achievement gaps, people have often
pointed to the students and their families as being deficient.
This disparity has in part resulted from high-poverty schools hiring teachers who are less
experienced and less well-educated. A study of the 50 largest California districts found that their
high-poverty schools spent an average of $2,576 per teacher less on salaries than low-poverty
schools within the same district (Carter & Welner, 2013). Many aspects of teacher quality
matter. Students are hurt most by having an inexperienced teacher with a temporary license—a
teacher profile most common in high-minority, low-income schools (Carter & Welner, 2013).
Not only have schools in historically marginalized communities hired less experienced
and less well-educated teachers, they were also predominantly White, not reflecting the students
they taught. In a report written in 2004 by the National Collaboration on Diversity in Teaching
90% of the K–12 teaching force was White. A more recent study showed 79% of teachers
working were White in 2019 (Digest of Educational Statistics, 2019). The immediate future will
not be very different because 64% of all current teacher education students are White females
instructed by teacher education professionals who were themselves 88% White (U.S. Department
of Education, 2020). White privilege, ideologies, and stereotypes reinforce institutional
hierarchies like those in education (Picower, 2009). A predominantly White teaching force is
problematic in part because the ideology of essentialism, which still exists in our educational
system, supports the notion that the teacher serves as the “authority” in the classroom and the
conveyer of knowledge (Oakes et al., 2018). The purpose of essentialism as a philosophy of

9
education is to transmit the culture from one generation to the next by training what Oakes and
her colleagues (2018) called “the preferred curriculum which was the knowledge and basic skills
necessary to preserve the [dominant] culture” (p. 79).
The current state of teacher preparation for educating a racially, culturally, and
linguistically diverse population suggests that much must be done to deconstruct the teachers’
own White privilege and racism (Knowles, 2019). Today, teacher preparation programs, like
mine, offer only a handful of courses designed to teach the definitions of culture and diversity,
but dare not address the more difficult conversations of deficit ideologies or racism.
Unfortunately, these programs graduate and credential educators who are not prepared to teach
students of color (Blanchett, 2006). Milner and Lomotey (2014) argued that teachers need not
only content and pedagogical knowledge, they also need cultural knowledge. Teacher candidates
continue to exit their programs with many of their prejudice, racism, and sense of entitlement
regarding White privilege intact, and while recent calls for equitable, culturally relevant
education are gaining traction, teacher preparation programs have a long way to go to prepare
teachers to fully enact these ideal pedagogies. The same is true for the teacher preparation
program in which I currently work.
Context
As the coordinator of the Los Angeles County district intern program, my role at the time
of this study was to lead and support all interns
1
from their start in enrolling into the program
through their recommendation of the preliminary teaching credential. At the time of the study,
the LACOE district intern program had over 170 active district interns. According to the

1
I will be using the term intern to describe the new teachers I support in my usual role and will use intern
participant to describe those taking part in the study. However, when I cite an author, I will be using their terms
which may be any of the following: teacher candidate, pre-service teacher, new teacher, or candidate.

10
California Commission on Teacher Credentialing [CTC] (2021) data dashboard for the 2020–
2021, the demographic breakdown of the students in our program was as followed: 44.3%
Hispanic/Latinx, 18% White, 16.4% Black or African American, 4.9 % Asian (Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Asian, Indian, Laotian, Cambodian, Filipino, Hmong), 1.6%
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and 14.8% declined to state. Included in this dashboard
there were 52.5% women and 47.5% men. Due to the intern nature of the program, the interns
were responsible for obtaining employment as a full-time teacher anywhere in Los Angeles and
bordering Orange County public school districts or charters. According to the enrollment data
taken at the time of the intern participants’ advisement, most of the interns taught in urban
settings.
The LACOE district intern program was considered an alternative teacher preparation
program and was held to the same state accreditation standards as local universities. As reported
on the CTC data dashboard for 2020–2021, LACOE was accredited, and in the 2018 site-visit
and program review “has demonstrated to meet or exceed the Common and Program Standards
and was effectively preparing educators.” One of my roles was to maintain that each intern was
successfully working toward meeting the requirements of the program whether it was
coursework, clinical practice and support, or preparing to pass the necessary assessments. I was
also responsible for hiring the practicum supervisors who were matched to support the interns in
their clinical practice. As an intern in the program, the clinical practice (fieldwork) was
embedded in their full-time position as a contracted teacher of record. Practicum supervisors
must hold the appropriate credential in order to support the interns. This was one example of
maintaining the CTC program standards. Another example was assisting in the creation of the
schedule and enrolling of students in the coursework needed to meet the specific requirements of

11
that credential. In the 21–22 academic year, the program enrolled candidates in the Single
Subjects of English, Math, Social Science, Sciences, Spanish, Music, and Physical Education;
Multiple Subjects; and Mild to Moderate, Moderate to Severe, and Early Childhood Special
Education programs.
Situating Self in Context
Being a leader in an alternative program meant overseeing most of the program in
comparison to university programs where, typically, there is more staffing. This meant that I
needed to have a global view of the program and the people who take part in it, because I was the
one designing and changing most components that kept it running. To begin to make changes to
my context and address the best way to teach and support new teachers so that they provide
equitable and culturally relevant education I had to understand where I was located in relation to
it. I was situated in a context that provided me the creative space to make the changes necessary
for a future of equitable and culturally relevant education for all students, which meant that I
could teach them how important critical reflection was at the beginning of their journey as
educators. What took me thirty years to understand about my own positionality and biases, I
wanted to instill at the onset of these new teachers’ career in education. Learning the skills to
develop a critical consciousness and identify the ideologies that we held, was the beginning of
the work that needed to take place in education, especially for the interns in my program.
What we know from years of research on educational inequity is that teacher ideology is
a critical piece of the puzzle. Addressing and disrupting deficit ideologies is one of the main
themes of culturally relevant pedagogy (Milner, 2007). Without addressing teachers’ deficit
ideologies and working to ensure they are critically conscious; it is impossible to repay the
educational debt. My role as coordinator afforded me the opportunity to design a new teacher

12
program grounded in equitable and culturally relevant education. Implicit assumptions such as
those around ability and race or focused on common sense soak into our consciousness from the
professional and cultural air around us and are thus hard to identify (Brookfield, 2017). That is
why it is imperative to integrate practices such as critical reflection into teacher education
programs. Critically reflective teaching happens when we build the habit of consistently
identifying and checking for assumptions to inform our actions as teachers (Brookfield, 2017).
More specifically, developing a teachers’ racial literacy is necessary to alter perceptions
and attitudes that teachers often hold about their historically and systemically marginalized
students (Sealey-Ruiz, 2011). Guinier (2004) argued that teacher education programs need to
teach their pre-service candidates to develop racial literacy to read our racialized world in an
analytic way to problem-solve in order to counter the educational debt brought on by racism.
Racial literacy in teacher education means promoting candidates to engage in deep self-
examination and requires actions that lead to social justice and educational equity for all students
(Sealey-Ruiz, 2011). Though there was not enough time for the intern participants to engage in
deep self-examination in this study, I contend that new teachers learn, throughout this program,
ways to become racially literate.
As I helped guide the interns through the requirements of the teacher preparation
program, I had a unique opportunity to foster teachers’ racial identity development, which I
believe was a prerequisite for helping them be more culturally responsive teachers. Helms (1990)
wrote that one can only guide others in racial identity development if they first took the journey
themselves. As such, using the new skills that I have acquired through critical reflection, it was
imperative that I, as the teacher educator, began to address my own biases and assumptions, such
as honoring the educational histories of all candidates with whom I worked. Due to my history

13
and positionality, I acknowledged that my educational experience could be very different from
those of the interns. That was one of the benefits of action research, where I, as the researcher,
began the study by examining my own positionality. Critical reflection was so much more than
recognizing that I am White and hold privilege. It was about having the ability to articulate the
socio-political, historical, and emotional consciousness that led White people to a privileged
status in order to acknowledge the impact it had on interns and subsequently their students. By
initiating a practice of my own critical reflection, I needed to feel emotions, recognized them and
understood where they came from. More importantly, it was about developing the courage to
withstand the ups and downs of discussing race (Matias, 2016). During the study, I experienced
the realization that I had deficit mindsets about the intern participants, and as such,
acknowledged it publicly and made changes to the way I was leading the sessions.
I contended that I needed to work with the intern participants in our program to support
their critical reflection because critically reflective practices are necessary to always be a part of
the humanizing process of racial justice that can free us from colorblind racism (Brookfield,
2018; Matias, 2016; Milner, 2010). Although we did not have the time to begin critically
reflective practices in the context of this study, I still believe it to be necessary. In order to move
away from the deficit ideologies that lead to the inequitable treatment of and outcomes for
historically and systemically marginalized students, we need to build an army of new teachers
who enact culturally relevant curricula, pedagogy, and practices that place the student at the
center and challenge the existing power structures in today’s schools (Gay, 2000). This action
research study examined my efforts in supporting intern participants to begin a lifelong
commitment to move toward practices of critical reflection so as to develop critical
consciousness and racial literacy. I contended that this can position new teachers for more

14
positive interactions with students from a stance of cultural humility and responsiveness. As such
the research question for this study was: How do I teach and support my intern participants to
critically reflect on how their unconscious biases shaped by deficit ideologies of their students
impact their practice so as to develop their critical consciousness?
I will use the findings gleaned to further the work of developing a program built on the
tenets of equity and cultural relevance. The goal of my work in this space is to ultimately design
a program that helps intern participants develop a stance, vocabulary, and skills to understand
and address the dynamics of race and racism in their schooling contexts and create curricula and
pedagogies from a race-conscious perspective (Rolón-Dow et al., 2021). In the next section, I
will present my conceptual framework, informed by literature that supports the need to engage
new teachers in critical reflection to develop their critical consciousness and racial literacy.
Conceptual Framework
As the coordinator of a county district intern program, my conceptual framework centers
my work with the year one intern participants, synonymously known in much of the literature as
“pre-service teachers.” According to Maxwell (2013), the conceptual framework is a key part of
the design of a study that visually demonstrates the concepts, relationships, experiences, theories
and plans for change. My conceptual framework, or what I will refer to as my “theory of
change,” visually depicts my role as the coordinator of a teacher preparation program and the
ways I plan to work with intern participants to address issues of deficit ideology through critical
reflection. My theory of change serves as a visual guide as I develop and enact new
understandings on my work through systematic use of research methods. For this action research
study, I used the framework to enlist in my dual role of researcher and coordinator within the
context as an active member of the program.

15
My conceptual framework, shown in Figure 1, has been revised based on what I learned
from my field experiences and relevant theories that were central to working toward the short-
term goal of teaching and supporting the intern participants to critically reflect to build critical
consciousness. While in the field, I made progress towards my short-term goal as I taught interns
how to analyze their own identities and become aware of bias and assumptions and the ways
deficit mindsets can affect their students. Moving forward I will utilize what I have learned about
myself as a facilitator and the growth experienced during this action research to redesign the
intern program. The data taken from the study will continuously guide movement towards the
middle and long-term changes for the district intern program.

Figure 1
Conceptual Framework

16
In the sections that follow, I will explain each of the concepts and their relationship to
each other as well as how they evolved because of my field experiences in this study. My
participation in the context of the district intern program was unique to other university teacher
preparation programs in that I alone carried out many of the roles that directly affect the
participating interns in the study. Who I am in relation to my participants and my setting directly
affected the conceptual framework (Herr & Anderson, 2005), particularly in an action research
project that centered my work in my context. Being a part of a district intern program, I was
called upon to be a course instructor, academic advisor, practicum supervisor, and program
content designer. For the purpose of this study, I focused on my leadership role in providing
instruction as a means of direct support to the intern participants. In this work with the first-year
interns, I began with an emphasis on critical reflection. The representation of concentric circles
in Figure 1 both in the intern participant and my coordinator role show that the basis for our
work was critical reflection, first and foremost. I still believe this to be true though the time in
the field for this action research study did not allow us to begin critically reflective practices. As
stated above, we know from research that deficit ideologies on the part of teachers continue to be
a barrier to high-quality education for marginalized groups of students, thus increasing the
opportunity gap in present-day education (Matias, 2016). In order to close the achievement gap
and to address these entrenched inequities, we need teachers to teach in equitable and culturally
relevant ways.
When referring to the achievement gap, Ladson-Billings (2007) called for a
reconceptualization of the term, and to rename it “educational debt” especially in the context of
the preparation of teachers. She said that the term “achievement gap” implied that the scholarly
achievement of students at the top was static enough for those at the bottom to catch up and that

17
the term limits solutions of educational inequity. Darby and Rury (2009) further elaborated on
how the achievement gap and related policies affect the way individuals think about race and
education. In what they call color of mind theory, explanations for the perpetuation of the
achievement gap come from educator ideologies like: high test scores equal intelligence,
differences in family backgrounds and lack of resources attribute to academic success, and the
level of parental education has been shown to be directly related to lower test scores (Darby &
Rury, 2009).
By using the term educational debt instead, teacher educators, like myself, can reframe
the explanations for its existence, and how teachers may influence the perpetuation of that debt.
To do that, these intern participants need training on and development in racial literacy, of which
a key starting point is critical reflection. This was the focus of my study, and although the path to
reaching critically reflective practices was not reached in the field, I continue to believe that
critical reflection is at the heart of this study and in the intern participants developing a critical
consciousness. Consequently, to be successful as their instructor, I, too, needed to critically
reflect to ensure I was addressing any assumptions I held about the intern participants and any
issues of power in my interactions with them.
Critical Reflection
In the conceptual framework visual, the intern participants and I are surrounded by
critical reflection because I contend that critical reflection needs to become part of who we are as
educators. Brookfield (2019) defined critical reflection as an action that involves us reflecting
and researching the assumptions that undergird our thoughts and actions within our work,
community, and social relationships. It focuses on uncovering assumptions, the conceptual glue
that holds our perspectives, meaning schemes, and habits of mind in place. This is important in

18
the context of teacher education because intern participants, new to education, need to address
the possible biases entrapped within their understanding of teaching and learning as well as their
preconceived assumptions of the diverse students with whom they will need to engage.
While in the field, we were not able to engage in the development of understanding
around, nor practice critically reflective practices. However, I contend that it is a major tenet
upon which teacher preparation programs should be developed. Future actions in this study are
dependent on the ideas of critically reflective practices and theory addressed in my conceptual
framework in this area. Before moving into the explanation for the necessity of critical reflection
as a major tenet of the interns’ pre-service education, it was important to understand the varying
levels of reflection that can be experienced by these new teachers as they began their work with
me in this study. Figure 2 depicts Rodgers’s (2002) reflective cycle that described the four
phases of reflection that educators, like the interns, can enact in their everyday work with their
students. The goal of this reflection should be aimed at improving student learning, which
happens best if teachers are present to their students’ learning and able to respond with the best
next instructional move or “intelligent action” (Rodgers, 2002).

19
Figure 2
Rodgers’s Reflective Cycle

Note. Adapted from “Seeing Student Learning: Teacher Change and the Role of Reflection,” by
C. R. Rodgers, 2002, Harvard Educational Review, 72(2), pp. 230–253.

The first phase of the reflective cycle, Learning to See, focuses on the teacher’s ability to
be present. The more they can be present to their students’ learning, the more they can perceive,
which in turn means a greater potential for an intelligent response (Rodgers, 2002). This means
that they cannot be preoccupied with something that they might be doing next, and most
importantly they must be less satisfied with the appearance of learning and more satisfied with
knowing what their students are learning. Without being present to the learning, teachers are

20
unable to provide the external feedback that their learners cannot provide for themselves
(Hawkins, 2007).
The second phase, Learning to Describe and Differentiate, is the process of telling a story
of an experience, and ultimately one of the most difficult stages (Rodgers, 2002). It asks teachers
to withhold their own interpretation of events including the urge to try to fix the problem.
Teachers at this stage need to learn to develop descriptive skills and gather descriptive data from
their own classrooms in low inference ways. As I began to work with the intern participants on
this phase, it became very important that I provided exercises that helped them learn to
distinguish between description and interpretation (Rodgers, 2002). Moving from exercises of
observation of non-related students and teachers to moments from their own classrooms provided
the objectives of slowing down to see and notice when they were jumping to conclusions. This
phase helped teachers understand what prior knowledge, values, assumptions, desires, fears, etc.
might be driving their interpretations. Another way to encourage teachers to see beyond their
primary perceptions as a means of advancement in their description skills was to use student
feedback, both ongoing and structured (Rodgers, 2002). Ongoing feedback relates to the concept
of presence and involves moment-to-moment in-class information. Structured feedback can be
given by teachers posing specific questions to students about their learning.
Brookfield (2019), too, suggested examining the students’ lens when reflecting on one’s
teaching practice. He suggested using an end-of-class reflection for ongoing feedback or
anonymous polling for a structured method to provide means of truth-seeking information from
students. Descriptions and explanations of these “high-leverage practices” will be further
explained in the Research Methods section below. By using forms of feedback to see and
describe, teachers begin to realize that certain ways of structuring activities, curriculum, and the

21
physical space of the classroom may provide more opportunities for learning. This phase of the
cycle was key for the interns as they developed new habits for working effectively with their
students in order to create opportunities for student learning.
The third phase, Analysis of Experience, involves generating different explanations of
what is going on and making meaning from their theory or hypothesis of such information. This
analysis is grounded in the teachers’ experiences or description of their practice. It is in this
phase that the teacher’s learning of their own experience can be so powerful. This will be
explained further in the andragogy section. As I instructed intern participants about this third
phase of analysis, it was necessary for me to teach them to define what they mean by words and
terms that they might assume to be commonly understood by their students (Rodgers, 2002). In
asking the intern participants what they meant by what they said, I could begin to demonstrate
how to uncover assumptions by using myself as the example. I could discuss how I addressed my
own assumptions and how they could drive my actions. This was a critical aspect of the third
phase of reflection (Rodgers, 2002). In this process I needed to be supportive, but willing to push
and be pushed by others and to take the risk to explore the very assumptions that grew out of our
own identities (Rodgers, 2002). As reflections move into thoughts about identity and race, they
can serve to uncover what used to be inconspicuous phenomena. This reflection can become a
process to support teachers in their development of identification and understanding of their
hidden values, biases, assumptions, and beliefs about race that might not have ever been at the
forefront of their thinking (Milner, 2010). Then, as part of this study, it meant helping the intern
participants begin to develop the skills to reflect on identity and race as part of this third phase.
The final phase of the reflective cycle (Rodgers, 2002) is Experimentation. It is
considered to be both the final and initial phase of the cycle because it doubles as the teacher’s

22
next experience upon which to reflect, thus starting the cycle once again. The suggestions for
action in this phase only occur after hard work in description and analysis, as well as being based
on mutually constructed theory (Rodgers, 2002). There may not be definitive decisions at this
point. As part of this phase, I needed to encourage the intern participants to begin to take risks,
describe and analyze, and learn to acknowledge that it might take many tries in this phase of
experimentation. Rodgers (2002) used the metaphor of teachers learning to see in more than one
color and to discern the complex shades of teaching and learning. It is ultimately about new
teachers, through reflection, learning to see in more nuanced ways as they begin to differentiate
their teaching from their students’ learning (Rodgers, 2002). Rodgers (2002) suggested that in
the context of supportive and disciplined communities of reflection, teachers can formulate
explanations of what they see–that comes from their knowledge of teaching, learning, each other,
and from research.
While Rodgers’ (2002) reflective cycle served as a central concept in the development of
my conceptual framework, missing from her initial conceptualization is an explicit focus on how
to be critical. For reflection to be considered critical, it must have an explicit focus of uncovering
and challenging the power dynamics that frame practice while uncovering and challenging
hegemonic assumptions. Mezirow (1997) articulated the necessity for critical reflection over
simply reflecting saying that reflecting on our insights and assumptions is not enough to consider
how or why one has experienced, thought, felt, or acted. The application of critical reflection, on
the other hand, is at the core of transformative learning when considering how to act in new
situations. Critical reflection necessitates dialogue between self and others as a common part of
the transformative journey, as each other’s boundaries are discovered, challenged, and excluded.

23
It is imperative that critical reflection is included in teacher preparation programs, most
importantly for intern participants working in urban settings of Los Angeles County and
supported by the LACOE district intern program. As articulated later in this narrative, I needed
to first teach the intern participants about the reality of an unequal society as reproduced in their
classrooms, the ability and importance to interrogate themselves, their biases, and assumptions,
and finally, to encourage that they use practices that provide an equitable and culturally relevant
education to the students in their care. The final phase of Rodgers’ (2002) reflective cycle was
not accomplished in my study, but was conceptualized as a long-term goal for change, which
will be discussed later. In my study, I began the dialogue with the intern participants on the
complexities surrounding race in the United States, and how that often leaves new teachers, like
themselves, entering classrooms cross-racially incompetent. Many have never had significant
experiences with students from different racial backgrounds (Milner, 2010). These teachers lack
the competencies needed to address the needs of students from different racial backgrounds. This
lack of understanding may lead to new teachers relying on stereotypical conceptions of racially
diverse students, and very often leading to deficit-mindsets and biases (Milner, 2003). It was
essential to teach the process of critical reflection because it illuminates and challenges subtly
hidden forms of manipulation, as well as allows us to pursue pedagogical, political, and
emotional clarity (Brookfield, 2017), which I still believe to be true.
In the conceptual framework visual, the intern candidates are represented by concentric
circles that demonstrates the important role of critical reflection in their context. Drago-Severson
and Blum-DeStefano (2017) said that by critically reflecting on our external actions, practices
and behaviors and the internal mind-sets, beliefs and understandings can help teachers to live
genuinely and embody a commitment to diversity. Critically reflective practices were an absolute

24
necessity in the context of what I wanted to teach my intern participants in this study. Although I
was not able to move into teaching critically reflective practices, I introduced the necessity of
critical reflection, both for the intern participants and for future teachers in the field. It was
imperative that I taught and modeled critically reflective practices for the intern participants so
that they were better positioned to do the same in their respective teaching practice. Rodgers
(2002) emphasized that reflective practice is a primary exercise to position teachers as the learner
to have a profound connection with what it means to be the learner. As teachers gain the skills in
critically reflective practices, they become better able to respond thoughtfully as well as more
interested and curious in the work that they do. According to Rodgers (2002), the goals of
reflection for pre-service teachers are to develop their capacity to observe skillfully and think
critically about their students’ learning so as to begin to take intelligent action to support student
learning. Brookfield (2010) explained that reflective learning is the chief form of learning and
needs to be a consistent undertaking every day. Learning to reflect on the problems that we face
in the field allows us to learn how to address those problems. Through reflective inquiry on
specific problems of practice, both the intern participants and I explored the assumptions that
framed our perceptions and the responses typically generated to deal with them.
Larivee (2008), in working with pre-service teachers, developed four levels of reflection.
Table 1 gives a brief description of the reflective behavior in each given stage. Although Larivee
developed this typology to build an assessment tool for new teacher evaluation, the description
of the four levels and their definitions of teacher behavior provided clarity on the continuum of
reflection and was used to guide the intern participants in their critically reflective practices.

25

Table 1
Levels of Reflection
Type Description
Pre-reflection Teachers react automatically to students and classroom situations
without conscious consideration of alternative response.

Surface reflection Teacher reflections focus on strategies and methods used to reach
predetermined goals and more concerned with what works.

Pedagogical
reflection
Teachers move into a higher level of reflection based on application
of teacher knowledge, theory, and/or research.

Critical reflection Teachers focus on both their personal and professional belief systems
and the consequences of their classroom practices.

Level one, called pre-reflection, or the non-reflection level, depicts teachers as operating
under knee-jerk responses attributing the ownership of problems to the students, while they (the
teachers) are the victims in these situations (Larivee, 2008). Many teachers at this level take
things for granted without ever questioning situations or, even more significant, do not adapt
their teaching to students’ needs. Larivee (2008) emphasized that new teachers at this level must
find ways to develop reflective practice. The second level, called surface reflection, is reflection
where teachers are much more concerned with what teaching strategies work, and they value the
ends of a lesson instead of the goals (Larivee, 2008). The third level, pedagogical reflection,
describes teachers as they begin to apply their knowledge from the field with current beliefs
about what represents quality practices (Larivee, 2008). Teachers at this level, engaging in
reflective practices, strive to understand the theory behind classroom practice and work to be

26
consistent between espoused theory and theory in use (Larivee, 2008). Finally, at the fourth
level, teachers begin to engage in critical reflection where they begin to reflect on moral and
ethical considerations of their actions in the classroom. Larivee (2008) defined critical reflection
as the focus of attention, both inwardly at their own practice and outwardly at the social
conditions with concern about issues of equity and social justice that arise inside and out of their
classrooms.
Discussions at the surface level of reflection are made for efficiency while at the
pedagogical level they are based on value judgement, and finally, decisions made at the critical
level are based on questioning a teachers’ assumptions and belief systems. Teachers move from
initially asking, “Am I doing it right?” to eventually asking, “Is this the right thing to do?”
(Larivee, 2008). Drawing on the teacher behaviors described in each level of reflection, the
intern participants could dialogue with their group members to determine where they fell in
relation to critical reflection. During the study, we did not engage in this dialogue. However, in a
longer span of time, new intern candidates could learn to participate in the varied levels of
reflection.
It is important for new teachers to progress through the levels of reflective practice to
ultimately become critically reflective teachers who pose the important questions of practice.
Pre-service teachers do not necessarily move from one level to the next in a linear fashion and
may demonstrate some aspects of each depending on the activity or the individual. Larivee
(2008) wrote that both pre-service and novice teachers can develop at higher levels with
strategically constructed intervention. Due to the weight of prior learning experiences that the
intern participants brought to their program, the goal was to stay within what Warford (2010)
called the zone of proximal teacher development. This will be described later in the section titled

27
Andragogy. This zone started with an intern participant’s reflection on prior experiences and
assumptions with some mediation provided by the teacher educator. In order to coax tacit
assumptions into critical consciousness and subject the intern participant to new approaches,
teacher preparation programs need to determine where they are in their learning while helping
them to weave expert and experiential knowledge into their personal narrative. By teaching and
working through various definitions and examples of reflection, such as Rodgers’ (2002) cycle, I
contended that intern participants might begin to develop their own critical consciousness as they
learned how to be critically reflective educators. While the intern participants did not engage in
critical reflection during my study, I continue to believe this to be an important aim for all
teacher education programs.
In the study cycles, the intern participants were given critical reflection prompts tied to
the sessions’ objectives. They also served as practice for the reflection itself. The intern
participants reflected about session activities and their experiences within them. They were asked
to share what they learned about their identity and identification of common themes within the
sessions themselves. As the intern participants were introduced to terms such as deficit
ideologies, they were asked to reflect on their own teaching experiences or unearthed
assumptions in education. For specific critical reflection prompts I intended to use, see the draft
lesson plans in Appendix A.
In the conceptual framework visual, critically reflective practices were not only shown
around the intern participants, but also around me as the coordinator of the district intern
program. Engaging in critically reflective practice helped me to identify the mindsets and beliefs
that I have held for almost five decades. As I worked with my intern participants in my role as
coordinator, I have moved away from generalizing that everyone experienced a positive

28
education like mine. I needed to acknowledge that intern participants came to the program with
both positive and negative experiences in education and as such, calibrated the level of support
needed as they begin their teacher preparation journey. It is only by coupling the urgent inner
work of education as I critically interrogated my mindsets and beliefs, with the outer work of
teaching and leading (internally aligning my actions, practices, and behaviors with a social
justice stance) that we as educators are able to authentically see, understand, support and
champion all our students’ great diversities and potentialities (Drago-Severson & Blum-
DeStefano, 2017).
Throughout my doctoral experience, I have declared that I felt as if I have been reborn
not only as a human but as an educator. In the coursework, discussions, and most importantly the
practice of critical reflection, I was able to connect with my complicity of White privilege and
the oppression that has impacted so many people. My eyes were opened to the concept of
colorblindness and the dominant ideologies that play out in both my personal and professional
life. Growing up in a predominantly White community and then continuing as an educator in that
same community I, as Matias (2016) claimed to “not see race” in my pedagogy, producing the
haves and have nots with a hidden curriculum of Whiteness reinforced by White supremacy and
denied the humanity of marginalized groups of people. This White savior narrative is
indoctrinated in the minds of countless White teacher candidates, much like it was for me
(Matias, 2016). Thus, it is imperative that I continue to unearth and interrogate my colorblind
assumptions that I have carried with me that were facilitated by the successful educational
experiences my privilege allowed. My teachers treated me with kindness, respect, and held high
expectations. These expectations and the interactions I had in school mirrored the cultural norms
I was used to at home. That, in tandem with a strong supportive family unit, who had also

29
benefited from privilege, pushed me to college and beyond. I continued to take for granted this
treatment. I successfully progressed through graduate school and navigated within an American
context of a country founded upon White hegemony, discourse, and gaze.
I intended to use critical reflection in this study to continuously take informed actions in
what I saw as I observed and worked with the intern participants. Critical reflection raises the
chance that I would take informed action, not just basing andragogical moves on an assumption
that I held of teachers as learners. It was my hope that as I engaged in and modeled critical
reflection that I saw my practice through the interns’ eyes (Brookfield, 2017). It also helped us,
as teachers, survive the emotional roller coaster of teaching. For me, the process of teaching
critical reflection to new teachers was about establishing a new paradigm for education with the
hope that the result would positively impact and empower all their students. To truly engage the
intern participants in dialogue about issues of identity and equity required more than just the
book learning that they received in coursework. It was vital in this study to develop the kind of
engagement that called on our internal capacities for seeing, being, and connecting with one
another, and for taking a differentiated approach to reflection, transformation and
communication that could help us better meet each other where we were as we strived for change
and growth (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017).
During the study, I used critical reflection to analyze my actions as a teacher, to make
sure that I was indeed practicing what I was preaching. It was not until I came face-to-face with
the data from the first cycle, which will be explained later, that I realized I was not doing
anything I had committed to in this study. Once I began to teach in the manner beneficial to
meeting the objectives of the study sessions, was I able to study my own assumptions and deficit
ideologies. I then addressed the ways that I had used my power and long-held assumptions of

30
how people should learn. The teacher-centered way that I had taught the first cycle delayed
further learning and practice of critical reflection for the intern participants. Now I know to look
at anything from teaching plans to course and program objectives with the critically reflective
lens of whether something is teacher or learner centered. I can ask myself questions like: What
assumptions do I currently have about the learners based on their identities? How are the power
dynamics between me and the learners being deconstructed? Having a deeper understanding of
the trajectory for learning through positionality and intersectionality, I was able to determine that
critically reflective practice takes longer than would ever be met in a 12-week study. Therefore,
critical reflection remains a major tenet in my conceptual framework because it is the basis for
how I continue to live my life personally and professionally and believe it to be critical for the
development of critically conscious educators.
Deficit Ideologies
Of the many educational challenges facing historically and systematically marginalized
groups of students, oppression does not only come from technical or methodological issues in the
classroom. Bartolomé (2009) said that oppression tends to be rooted in the systemic
unacknowledged discriminatory ideologies and practices. Eagleton (1991) emphasized the
conception of ideology as “legitimizing the power of a dominant social group or class” (p. 13).
For the purposes of this study, I used the definition from Bartolomé (2009), who argued that
ideology refers to a framework of thinking constructed and held by members of a society that
justify an existing social order. These ideologies reflect the symbolic and cultural practices of the
dominant culture that shape peoples’ thinking so that they unconsciously accept the current way
of doing things as “normal.”

31
Research suggests that institutions such as those in education have had great success in
perpetuating dominant ideologies, specifically hegemonic ideologies (Bartolomé, 2009).
Hegemony refers to the powerful ideas that a dominant culture uses to overpower and further
eradicate competing views. In doing so this works to create a commonsense view of the world
where educational systems legitimize the existing social order (Bartolomé, 2009). There are
varying strategies quite often employed by dominant cultures to render hegemonic ideologies as
invisible. This process promotes beliefs and values that bolster the dominant culture while
universalizing such beliefs so that they become inevitable, and finally denigrating any ideas that
challenge dominant culture (Bartolomé, 2009).
An ideology important to address in this study was meritocracy. Meritocracy refers to the
societal idea in which one’s educational success is the result of their innate ability or merit
(Bartolomé, 2009). This belief, in the context of education, often means teachers hold onto
deficit-oriented beliefs of historically and systemically marginalized groups of students. These
invisible hegemonic ideologies are internalized and manifested at a personal level. That is why it
was imperative that these ideologies became concretized by the intern participants so that they
learned to consciously resist accepting them. Without doing this, the unconsciousness of
hegemonic thinking can translate into discriminatory classroom practice (Bartolomé, 2009).
Darder et al. (2002) emphasized the need for studying the ideological dimensions of
educators’ views and experiences. Many scholars have suggested that teachers’ ideological
orientation is often reflected in their beliefs and attitudes, especially in the way they treat,
interact and teach their students (Bartolomé, 2004). Tragically, new teachers often exit teacher
preparation programs having unconsciously absorbed deficit views of non-White and low-
income students (Bartolomé, 2009). This osmosis-like learning of deficit mindsets can be a result

32
of the lack of critical reflection activities that teach these intern candidates how to interrogate
their ideological orientations. Bartolomé (2009) suggested that education programs create formal
experiences to study ideology to learn the harmful manifestations that such beliefs have in the
school context.
As part of my study, the participants spent a good portion of time learning and reflecting
on the definition of common ideologies in education, more specifically deficit ideology,
hegemony, and meritocracy (see Research Methods section for more detail on these actions).
They provided the content of our interactions as we discussed various examples of ideology by
pulling from personal and professional experiences. It was my hope that as the participants
engaged in the discussion and in writing reflections of deficit ideologies, they could potentially
begin to develop critical consciousness skills and work toward holding counter-hegemonic
ideological orientations (Bartolomé, 2009).
During the study, I learned that I had a deficit ideology about my intern participants’
learning. In the process of critical reflection and post-session memo writing, I experienced a
disorienting dilemma, explained in detail in the Findings section. Once I addressed this negative
mindset, I was able to shift the way that I was teaching. I facilitated discussion around
meritocracy and other educational assumptions and hegemonic beliefs. The intern participants
engaged in discussion about various belief systems, sharing experiences of ageism and ableism
in their personal and teaching contexts. The researcher and participants spent a good deal of time
discussing exclusionary practices that included low expectations and bias. The intern participants
wrote reflections each session guided by prompts that I had created. Their reflective answers
helped guide further dialogue in the sessions that followed.
Mechanisms for Action

33
Between the researcher and intern participants, Figure 1 represents a double-sided arrow.
This arrow represents the mechanism for action during this study and in my work as a teacher
educator. Brookfield (2010) argued that for critical reflection to be done correctly, the leader
must model it and use other andragogical tools. Modeling critical reflection meant being explicit
regarding my own efforts and checking my assumptions while seeking feedback from the intern
participants to help maintain the interrogation of my own systemic beliefs about race (Milner,
2007). It was my hope that by providing these examples of critical reflection, it would help to
influence the intern participants in their future endeavors to critically reflect. In addition to
critical reflection, in my teaching and leading of intern participants, my role was one of
educating them on the practices I wished to see them enact once in the classroom. It was
necessary at the onset of the sessions together, that I introduced conversations about developing
a brave space to move forward with any of the activities and topics discussed in the study. Arao
and Clemens (2013) emphasized the importance of creating a space that allows participants to
make their own meaning of such a space that will lead to rich learning in alignment with justice-
related objectives. Brave spaces are actualized by establishing co-constructed ground rules that
create an atmosphere that, with the guidance of the facilitator, demonstrate openness and disrupt
and decenter dominant narratives (Arao & Clemens, 2013).
The mechanism pointing from me to the intern circle represents the actions that I
proposed to enact related to andragogy that helped me move the intern participants toward the
short-term goal of critical consciousness (to be further discussed below). I contend that my role
as a leader and teacher educator required that I had a thorough understanding of my own deficit
ideology of my intern participants’ and the ways they were making meaning from their
experiences (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017), which is represented by the arrow

34
coming to me. Teachers and leaders must have knowledge of the developmental location of their
learners so that they can better support them (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017). The
mechanisms of action pointing from the intern participant to me represent what I learn from their
developmental location to guide my andragogy, to be further discussed below.
During the study, my actions changed as I began to realize that we needed to put a hold
on critical reflection and I needed to enact andragogical moves and support the acknowledgment
of deficit ideologies. I did not want to move away from critical reflection but knew that I could
not get to it and do it justice. I focused on my role as instructor instead of adaptive leader for the
study. It was far more important to address the andragogical moves that I made to move away
from my deficit ideologies and into addressing what I needed to do to shift and create a learner-
centered environment for the interns. It was also important to address the climate needed for a
learner-centered environment, as realized after Cycle 1 and the teacher-centered approach I
unintentionally employed. Once there was an understanding of the type of climate needed for the
intern participants to learn, I provided time in the field for them to address their own ideologies
and assumptions during discussion of experiences from their personal and teaching contexts.
Andragogy
Adult learning theory argues that learning is significantly different for adults than for
children. Knowles (1984) defined andragogy as the art and science of helping adults learn. For
my study, I utilized andragogical strategies drawn from constructivist adult learning theory.
Constructivism is an epistemology that suggests learners construct knowledge through
experience (Schunk, 2000). More specifically, Vygotsky emphasized a social aspect of
constructivism by situating cognition with socially mediated learning. Only when linguistic tools
are integrated with the tools of physical action can the potential for full human cognitive

35
development be reached (Tharp & Gallimore, 1997). Situated cognition also addresses the
intuitive notion that many processes interact to produce learning (Schunk, 2000). In this study, I
took a Vygotskyan approach to the education of the intern participants as situated learning.
Vygotsky theorized the zone of proximal development (ZPD) to measure the distance
between what a learner can do and a proximal level that they might attain through the guidance
of an expert other. Warford (2010) adapted Vygotsky’s ZPD to educating teachers within zones
of proximal teacher development (ZPTD). The sense of learning as a fundamentally dialogic,
emergent process also resonates with the notion of discovery learning and other constructivist
approaches that have often failed to gain acceptance in mainstream educational practice
(Warford, 2010). The ZPTD is the distance between what an intern participant can do on their
own, without assistance, and an approximate level that they could accomplish with my support as
their instructor. The zone of proximal teacher development and its four stages integrated
beautifully in the context of the intern participants’ experiential work and the study itself. By
providing the context of field-based learning, as the intern participants were full-time teachers of
record, with the coursework application of the teacher preparation program, there was a blending
of scientific and experiential discourse that is necessary for substantive development to occur
and consequently, situated learning within a Vygotskyan framework (Warford, 2010). This
blending was considered essential, as the intern participants were front-loaded with real-life
problems and cultural artifacts from actual classroom language (Warford, 2010).
The first stage of ZPTD is considered to be self-assistance, and it begins with learners’
reflection on their prior experiences and assumptions. There is an emphasis on setting the field
by promoting reflection on their experiences and tacit beliefs about teaching and learning
(Warford, 2010). A Vygotskyan framework for teacher critical reflection promotes a learner’s

36
choice in determining the trajectory for their own growth. It is during this stage that, while
working with the intern participants in the study, we began the process of planning, designing,
analyzing, and reflecting on their experience and learning. Stage II of ZPTD is considered to be
teacher-assisted. During this stage, there are more interventions taking place as the new teachers
confront the new language of their academic discourse. Warford (2010) reminded teacher
educators that this confrontation should be grounded in the experiential concepts that emerge
from intern participants’ own continued critical reflection and exploration of their classroom
realities. Teacher observations and continued modeling of innovative teaching practices carried
out at this stage as well. Understanding the stages in ZPTD was key to supporting the intern
participants’ development of racial literacy. During the stage of teacher-assistance I employed
andragogical moves such as modeling and provided experiential learning opportunities. To
transform the intern participants’ learning there was a need for me to use a learning-centered
approach. As a means of demonstrating this, I kept the lessons in the sessions tied to their
experiences, facilitated authentic reflection practices, and encouraged critical thinking (as
detailed in Appendix A). I modeled for the intern participants the ability to be open and genuine
with others. Tharp and Gallimore (1988) defined modeling as the process of offering behavior
for imitation. In the educational setting, modeling is an important source of assisted performance,
and has a very important place in teacher preparation programs. The act of modeling was key to
teaching and leading the intern participants in this study and discussed more specifically in later
sections.
The role of experience in learning is also central to adult learning. Merriam and Bierema
(2013) stated that experiential learning is important in the conceptualization of self-directed and
transformative learning. I argued that as the intern participants moved through the stages of

37
ZPTD, these embedded life experiences would lead to transformative learning, sometimes
beginning with an event that made us question our assumptions in what we believed was our
reality (Mezirow, 2000). A disorienting dilemma is a disconnection between one’s experience
and what they understand of it. Transformative learning occurs when the way we make meaning
of experience changes; that is, our meaning-making process has become transformed into one
that is more accommodating of our real-world experience (Merriam & Bierema, 2013). It is a
process of critical self-reflection that can be stimulated by people, events, or changes in context
that challenge the teacher’s basic assumptions of the world (Brown, 2004).
Referring to the conceptual framework visual, the arrow moving from me to the intern
participants’ helps to symbolize the andragogical actions I employed. Intern participants were in
different places in terms of their knowledge of content, which in my study, included issues of
ideologies that helped develop their critical consciousness. For me to differentiate my
instruction, I needed to rely on the theories of andragogy mentioned above to meet the intern
participants where they were developmentally. Critical reflection helped to illuminate the choices
that the intern participants made in determining the direction of their growth. My role was to use
this information to carefully gauge the extent to which they were demonstrating coherence from
their prior beliefs and assumptions, as well as the nature of their critiques of their own current
teaching practices. Teacher reflection had to be sustained over time as a means of creating
substantive growth. The Vygotskyan approach to teacher education pointed out that we, as an
educational system, cannot afford to dismiss teacher education as a simple question of fact-
cramming, but rather the promotion of a fundamental shift in the candidate’s cultural identity
(Warford, 2010).

38
The andragogical strategies listed in the conceptual framework provided the support for
developing the intern participants’ critically reflective practices and development of their critical
consciousness as they moved toward racial literacy. Understanding the developmental
trajectories of the intern participants as adult learners helped me better differentiate the supports
and challenges that were offered when working with each other to manage complexity, examine
assumptions, relate across lines of difference, do the best for their students and each other, and
shape more equitable visions for the future (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017).
Adaptive Leadership
Another mechanism for action in this study was leadership. Heifetz (2016) defined
adaptive leadership as the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges that enables
their capacity to thrive. Adaptive leadership focuses primarily on how leaders help others to art
in order to adapt to the challenges they face (Northouse, 2016). Although I held a position of
leadership in my context, I focused more specifically as an instructor to the intern participants I
supported. While the teacher-learner relationship was not often perceived as a leader-follower
paradigm, it was still important to draw on behaviors of adaptive leadership to inform how I
worked with the adults in my study. Adaptive leadership emphasizes that the phenomenon of
leadership is an interactive process comprising many dimensions and activities and cannot be
done without the followers involved (Northouse, 2016). Northouse (2016) summed it up well
when he said that adaptive leadership is a “recipe” for what leaders and followers should do to
make change.
Developing adaptive leadership skills meant honoring the reality that change
accompanies distress in many forms (Heifetz, 2016). Regulating distress is one of the adaptive
leadership behaviors as stated by Northouse (2016). Psychologically, we all crave consistency in

39
our beliefs, values, and attitudes. However, adaptive leadership is the process of creating change,
and in doing so can create uncertainty and distress for those involved (Northouse, 2016). In the
study, the work done for the creation of a brave space (detailed in the Methods section below)
required constant communication between me as the leader, and the participants. Northouse
(2016) called this a “holding environment” as a means of regulating the distress experienced
during this time of disequilibrium.
The challenge for me as the leader was to help the participants recognize the need for
change, but also to help minimize their feelings of being overwhelmed as they experienced these
emotions. The purpose of the holding environment, or brave space in my context, was to
establish an atmosphere where my participants could feel safe as they began to interrogate their
biases, assumptions, and possible deficit ideologies. As I modeled the practice of addressing my
vulnerability by consistently using critical reflection to manage my emotions, it was also my
hope that the participants would learn to use similar strategies (detailed in Methods) as I guided
them in analyzing their own feelings of distress. In leading adaptive change, I intended to, as
Heifetz (1981) suggested, ask people to open their hearts to me and the purpose that I believed
we share, while I demonstrated that same behavior. Listening with my heart meant taking in the
information beyond what was being said, as a source for my own feelings and the non-verbal
messages the intern participants were giving.
Listening with my heart also required me to be vulnerable with my intern participants. In
his theory of adaptive leadership, Heifetz (2016) focused on the concept of vulnerability as a key
element to solving adaptive problems. Another scholar who engages with the concept of
vulnerability is Brown (2018). Brown (2018) defined vulnerability as the emotion that we
experience during times of uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. I argued that as the intern

40
participants and I began work toward critical consciousness, we would unearth and scrutinize
assumptions which could encompass a strong element of vulnerability (Brookfield, 2017). In
order to maintain vulnerability and have the holding space created for vulnerability, I had to be
ready as a leader to regulate the distress. Otherwise, the intern participants could shut down
emotionally as the distress could be counterproductive or even debilitating (Northouse, 2016). As
Wergin (2020) argued, not all disorientation is constructive.
Finally, it was essential that I maintained disciplined attention as another adaptive
leadership behavior (Northouse, 2016). This meant that I needed to encourage the intern
participants to maintain a focus on the discomfort that rose to the surface as we interrogated our
own assumptions and biases. In addition, it meant not allowing the intern participants to revert to
beliefs and behaviors that hid in their subconscious. Change takes time and can be a lot of hard
work, which in turn can cause resistance or moving away from the work when it gets difficult. It
is up to the adaptive leader to ensure that their people do not engage in avoidance behavior. In
the context of my study, in addition to providing a space where the participants could navigate
the emotions involved in manifesting change, it was essential that I teach the why. Historically
and systemically marginalized students deserve a classroom environment where the teacher is
mobilized to drop their defenses and openly confront how to get the inclusive work done
(Northouse, 2016). Maintaining disciplined attention in this study meant nudging the group to
talk about the “elephant in the room,” the issue of race and racism (Northouse, 2016). This was
demonstrated in my study by providing discussion topics, such as working through the
definitions of common deficit ideologies found in current educational systems. To move the
participants into a more developed critical consciousness, it was imperative that hegemonic
assumptions that benefit some and oppress others were discussed and quite possibly argued as a

41
way of getting people to show disciplined attention to the work at hand (Northouse, 2016). By
demonstrating the adaptive leadership behaviors and skills listed above it was my hope that I
could move the intern participants in the direction to enact real change. It was important for me
to signal to the intern participants that these were just beginning steps, but that the work would
be ongoing and sustained. Developing critical consciousness is necessary but insufficient in
producing change. Below, I will discuss the various levels of change represented in my
conceptual framework.
During the study, as I made changes to move to a learner-centered climate, it became
clear that I had to focus on the andragogical shifts more than adaptive leadership moves.
However, there were strategies used like regulating distress and modeling vulnerability that
could be defined either in the instructor or the leadership roles. For my study, I chose to focus
these actions through the role of teacher. However, in the future, as I work with other peers, my
role will be more of adaptive leader, so these concepts are still important to my theory of change.
To move beyond the short-term change and on to intermediate and long term changes
represented in my conceptual framework, I will need to use what I learned in this study to engage
in programmatic changes.
Anticipated Change
Short-Term Change
I consider my conceptual framework visual a depiction of my theory of change, with the
outcomes stated as what I theorized, I could accomplish in my work with the intern participants.
One way to repay the educational debt is for teachers to truly enact culturally relevant and
responsive teaching and pedagogy (Brookfield, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 2007). However, to get
there, teachers first need to examine who they are and identify their deficit ideologies, to

42
ultimately work toward racial literacy. Although racial literacy was not something I expected to
see enacted in this study, it was my hope that the intern participants would work towards a
critical consciousness. Sealey-Ruiz (2017) called out three ways for developing racial literacy:
encourage, engage, and emphasize. For my study, the first two goals could be accomplished
within the context of my study. The participants were first encouraged to question their
assumptions about race, acknowledge and challenge their biases, and work toward taking a
stance to actively resist racist and discriminatory practices, policies, and beliefs they may
encounter in their teaching sites (Picower & Kohli, 2017). Next, the intern participants engaged
in critical conversations about race and identity in a brave space where they were encouraged to
speak openly about their biases. This is something we did in the context of our sessions. What I
wanted to see in the short term was the intern participants developing their skills in reflection and
moving towards developing critical consciousness. I contend that individuals must learn to
critically reflect to recognize that we are all cultural beings, and our experiences are shaped by
our cultural identities (Spikes, 2018). Although we did not fully move into the short-term change
as planned, the intern participants were moving in that direction, and it is my hope that in the
final year of their intern program, they can continue the practice.
Intermediate Change
The intermediate change I wished to see in the intern participant was outside the scope of
my study and as such, depicted in grey in the conceptual framework visual. Because I wanted to
teach intern participants how to be critically reflective teachers, what I expected was that they
would then be able to move from critical consciousness to developing their racial literacy and the
practice of culturally relevant pedagogy. Gay (2002) wrote that cultural consciousness of self and
others for all teachers is an important pillar of culturally relevant teaching. A quality education

43
for historically and systemically marginalized students is as much culturally relevant as it is
developmentally appropriate. This means teachers must use their cultural orientations, students’
background experiences, and ethnic identities as conduits to facilitate their teaching and learning
(Gay, 2002). I argue that as the intern participants gained more experience in the classroom and
were equipped with the capacity for critical reflection, they could begin to adjust their teaching
and development of pedagogy to meet the needs of their historically and systematically
marginalized groups of students.
Racial literacy is context specific, and as such, the intern participants’ continued
engagement with culturally relevant pedagogy is centered within it. Mosley (2010) said that the
major elements needed for teacher candidates to develop racial literacy is exposure to critical
frameworks and structured practice of approaches such as student-developed lessons and
counter-narratives in various teaching and learning experiences.
Long-Term Change
The desired and theorized long-term change, outside of the scope of study, is to witness
intern participants teaching with an educational philosophy based on the tenets of critical
consciousness and culturally relevant pedagogy, fueled by their own racial literacy. The
continued enactment of culturally relevant pedagogy, from a racially literate space, will
ultimately position the intern participants to engage in high-quality teaching practices and
provide historically and systemically marginalized students with equitable learning experiences.
It was my hope that these intern participants move forward well prepared to provide a truly
inclusive classroom in an attempt to pay back the educational debt.
Whether teachers will act to implement culturally relevant teaching with their students is
strongly influenced by their own knowledge of and comfort with talking about race and racism,

44
as well as their confidence and skills in being able to enact culturally relevant teaching
(Brookfield, 2020). Working with a small group of interns participating in this study was only
the first step. As a leader of a teacher preparation program, I needed to ensure that the teaching
methods initially designed for my study continued and became embedded in the program.
Professional preparation programs must be much more aggressive and diligent about including
knowledge about and skills for teaching ethnically and culturally diverse students, and then hold
teachers accountable to implementing these changes in classroom practice (Gay, 2002). In the
long-term change, it was my hope that this group of intern participants would develop racial
literacy as a means to build more awareness of the ways that their own social identities influence
their experiences in education, the ways race functions systematically in schools, and the ways in
which, they as educators can disrupt racism (Rolón-Dow et al., 2021). As well, on my part, my
long-term plan is to use this new information to develop coursework that enacts, on a larger
scale, what we were able to create in the study’s cycles. As an adaptive leader, I will need to take
what I learned within this small group action research study to push it forward as a means of
training all future interns. Using what I learned about my own teaching with this small group of
adults in the study, I intend to carry forward with the instructors and Practicum supervisors. I
also need to acknowledge that the changes that I intend to make, both in the coursework and in
the people who teach and support the intern participants, will take time. This is not a process that
can be rushed.
Conclusion
When I began this study, my hope was that by engaging in this study, the group of first-
year intern participants would learn to address their biases, assumptions, and deficit ideologies as
a way to develop their critical consciousness. By teaching intern participants, using andragogical

45
moves and enacting adaptive leadership behaviors, I created the conditions for my interns to
learn the skills to begin to address their biases and assumptions and the ways in which those can
negatively affect their students.
Research Methods
This study used a qualitative action research approach because it provided me as a
practitioner-scholar the means to bring about change by first examining my own practices and
ultimately using what I learned to transform teacher education within my local context.
Professionally, in my role as instructional leader, I provided instruction as a means of support to
the intern participants, which began with an emphasis on reviewing our personal identities. The
research question for this action research project asked: How do I teach and support my intern
participants to critically reflect on how their unconscious biases shaped by deficit ideologies of
their students impact their practice so as to develop their critical consciousness? The goals of
action research involved examining and making changes in a local context (Herr & Anderson,
2005). My goal was to examine my own andragogical and leadership behaviors to support my
participants as we worked toward becoming critically reflective and developed our critical
consciousness.
After engaging in critical reflection as part of my doctoral program coursework, I had
come to observe that current teacher preparation programs often do not address the perpetuation
of inequities in education experienced by marginalized students in part because they do not
address teachers’ deficit ideologies. As expressed in my conceptual framework, it is imperative
that discussions about effective instructional practices in historically and systemically
marginalized settings and the impact of teachers’ biases on students’ academic, social, and
psychological development permeate every course in teacher education programs (Kumar &

46
Lauermann, 2018). This action research study was a step in that direction for my own teacher
education context.
Participants and Setting
This study utilized a purposeful sampling strategy so as to provide information that is
particularly relevant to my research questions and goals (Maxwell, 2013). The participants were
a purposeful subgroup of first-year district intern teachers who were willing to be part of the
study and eager to work together to learn about critical reflection and racial literacy. As part of
this action research study, it was my hope that this information-rich purposeful sample would
teach me how to lead and teach a group of new teachers how to unearth their deficit ideologies.
Upon receiving IRB approval, I reached out to a colleague who recruited the potential
participants by sending a blanket email to the entire cohort asking for volunteers to contact me
using my USC email address. Candidates who agreed to be part of the study received a
confirmation email individually so as to protect their confidentiality. The study began with seven
volunteers but two left after the first session leaving a group of five total intern participants.
Participants
For the purpose of this research study, I chose to work with first-year District Intern
participants from the district intern program as they learned to reflect on how their perceptions of
their students shaped their practice. I contended that this reflective practice would better position
them to develop critical consciousness and work to build their racial literacy. The district intern
program enrolled education specialists, multiple subject, and single subject cohort members. This
group of intern teachers worked in public district or charter schools, ranging from pre-school to
high-school and adult transition settings. To become intern eligible, all first-year interns must be
hired as the contracted teacher of record for their school sites. Given my role as a coordinator of

47
the program, the first-year intern participants were an appropriate population to recruit in this
action research.
At the time of the study, there were 80 first-year District Interns. However, for this study
I recruited seven participants to engage in the actions of reflection and development of their
critical consciousness. This was a small enough group to allow the development of a community
of learners, but one where participants could engage with others in public reflection (Raelin,
2001). As mentioned above, although I recruited seven original volunteers, the study ended with
five intern participants. At the time of the study, my predominant role as coordinator was to
provide support to the interns by reviewing their course progress and meeting the requirements
of their clinical practice. The timing of this study aligned with the ever-present need to make
changes to the coursework as mandated by the accreditation standards for the state of California.
As evidenced by their willingness to volunteer to participate, I purposefully chose participants
who showed an interest in the study topic, and wanted to learn ways to demonstrate commitment
to developing a critical consciousness. Because the group of participants came to this study with
varied levels of understanding of the content, which in my study was deficit ideologies and
critical reflection, I enacted andragogical moves that supported them as they moved toward
critical consciousness and racial literacy. My efforts focused on collecting data using my own
critical reflections and how that can more specifically guide the andragogical moves needed to
both teach and support the participants in their development of critically reflective practices
related to the effect of their ideologies on their practice. Table 2 provides more information on
the intern participants who volunteered for this study.

48
Table 2
Intern Participant Information
Intern
participant
Gender Ethnicity First language spoken Los Angeles County
teaching site
Bette Non-binary White Turkish and Russian transitional school
Carl Male White English charter school
Jack Male White English charter school
Ruth Female White Arabic school district
Angie Female Black English school district

Setting of Actions
The action cycles of this study took place at the end of a contractual workday, for both
the participants and myself, on Tuesdays from 6:30–8:30 p.m. via Zoom, an online conference
platform. I sent a selection of weekdays and times that fell outside of the intern participants’
teacher preparation program days and evening time slots. The chosen day and time were dictated
by the candidates’ intern program course schedules, so as not to interfere with their Monday and
Wednesday evening courses. The benefit of using Zoom was that it allowed participants to take
part from anywhere they felt comfortable. Prior to beginning the study, I informed my direct
supervisor, in an effort to be ethically transparent. There is no organizational IRB process to
which I needed to adhere, but as my supervisor, I wanted to make sure they knew about my
work, even though it was all conducted outside my contractual hours.

49
Actions
While in this study, participants engaged in six group sessions via Zoom, for 90 minutes
each. The sessions spanned across three action research cycles. The first cycle was divided into
two group meetings that focused on the participants’ co-creation of group norms and guidelines,
definition of brave space, and the introduction to participant positionality. In the second cycle,
the two group sessions focused on the participants learning about and addressing their biases and
then using that information to examine how those played out in perpetuating deficit ideologies
about their students. During that cycle, participants were asked to become more aware of and
discover the oppression experienced by marginalized students and what they actively did as
educators to mitigate oppressive acts in the classroom. In the final cycle, the sessions introduced
critical reflection and asked the participants to distinguish between types of reflection. Using an
experience taken from their classroom, the intern participants wrote a reflection and ultimately
revised it to be more critical so as to help in developing their critical consciousness. The intern
participants were placed in small breakout rooms in pairs to share their revised versions of their
quick writes and answered questions related to the similarities and differences between them. By
engaging in content about deficit ideologies and colorblind perspectives in the United States and
analyzing their reflections for descriptive, comparative, and critically reflective aspects, I
contended that they would begin to work towards developing their critical consciousness. The
detailed description of the action cycles is described in Table 2, and draft lesson plans are
included in Appendix A.
50

Table 3
Description of Action Cycles

Cycle 1
Co-constructing norms and guidelines/
creating a brave space/unpacking
positionality
Cycle 2
Addressing and interrogating
biases/merging educational ideologies
Cycle 3
Analyzing bias, similarities and
differences
Session 1 Session 3 Session 5
Background of dissertation

Establish learning conditions-
co-construction of group norms

Brainstorm connotations of brave vs. Safe
space

Reflection #1

My apology

Definitions and examples of ideologies

Common sense discussion

Reflection #3

New York Times video: Bias

Quick write revise using Jay & Johnson
as guide

Breakout room – pairs for quick write

Whole group discussion of
commonalities and differences in
participant writings.

Action researcher critical reflection #1
post Session 1
Action researcher critical reflection #3 post
Session 3
Action researcher critical reflection #5
post Session 5
Session 2 Session 4 Session 6

51

“Circle of Objects” activity

Continued maintenance of a brave space
by revising norms.

“i am from” poem

Defining identity in relation to others

Reflection #2

Introduce exclusionary practice and bias

Minoritization of space/low expectations

Introduce Jay & Johnson typology

Reading on colorblindness

Group discussion-colorblind
perspective

Padlet activity – final debrief and plans
for their teaching context

Final open-ended questions

Action researcher critical reflection #2
post Session 2
Action researcher critical reflection #4 post
Session 4

Cycle 1 literature
Aguilar (2020), Arao & Clemens (2013),
Brookfield (2016, 2019), Mezirow (1990)
Northouse (2016), Spikes (2018), Tharpe
& Gallimore (1988)
Cycle 2 literature
Aguilar (2020), Bartolome (2009), Drago-
Severson & Blum-DeStefano (2017), Jay &
Johnson (2002). Larivee (2008). Mezirow et
al. (1991).
Cycle 3 literature
Brookfield (2016, 2019), Jay & Johnson
(2002), Larivee (2008), Loughran,
(2006), Mezirow et al.(1991) Rodgers
(2002)

52
Data Collection and Instruments/Protocols
In order to examine the process and progress in teaching and supporting my intern
participants in developing their skills in critical reflection on their deficit ideologies to work
towards critical consciousness, I used both observations of all Zoom sessions, my critical
reflections, and participant reflections. The primary form of data collection included the fully
transcribed recorded Zoom meetings after given permission from the intern participants which
helped inform field notes and analytic memos. The recorded Zoom meetings helped me analyze
the action while in the field, including all interactions between all participants. Utilizing the
Zoom transcriptions of conversations during each one-hour session, I took descriptive field notes
on both my behavior as the researcher and instructor and that of the participants. Having the
benefit of recorded sessions meant that I could review the transcript for specific information in
multiple instances. These observations allowed me to triangulate emerging findings that were
used in conjunction with jottings written during the sessions and in reviewing the evidence of
participant critical reflections (Maxwell, 2013).
In addition, critical reflections written by me as the action researcher and participant
reflections, quick write, and the Padlet activity made up the other primary forms of data
collection. In order to examine how I supported the intern participants in examining their biases,
I analyzed the intern participants’ reflection for evidence of meeting the session objectives and
making progress towards the short-term goals stated in the conceptual framework. I engaged in
critical reflections so as to uncover my own biases, assumptions and deficit ideologies, as well as
any power dynamics between me and the intern participants or new awareness in relation to my
learners. Engaging in critical self-reflection pushed me to consider the behaviors, actions, and
andragogical moves I chose to enact while facilitating my intern participants’ learning. Finally,

53
data collected during the final meeting session included responses to open-ended questions
where the intern participants provided anonymous feedback on my teaching and leadership for
the purpose of my own self-study and continued growth. In the sections below, I explain each of
these data sources more thoroughly.
Observational Fieldnotes
I documented interactions with the participants through comprehensive fieldnotes that
emerged from my jottings including any informal conversations or data outside of recorded
Zoom sessions. During the live Zoom meetings, I used jottings to capture information that were
not picked up by the Zoom recording as well as writing specific words and phrases I wanted to
discuss later. I made notes of body language, facial expressions, voice tone and gesturing. I then
wrote them out more fully after the sessions were complete. Using a combination of descriptive
and reflective fieldnotes, I captured information about the setting, participant actions and
conversations, in addition to my frame of mind, ideas, and concerns, called observer comments
(OC). Observation was important to my study and key to recording behavior as the actions in
Table 2 were happening (Maxwell, 2013). Thoroughly reviewing recordings aided me in noticing
things that might have been routine to the intern participants as well as spotting body language
that helped me to understand the context of the situation. For example, I observed active
listening behavior like nodding in the affirmative and animated confirmation of agreement. I also
saw intern participants shake their heads or look surprised when their cohort members were
sharing. The intern participants rarely wrote in the chat box during Zoom sessions so this was not
a main source of data. By using observations of our sessions, I analyzed the level of support or
intervention that I needed to use as I planned for upcoming sessions as well. Utilizing
observational data also helped me triangulate emerging findings (detailed in Data Analysis

54
section) and helped me to substantiate findings in the analysis of other documents used in this
study. I observed the six Zoom sessions in their entirety for a total of approximately 18 hours of
observational data. The multiple data passes and subsequent observer comments helped me find
rich findings that are discussed in more specificity below.
Documents and Artifacts
Documents and Artifacts were also a key data source. The participant documents and
artifacts collected during the sessions were as follows: four reflections per participant that were
guided by critically reflective prompts that I provided; a quick write detailing an exclusionary
practice experienced by the intern participant, the revision of that quick write after the
introduction of the Jay and Johnson typology, anonymous Padlet answers as a culminating
activity in Session 6, and anonymous Google Form responses to the open-ended survey provided
at the end of the study. I had initially planned for the intern participants’ reflection to be critical,
however, we did not get there. It was too important to take the time for them to simply reflect on
what they were feeling and experiencing. There was powerful data found in all their reflections,
the Padlet answers at the end of the study, and the final open-ended survey questions. The data
taken from thee helped determine areas of growth for me as well as the intern participants. One
question from the open-ended survey asked, “What suggestions, if any, do you have for how I
could support your identification of personal assumptions in education?” Time for participants to
engage in reflections was provided towards the end of each 90-minute Zoom session. I wrote six
critical reflections during the study, one after each session, where I could address the ways in
which I was meeting or missing the objectives set as the action researcher for each study session.
An example of a critical reflection prompt following the “I Am From” activity was, “How did I
support the intern participants in critically thinking about their identity?”

55
Data Analysis
Data were analyzed both while in the field and after the data collection phase was
completed. While in the field, preliminary analyses were conducted after multiple passes of the
Zoom transcriptions, followed by analytic memoing, which informed my andragogical and
leadership actions in the next cycles of the action research process. For example, if I noticed a
reflected on a need to change my approach, I would then make changes before starting the next
cycle of actions. There was a benefit to seeing things first-hand and using my own knowledge
and expertise in interpreting what I had observed in the recordings and in real-time (Maxwell,
2013). Analyzing the fieldnotes and the intern participants’ reflections enabled me to reflect on
how well my actions facilitated movement towards building their critical consciousness and
racial literacy. For example, the intern participants’ reflections helped me see that initially I was
not honoring the norms/guidelines set by the group. As explained in more detail in the Findings
section, because I started by being teacher-centered, I had not read the interns’ first reflections in
which they shared with me how they learned best. Had I read the first selection of intern
participant reflections, I could have moved out of such a teacher-centered climate which lasted
for the first two sessions. The study sessions were hosted every other week to give me time to
review the transcriptions and conduct multiple passes of the data in order to develop more
specific observer comments. After each session, I wrote an analytic memo that served to guide
future sessions as I gleaned more information on the current understandings of the intern
participants. For example, the first memo after Cycle 1 led the major shift in andragogical moves
needed to develop a more learner-centered teaching approach.
Once the action research was completed and I was out of the field, data were coded using
thematic analysis (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). For example, analyzing themes across the

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documents in the study helped to demonstrate whether the participants were moving into a better
understanding of bias and assumptions. By reviewing my own critical reflections and analytic
memos, I was able to realize that I had been performing under a deficit ideology of my interns. I
analyzed the unconscious nature of how my own biases were being perpetuated in the teacher-
centered moves that I had made during the first cycle of the study. Reviewing data such as the
percentage of time each participant had been speaking helped to support the moves out of
teacher-centered approaches into learner-centered. The coded observer comments and
reflections, in tandem with the end-of-cycle memos helped triangulate the major themes for the
findings noted below.
Limitations and Delimitations
One limitation to this study was my novice status as the action researcher. I was a novice
in not only the overall research process, but in the skills of understanding the data and coding
them thematically. Being somewhat inexperienced in data analysis, it was key to remember the
focus of the analysis as data continued to come in. Keeping the focus consistent and aligned with
the research question helped me build my skills in coding the data, however, there may have
been some insights that were missed as a result of my novice researcher status. Another
limitation to the study was that of time to engage in actions outlined in my conceptual framework
given my status as a doctoral student. The time in the field was only 12 weeks, meaning that as a
researcher, I needed to enact andragogical and leadership moves as well as gather rich data about
my actions and interactions with intern participants in a shorter amount of time. Again, as a
novice researcher, it was imperative that I relied on the design of the study and the research
questions to keep me grounded in gathering the necessary data in the given amount of time.
Merriam and Tisdell (2016) said that there is not necessarily a defined amount of time that the

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researcher must be in the field gathering data. Rather, it is dependent on the study itself. For this
action research study, however, a 12-week timeframe was too short considering the actions I
planned to enact and examine as well as the short-term goals I wished to reach. For example,
while I had hoped to teach and support the intern participants to engage in critical reflection,
there was not enough time to reach this goal. My participants wrote and verbally communicated
reflections, but they were not consistently critical in nature. Additionally, while my hope was to
get the interns to reflect on their biases and assumptions as well as how these shape their
practices, the first part of this process took more time than anticipated, leaving less time to make
connections to practice.
One of the delimitations of my study was that I bounded the action research to the
research questions and conceptual framework that I had created. By staying specific to the
questions and containing myself within the structure of my conceptual framework, the study was
highly specialized and not meant to be generalized to other concepts or local areas. I also
delimited the study by choosing a small group of volunteers in my own context, and as such,
knew the participants who were taking part in the study. They also voluntarily participated,
which meant that they were open to the topic of my study and interested in engaging in the work.
This study, then, did not try to engage interns who may be resistant to the ideas set forth in my
conceptual framework. Finally, due to the small group size and their willingness to participate, I
only learned how my leadership and andragogical skills impacted this cohort. I cannot assume
that my actions will be impactful to anyone else outside of this study. At the same time, this
narrow focus did enable me to learn quite a bit about myself and my own andragogical and
leadership mistakes, which I do believe I can translate to other contexts with other interns.

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Credibility and Trustworthiness
Looking at the bigger picture of the study to review credibility and trustworthiness, I first
needed to reflect on whether the research reflects reality (Milner, 2007). In order to maintain
credibility, my interpretation of that reality was accessed directly through my observations
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). Throughout the study cycles I needed to ensure that I was accurately
depicting the participants’ construction of reality as well. It was also about searching to
determine how biases play into this reality. I needed to think about myself in relation to others in
order to acknowledge the intern participants’ roles, identities, and positions that they brought to
the study. To ensure that I was not misrepresenting any participants in the study, especially those
who were racially different from me, I needed to consistently check myself to make sure I was
not practicing colorblind perspectives or culture-blind research epistemologies (Milner, 2007).
At the same time, the nature of reality or of our truths shaped and guided our ways and systems
of knowing (Ladson-Billings, 2000). This meant that I had to continuously maintain a reflexive
stance to bring the participants’ realities front and center.
During the study, I needed to reflect on the cultural and racial backgrounds of the
participants and the ways in which their intersectional racial and cultural backgrounds influenced
how they might experience the world (Milner, 2007) and how that influenced the way they came
to the group meetings. To develop authentic findings, I needed a better understanding of how my
own assumptions and biases could affect how I thought about and worked with the participants. I
had to be explicit in my critical reflections about my role and in my relationship with the intern
participants in this study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). This meant first unearthing and then
continuously checking these biases that align with my day-to-day roles as coordinator, and then
to ensure they did not encroach in the role of action researcher and instructor. In order to

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maintain my credibility in this study, I needed to be consistent in being open and vulnerable with
my participants. An inconsistency in sharing of my positionality and identity could cause the
participants to be skeptical or lose trust altogether (Brookfield, 2018).
To maximize both credibility and trustworthiness, using critical reflection was one
important strategy. Milner (2007) suggested that “researchers and participants engage in
reflection together to think through what is happening in the research community, with race and
culture placed at the core” (p. 396). Using critical reflection to center race and ability helped me
realize that power is a colorblind word. It meant holding a mirror up to myself to acknowledge
the difficult work that I had to do to make myself credible and trustworthy in the eyes of my
intern participants. If I tried to be someone different than who I was in my usual role, the intern
participants would not trust who I am as a researcher. To ensure trust for the study and myself as
the researcher, I needed to clearly articulate why the topic was so important to me and the impact
that it could have on their future as new educators as presented by the findings. It meant
communicating how education as a system needs to break away from the status quo and bring to
light the authentic and culturally relevant education so desperately needed by historically and
systemically marginalized groups of students. The district intern program took great pride in
educating teachers who were doing the work in our urban districts. The system of education
needs to change, and this study was a way to start that revolution by teaching a group of intern
participants how to not only identify their own biases and deficit ideologies but begin to work
toward learning the skills to critically reflect on their teaching so as to ultimately change their
practice.
Finally, it was important to increase credibility of the study by triangulating data. Using
multiple forms of data collection methods, such as those listed in the Data Collection section, I

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was able to review fieldnotes taken during observations in the sessions and compare them with
the artifacts created by the participants and myself. By triangulating this data, it allowed me to
cross check that the findings were accurate. For example, I reviewed the data from intern
participants’ specific reflection answers against the Zoom transcriptions to find evidence of their
personal analysis of bias. I then triangulated that with observer comments that I had written
during data analysis of a specific session. In order to be considered a credible and trustworthy
researcher meant taking enough time to thoroughly analyze the data collected during the study to
report findings that captured the intern participants’ experiences in the sessions. In addition to
observations and critical reflections, I ended the study with open-ended questions for the intern
participants to answer anonymously in order to give me feedback on my teaching and leadership
for the purpose of my own self-study and continued growth. While I acknowledge the limitations
of asking those I lead and teach to evaluate my leadership and teaching, informed by
Brookfield’s notion of a student lens and teachers asking for feedback via anonymous
backchannel approaches, I believe it was important to gather feedback from my learners as yet
another credibility check.
Ethics
One of the greatest ethical demands as researchers is taking responsibility for how our
practices affect the lives of our collaborators (Herr & Anderson, 2015). Focusing specifically on
my role as a leader of instruction, for the purpose of this study, I had to be cognizant of the
power dynamics between me and the intern participants as well as addressing any possibility of
coercion in the process. My goal in this study was to work with the participants in a stance of
authentic collaboration involving the interests of all involved (Herr & Anderson, 2015). This
meant that I needed to consistently acknowledge and communicate that everything I did in the

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study was only carried out with participant approval and informed consent. Any data collected
during the study and recorded on Zoom were private and would not be published with
identifying information. Although I was the researcher asking them to participate in this study, I
did not, at any time in the process, want them to feel as if I had used my power to pressure
participation. A relational ethic means being aware of one’s own role and impact on relationships
and treating intern participants holistically. My participants were not to be considered as
nameless test subjects. These were fellow educators whose participation was valued. Every
aspect of the study, whether it be the recruiting and sampling of participants, the observation data
collected from conversations or various reflections were valuable and done in ways to honor the
participants informed consent.
Speaking to the ethical issues of data collection in this study, I explained to the
participants that this study was voluntary, and that they could leave it at any time without that
decision affecting their standing in the intern program or in their relationship with me. In fact,
two of the seven initial participants decided to leave the study after two sessions. It was also
imperative to continually and clearly communicate that all data collected during this study were
solely for the purpose of my dissertation and did not affect their progress in the teacher
preparation program. I included in the communication about this study that the data collected and
analyzed might be helpful to the future design of the teacher preparation program and new
teachers in the future. If the research is ethical, information learned from the data can provide
theoretical background information and guidance on how best to develop curriculum to be added
in order to move the teacher preparation program further in terms of teaching culturally relevant
pedagogy. Although this study did not hold include risk, it was communicated to participants that
the discussion and reflection on race and racism could incur feelings of vulnerability in some

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intern participants. I informed participants that as they became more comfortable in the sessions,
conversations that brought about stronger emotions could take place. The reflections of such
conversations could be more private in nature. Because of this, the dissemination of data
presented as confidential was key. In order to receive rich data, intern participants needed the
guarantee that the information they provided was safe from identification. As such, in this
document and any other dissemination products, I do not/will not share participants’
contributions during sessions or their reflections without de-identifying them.
Findings
In this section, I will present my findings to the following research question: How do I
teach and support my intern participants to critically reflect on how their unconscious biases
shaped by deficit ideologies of their students affect their practice to develop their critical
consciousness? This chapter will describe the findings chronologically and divided into two
parts. In the first part, titled Action and Reaction, I address the extent to which the initial sessions
were unnecessarily teacher-centered and the andragogical changes I had to make to move away
from this style of teaching. Only then could I engage my intern participants in examining how
their unconscious biases and assumptions shaped their ideologies about their students. The
second part of the findings section, titled Areas of Growth and Reflection, discusses the growth
in both the participants and me because of the shift into learner-centered teaching, including
examples of the nascent stages of transformative learning as evidenced by my own and the
participants’ reflections. The data used to inform my findings include: my own critical
reflections from the action research, participant critical reflections, session transcriptions,
analytic memos, a participant-completed open-ended questionnaire, and participant answers from
a Padlet activity during one of the sessions.

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Part I: Action and Reaction
Through my action research, I created and facilitated six small group sessions that
focused on teacher learning and addressed common biases and assumptions in education, as they
shared experiences from their classroom contexts. The aim of these sessions was to teach and
support the intern participants to become aware of their own biases and assumptions. In this
section I will demonstrate how I used in-the-field analysis of my critical reflections and multiple
passes at the observational data from Cycle 1 to realize that I needed to shift how teaching was
enacted during the sessions to meet the goals I had set out to accomplish. I had written lengthy
lesson plans prior to the start of fieldwork for this action research. As we moved through the first
cycle, there was evidence of the multiple times that I spoke long monologues in teacher-centered
lectures, thus not allowing the interns to engage in critical reflection and dialogue themselves,
which was, as shown in my conceptual framework, a key part of the proposed sessions. This
section will also discuss how all future lesson plans were changed considerably upon realizing
the limitation of a teacher-centered approach.
In this action research I changed from direct instruction to facilitated learning in future
sessions to make progress toward the outcome as stated in my conceptual framework. Although
participants, as novice teachers, were excited to learn new information coming into the study, the
first cycle was designed and taught in a way that reflected my own deficit mindset about the
intern participants, which will be described later in this section. I realized that until that deficit
mindset was addressed and I decentered myself in the sessions, I would not be able to teach and
support the intern participants to uncover their own biases and assumptions to work towards
critical consciousness. Therefore, I stepped back and restructured how the sessions were

64
designed. I centered questioning and analyzing educational assumptions and biases in practice,
thus positioning the interns for growth.
Finding 1: Starting With Teacher-Centered Instruction and the Journey Out
When I began Session 1, I was armed with newly learned research on how to effectively
teach adults. For instance, Brookfield (1995) wrote that there are four major research areas that
make up an espoused theory of adult learning that inform our preparation of adult educational
leaders: self-directed learning, critical reflection, experiential learning, and learning to learn.
However, I began the study instructing the intern participants as if I had not learned any
information on how to teach adults. I determined what information was necessary for the intern
participants to learn. There are three areas within this finding that support my claim that I was
teacher-centered throughout Cycle 1. First, I will describe how I perpetuated the power
differences by communicating that I was the holder of all the knowledge. Second, I will provide
evidence that the design of the session plans communicated that I was the only person to impart
the wisdom that ultimately led to a teacher-centered instructional approach. Finally, I will
describe the disorienting dilemma I experienced when I realized that I was not using a learner-
centered teaching approach.
Perpetuating the Power Dynamic
When I began the study, there were existing power structures between the intern
participants and me because I was their teacher preparation program coordinator and now their
teacher. I was determined to eliminate the usual power dynamics that are typically reproduced in
higher education classrooms. However, the data from Session 1 suggested that I maintained the
existing power differentials between teacher and intern participant. I did this by centering myself

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as the teacher. In the examples below I demonstrate how I used language in my teaching
dialogue to reproduce the common societal assumptions of teacher power.
Introducing Myself and the Study. One way that I perpetuated the power dynamic
between me, and the intern participants was in how I described myself and the study. In the first
example, the selections are taken from my dialogue as I introduced myself and the study, my
rationale for choosing interns to participate in my study, and my hopes for the outcome of the
study. This took place at the beginning of the first night after everyone had entered the Zoom
room. Although my monologue went on for longer than what I am presenting below, I have
included this extensive excerpt of my dialogue to demonstrate the length of time I took giving
the intern participants extraneous information on aspects of the study. Much of this information
was not important for the intern participants to know and only served to distance me from them.
My introductory lecture began with me thanking the intern participants for taking the time to be
part of the voluntary study. I was extremely nervous beginning the first session, and I spoke for
over 16 minutes without stopping. In the vignette below, I provide part of my dialogue to
demonstrate how I was continuing to perpetuate the power differential between myself and the
intern participants.
I want to thank you so much for taking this journey with me. I'm going to share a little bit
about the study and why I'm doing it before we even get to know each other even better.
But I have felt my life change since I have been part of this doctoral program and I turned
50 during this program. I know as we get older, we learn a lot more about ourselves. But
I do have to say that in the classes and the activities, and getting to know my cohort, and
having amazing professors that created this concentration, I've learned so much more
about myself. I'm hoping (I did this for the last almost three years, and we will only have

66
12 weeks together) but I'm hoping that it'll be the start of something wonderful for you. I
chose my first-year interns because I feel that some of the things that we're going to talk
about and learn about ourselves are just going to make you an even better teacher.
Sometimes with doctorates, you do your doctoral (program), you know, study, and it's
just a very small glimpse into something. That's it, and you get your degree! And I so
didn't want that. I wanted something that would carry on over time. What you, this
mighty group, is going to do is not only learn hopefully more about yourself and as a
teacher, but then to create change that will ripple out to four years in a teacher prep
program.
In my introductory comment I told the intern participants that my life changed because of
the doctoral program, which put a barrier between me and the interns who weren’t in a doctoral
program. I said, “I have felt my life change, since I have been part of this doctoral program and I
turned fifty during this program.” By stating that I was in a doctoral program, I was upholding
the power dynamics and highlighting how I was different from and higher than them on the
educational hierarchy. I was occupying a space that Brookfield (2021) calls innate superiority as
I unconsciously acknowledged my superior level of education in the doctoral program. I shared
about my life-changing experience with them, but I did so by layering in additional power and
privilege reflected in my identity. For example, I said “I turned 50 during this program.” By
naming my age, I implied that the intern participants, some of whom were most likely younger
than me, that I was older and knew better. I then said, “I did this for the last almost 3 years, and
we will only have 12 weeks together,” which also highlighted that I knew more because I had
been enrolled in a doctoral program and engaged with these concepts for 3 years. Finally, when
explaining why I chose them as my participants, I said “I chose my … first year interns.” By

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using the word “my,” I highlighted the fact that I was a coordinator in the program, thus
perpetuating the power dynamics between me and the interns.
The next example is taken from the same session 11 minutes later where I was still the
only person speaking. In the narrative of my conceptual framework, I discussed the concern that
I had with whether I could minimize the power differentials between the intern participants and
me. I remember being very preoccupied with this when I spoke to them that first night. I said, “I
am the coordinator of your program, but in this [the study] it is not about that ... consider me
another cohort member.” My preoccupation with minimizing the teacher power was evident
when I told them NOT to think of me as their coordinator, but as a first-year intern. I thought that
I could disrupt the dominant narrative in which knowledge flows one way, from teacher to
student, working under the premise that facilitators [teachers] should demonstrate openness as a
means of decentering dominant narratives (Arao & Clemens, 2013). Unfortunately, I highlighted
the power dynamics that existed between us by calling attention to the fact that I was the
coordinator of the program in which they were enrolled. By simply suggesting that they forget
my present role as coordinator of their teacher preparation program, I thought they would
consider us as equals.
In addition to the preoccupation with power relationships, I was focused on establishing a
climate conducive to minimizing them. I felt the need to try to persuade the intern participants
that the sessions were unstructured and informal. The last piece of evidence in this section
demonstrates how I communicated to the intern participants that the study was not going to be
anything like a class. I said, “These [study sessions] are very informal ... do not think of them
like a workshop, even if I call them sessions.” Continuing to try to persuade the intern
participants away from the idea of formal class sessions, I said, “It is just time for us to come

68
together.” Describing the sessions as “informal,” I tried to convince the intern participants that
the study sessions would not resemble any of their past classes or workshops. I believed that the
power differential between us would disappear if I described what we would be doing as
informal. Feeling the need to create a power-free climate, I thought that I could simply tell the
intern participants that providing “time for us to come together” would make us equals.
However, by adding “even if I call them sessions,” I highlighted the power I had in creating and
naming the sessions. As the facilitator, I believed that if I could change the intern participants’
perspective on the power dynamic between us by simply saying it was not there, we could move
on to deeper conversations. I was trying so hard to lessen the power dynamic, that I was not
aware how my words were doing the opposite. In an oxymoronic statement, I continued, “I am
wearing a different hat, I am the coordinator of your program, but it’s not about that. I want to
share what I have learned. I am a novice too.”
The three examples above help to provide evidence that I communicated to the
participants that I held the power in the space I was creating, despite my preoccupation with
providing an inclusive, power-free space. Although I wanted to create a space that would break
down power dynamics between me and the intern participants, I reverted to the teacher-as-all-
knowing stance by spending much of the first session doing most of the talking and
unintentionally perpetuating the power dynamics between me and the interns. My choice of
words and inclusion of dominant identity markers such as my age and my status as a doctoral
candidate highlighted rather than minimized the power differentials.
Teacher-Centered Lesson Plans. A second way that I perpetuated the power dynamics
between my intern participants and me was through the development of teacher-centered lesson
plans. Prior to the first session, I developed very detailed lesson plans in which I wrote the

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dialogue to be read verbatim as we moved through the planned activities. The examples below
are excerpts taken from the Session 2 lesson plan. These selections help demonstrate how I
scripted instruction that ultimately guided a teacher-centered direct instruction approach. Since
the lesson plans were written in a way that supported a teacher-centered instructional style, I
maintained the power and the intern participants were not provided an opportunity to shape the
sessions or any time for engaging in a student-centered way. Instead, I determined how the intern
participants would learn.
The activities that took place during the session I present below included an opening
activity where each intern participant shared an item of personal importance, a review of norms
and guidelines, and the “I Am From” poem activity. At the end of the lesson, intern participants
were given time to complete the second individual (critical) reflection. Figure 3 is the guiding
script where I detailed how I would welcome the intern participants into the second session of
the study. I planned the first agenda item to include what Brookfield (2021) calls the “Circle of
Objects” activity. Each person in the session was instructed to bring an object that held
importance or communicated something about their individual identity. The plan included a
script that I read giving the intern participants the reasons why the activity was used and the
connections that it had to race and identity.

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Figure 3
Screenshot: Lesson Plan Script for “Circle of Objects”

The beginning of this lesson plan shows the scripted introduction to the “Circle of
Objects” activity. The plan in Figure 3 directed me to read from the “script” with exact words
written: “Let’s start with [any of the participants] and continued by asking who would like to go
next.” Once each member of the group had shared their object, the plan directed me to read a
script that explained the rationale for the activity. I included in the plan dialogue, “There are two
primary reasons why we did this exercise, other than introductions.” The script then provided the
two reasons:
First, we want to understand the different experiences of race and racism that are in this
room so that we can try to identify and develop possible points of common connection.

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Second, we want to build on the intersections we discover to explore steps we can take to
combat racism.
The example of teacher-centered instruction was evident in this part of the script where I
gave the reasons for the importance of such as activity. As I read through the data, I realized that
I was working under an assumption that the student’s role was to receive the transmitted
knowledge. Much like Freire’s (1970) concept of “banking model,” I worked under the
assumption that learning was simply a matter of depositing information into learners’ brains. It
was one thing to explain how things are done, but adult learning needs instruction to go beyond
didactic teaching. I was so focused on giving all the information to the intern participants that I
was afraid to leave the plans open in the fear that it might appear that I did not know the
information. I was the one who determined how the information was produced and displayed.
Instead of scripting every word, I could have created a learner-centered environment by asking
the intern participants why such an activity was a good idea after they had engaged in it. By
removing the rigid scripting from the lesson plan, I could have facilitated a discussion asking for
the intern participants’ perspectives. The goal of the lesson was to begin conversations about
identity and race. The “Circle of Objects” could have been an opportunity for the intern
participants to talk about why the item was significant to their identity (Brookfield, 2021). I
should have planned for open-ended questions in the plan and a space for the intern participants
to make connections between the activity, their identities, and the reasons for doing the activity
together. Giving the intern participants the reasons was an example of passive instruction and is
limiting as a means of teaching adults (Fink, 2013). Active learning, on the other hand, moves
beyond the teacher covering the material in lectures and into learning activities that are

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experiential in nature (Fink, 2013). While the activity itself engaged my learners, the scripted
monologue at the end of my lesson plan positioned me as the holder of knowledge.
Moving down the lesson plan, I wrote another script to guide the co-construction of
norms/guidelines for discussion. My intention in this part of the lesson was to review the
norms/guidelines introduced and discussed the first night. I developed the activity to review the
five agreed upon norms, and then talk about an additional item I had added called canvassing for
common ground (Brookfield, 2016). Canvassing for common ground is an exercise introduced
by Brookfield and Preskill (2016). It was designed to be used during controversial or contentious
discussions where it is easy to get locked into disagreement. It focuses on identifying areas of
agreement that can become the beginning points for more constructive exploration. The sixth,
added norm was included to provide a means for working through discussions if participants
became triggered or angry. Figure 4 shows the discussion where we reviewed the
norms/guidelines and identified suggestions for additions, changes, or revisions.

Figure 4
Screenshot: Lesson Plan Script for Norms/Guidelines Review

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While the title of this discussion was “Review Co-Constructed Norms/Guidelines for
Revisions, Changes, or Additions,” when I said, “you will see that I have added the sixth norm,
canvassing for common ground” I demonstrated that I unilaterally chose the additional norm, and
thus, it was not “co-constructed.” Though I had “reviewed the data” and mentioned I was
committed to “stepping back,” I chose the direction that I wanted to go with the lesson and
maintaining a teacher-centered approach. This session ended with a scripted dialogue where I
said, “If and when this [a heated discussion] does happen, I will teach this exercise.” There were
two reasons for designing the norm by myself rather than allowing for a discussion with the
interns. First, I was afraid of my novice abilities in talking and teaching about race. Being a
White educated woman in a culturally diverse study group, my self-efficacy in working through
controversial conversations was low so I thought I needed a concrete strategy. It was more about
my own insecurities than what I felt the group needed. Additionally, I was legitimately scared to
talk about race. I was projecting my fear of conflict onto the intern participants. By spending so
much time and effort in studying about and using the strategy of canvassing for common ground,
I perceived the activity as a solution to any discomfort that we might encounter. I continued to
hold the power, speaking for the entire group deciding what norms needed to be adopted instead
of doing what the title of the lesson segment was: to “co-construct.” Second, the fear of conflict
made me reluctant to speak about racism and the emotions that could surface as part of the
conversations. I was worried about what Brookfield (2018) described as the messy, distressing,
and uncomfortable discussions of racism. Worried that I would not know how to teach through
conflict, I took it upon myself to design a way to handle it, which is exactly why the sixth
discussion agreement was added. I could have asked the intern participants what they wanted to
add, thus centering true co-construction.

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The last example from the Session 2 lesson plan was the scripted transition into the “I
Am From” poem activity. After I read the dialogue, I planned to share a PowerPoint slide that
gave some background information on self-knowledge and the directions for starting the “I Am
From” poem. The plans then moved into asking the intern participants to share their individual
poems.

Figure 5
Screenshot: Lesson Plan Script for “I Am From” Activity

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The scripted plan for the transition to the “I Am From” activity said that,
It is important as educators to demonstrate compassion and understand that much of the
ignorance around race and racism is largely due to institutional and societal oppression
and not individual intent (Spikes, 2018). This next activity helps us recognize that we all
have been socialized by these oppressive systems in various ways.
The scripting in this excerpt did not demonstrate active learning, because the plans did not
provide for learners’ direct engagement with the material. John Dewey and his colleagues
believed that humans should come to know information through interacting with the real world
(Oakes et al., 2019). I wrote the dialogue into the plan to give the information I thought
necessary about the activity leaving little room for interaction between the intern participants or
me. This is evidenced when I read Klein’s (2019) words, “This exercise is about introducing
yourself after reflecting individually on many different parts of your identity” (p. 89). To provide
active learning opportunities, I should have planned for a discussion that engaged the intern
participants in connecting the rationale for the activity with identity and race. As detailed above,
I developed long, scripted dialogue to ensure that I covered what I thought were the pertinent
information. The scripts acted like a crutch which positioned me to move through the sessions,
maintaining teacher-centered instruction and ultimately perpetuating the power dynamics
between myself and the intern participants.
Plans Lead to Evidence of Teacher-Centered Instruction. The scripted lesson plans
for the first two sessions described above prompted the teacher-centered instruction that
followed. The examples below were taken from the Zoom transcription from Session 2. The
transcription captured my dialogue as I transitioned from a discussion about personal identity
traits to a brief description of critical reflection. The teaching examples that I provide below

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demonstrate how the actions I took directly mirrored what was written and designed in the lesson
plans described in the section above, thus demonstrating how I was constrained by them.
In the norms, which we’re going to look at in a second is “Be present.” I thought I knew
what that definition meant, as a teacher, “Oh, yeah, we need to be present in the
classroom with our kids.” Well, there’s, there's a lot to being present ... to critically
reflect, we need to be present. So tonight. I mean, I do objectives just because yes, there
is something I have a main point for tonight. But we’re going to not spend tons of time.
But as much time as we need, looking at and possibly revising our norms and guidelines
that we talked about last week. I’m going to have you get out your journal. I want you to
draw on that as we look at our list of norms. You'll notice the sixth one. And this was
something after a discussion from last time. And so, I titled it “Canvassing for Common
Ground.” And so before, but before we talk about what we can do, I want to get, I want to
get familiar with the concept first, kind of as a stepping off point. So, when we’re talking
about working within conflict, okay, now, hopefully, it’s not conflict in our
conversations, but just that feeling of uncomfortableness. When we talk about conflict,
whether it’s in a small group of colleagues that you have, or in your own classroom with
your family.
I began by using direct instruction to review the individual norms and added in some
brief information from the work of Carol Rodgers. I shared that even as a veteran teacher, I did
not know the true meaning of the word presence. I said, “One of our first norms … is ‘be
present’ and I thought that I knew what that definition meant as a teacher.” I continued, “We
need to be present in the classroom with our kids. That means not only listening carefully, but
there’s intent in your listening.” In this example, I told the intern participation what “we need” to

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do and what being present “means.” There was no room for me to listen to the intern participants
if I was focused on reading from a pre-planned, pre-scripted lesson. I was too busy attending to
what I wished for them to do. It was not until I reviewed the data from the Zoom transcriptions
that I reflected on the teacher-centered nature of my instruction.
I continued talking for five more minutes about the revision of norms and guidelines and
then reminded the intern participants about their reflections from the first night. I stated that we
were going to address the topic of identity and address things that they had in common using
another activity from the session. I said, “We’re going to talk tonight about identity and its
relation to others in an activity called “I Am From” (Klein, 2019). Reading from the scripted
plans, I remained focused on telling the intern participants the information. Instead, I should
have used discussion to create active learning opportunities to determine what the interns
perceived as important. Klein (2019) suggested that teachers use the script to read the
instructions for the “I Am From” activity, not the entire section written about the activity. This
was just one more example of many where I enacted a teacher-centered approach. It is a
characteristic of teacher-centered thinkers to see the curriculum as asserting the essential values
as a simple expression of truth (Oakes et al., 2019). As I said, “It just builds awareness as it
relates to our identity and, and how we engage with others and their identities.” My expression of
“truth” was determined by the words that I said or read out loud. I was giving them a one-sided
definition of the ways in which people understand themselves. I was not allowing anyone to
construct an understanding outside of the information that I was providing. I asked intern
participants to share their poems one after the other. I did not provide any time for them to ask
questions of each other or make comments on the others’ writings. I did not create a space where

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the intern participants could make meaning about their study members’ identities, nor to discuss
what the activity meant to them and why it was relevant.
The final example of how scripted lesson plans led to a teacher-centered approach to
teaching was taken from the same Zoom transcription, later in the session, where I began to
speak about structural racism.
You know, a theorist named Bonilla-Silva (2001) critiqued prevailing ideological
definitions of racism. He said that these definitions were too focused on individual
beliefs, and that many of the definitions fail to address the larger racialized social system,
that racism is only a part of. So, it’s not just individual identities that we’re talking about.
Take a minute to read this quote, and then allow the silence for you to think about what it
means to you.
During this session, I wanted to help the intern participants develop an understanding of the idea
of structural racism. I chose to include a quote from Bonilla-Silva (2001) that provided
ideological definitions of racism. The quote says that racism has often been focused on
individual beliefs instead of addressing the systems of racism in society. Moving further down in
my dialogue, closer to the end of the 12 minutes, I read from the lesson scripts, “When we talk
about conflict, whether it’s in a small group of colleagues or in your own classroom, there’s a
theorist named Bonilla-Silva (2001) who critiqued prevailing ideological definitions of racism.”
As argued above, having specific scripts in the lesson plans made it easy to read from them
during instruction. The exact words were spoken during the session with the intern participants
as were written in my lesson plans. The absence of active learning during the introduction of
racism, one of the most important topics of the study, could have easily jeopardized future
engagement in learner-centered instruction.

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The quote above was a descriptive example of teacher-driven direct instruction. I did not
allow for the intern participants to demonstrate their ability to be self-directed learners. One
principle of adult learning according to Collins (2004) is that adult learners are autonomous. I
needed to involve them in the learning, asking for their definition of structural racism, as a way
of using their prior knowledge and ideas so as to position them to make meaning of the term. The
topic of racism played an important role in this study given my conceptual framework and the
desire to critically reflect on deficit ideologies. Enacting a teacher-centered approach disallowed
the intern participants from developing meaning of this important concept for themselves and in
community with each other.
The teacher-dominant nature of my diatribe, including the other examples above, do not
reflect the proposed andragogical moves listed in my conceptual framework. I designed the
framework to show that I believe the andragogical moves of modeling and scaffolding would
help my learners develop new understandings. However, the only move that I was modeling was
how to stand up in front of a class and read pre-scripted lesson plans and literature. During
Session 1, I spoke for almost 75% of the 12-minute span of time. There was no evidence of
engagement strategies or checking for prior knowledge. In other words, I dominated the
instructional space.
I am not arguing that direct instruction is not effective or never needed. However, I was
mimicking what Drago-Severson (1999) called an educated practitioner; a non-enlightened
pedagogue who was the source or producer of knowledge, instead of becoming the facilitator
who helped to interpret the knowledge. I was not opening the possibilities for further learning
experiences. Learning is an interpretive process where new information is stored by the learner
relating to that information and linking it to what they already know (deWinstanley & Bjork,

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2001). To trigger learning in future sessions, I needed to facilitate processes that would scaffold
the new information that I was teaching, with ways for the intern participants to access it later.
Lecture style direct instruction is sometimes appropriate depending on the goals of the learner
and the educational content (Collins, 2004). However, one of the principles of adult learning is
that adults (and really anyone) learn best when they are active participants in the learning
process. Applying that principle meant limiting lecture, and instead spending more time
providing opportunities for discussion or sharing experiences. Prince (2019) argued that to
develop deep understanding of the important ideas, activities must be carried out in a way that
promote thoughtful student engagement. Active learning is better than traditional lectures and
increases retention of material, motivation, and the development of thinking skills; all of which
were ignored in Session 1 and 2 of the study. The examples in this section demonstrated the
teacher-centered instruction that resulted from the detailed pre-scripted lesson plans. Reading
directly from the script meant that I did not actively or intentionally engage my learners.
Disorienting Dilemma of My Own Deficit Mindsets
This section describes my realization of teacher-centered behavior and coming to terms
with the deficit mindset I had about my learners. I will provide evidence that I experienced a
disorienting dilemma that occurred just after Cycle 1. I will also demonstrate the ways in which
ignoring the “student lens” (Brookfield, 2017) kept me from moving into a learner-centered
teaching approach much earlier in the cycles. The evidence below is drawn from a critically
reflective memo that I wrote between Sessions 2 and 3. It was the catalyst to the andragogical
shift that will be described in detail in Finding 2. I began writing this critically reflective memo
to help me gain a better understanding of the data I had collected from Sessions 1 and 2.

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Today’s memo is a necessity! I just realized that throughout my session planning and in
working with my intern participants, I hold these hidden assumptions. Most importantly I
have a deficit mindset. It feels like a bad word in my mouth. What is even worse is that I
held these thoughts as I taught in the K–12 setting. As I am planning the next session
[Session 3], I realized that I have worked under an assumption. Will my instruction make
sense to the student [intern participants] if I do not give all the ideas, topics, and even
connections? I see that I was assuming that I had to really scaffold to help students learn
... I also assumed that a learner won’t understand what I am asking unless I provide ALL
the information. This is a huge shift for me. I am ashamed to admit that this deficit
ideology was moving into my work in the study. I am now extremely aware that I was
being guided by a deficit mindset of my students, child or adult. Instead of pushing them
[the students] and allowing the time to figure it out, I would automatically scaffold down
so that they could understand easily.
In the excerpt of the memo above, I began by saying, “I just realized that ... I hold these hidden
assumptions, and most importantly, deficit mindsets. It feels like a bad word in my mouth.”
Mezirow (2000) said that a disorienting dilemma is a problem that does not fit into our existing
mental models, and often catches us off-guard. I had a very visceral reaction to the assumptions I
was making about the intern participants as I unearthed my deficit mindset. I was so embarrassed
and felt very much like a fraud. I was ashamed because I thought that I had always held high
expectations for my students, when all the while, my deficit mindset unknowingly guided my
instruction.
I continued, “As I was planning the next session, I realize that I was working under an
assumption ... will my instruction make sense if I do not provide all of the information?” It was

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an epiphany when I realized that as the facilitator whose main goal was unearthing deficit
mindsets of my intern participants, I was the one harboring and communicating low
expectations. Mezirow (1978) explained that a disorienting dilemma is a triggering process that
works to initiate transformational learning. My realization was in fact “triggering” because past
teaching experiences came flooding back as I worked through this realization. I continued in the
memo, “This is a huge shift for me ... the deficit ideology moving into my work in the study.”
This was a point of new awareness for me. Wergin (2021) called this awareness an interruption
in homeostasis. My homeostasis, or status quo, was the unconscious deficit lens controlling the
development of the lesson plans and facilitation of teacher-centered instruction. I assumed that
the more I gave and told my learners, the better the intern participants would understand. I
believed that without my lecturing, they could not meet the objectives that I had designed.
I realized that I had been a hypocrite, and in my memo, I continued, “I now realize that I
have been guided by a deficit mindset of my students, child or adult.” Consequently, it is in this
place of learning that Wergin (2021) called the “sweet spot,” a space most conducive to
constructive disorientation. I was seeing the gap that existed in my value system (what I believed
I stood for) and the reality of my actions, or what Senge (2006) described as “espoused values”
versus “theories-in-use.” I was driven by the need to ensure that the intern participants received
the information and decided how and what they were going to learn. The final part of the memo
said, “Instead of pushing them [the students] and allowing them to figure it out, I would
automatically scaffold-down so that they could understand easily.” The deficit lens as reflected
in my comment “scaffold down” kept me focused on lesson development and instruction that
discredited the experiential knowledge of the intern participants.

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Teaching Without a Student Lens. The experience of a disorienting dilemma also
helped demonstrate that I was not fully enacting the mechanisms of action presented in my
conceptual framework. I did not listen to the intern participants long enough to change my
teaching approach. In the conceptual framework, I argued that it would be important to use the
intern participants’ voice when I engaged in their reflective prompts as a means of interrogating
their deficit ideologies. Through their self-interrogation process I could learn more about their
understandings. For example, I had intentionally planned the interns’ first reflection prompt, how
have you learned best in the past? so that I could design instruction accordingly. Rodgers (2002)
stated that teachers who are present learn to see their students’ learning and are able to respond
with the best possible next instructional move. Unfortunately, operating from a deficit lens, I did
not meet the intern participants where they were developmentally, because I was not present to
what they needed as learners. I continued in a teacher-centered manner and did not review the
intern participants’ first reflective answers, which would have alerted me to the error in my
ways.
Table 3 of the intern participants’ first reflections shows what they believed they needed
from me in order to learn. In this section, I will demonstrate how I neglected to use their
experiences of learning as a means of reflecting on my own practice to make mid-course changes
to my instructional approach. At the end of Session 1, I gave time for the intern participants to
complete their first reflection. I introduced the activity and let them know that reflections would
be a part of each session. I copied the prompts into the Zoom chat. The Session 1 reflection
prompts were created to provide feedback to help shape my practice. The prompts were not only
a means of practicing reflection but providing background information that I could use for future
sessions to better support my learners.

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Table 4
Session 1: Participant Reflections
Participants Reflections
Ruth I’ve learned best in the past from experience and through
watching others. I always try to involve myself with
others that possess the same interests as I do. Even if
all that they do does not spark an interest there is
generally something that can be learned from others. I
ask a lot of questions and look for details in the
answers that are given to me otherwise I will ask again
because I am very interested in what I am inquiring
about.
Carl It depends on the novelty of the subject matter. If it is
something I already have some familiarity with, I can
learn and make sense of it expeditiously. If it is
something new, I will have to break it down into
simpler chunks and assimilate and reflect. Then return
to the topic after a short interval (a day is usually best
for me) and see how easily the content can be
retrieved. If it is something critical, I will “pretend” I
am teaching the material I learned to someone else. If I
hand wave or stumble on presenting the material, then
there is a disconnect in my “knowledge structure” or
my understanding is incomplete.
Bette By imitating, doing, saying, making mistakes (allowing
myself opportunities for learning), by being curious in
general, by asking the right question, by asking the
wrong question, by whispering, by screaming, by
complaining, by giving grace, by questioning
ruthlessly, by questioning calmly, by comparing, by
contrasting, by analysis, synthesis, by thinking deeply,
by feeling, by loving.

Reviewing the intern participants’ reflections, I made connections between what they
were hoping to get in the learning environment to what adult learning theory says is important. In
some of the reflections, the intern participants mentioned that they learned best through
experience. For example, Ruth, who immigrated from the Middle East when she was young

85
wrote, “I’ve learned best in the past from experience and through watching others. I always try to
involve myself with others that possess the same interests as I do.” Her comment, “I always try
to involve myself with others” points to Ruth’s desire for active engagement with other learners,
which is consistent with active learning theory and Vygotsky’s socio-cultural learning theory.
She communicated being able to learn by using past experiences to help develop meaning.
Dewey (1938) claimed that not only are experiences the key building blocks of learning, but
action is an intrinsic part of the learning cycle. Carl, a White, 50-year-old male, shared that he
too learned through experience when he wrote, “If it is something I already have some
familiarity with, I can learn and make sense of it.” The relationship between experience and
learning is particularly prominent in adulthood, where we are in a continual flow of activities in
our daily life, having had more experiences than children (Merriam & Bierema, 2013). Although
I planned activities that accessed the intern participants’ perceptions of their past learning
experiences, I did not, in the first cycle, subsequently create learning opportunities that linked
their experience to how I facilitated their learning.
Other reflection responses from the intern participants aligned with reflective inquiry.
Lyons (2010) stated that reflective inquiry invites a consideration of how we know, how we learn
and to be attentive to our own awareness as we become conscious of ourselves as knowers.
Dewey (1933) said that reflective inquiry is not just the mulling over of things but stems from
several other mental processes: from stream of consciousness to the uncontrolled coursing of
ideas through our heads. Bette’s reflection response demonstrated a reflective stream of thought.
Choosing not to answer the prompts as separate sentences, they wrote, “By asking the right
question, by asking the wrong question, by whispering, by screaming, by complaining, by giving
grace, by questioning ruthlessly, by questioning calmly, by comparing, by contrasting, by

86
analysis, synthesis, by thinking deeply, by feeling, by loving.” Bette’s writing demonstrates
aspects of self-directed learning as evidenced by words like “allowing opportunities for learning”
and “questioning ruthlessly” that seems to describe Bette’s complexity and determination for
choosing their own learning path. My lengthy lectures in both Session 1 and 2 did not offer
opportunities for self-directed learning, and the teacher-centered environment I initially created
left no time for open-ended questioning. The absence of learning by inquiry meant that I was not
honoring the learning style Bette had described as their preference.
Adult learning theory promotes the concept of self-directed learning. Adults should create
personal learning objectives that allow them to set individual goals to practice using new
learning in practical ways (Collins, 2004). Carl also said he preferred self-directed learning when
he wrote in his reflection, “If it [new skill] is something new, I will have to break it down into
simpler chunks and assimilate and reflect.” He used metacognitive language to explain his
problem-solving strategies when he continued, “If it [new information] is something critical, I
will teach the material to someone else.” Adults desire course content to be relevant and practical
(Collins, 2004). Adult learners need the ability to apply what they learn. Carl’s description of
“practicing skills” by teaching them aligned beautifully with the contention that adults are
problem-centered (Collins, 2004). In the first two sessions, I failed to engage my learners with
their preferences for active learning, thus I did not follow Brookfield’s suggestion to use the
student lens to inform my practice.
Additionally, Carl’s reflection excerpt also pointed to the relationship between
motivation and adult learning. One motivating factor for learners was the need for social
relationships in learning. Carl’s acknowledgment that “I teach the material with someone else,”
demonstrated his need as an adult learner for collaborating with others. Ruth also reflected on her

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need for socialization when she wrote, “I always try to involve myself with others that have the
same interests I do” Social welfare which is the ability to improve to serve humankind and
community, much like teaching, is another motivational factor. Ruth’s reflection demonstrated
her motivation for learning when she wrote, “There is generally something that can be learned
from others ... I am very interested in what I am inquiring about.” This last part of Ruth’s
reflection (“I am very interested in what I am inquiring about”) and Bette’s reflection excerpt
also addressed a motivation for learning in what Collins (2004) called cognitive interest or
learning for learning’s sake. Bette who is mixed-race in their late thirties said she learns “by
allowing myself opportunity for learning.” The word choices of “very interested in” and
“opportunity for learning” represent a positive interest in learning. In all of these reflections, the
three intern participants provided insights into what motivated them. All I needed to do was be
present to my learners and lean into their preferred learning approaches, which were also aligned
with learning theory embraced in my conceptual framework.
The excerpts shared in this section support my assertion that by using a teacher-centered
approach during the first two sessions, I was not using the intern participants’ reflections to guide
the development of Cycle 1. Even after my learners gave me insight into their desires for
drawing on their experiences and being provided opportunities to practice and learn with others,
I continued to follow my own default, teacher-centered approach until I experienced the
disorienting dilemma explained above. Collins (2004) emphasized that teaching is not something
that is done to the learner. Had I used the intern participants’ reflections as intended, I would
have been able to engage them in their learning through experiential and self-directed learning,
which reflects both what they preferred and what is supported by adult learning theory.

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The reflection prompts provided the students’ lens for planning future teaching and
learning opportunities. Learner-centered teaching is discovering as much as you can about your
learners so that you can craft an instructional sequence that takes them deep into territory that
you feel they need to explore (Brookfield, 2017). Contrary to this approach, the examples in this
finding support my assertion that in Cycle 1 of my study, I established and maintained the power
dynamics between me and the intern participants, and I planned for and then enacted teacher-
centered instruction. While I had the wherewithal to ask for my learners’ advice about how they
preferred to be engaged, I did not actually use their advice to alter my approach during Session 2.
One of the most exciting experiences upon completion of Cycle 1 was witnessing my own
disorienting dilemma driven by my deficit mindset of the intern participants. As demonstrated
below, I contend that this disorientation was ultimately constructive, because I not only became
aware of it, but I acted on this awareness to shift my andragogical moves to better align with my
proposed theory of change.
Part II: Areas of Growth and Reflection
Part II will provide evidence of the growth of both the intern participants and me because
of the shift into learner-centered teaching, including examples of nascent stages of
transformative learning. In this section I will demonstrate how I used multiple passes of the
sessions’ Zoom transcriptions, in-the-field analysis of critical reflections, and participant
completed open-ended questions to address my disorienting dilemma and to move into a more
learner-centered teaching approach. The data will show how instruction changed at the beginning
of Cycle 2. In particular, in the following section I will use the data to show the ways that I
created a learner-centered climate. Creating this new climate meant centering the intern
participants instead of myself, which consequently provided evidence of my own growth as a

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leader and facilitator. Using my conceptual framework as a guide, the actions taken during the
remainder of the study provided my intern participants with an opportunity for learning through
dialogue, an important active learning technique.
Finding 2: Creating a Learner Centered Climate
My conceptual framework stated my desire to teach and support the intern participants to
become aware of their own biases and assumptions. In this section I will demonstrate how I
modeled vulnerability and moved into a facilitative role to help enact the andragogical moves
needed to meet the objectives of the remaining sessions and to move closer to my desired
outcome as highlighted in my CF. As mentioned in the previous finding, the lesson plans and my
subsequent instruction during the first two sessions maintained a teacher-centered learning
environment. This section will show my growth as I became aware of the limitations of my
approach. After the disorienting dilemma, described in Finding 1, I acknowledged the need for
change and began Session 3 with an apology. This pivotal moment helped me begin to establish
a learner-centered climate where the role of the instructor shifted from giving information to
facilitating student learning (Blumberg, 2004). As I transitioned from Cycle 1 into 2, I moved
from experiencing a disorienting dilemma into what Wergin (2021) called constructive
disorientation. Constructive disorientation differs from a disorienting dilemma in that it focuses
on ways to acknowledge the beliefs of the past and work toward bettering myself in the
present. Instead of feeling ashamed of and paralyzed by the deficit mindset I held about my
learners and how it constrained my andragogy, I chose to use it as an opportunity to make
changes to the way I was teaching. I then utilized more effective andragogical moves to create a
climate that was more conducive to adult learning.

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Modeling Vulnerability
The data described in this section support my assertion that by modeling my own
vulnerability, I could create a climate for transformative learning. Brookfield (2021) suggested a
scaffolding approach to teaching adults, which began with a lot of modeling, specifically
vulnerability. As the teacher, being vulnerable is the necessary first step in opening up a space
for greater risk-taking by the students (Brookfield, 2019). From there, he suggested moving
incrementally, getting people more comfortable with scrutinizing their own assumptions and
actions. This is particularly important when interrogating assumptions and ideologies.
Transformative learning around race and racism is built on trustful relationships and believing
that those inviting you into this work see you for who you really are, not for who they assume
you are or want to be (Brookfield, 2021). To create a climate for transformative learning to
occur, I started by modeling vulnerability by apologizing for how I had approached our sessions.
The opening of Session 3 began with an apology to the intern participants. It was
imperative that we did not move forward with any activities until I honored my mistakes with
transparency. As a teacher-leader, I needed to be as transparent as possible about my past actions
[in the study]. Below is an excerpt from the Session 3 transcript where I apologized to my intern
participants.
I want to start this evening with an apology. I wanted to be very transparent with you. As
I’m analyzing the data and looking at the transcriptions, there’s some things that I feel I
need to apologize for ... and some of it, a lot of it as I was reflecting and writing memos,
was that I haven’t been abiding by the norms. I have stepped up a lot, and I haven’t
stepped back. [participants’ faces are solemn, listening]. I really was lecturing a lot! And
that’s so not the space that I wanted to create! So, in an effort to teach you, I was telling,

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instead of asking ... I wasn’t using “I” statements ... I can’t do that. I need to use “I”
statements. As I was really going through what I’ve been saying in the transcriptions, a
lot came to light to me. If we want to have a brave space, so when I am talking about this
and thinking about how we can enact critical reflection, it involves challenging my
beliefs and taking myself to uncomfortable spaces. For me, that uncomfortable space
would be that I have been a teacher of children and adults for a very long time. I need to
take myself into a place where I step back, not saying as much, and not feeling like I need
to cover everything.
In the beginning of the excerpt, I emphatically stated that I wanted to start the evening by
apologizing and being transparent, which allowed me to address the various ways that I had been
teacher-centered. I said, “I want to be very transparent with you ... there’s some things that I feel
I need to apologize for ... I haven’t been abiding by the norms.” In Cycle 1 we had agreed on the
following norms: (a) Be present, (b) foster a brave space, (c) use “I” statements, (d) engage in
ongoing dialogue, (e) move up move back, and (f) give grace take grace. By referring to these
norms, I demonstrated that, as a part of the community, I, too, needed to hold myself accountable
to them. I continued, “I stepped up but I haven’t stepped back.” By directly stating my apology
and naming my mistake as not “abiding by the norms,” I was modeling vulnerability. Addressing
flaws and mistakes is a powerful tool for investigating how we function in the hierarchies around
us (Brookfield, 2019). I continued by talking about my desire for creating a brave space and the
enactment of critical reflection as a means of challenging existing beliefs. I continued speaking
about my need to change, acknowledging that I had spent too many years being teacher centered.
I said, “That uncomfortable space would be, as a teacher of children and adults, for a very long
time; I need to take myself into a place where I step back, not saying as much, and not feeling

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like I need to cover everything.” By publicly naming what was for me an “uncomfortable space”
of recognizing that I had taught in a teacher-centered way for a long time, I modeled
vulnerability and set the stage for my intern participants to hold me accountable to changing my
andragogical moves to establish a more authentic learning environment. Brookfield (2019)
suggested that teaching from mistakes in an anti-racist education requires forfeiting a degree of
power that teachers are not accustomed to being without. To create a learning climate where the
intern participants could feel brave enough to talk about their biases and beliefs, I had to
empower them to take risks. Hooks (1994) declared that the empowerment of students cannot
happen if we refuse to be vulnerable. I remembered the discomfort that I experienced as I looked
at the faces of the intern participants on their Zoom cameras. They were all intently listening, a
few with looks of concentration, but all looked surprised by me publicly addressing my faults.
Stepping Back and Becoming a Facilitator
Modeling vulnerability by apologizing publicly to the group and holding myself
accountable to the norms we had established as a group signaled a turning point in my teaching
approach. Moving away from a teacher-centered approach to one that aimed to foster
transformative learning on the part of my intern participants meant creating a climate more
conducive to such learning. To do so, I needed to make changes in my role from an all-knowing
teacher to a facilitator. This meant that a shift in power relations was needed immediately. To
disrupt the power differences I had created in the first two cycles, it was important to be
transparent about the reasons behind such changes in the environment (Brookfield, 2021).
Teachers’ beliefs have profound influences on their instructional judgements and actions and in
order to change practice in worthwhile ways, teachers must learn new strategies, but more
importantly, alter their conceptions of practice (Smylie, 1995). Saying that I was going to honor

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our norms by stepping back was a way for the intern participants to see that there was
thoughtfulness in my choices and a desire to decenter myself moving forward. It was my hope
that centering the intern participants would create a more learner-centered climate. Table 3
shows evidence that I stepped back as demonstrated by the significant decrease in the total
percentage of time that I spoke once I acknowledged how teacher centered I had been.

Table 5
Participant Speaking Percentage by Session

Participant
Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Cycle 3
Session 1 Session
2
Session
3
Session
4
Session
5
Session
6
Amy (teacher) 73% 60% 42% 48% 42% 41%
Carl 8% 7% 25% 21% 22% 23%
Ruth 5% 11% 9% 7% 5% 13%
Bette 1% <1% 20% 13% 7%
Jack <1% 4% 4% 24% 21%
Angie 1% 1% 12% 16%

Note. Blank cells denote a participant’s absence

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The data show that I started Cycle 1 talking 73% of the time, which supports the assertion
of a teacher-centered environment described in Finding 1 where I spoke significantly more than
the intern participants. However, Cycle 3 shows a 32% decrease in my speaking and an increase
in how much each of the intern participants spoke, especially the two males in the study. This
provides evidence of a more learner-centered environment where more verbal engagement was
occurring on the part of the intern participants. Stepping back meant disrupting the current
perception in teacher education that too often revolves around doing things to intern participants
rather that with them (Loughran, 2014). If I was to engage the intern participants in considering
their deficit mindsets as outlined in my conceptual framework, simple delivery of the
information about biases and assumptions would be insufficient. I wanted to create a learner-
centered climate that would help build what Mezirow (2019) called authentic relationships. Part
of stepping back and providing space for the intern participants to move up required using their
ideas and beliefs as the focus of constructing knowledge. It was my job to act as a partner,
catalyst, resource, or provider of questions (Mezirow, 2000). Learner-centered teaching is an
approach where the teacher is seen as a facilitator who strives to balance power with learners
(Mezirow, 2019). The next example vignette demonstrates how I facilitated instruction in ways
that allowed intern participants to begin interrogating their beliefs and understandings. The
excerpt below was from a discussion that we had about conscious and unconscious bias. Prior to
this discussion, the intern participants shared experiences in their teacher settings where they had
either enacted or witnessed exclusionary practices.
Amy: You thought through the experience ... how should we be aware of these
biases? So that as teachers, we do not let those biases create exclusionary
practices even if they’re unintended? What should we do?

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Ruth: I can share an example. It happened this week. Her name was Amanda, now it’s
Luis. We were doing group work; it was an activity on the book The House on
Mango Street and it was written back in the year [decades ago]. They [the
students] weren’t excited.
Amy: It was written in a different time.
Ruth: One of the activities was questions with quotes, and they were answering using
male and female [pronouns]. So, then Luis jumps up and says “What about if it
is they? (italics used for emphasis) And I was like ... “dang! I didn’t see that!” I
was like, “Well, this was written way back.”
Amy: That is a great teachable moment!
Ruth: [Speaking to how she continued with her students] At that time, in that day, it
[the term they] wasn’t acceptable ... so that’s the reason ... you [referring to
students back when the book was written] had to answer either male or female
... you could not put “they” or “LGBTQ.” Luis looked at me and was like (Ruth
smiles and mimics shaking her head laughing) “dang it miss! Okay!” But it
took me, you know!
This interaction between Ruth and me demonstrates some facilitative moves that I was
making to decenter myself and support Ruth as she shared an example from her teaching
experience. I began the discussion by asking how we (the group) should be aware of the biases
that are part of exclusionary practices in education. Asking the open-ended question, “What
should we do?” I framed the discussion for the intern participants to offer examples from their
experiences. As a means of offering support as the facilitator of learning for a group of newer
teachers, I wanted to ensure that they had space to share without feeling judged critically. My use

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of the word “we” signaled to them that all of us have biases and we all need to work to address
them in our practice. Additionally, when Ruth described using an older text, I added “it was
written in a different time,” acknowledging Ruth’s comment that “it was written back in the year
[decades ago]” and her students were not excited about the book. I continued supporting her as
she shared the discussion that took place between her and Luis. In order to maintain a positive
climate in which Ruth could continue to share and be vulnerable, I acknowledged the challenge
that she faced by saying, “It was a teachable moment,” understanding that she was exhibiting a
sense of embarrassment, expressed in her nonverbal behavior and her comment “dang, I didn’t
see that.” I wanted to create a learner-centered climate, not by judging the way she handled the
situation, but applauding the connection she was making between binary language in text with
exclusionary practices and how our own biases shape our teaching practice.
By demonstrating my vulnerability when I addressed my own mistake and holding
myself accountable to the group’s norms, I had communicated to the intern participants that they
could do the same. This then opened up the space for Ruth to also demonstrate vulnerability
when sharing an example from her practice. Ruth mirrored vulnerability as a reflection of my
own modeling earlier in the session. Ruth shared a moment that revealed her unconscious biases
related to binary gender roles by saying “Dang, I didn’t see that!” Additionally, by sharing Luis’s
words (“dang it miss! Okay!”) in response to her justification for the exclusionary language in
their text and demonstrating how he shook his head at her, Ruth showed how her student was
attempting to hold her accountable to not problematizing the binary language in their curriculum.
Ruth realized her unconscious bias when she said, “But it took me, you know?” I contend that it
was only when I moved back and took on the role of a facilitator that I allowed Ruth the space to

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describe her experience. In this interaction, Ruth showed the beginning stages of making
meaning of her unconscious bias about exclusionary language in their text.
During the data review, I coded the Zoom transcriptions in Sessions 3 through 6 for
evidence of my actions and found multiple examples of me facilitating the interns’ learning.
When the intern participants began to engage in more dialogue, we switched roles; we
reconfigured the traditional educational relationship of the teacher giving the information to the
students (Mezirow, 2009). I had begun to make changes in the learning environment itself, as
evidenced in the section above, but I also needed to ensure that I continued to be the facilitator of
their learning. The examples below will demonstrate some of the strategies that I used to keep
the learning centered on the intern participants in ways that I had not demonstrated in the first
cycle.
To maintain the learner-centered climate I began to affirm the intern participants, which
helped support the points that they were making in our discussions. The example below is taken
from Session 4 where I facilitated the discussion about bias and deficit mindsets. The intern
participants were answering a question about their students’ minoritized circumstances in the
educational setting and power relationships. The group offered examples that they had witnessed
in their own classrooms or schools. After jotting down specific information given by Angie,
Carl, and Ruth, I said,
This is a good example of why this discussion is happening today. This is wonderful! I do
not want to cut anyone off ... before I go on. [paused and gave wait time]. I am hearing
words like restrictive [Italics used for emphasis] ... and Carl, going back to when you
were talking ... that it seems that the administration really wants to be hands on [with
discipline], so I made a note of that ... it really makes me think about power ... and what

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Angie said, when you were giving the example of your daughter, and if she goes to a
buddy, the rules are one way, but for someone else, they’re not as rigid. That makes make
me think about power too!
I started by praising the intern participants on their participation and said, “This is
wonderful,” referring to the rich conversation we were having. I was excited by the ways they
were making meaning of their biases and wanted to affirm them. I paused, provided wait time
and only when no one jumped in to answer did I continue. Before beginning to frame
information, I ensured that all intern participants had the time to offer an answer by saying “I do
not want to cut anyone off ... before I go on.” Another action that supports a positive learner-
centered climate is one of mutual respect between the facilitator and the students. Allowing time
for the intern participants to share and discuss helped me demonstrate the respect that I had for
them thus cultivating a positive learning climate (Matsumura et al., 2008). I then began to
validate some of their responses and repeated back words that I was hearing them say. I said,
“I’m hearing words like ‘restrictive’”, which not only showed that I was intently listening to
what they were saying but validating the use of a term that reflects power in the context of
exclusionary practices. I then intentionally paraphrased Carl’s statement when I said, “It seems
to me that the administration really wants to be hands on” and to Angie’s comment when I said,
“the rules are one way, but for someone else, they’re not as rigid.” Building on the intern
participants’ contributions affirmed and valued their contributions and modeled the ways they
could build and validate each other. In other words, I modeled active listening as well as mutual
respect, and in so doing, I maintained a positive learner-centered climate (Matsumura et al.,
2008).

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In addition to affirming their contributions, I also used questioning to be a facilitator of
the interns’ learning. The next example demonstrates this through a discussion from Session 4. I
welcomed everyone back and mentioned that we would be continuing the conversations about
power and hegemony that had been defined the session prior. I used a digital presentation that
listed “Topics for Tonight’s Discussion: Power & Hegemony, Exclusionary Practices, Jay &
Johnson Typology, and Critical Reflection.” I began the discussion by acknowledging and
praising the powerful conversations in Session 3. I moved the digital presentation to the next
slide, titled “Space & Identity,” depicting a black and white picture of a closed eyelid that had
“identity” written across it. The vignette below demonstrates how I used questioning to become
more of a facilitator in a learner-centered space.
Amy: We are talking about space and identity. [Reading from slide] The word SPACE
indicates not only physical location, but social/historical contexts, associated
with communities. It encompasses epistemologies, behaviors, and artifacts
associated with distinct minoritized communities.
So, just giving you this brief quote [that was on the slide] to shape this context.
What does “space” mean in the context of school or education?
Angie: I think it kind of means allowing them [the students] an outlet. That outlet is like
their space to be able to express themselves. That’s what I gather from that.
Amy: Can you give an example of that?
Angie: I will say an example would be maybe, to have an open discussion about it.
Somebody that they are able to go to, and have that open discussion with.
Amy: [Jotting: open discussion/outlet] Thank you, an outlet? That’s great!
Ruth: So, are you saying that space could be identity?

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Amy: Do you want to expand maybe in your thinking process?
Ruth: Well, space could be used to develop their identity, as far as them being students
and us being a teacher, so that we can supplement their [the students'] space
based on the classroom space ... and that could help them develop their identity.
Amy: [Jotting: develop their identity ‘students’ supplement their] I really like the word
“supplement” and I really like that, especially as how you’re framing it with
students and teachers ... and supplementing not limiting.
In this interaction, I was attempting to create a learner-centered climate by facilitating a more
authentic conversation instead of simply giving the intern participants information. At the
beginning of the excerpt, I framed the subject of space with some context by providing an
alternative definition of the word so that they would connect the meaning of the word with a
classroom context. I said, “The word SPACE indicates not only physical location, but
social/historical contexts, associated with communities. It encompasses epistemologies,
behaviors, and artifacts associated with distinct minoritized communities.” We had already been
addressing hegemonic ideologies and I wanted to move into facilitating learning around biases
and exclusionary practices.
To facilitate a deeper understanding from her own experience, I asked for an example.
Matsumura et al. (2008) argued that rigorous instruction provides the learners with opportunity
to participate in classroom discussions that are built on and extend the contributions of others.
After Angie gave the example, Ruth asked me a clarifying question about identity. Instead of
giving an answer, I asked, “Do you want to expand maybe in your thinking process?” By doing
so, I could get a better understanding of the way she was trying to make meaning of the concepts
of space and identity as she listened to the contributions of her peers. I needed to establish her

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meaning of the word “supplement.” Looking at the excerpt as a whole, it is clear that the intern
participants deepened their contributions in response to the open-ended questions I posed. The
discussions had become driven by the intern participants, and they engaged in dialogue with each
other by offering examples taken from their own classroom experiences.
A final source of evidence to support the assertion that I established a learner-centered
climate are the multiple anonymous responses provided by participants at the end of the study in
the Action Research Questionnaire section. Leaving about 20 minutes at the end of the last
session, I presented the link to the questionnaire and closed the session. The purpose of the
action research questionnaire was to ask the intern participants to provide their thoughts on my
efficacy as the facilitator. Table 6 shows one of the prompts along with responses from intern
participants.

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Table 6
Action Research Questionnaire Responses
Question Intern participant response
Describe to what
extent, if at all, I
have routinely been
accountable to our
norms/guidelines in
order to keep a
brave space.
Amy was extremely open to hearing everyone’s views and was always
open to discussions from us all. I felt comfortable with anything.
I needed to express. I always felt comfortable and was able to say
what I wanted to say without judgement. This study was amazing!
I think you [Amy] have been accountable for the duration of this
study.
You [Amy] were able to lead each and every meeting according to our
created norms and guidelines.
I think you (Amy) supported us being a patient and understanding
listener.
You (Amy) supported my understanding ... by listening and providing
examples of other experiences and letting me know you understood
for whatever reason.

The anonymous answers from the participants in this action research supported my
actions to work toward facilitating a learner-centered climate. One participant said, “Amy was
extremely open to hearing everyone’s views and was always open to discussions from us all ... I
felt comfortable with anything I needed to express.” By saying I was “extremely open to hearing
everyone’s views,” this participant signaled that, while I may have started by dominating the
discussion, I ultimately created the space for them to engage and share their views. Additionally,
the other two participants responded directly to the question about being accountable to our
norms/guidelines: “I think you (Amy) have been accountable for the duration of this study,” and
“you were able to lead each and every meeting according to our created norms and guidelines.”
While Finding 1 showed that this was not true during the first cycle, making the shift during
Cycle 2 meant that, in the end, the participants felt that I did hold myself and the group
accountable to the norms/guidelines.

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The participants’ responses to this question provided evidence to support my assertion
that I created the conditions for a learner-centered climate by listening and demonstrated a level
of care for the intern participants. Wilson (2006) found that students’ perceptions of professors’
attitudes towards them showed that they were concerned about their students and wanted them to
succeed. This is evidenced when one participant said, “Amy supported my understanding ... by
listening ... and letting me know you (Amy) understood.” The comments show that I
demonstrated a level of care by listening and being patient, an aspect of teaching that was
nurturing and supportive. Meyers et al. (2009) identified behaviors frequently associated with
caring, like those described in the quote, using personal examples, incorporating humor and
smiling.
The quality of a learner-centered climate can be measured by the level of respect and
regard that facilitators show their students in discussions, opportunity for engagement, and
presence of norms and guidelines for respectful, prosocial behavior (Matsumura et al., 2008).
Employing the characteristics of a facilitator like providing affirmations to intern participant
contributions and asking open-ended questions helped establish and maintain a positive learner-
centered climate. Modeling vulnerability at the start of Cycle 2 also helped communicate to the
intern participants that emotions and admitting mistakes were not only acceptable but preferred
in order to create authentic conversations. The actions described in this finding demonstrate my
growth as I moved away from teacher-centered instruction and into more of a facilitator role. By
creating the climate for learning and modeling active listening skills, the intern participants were
mimicking that same behavior by encouraging each other to share in further conversations. The
learning centered climate could only be co-created in order for the continuing reflections and
dialogue that had taken place.

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Finding 3: Intern Participants and Transformative Learning
My conceptual framework argued that I would need to enact leadership and andragogical
actions to support the content and to move the intern participants away from their deficit
mindsets by establishing a positive learner-centered climate. It was in this process where I
believe the intern participants showed growth as they increased their developmental capacity and
demonstrated nascent stages of transformative learning and self-examination. Wergin (2019)
defined transformative learning as a necessary part of deep learning. Deep learning is the result
of cognitive and emotional disorientation that makes us, as learners, want to examine other ways
of viewing the world (Wergin, 2021). While transformative learning is a part of deep learning
(Mezirow, 2019), Wergin (2021) argued that deep learning is a mindset or worldview, and as
such, takes time and continuous commitment to cultivate. This action research study was only 12
weeks long. As such, while deep learning is certainly a long-term goal, my short-term goal was
to support my learners to reach nascent stages of transformative learning. Nevertheless, by
sustaining the learner-centered climate, I believe that it set the stage for the intern participants to
begin to demonstrate a shift in their beliefs and begin to engage in experiential learning as well.
This final section will provide examples of how, drawing on my conceptual framework, I used
facilitation of dialogue to give intern participants the space to share their experiences, thus
leading to nascent stages of transformative learning.
The Importance of Dialogue in Learning
In this section, I will provide evidence to support the ways that I facilitated a learner-
centered approach to engage the intern participants in deep discussions based on experiences
from their varied teaching contexts. It was in the dialogic process where they began to
investigate their own beliefs, biases and assumptions, and the demonstration of their growth from

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the beginning of the study session to the end. Dialogue, individual experience, and critical
reflection combine to transform learning (Wergin, 2021). Once I created a positive climate where
the intern participants were comfortable enough to engage in deep discussion, I needed to sustain
my role as a facilitator as they shared experiences with each other. The example below provides
evidence on the ways that I used andragogical moves to nurture the dialogic process between the
intern participants.
The intern participants and I was beginning the fifth session of the study. This session
began with a short video I used to open the discussion around bias. The 3-minute video shed
light on implicit bias and assumptions and the ways they play out in our perspectives of other
people. We had discussed how power played into ideologies and assumptions. The objective of
this activity was to begin dialogue between the intern participants to illuminate biases and
continue conversations about the ways in which students are excluded in education, most
specifically in the intern participants’ contexts. I guided the discussion by asking questions. The
excerpt below was taken from the Zoom transcription from Session 5 and provides evidence of
the dialogic process that was beginning to take place between the intern participants after I asked
the question, what is the difference between conscious and unconscious bias?
Amy: So it made me think, what is the difference between conscious and
unconscious bias, do you think?
Carl: I would say that conscious bias is probably the kind of bias that I’m
cognizant of that. I try to rein in because I know that I have prejudices ... if I
am aware of them, I have to stop myself from jumping to conclusions. But
the unconscious biases ... things that I’m not really aware of, but they are

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potentially hurting people, or not giving them a fair shake, or some equity or
opportunity.
Amy: Excellent! Absolutely!
Ruth: Carl, I was going to say the same thing, like conscious bias is the one you
know that you feel that you’re doing it ... unconscious could be like,
“nobody’s perfect!”
Carl: [Remembering a past experience] This just popped into my head ... I had just
had a discussion with my parents at their house ... my dad likes to be
provocative about some things ... I think he said something that wasn’t
appropriate ... it was like an old stereotype, and I said to him, “The difference
between you and I is, I know that I am prejudice and I try not to lean into it
and accept it as automatic!”
Amy: I’m with you. My sister and I are 15 years apart, so my parents are
significantly older than, let’s say ... people my age ... there can be a definite
generation gap ... a way of thinking.
Carl: I have a grandmother from the South ... she did not see anything wrong with
calling people the “n” word. Basically, I told her, “Use that word again and
you will never see your grandchildren again!” So, she stopped ... and here’s
the kicker. Who was her best friend? The African American lady who is also
from the South.
Amy: Exactly! That’s unconscious right? Here’s a deep question for everybody.
What’s the difference between explicit racism and unconscious bias? Please
... your thoughts?

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Jack: I can give you an example ... around the Christmas dinner table, touchy
subjects come up from uncles and cousins that you haven’t seen for a while.
Somehow, some sort of White male bias came up. My sister was talking
about her experience in the workplace, going on an interview with some
people and feeling like she was across the table from a “bunch of old White
guys.” My brother-in-law, who’s roughly my age (45 and White), stopped her
and said, “Why do you have to say, old White men? Why are you judging
them for being White?” and he probably believed that he was trying to be
race neutral. He’s also lecturing my sister, who is the mother of two mixed-
race boys. Here I was listening to a man lecture my sister, and this man
knows nothing of her experiences, or what the boys’ experiences will be in
this world. So, I think this is an example of racist behavior ... I do not
remember the phrases you were using.
Amy: Explicit racism and unconscious bias
Jack: I think that’s bias, I do not think it’s explicit racism ... But where Chris’s
example of his grandmother, there’s something you can point to and say,
here’s a line, do not cross it.
Carl: I want to echo the point that Jack made on his implicit bias, I think, explicit
racism is easier to define and deal with, but when it’s implicit bias, it’s kind
of amorphous ... It’s hard to confront it ... because it gives every case on the
perspective of someone who’s being discriminated against ... unconsciously
perhaps.

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I began the excerpt by asking an open-ended question, “What is the difference between
conscious and unconscious bias?” This question opened the space for the intern participants to
engage in discussion. I used a variety of open-ended questioning to gain clarity and push the
thinking that was revealed in the subsequent statements made by the interns. I was making more
intentional jottings as the intern participants spoke so that I could circle back to ask them what
they meant by certain words or phrases. By restating what the intern participants said and asking
clarifying questions about what they said, I was able to more concretely address what they meant
and could then extend their learning. According to Mezirow (2019), dialogue is the essential
medium through which transformative learning is promoted and developed. Carl began by
providing his definition of conscious bias and then added his awareness of it. He said, “I’m
cognizant of that, I try to rein it in.” He continued by acknowledging his prejudices by saying,
“I’m aware of them” and “I have to stop myself from jumping to conclusions.” In Carl’s
commentary, he was making meaning between the two types of bias and describing the ways that
he was beginning to address his own. Carl then defined his idea of unconscious bias by saying
that “unconscious biases are things that I’m not really aware of ” and sharing that he was
unaware but acknowledges the implications that has on others when he continued, “but they are
potentially hurting people, or giving then a fair shake, or equity or opportunity.” Carl
demonstrated a realization of the detrimental way that unconscious bias harms others. Keeping
the conversation going, I affirmed Carl’s articulation of the definitions by stating, “Excellent,
absolutely!” At this point I wanted to hear how the intern participants were making meaning of
the biases which was a part of my research question; therefore, I limited my response to these
two words. Ruth then joined the discussion and provided evidence of what Wergin (2021) called
social capital. Social capital is defined as the social ties among people, like the intern

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participants. It encompasses the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise when the
group of learners have a common bond (Wergin, 2021). In this discussion, when Ruth said,
“Carl, I was going to say the same thing,” she affirmed how he defined conscious and
unconscious bias and in so doing, strengthened her social ties with Carl. In the above vignette,
the intern participants were immersed in discussion and were trying on the perspectives of
others, affirming each other’s contributions and then extending them.
As Ruth shared “unconscious (bias) it could be ... sometimes you say things, but you do
not mean it,” Carl was reminded of an experience with his own father. He continued the
discussion by sharing how he found a difference in beliefs between him and his father. He said,
“My dad likes to be provocative ... and said something that wasn’t appropriate,” which could be
interpreted as being racist. Carl demonstrated an application of the concept of conscious bias
when he said, “the difference between you and I is that I know that I am prejudice and I try not to
lean into it and accept it as automatic!” Mezirow (2009) said that learning may be understood as
the process of using a prior interpretation to construe a new or revised interpretation of the
meaning of one’s experience to guide future action. Carl was applying the concept of bias to past
experiences and at least recognizing that he held biases. While we did not get this far in this
particular instance, my hope is that in the future, he could work to challenge his own beliefs and
work to overcome them.
After Carl shared the experience with his father, I made a connection to my own
experiences when I said, “My parents are significantly older ... there’s very definitely a
generation gap, a way of thinking.” Sharing what I had in common with Carl, I was choosing to
use a pedagogical tool defined by Gerlach (1994) called collaborative learning, meaning that
learning is a naturally social act where participants talk among themselves. I created a mutual

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learning environment where the intern participants and I could focus on our curiosity and
meaning making. I made connections to their ideas by sharing that I, too, had learned from my
own family and chose to move away from those beliefs. By sharing the stories of my family,
especially those around biased or hegemonic belief systems, the intern participants increased
their sharing of similar situations. Discussions about family members led Carl to add an
experience about his grandmother, which, as I will explain below, helped the group juxtapose the
different types of bias. Carl said that his grandmother, “Didn’t see anything wrong with using the
‘n’ word,” but that her best friend was African American, ultimately showing that prejudice can
be hidden in a variety of ways. This vignette is an example of the ways the group, including
myself, were making meaning of the two concepts by engaging in dialogue and extending each
other’s contributions.
Next, Jack responded to my question, “What is the difference between explicit racism
and unconscious bias?” using an example of a recent Christmas dinner table conversation. Jack
had mentioned that during holiday dinner some family members engaged in “touchy subjects
came up between uncles and cousins.” He explained, “Somehow, some sort of White male bias
came up.” His sister spoke about her experience in an interview feeling like she “was across the
table from a bunch of old White guys.” Jack’s brother-in-law, a White man in his early 50s asked
her if she was judging them, “for being White,” which Jack surmised as trying to be “race
neutral.” Jack also mentioned that his sister is the mother of two mixed-raced boys, and finished
his story by saying, “Here I was listening to a man lecture my sister, and this man knows nothing
of her experiences, or what the boys’ experiences will be.” He struggled with how to name the
experience and juxtaposed it with Chris’s original example, “I think that’s bias, I do not think it’s
explicit racism ... But where Chris’s example of his grandmother, there’s something you can

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point to and say, here’s a line, do not cross it.” By juxtaposing Chris’ example of his
grandmother casually using the n word with his own experience of a White man questioning a
woman’s judgment of White men, John was trying to make meaning of the two concepts I had
asked about. He was also correctly pushing against my earlier comment “that’s unconscious,
right?” Then, Carl agreed, “I want to echo the point that Jack made on his implicit bias, I think,
explicit racism is easier to define and deal with,” and argued that unconscious bias is “Kind of
amorphous ... It’s hard to confront it.” By providing space for the intern participants to share
specific examples where biases played out in their own lives, I enabled this dialogue that
supported the intern participants to make sense of the difference, first, between conscious and
unconscious bias, and second, between explicit racism and unconscious bias. The intern
participants benefitted from the cooperative learning that took place during the group discussion
as they could drew on specific examples and noted differences between them. This conversation
provided a great example of how important dialogue among a group of adult learners is to
individual learning. Being open to the contributions of others refer to a willingness to suspend
one’s own beliefs and assumptions to make room for other voices (Wergin, 2021).
To provide a space where the intern participants could engage in dialogue, I talked much
less, and when I did speak, I either affirmed participants’ contributions or asked questions where
the intern participants could draw upon their peers’ comments and share. Successful group
learning is marked by a qualitative shift in the nature of the dialogue that took place (Wergin,
2021). In this example, it was not me, but the intern participants who led the discussion and
shared experiences to collectively make meaning of the concepts we were discussing. Then,
when they engaged in dialogue with each other, it demonstrated how through a dialogic process,
they were beginning to make new meaning as they analyzed their beliefs.

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Growth in Participants
The section above focused on the dialogue and the ways in which I created a learner-
centered climate and opened space for discussion and meaning-making. By Cycle 3, the intern
participants were engaging in conversations about explicit forms of bias and exclusionary
practices. While in the previous section, I provided examples of instances where they spoke of
experiences with other people to help define unconscious bias and explicit racism, in this section,
I will present data that demonstrates intern participants holding up a mirror to their own biases
and practices. The value laden content and my facilitation of experiential activities helped the
intern participants analyze their identities and the ways those identities might intersect and shape
their biases.
During these discussions, one of the intern participants, Jack, demonstrated a shift in his
awareness of how his identity shapes both his biases and others’ perceptions of him. Reviewing
the data from the Zoom transcriptions, focusing on the conversations around the intern
participants’ experiences, I was able to find evidence of Jack’s growth, both in the increased
frequency that he spoke (see Table 3) and in his analysis of his own beliefs. While I do not have
evidence about his beliefs at the beginning of the study because I did not ask about the intern
participants’ beliefs coming into the study, I have quotes from Jack from Session 1 and 6 that
provide support that he grew during the study. The first quote from Jack was in reference to a
question that was posed to the intern participants on their ideas of what success looked like to
them. Jack answered that he worked at a school with a vision of being an anti-racist institution
and that his success would be dependent on him being an active participant in that vision. I then
asked him, “What does an active participant look like in reference to an anti-racist institution?”
Jack said, “I actually do not know ... What would I do? What would I say? The answer is I do not

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know yet ... I do not know yet. So, I do not really have an answer.” Jack saying that he “doesn’t
know yet,” goes against the typical White person characteristic of wanting to learn, but not
wanting to put in the work of learning. Jack specifically used the word “yet” suggesting that he
was open to learning what it meant so that he could do and say the right things and be an active
participant in the organization. By pushing him to explain in concrete terms what it means to be
“an active participant” in an “anti-racist institution” I was able to prompt Jack to articulate that at
this point in the study, he felt unskilled or unsure about what it means to be anti-racist.
Although he started off saying he did not know what it meant to be an active participant
in an anti-racist institution, he demonstrated growth in recognizing how his identity shaped how
he came to the organization and the people within in. The vignettes below show Jack’s growth in
this study as he recognized that despite being in a marginalized category (age), he was still more
dominant by virtue of his most presenting identities: race and gender. The example below took
place during Session 4 when the intern participants were sharing the ways they had witnessed
exclusionary practices among students or themselves. I put them into pairs in Zoom breakout
rooms where they were asked to share and then compare and contrast their quick writes. The
quick write, initially given in Session 4, asked the following questions: Describe a time when
you have witnessed or experienced exclusionary practices in your setting. Who did it harm and
how? How did it make you feel? Once the whole group came back together, I asked for them to
share what they had discussed. Jack and Carl were paired together automatically by the Zoom
breakout room function. Jack offered the following, referring to the discussion that he and Carl
had about the ageism they experienced at their school sites.
First of all, as teachers (Jack and Carl) we’re older than most of the people in the building
with us [other teachers in their contexts]. So, I was having a meeting this afternoon and

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one of them made a comment about how her daughter helped her do something on
Instagram. And the way she said it. “Oh, you know, I'm so old or whatever” just
assuming that the generation younger than (us) … [younger teachers] made those value
statements about how people who are older than you ... and it tends to be negative,
because [education] kind of wants to push them (older teachers) out of the way to make
room for yourself (younger teachers) … something that's so, that sort of very prevalent in
our culture. Just dealing with people who might be 20, 30, 40 years younger than you on
a daily basis; you're viewed in a certain way, all day, every day ... and that's not how
you're viewed in the rest of your life by your peers, your friends, your siblings, or your
family ... it’s sort of I think, as a teacher, and certainly as an older teacher, it’s something
that's there.
It’s not maybe the same type of bias as race or gender, or language, something maybe it’s
I do not know, maybe it's like an immigrant bias. I do not know. I do not know what it's
like, but it's something that most of us are going to experience to some degree. That’s
very prevalent that the knowledge and experience of somebody who is 20 years older
than you ... is inferior or devalued, or in some cases, worthless or needs to be thrown
aside ... but it’s not the same as racism ... I would argue being a 50-year-old White dude,
might put me in a better position than a 50-year-old Black woman ... I think that the
argument could be made ... the advantage of being the White dude.
Jack began by sharing something that he and Carl had in common. He had recently
shared that education was their second career. Being “older than most of the people in the
building with us,” Jack acknowledged that both he and Carl were older than most teachers at
their sites. He went on to describe an experience in a meeting between a veteran teacher and

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himself who told a story about her younger daughter and getting assistance on Instagram. Jack,
realizing the assumptive way this teacher was speaking by saying, “And the way she said it. ‘Oh,
you know, I'm so old or whatever.’” This off-hand comment told Jack that this woman was
making the assumption that younger teachers are valued more due to their skills with technology.
He went on to describe the exclusionary nature of the educational system when he said,
“[Education] kind of wants to push them (older teachers) out of the way to make room for
yourself (younger teachers).” At this point, Jack was still focused on the exclusionary nature of
ageism in the workplace. He said, “Just dealing with people who might be 20, 30, 40 years
younger than you on a daily basis; you’re viewed in a certain way, all day, every day.” He
juxtaposed the poor treatment in the school setting with the statement, “That’s not how you’re
viewed in the rest of your life by your peers, your friends, your siblings, or your family,”
meaning that in other contexts, his age was not an issue, but that he felt marginalized in the field
of education.
In trying to connect his experiences to what we had been discussing about racism,
however, Jack then said, “It’s not maybe the same type of bias as race or gender, or language,
something maybe it's I do not know, maybe it’s like an immigrant bias?” Jack tried to examine
how his intersectional identities as a “50-year-old White dude” sometimes put him at a
disadvantage when talking to younger teacher colleagues. In his comment about immigrant bias,
he related immigrant bias with ageism. In the end, however, he recognized that although he was
made to feel “inferior or devalued,” he could acknowledge that, “It’s not the same as racism.”
Becoming a White antiracist means we can never skip the step of bearing witness to testimonies
of racism by diligently working to get inside another’s experience (Brookfield, 2021). Jack drew
from the memories experienced with the younger teachers — feeling excluded by them by virtue

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of them being more dominant in the field of education — to recognizing it is not the same as
being on the receiving end of sustained racism (Brookfield, 2021). By engaging in group
discussion sharing experiences, he was able to acknowledge his dominant 50-year-old belief
system and language in his head to begin to understand and empathize with others’ experiences
and behaviors. Jack went from not knowing what it would look, or sound like to be an active
participant in an anti-racist institution, to bearing witness to racism as much more marginalizing
than ageism. While this is not the same as action to disrupt the status quo, awareness of racism is
often a first and necessary step.
At the end of the session, after bringing the intern participants back from individual work,
I asked them, “What have your learned about yourself?” Jack said the following,
I get it. I still do not know fully how I feel but I was very impressed of the job that you
did (referring to my role) ... I still do not know where my limits are and sometimes my
colleagues drive me crazy, and I just start to avoid meetings. I think that I may be
perceived as having the language of the 50-year-old White dude, who sort of has all of
this confidence and steamroll through the meeting ... and really, this type of language
(referring to anti-racist) that just says, “Hold on a moment! Let’s see how we are going
forward,” so, I appreciate that.
When Jack said, “I get it ... I still do not know fully how I feel,” he seemed to be saying, “You
have shifted my thinking, but I’m not all the way there.” His comments showed he was moving
in the direction of developing an anti-racist identity where we must hold ourselves accountable
for our explicit, but also unacknowledged racism (Brookfield, 2021). Jack went from claiming
that he did not know how to be an active participant in an anti-racist institution to saying he gets
it. Additionally, he discussed how his colleagues might see him, as a “50-year-old White dude.”

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By naming his positionality, Jack demonstrated he was beginning to recognize how his identity
shaped interactions with colleagues. As he reflected on his feelings about his peers and his desire
to avoid meetings, he recognized that his colleagues were seeing him as a 50-year-old White
dude and telegraphing feelings of intolerance to learning or collaboration. He also realized that
he became impatient with the meetings and needed to be conscious of the fact that his identity
shaped how he was perceived by other staff.
By the end of Cycle 3, the others in the group were more comfortable engaging in
dialogue about their biases as well. As the facilitator, I sustained the learner-centered climate
where the intern participants had space to engage in dialogue and share their experiences and
thus, I helped them grow. In the Conceptual Framework section, one of the mechanisms of action
for supporting the intern participants in transformative learning was to create a learner-centered
climate where they could work through uncomfortable feelings and experiences. The next
example supports my efforts in holding the intern participants in discomfort. Heifetz (2009)
called this discomfort the zone of disequilibrium, and it was the optimal range of distress within
which the urgency of the situation engages people in adaptive work. This interaction took place
during the last session of the study. The intern participants were demonstrating how comfortable
they were sharing their experiences and challenging their previous biases and assumptions.
Seeing that this was the last time that we would be together, it was important that we took time to
reflect on what we had learned about ourselves, and most importantly, how that could change
how they worked with their students. I created an agenda where there was time allocated for
individual personal reflection and started the night with a powerful piece of text addressing
colorblindness. As a White woman learning about colorblindness in my doctoral program, I
realized how important it was to address colorblindness before our time together was over. There

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is often a pride by White people to claim that they do not see color and I could not end this study
without addressing colorblind ideology (Bonilla-Silva, 2003).
At the beginning of the session, I welcomed everyone and stated that we would start with
a brief reading from Brookfield (2021). Below is a brief selection of the text I provided to intern
participants:
Bonilla-Silva (2003) names “colorblindness as racism without racists ... Why should
colorblindness be a problem? But the colorblind has two major flaws ... First it implies
that Whites can indeed quickly learn to stop stereotyping, bracket their biases, and see
people in an unbiased way. Second, it assumes a level playing field is in place in which
Whites interact with people of color as moral and political equals.”
The group was given 10 minutes to read the text. Then, I brought everyone back together. Once
back, the intern participants immediately began sharing their thoughts on the reading without any
verbal prompts. Looking at their faces on Zoom I could tell that many of them had a visceral
experience and both Carl and Ruth unmuted quickly to share.
Carl: This [paragraph] is talking about when White people tell other people that they
do not see color ... and my experience, which is limited ... I think they do see
color. They just do not feel comfortable acknowledging it ... they try to
rationalize it. I would say it’s kind of like washing your hands of guilt ... you
know, the “I do not see race” and [thinking] “I have not culpability or
responsibility.”
Ruth: (teary-eyed) I honestly felt so self-conscious!
Amy: I want to understand so I can support ... how did it [the text] do that?

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Ruth: I kept thinking ... Have I done something like that? Did I do something to
somebody? Did I say something? I do not know! I was like, “Oh Lord!” This
opened my eyes to ... wow! Sometimes, I really do not think or people do not pay
attention. Then this one sentence where it says, “Despite White people saying
that they see people, not color. We [the authors] do not believe this to be true.”
That sentence ... I was like, Oh my God! That is so true! We see it ... often and
we see it happening over and over again. Then ... people like me ... (she
shrugged) their shoulders ... like it’s nothing ... (her voice cracked). But to me
personally, I was like, Lord! I’m going to really pay attention!
Amy: That’s one of the reasons for us coming together! We talked way back about
having conversations where we are going to feel discomfort ... but it's in this
discomfort where we really learn ... deep learning. I’m right here with you Ruth!
It’s powerful!
Ruth: (nodding) Yes!
Amy: Oh my gosh! I hate that you feel discomfort, but I want you to know it is because
you’re seeing the other side, right? You’re seeing!
Carl, who was a White male, began the conversation, visibly dismayed as he shook his
head. He qualified his comment by saying that he was a novice when it came to colorblind
ideology by saying, “my experience, which is limited” and then said, “I believe that they do see
color.” He used “they” instead of “me” putting the problem outside of himself. However, he
acknowledged that White people do differentiate race, which aligns with Brookfield (2021) when
he said the colorblind perspective is flawed. Carl argued that through the colorblind lens, White
people were attempting to eliminate guilt associated with racism. He said, “It’s kind of like

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washing your hands of guilt,” which, seems to suggest Carl also saw how White privilege
enables White people to say that they do not see race leaving them without “culpability or
responsibility.”
After Carl finished speaking, Ruth was very quick to share. Ruth, who immigrated from
the Middle East as a young girl, was visibly shaken as well, and in my observer comments, I
noted that she was tearing up. It was evident that, she too, had a visceral reaction to the reading
when she said, “I honestly felt so self-conscious!” Once I acknowledged the discomfort she was
experiencing, I did not want to move away, so, I asked, “How did [the text] do that?” By asking
her to continue engaging in the dialogue, Ruth was able to articulate why she felt “self-
conscious.” She realized that she could have a colorblind perspective, when she said, “I do not
know! I was like, ‘Oh Lord!’ Ruth seemed to be experiencing a disorienting dilemma, because
she questioned her past behavior by asking, “Have I done something like that? Did I do
something to somebody? Did I say something?” Her questioning demonstrated that she was
starting to be aware of problems with the colorblind perspective (Drago-Severson, 2004) and
wondering if she had been complicit in it. Ruth’s comment and reaction demonstrated what Carl
had moments earlier argued about not feeling “comfortable acknowledging [race]”. At the same
time, she also demonstrated how this text “opened my eyes ... sometimes you really do not think
or pay attention. I was like, Lord! I’m going to really pay attention!” Brookfield (2021) wrote
that in developing an anti-racist identity we need to learn how to stay constantly alert to the way
racism still moves within us. Ruth’s disorientation with her past beliefs and possible actions
along with her last comment about needing to “really pay attention” showed that her colorblind
beliefs had not only been challenged but changed. This resulted in her planning to be more
present to her beliefs and behaviors.

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I wanted Ruth to realize the importance of experiencing discomfort while simultaneously
regulating her distress. I affirmed her new learning related to needing to pay attention by saying
“that’s one of the reasons for us to come together!” When entering discussions about anti-racist
work, we need to remind ourselves that discomfort is a sign of success. To endorse that success, I
added, “It is this discomfort where we really learn.” Wergin (2021) stated that transformative
learning is most powerful in group dialogue. The intern participants were both interacting with
the content I provided as fodder for discussion and engaging in dialogue that interrogated their
belief systems. In Ruth’s case, she both held up a mirror to her own possible transgressions and
discussed the changes she needed to make. Additionally, in order for this disorientation to be
constructive, I knew I had to also regulate Ruth’s distress, not just tell her this distress was
necessary. I said “I’m right here with you Ruth! It’s powerful!” and then later affirmed her by
saying “I hate that you feel discomfort, but I want you to know it’s because you’re seeing the
other side, right? You’re seeing!”
This excerpt shows the growth that intern participants demonstrated as they continued to
share their experiences and feelings about the topics, I introduced for us to discuss. The path to
helping someone else learn deeply is to find the space where constructive disorientation might
exist (Wergin, 2021). It is my hope that the intern participants will eventually learn how their
beliefs impact the students they teach, and the first step is to become aware and present to their
intersectional identities, colorblind ideologies, and exclusionary practices. Kegan (1984)
described the acquisition of new skills as a process of outgrowing one system of meaning by
integrating the ways they were learning from the analysis of those intersectional identities, bias
and assumptions into new systems of meaning. Growth is gradual and progressive, and humans
evolve gradually (Drago-Severson, 2004). Taken together, the data in this finding section

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demonstrated that the intern participants were gradually building their own meaning while
learning through some of the experiences that they were sharing from their own experiences.
While we did not discuss classroom practice as much as I would have liked, the intern
participants used other personal and professional experiences to make meaning of the relevant
concepts. As the facilitator in this study, understanding how the intern participants were making
meaning created an opportunity to support their growth. By asking open-ended questions that
brought them into dialogue with each other and by regulating their distress when they felt
discomfort about a new realization, I created the space for my learners to move into the nascent
stages of transformative learning.
Afterword
Implications of the Study on My Personal Life
Action research, undisputedly, transformed the way that I teach, lead, and live my life
personally and professionally. I had this picture in my head of someone who completed a
terminal degree, such as this, would instantly become stoic, wise, and extremely methodical in
the ways that they answered a question or gave their opinion. I did not become that person,
however, I have found myself slowing down to be more present in life, remembering to stop and
think critically about what I really feel is the most insightful. I have grown because of what I
have learned in my journey through developing my own critically reflective practices. I better
understand my own epistemology, the privileges that I have been granted and the necessity of
acknowledging my own past complicity prior to USC. I need to make it a priority to continue on
my path of critical reflection; to step outside of the hegemonic beliefs that have historically
moved some groups forward while others continue to be oppressed. My goal is to think, and
problem solve through the lens of decentered Whiteness. As I continue to work on my identity as

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a White anti-racist, I strive to make sure that I consistently address and interrogate my privilege
and power in situations where in the past I had not even considered.
Personally, the post-study applications have been a revelation. I learned that I was
continuing to make meaning of data through the lens of worrying that the work was not good
enough. I was critical of myself when I realized that the lessons in the field would not get to
critical reflection. In my head, I had failed the study. Typical of the way my own cognition
produces understanding, I made rash decisions without thinking it through. I was working under
assumptions of my understanding of the material instead of meeting the learners where they
were. In a personal sense, I need to get out of my own head and be present to people, my
environment, and society. Although I am getting better as time goes by, I need to nurture myself
in not only being present in my professional role, I must first practice it when I am away from
work.
Implications of the Study on My Professional Life
I had the unrealistic goal of the intern participants engaging in true critically reflective
practice before our time was over. I am not close to being an expert in these practices, so, how
could I expect the intern participants to get close in only a three months’ time? The same can be
said for movement toward transformative learning. I can confidently say that my learning has
been transformed but must acknowledge that it takes a great deal of time to get there. I have
spent the last three years living and breathing action research and studying andragogical
practices. I can’t assume that the intern participants would show evidence of transformative
learning in such a short period of time. This is especially true as I found my own footing as their
teacher and facilitator of knowledge. It took time for me to get better at creating the right
conditions for learning. Each time I reflect on the study and its process, I realize how important

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the findings were to my own redevelopment of myself as a facilitator of learning. I liken it to the
behavior realm and replacing a negative behavior with one that is more beneficial. As I look to
the future of my professional life, which is teaching and leading adults, I need to consistently
practice the actions that were successful in moving the intern participants’ learning. It is essential
to build a community of learners, just like the one that I did in this study. Although I was
beginning to see my actions as a facilitator, it was just the beginning. I need to continue to
facilitate learning in future interns where the learning environment is far more democratic, and
they are the ones taking ownership of their learning. The consistent practice of my facilitation for
democratic learning centered approaches will mean that I have strengthened my skills to assist in
making it happen.
Most importantly, I learned the power and importance of being vulnerable. Addressing
the invisible power structures at play between the teacher and student is just as important in adult
education as with youth. Sharing the mistakes that I had made the first two sessions helped
concretize the norms we discussed early on and to shift the interaction between me and the intern
participants. However, there is still much for me to do in working on giving up the control which
would impact my role as a leader, as I teach instructors that they need to do the same. If I am not
being responsible for giving up control in teaching the interns, the implications for carrying it out
programmatically will be limited.
Reflecting on the actions that I took opening Cycle 2 with an apology was still
communicating aspects of teacher centered approaches. Although I used literature to help
support my actions in the apology, I was continuing the stance of a teacher directed approach. By
giving the apology to my learners, I was demonstrating my teacher power because it was as
much for me as anything else. I was worried that had I started session three as a facilitator

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stepping back and centering the intern participants in the learning, they would be confused in the
change of my teaching style. That decision still showed deficit thinking and continued to hold the
power. De-centering myself would mean giving up all power in the direction the learning went.
What would have happened if I had truly stepped back and let my errors unfold in the
environment I was trying to create?
I have said that this doctoral program transformed me from a caterpillar into a warrior
butterfly, and now, the completion of this study gave me the wings to enact big changes in
education. In this study we co-constructed, though not at first, a space where we engaged in
dialogue, bringing our personal experiences and identities to bear as we made meaning of
concepts. We analyzed those experiences for bias, assumptions, and dominant hegemonic
ideologies. Some of the content was new to the intern participants as they engaged in activities
like the “I Am From” poem or quick writes about exclusionary practices. As I facilitated the
activities, the intern participants were able to make new meaning of the content by analyzing
their existing experiences from family relationships to teaching experiences. They learned more
about their identities, both as adults outside of teaching and as educators. Throughout the study
they individually experienced the intersectionality of their identities as they discussed their
memories of heated discussions at the dinner table, acknowledgement of dominant ideologies
that made them feel less than, and the emotional realization of some of their own colorblind
perspectives.
It took me quite some time to realize that we, in the study, were not going to have time to
begin to critically reflect on how these realizations shaped our classroom practices. Although I
shared Jay and Johnson’s typology with the intern participants, the time needed to understand
and engage in further practice far exceeded our twelve-week timeframe. There was more work to

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be done on self-evaluation and analysis, both on my end and on the part of the intern
participants. Reflecting on the trajectory of the study, it was evident that beginning an analysis of
ourselves and our beliefs while constructing new learning about important concepts was
nonetheless important as an initial step. I learned that developing critical consciousness and
racial literacy are lifelong processes that take time and commitment.
My dissertation committee emphasized during my proposal defense the importance of
ensuring that the intern participants understood that the work we were doing together was just an
introduction to enacting change in education. Now I realize the importance of this suggestion as I
look back on the time that it took to move through the study and attempt to fulfill the aims set
forth in my conceptual framework. I had also included and was focused on moving the intern
participants into transformative learning as part of the conceptual framework. This too, was not
something that happened during our short time together. It is my hope, however, that I ignited
the flame for the interns. They will be in the program for one more year, and it is my goal to
continue this work by embedding it into the rest of their teacher preparation program. I feel that
it is essential that as the new teacher candidates begin to learn who they are as teachers, they
must first identify who they are as individual beings. If the coursework and clinical practice
components of the district intern program are infused with reflective practices, in two years they
will have learned and practiced the skills necessary for critical reflection. In addition, as they are
learning the importance of critical reflection and how necessary it is for working toward critical
consciousness, they can concurrently build skills in developing culturally responsive curriculum.
Both goals are the intermediate and long-term changes that I planned for in my conceptual
framework.

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Finally, the action research study allowed me to work within a subject that is a passion
and a profession. Not only was I able to use volunteer intern participants from the program, the
lessons learned in the study could be continued in the development and revision of the teacher
preparation program. As the leader of the faculty and practicum supervision for the intern
program, the andragogical moves that I learned as part of the process should now be
implemented into the ways in which the courses are carried out. In my next iteration as a leader, I
will continue to practice actions as a facilitator and maintain the ways that I worked to create the
learner-centered climate in my own work, all the while remembering the preconceived ideas that
I had about my interns’ abilities. It is imperative that when I begin to redesign the intern
programs, that I share the study and its findings with all who guide, teach, and support the future
interns. It is equally important to address and teach what was learned after the study, as part of
this Afterword, where I could have moved into a more democratized space earlier on by
addressing the power that I was continuing to hold. I will also work to support the teachers’
learning, so that they can learn from mistakes I made when beginning work with the intern
participants. I will never forget the final discussion I had with the interns had as we were
preparing to leave the study. I briefly explained the difference between andragogy and pedagogy
and explained that what we learned in the study would be used to teach and support future
interns in the program. I was reassured that I had chosen the perfect problem of practice for my
context when the intern participants asked that future classes should be held in the same manner
as the study. They added that they had learned far more in the six sessions together then some of
their current intern courses. Their honest opinions confirmed that the changes I had made in the
study’s sessions were effective and powerful.

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What made an action research study so unique was its iterative nature. Not only were we
able to choose the problem in practice within our contexts, but the submission of the dissertation
was also not the end of the road. The intermediate and long-term changes are the roadmap for the
future of a culturally responsive teacher preparation program with a major tenet being the
development of critical consciousness of its new teachers. It is in this work that my role will be
to provide spaces for change, reenergizing and restructuring the program to challenge the new
teachers, like the intern participants in this study, to examine and critique the dominant
paradigms historically found in education.

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Appendix A: Session Learning Objectives
Session Learning Objectives
Cycle 1-Lesson Plan Week 1

Objectives
Intern participants will be able to:
 co-construct group norms/guidelines
 define a brave space

Action researcher will be able to:
 lead discussion of brave space by treating the conversation as a prelude to learning (Arao
& Clemens, 2013)
 provide opportunities for participants to share suggestions and ideas as well as reflecting
on what they have learned

Time: 90 minutes

Setting: Recorded Zoom Session

Data Sources
 Intern participants’ Reflection #1
 Field Notes
 Zoom recording transcriptions
 Whiteboard PDF of initial agreements
 Jottings, analytical memo constructed from informal observations taken from Zoom
recording
 Action researcher’s critical reflection #1

Actions with Guided Questions/Scaffold
 Why is it important to establish discussion norms for instructional sessions?
o Think back to discussions that you have been a part of in the past. What, if
anything, made you hesitate to engage? What about the opposite; what did the
instructor and/or your peers do to encourage you to participate?
o Ask participants to look at the 6-item list of initial group norms
o Is there anything that you think is missing, needs clarification or revision?
 Once the list has been co-revised or constructed, the instructor will create explanations
for them. The final draft will go into the shared drive and be shown at the start of every
session
 Small-group brainstorm - connotations of brave vs safe space using Venn Diagrams
dropped into the chat. Once the small groups are back, groups will offer their suggestions
for safe and brave connotations as the instructor, continuing to tease out differences and
similarities, serves as scribe on the Venn diagram shared screen
o What do you think are characteristics of a brave space?
o Arao and Clemens (2013) established a framework for defining brave space. Give
more background as to why this framework was developed.

136
o Let’s look at the items listed here. What do you think are the differences between
a safe or a brave space?
 Introduction to Reflection #1 allowing the group to write during the session.

Intern Participant Reflection Questions
Tell me more about your experience today by answering the following prompts.
 What do you hope to learn from me?
 What can I do as an instructor to make you feel brave in this space?
 How have you learned best in the past?
 What has made you hesitate to contribute to discussion in classes in the past?

Action Researcher Critical Reflection Questions (Critical Reflection #1)
 How did I advocate for conversations in the creation of group norms?
 How did my actions model a brave space?
 How am I facilitating discussion towards a brave space?
 How did I model maintaining disciplined attention and regulating distress in this session?
 Who are my learners, and how should I be changing or scaffolding to meet their
developmental location/ways of knowing?
 How am I checking my assumptions of my power and privileges while I work with the
intern participants?

Session Learning Objectives
Cycle 1-Lesson Plan Week 2

Objectives
Intern participants will be able to:
 revise discussion norms/guidelines, if any, drawing from the prior session’s journal
responses
 define their identity in relation to others
 build awareness as it relates to their identity and positionality by engaging in the “I Am
From” poem activity

Action researcher will be able to:
 pose questions to elicit critical thinking regarding positionality
 model the skill of naming my positionality by thinking aloud and drawing connections to
my actions
 redirect participant conversations about colleagues and/or students in non-colorblind
terms
 using andragogical moves to differentiate instruction by meeting learners where they are
starting with learners’ experience and cognitive structuring (teaching the why)
 develop trust by modeling vulnerability and sharing possible cultural blindspots that I
may hold at this point.
 model compassion in my interactions with the participants

137
 support participants in evaluating their identity construction by using the “I Am From”
poem

Time: 90 minutes

Setting: Recorded Zoom Session

Data Sources
 Intern participants’ reflection #2
 Action researcher’s “I Am From” Poem
 Field Notes
 Zoom recording transcriptions
 Jottings, analytical memo constructed from informal observations and conversations
taken from Zoom recording – including Circle of Response Activity
 Action researcher’s critical reflection #2

Actions with Guided Questions/Scaffold
 Review co-constructed norms/guidelines for revisions, changes, or additions
o As part of your reflection prompts about brave spaces from last session, what do
we need to revise on our norms/guidelines?
o What, if anything do we need to add?
 Introduce “I Am From” Poem
o It is important that we as educators demonstrate compassion and understand that
much of the ignorance around race and racism is largely due to institutional and
societal oppression and not individual intent (Spikes, 2018). This activity helps us
recognize that we all have been socialized by these oppressive systems in various
ways.

 Read the model poem first. Then, ask intern participants to access the template of “I Am
From.” Participants are given 15 minutes to write theirs.
o Who would like to share their poem? Then the next, etc.
o After all have shared, How might the deeper consideration of others’ identities
change the way you interact with them?
o What came to mind as your fellow participants were sharing their poems?
o Consider both ways that identity is dominant in some cases, and marginalized in
others.
o How does this relate to identity?
o Thank participants for sharing
Racial literacy should be an inside-out approach. We need to begin with ourselves, which
is why we just took part in the “I Am From” Activity. We must critically reflect and learn
to recognize that we are cultural beings and that our experiences are shaped by our
cultural identities.

 Rational Discourse Activity: Circle of Response-to introduce identity in relation to
others. Drop the Round 1 prompt into the chat. Review group rules of the activity. Round
1 – 2 minutes per participant to share how they describe themselves as a teacher. Round 2

138
– each participant then can ask a question or make a comment on the previous
participant’s identity definition
o What do you think is the objective of this activity?
o What questions came up for any of you while you were listening to your fellow
participants’ commentary?
 Introduce reflection #2.

Intern Participant Reflection Questions
Using the “I Am From” poem, please answer the following prompts.
 What surprised you about your responses to the phrase “I am From?”
 What did I do or say to help you learn more about your identity?
 How might the deeper understanding of others’ identities help you contribute towards a
brave space?
 How did addressing identity help you examine power structures?
 What differences or contrasting themes did you notice?
 How might this activity help you view ideas about race or racism differently?
 To what extent, if any, have I routinely been accountable to our co-constructed
norms/guidelines?
Action Researcher Critical Reflection Questions (Action Researcher Critical Reflection #2)
 How am I cultivating a brave space?
 How did I support the interns in critically thinking about their identity?
 How did I scaffold my learners to help them develop a deeper understanding of their
identity?
 How did I model maintaining disciplined attention and regulating distress in this session?
 How should I be changing or scaffolding to meet their developmental location/ways of
knowing?
 How am I checking my assumptions of my power and privileges while I work with the
intern participant?
 How did I display vulnerability?

Session Learning Objectives
Cycle 2 - Lesson Plan Week 1

Objectives
Intern participants will be able to:
 define types of ideologies and provide examples from their own experiences
 relate the newly defined terms of bias, assumptions, ideology, and hegemony to common
experiences in education
 identify possible assumptions of other intern participants in learning to become critical

Action researcher will be able to:
 pose questions to elicit critical thinking regarding ideology, hegemony and bias

139
 provide an opportunity to think about and practice perspectives and ideas without fear of
failure or recrimination
 scaffold learning to help participants understand and identify unexamined bias,
prejudices, and racialized assumptions
 redirect conversations about staff/students in non-colorblind terms

Time: 90 minutes

Setting: Recorded Zoom Session

Data Sources
 Intern participant reflection #3
 Field Notes
 Zoom recording transcriptions
 Jottings, analytical memo constructed from informal observations and conversations
(ideology and assumption discussions/examples) taken from Zoom recording
 Action researcher critical reflection #3

Actions with Guided Questions/Scaffold
 Review co-constructed norms/guidelines for revisions, changes, or additions
 Discussion: Introduction to Defining Ideology, Dominant Ideology, Hegemonic Ideology,
and Meritocracy. During discussion of the definitions, participants provide examples,
questions or experiences that they can draw from their own learning onto their
downloaded document.
o What are some dominant ideologies that you have experienced in education?
o Who is served by such ideologies? Who is harmed?
o How do dominant ideologies impact our students?
o Who can provide an example of ____________?
 Common Assumptions in Education-Pair activity. Each pair will be given a common
educational assumption. First, ask them to construct an alternative interpretation of that
assumption. Using the bottom of their handout, they will connect the assigned assumption
and interpretation with a dominant ideology.
o How were you able to make connections from the assumptions to the ideology?
o Where have you encountered these types of assumptions?
o Why do you think they are considered to be “commonsense?”
 Intern participant reflection #3 –

Intern Participant Reflection Questions
Thinking about your new understanding of ideologies
 What did you unearth about your ideologies?
 How has your identity shaped your ideology?
 How do the interpretations of the educational assumptions that you unearthed shape your
own teaching practice? Give an example of this.
 How did learning about your identity help you examine inequity in race?

Action Researcher Critical Reflection Questions (Action Researcher Critical Reflection #3)

140
 How am I cultivating a brave space?
 How did I support the interns in critically thinking about common ideologies in
education?
 How did I model maintaining disciplined attention and regulating distress in this session?
 Who are my learners, and how should I be changing or scaffolding to meet their
developmental location/ways of knowing?
 How am I checking my assumptions of my power and privileges while I work with the
intern participants?

Session Learning Objectives
Cycle 2 - Lesson Plan Week 2
Objectives
Intern participants will be able to:
 differentiate types of reflection against a lived experience
 analyze a critical reflection example to identify the types of reflection used (using Jay &
Johnson’s Typology)
 engage in dialogue with their fellow colleagues about critical reflection as a means of
deepening their learning

Action researcher will be able to:
 provide an opportunity to think about and practice differentiating types of reflection
 redirect conversations about staff/students in non-colorblind terms, if needed
 model the kind of open-minded readiness to consider alternative viewpoints as a means
of being vulnerable

Time: 90 minutes

Setting: Recorded Zoom Session

Data Sources
 Intern participants’ reflection #4
 Field Notes
 Zoom recording transcriptions
 Jottings, analytical memo constructed from informal observations and conversations
taken from Zoom recording – discussion notes from critical reflection analysis
 Action researcher critical reflection #4 (self)

Actions with Guided Questions/Scaffolds
 Introduce Critical Reflection by showing slide of Brookfield’s definition of critical
reflection.
 Review the three types of reflection using Jay & Johnson’s typology: Descriptive,
Comparative, and Critical.
 In breakout rooms: Model critical reflection by sharing the example with the group. Ask
them to access the Jay & Johnson’s Typology Part I-with the following prompts: Where
do you think I fall on the typology? Where do you see examples of descriptive?

141
Comparative? Critical? into the chat for participants to download and use to analyze the
example. Give 15 minutes for them to review the critical reflection.
 Transition back to whole group for a debrief of the example critical reflection posted and
shared on screen. Use whiteboard tools to highlight and make notes.
o Where do you see examples of descriptive or “setting the problem?” What is
happening in this example?
o Moving onto Comparative reflection, what are some of the perspectives framed in
the critical reflection?
o Where do you see evidence of open-mindedness or multiple perspectives
witnessed, if at all? Where, if anywhere, do you see different interpretations of
one thought?
o Finally, in the critical reflection as a whole, where do you see any evidence of
careful consideration of a problem that is set with multiple perspectives? Can you
show me examples in the text of different ideas of consequences? Where, if any,
are there examples of different solutions?
o Finally, as a reflection in whole, voice/perspectives are represented? Whose, if
any, are missing?
o What visions, if any, of education and the world are presented in this reflection?
o What is missing from the text?
 Intern participant Critical Reflection #4
o How, if at all, did I support your understanding of your biases of your students?

Action Researcher Critical Reflection Questions (Action Researcher Critical Reflection #4)
 How did I react to the analysis of my modeled critical reflection?
 How did I display vulnerability when having participants answer the discussion questions
about my critical reflection?
 How did I use dialogue to bring about multiple perspectives and hidden points of view in
the conversation?
 How well did I generate discourse around the typology’s representation of thoughts,
feelings, and ideas?
 How did I scaffold discussion to move the participants deeper into their learning of
critical reflection?
 How did I model maintaining disciplined attention and regulating distress in this session?
How am I checking my assumptions of my power and privileges while I work with the
intern participants?

Detailed Lesson Plans
Cycle 3 – Week 1
Objectives
Intern participants will be able to:
 practice critical reflection skills by writing about a classroom incident
 develop their understanding of the Jay & Johnson Typology by revising their critical
incident reflection
 engage in dialogues with their colleagues to illuminate their frames of thought about
critical reflection

142
Action researcher will be able to:
 continue to cultivate a brave space
 model analyzing their own critical reflection that allows for the learners to demonstrate
their discernment between reflection and critical reflection
 encourage reflection and model reflective practices
 analyze participants’ responses to learning and make continuous adjustments based on
what is observed

Time: 90 minutes

Setting: Recorded Zoom Session

Data Sources
 Intern participants’ critical incident reflection
 Intern participants’ revised critical reflection
 Field Notes
 Zoom recording transcriptions
 Jottings, analytical memo constructed from informal observations and conversations
taken from Zoom recording – discussion notes from critical reflection analysis using Jay
& Johnson Typology
 Action Researcher–Critical reflection #5

Actions with Guided Questions/Scaffolds
 Review group norms. Are there any revisions needed at this time?
 Breakout Room: Pair review of Cycle 2 Week 2 reflection prompt. Put pairs into
breakout rooms for 15 minutes. Drop the directions & Typology into the chat.
o Each partner will share their reflection prompt. The other partner, in turn, will use
the 3 types of reflection (Jay & Johnson Typology) to determine if and where
there are descriptive, comparative, and critical elements.
o Halfway through the time, the other partner shares.
 Group discussion of similarities and differences in reflections
o Discourse created using Typology questions to determine where the participants
were missing pieces of descriptive, comparative, and critical reflection
 Participants will use the notes from their partner conversation and the Typology guiding
questions to revise the first critical reflection from today.
 Have intern participants access the Critical Incident Questionnaire template from the
Google Drive. They will be using a version of this at the end of a lesson in their own
classroom. They will then have the student responses ready for the next session.

Action Researcher Critical Reflection Questions (Action Researcher Critical Reflection #5)
 How am I continuing to cultivate a brave space?
 How did I support the interns in critically thinking about ideology and assumptions?
 How am I consistently checking my assumptions for my power and privilege as I work
with the intern participants?
 What did I do to scaffold the learning in a way to allow them to make connections
between biases and ideology?

143
Detailed Lesson Plans
Cycle 3 – Week 2
Objectives
Intern participants will be able to:
 Analyze Rodgers’ Reflective Cycle and Larivee’s levels of critical reflection
 practice critical reflection using a classroom experience
 observe their classroom skillfully and think critically about students and their learning
 judge the accuracy of their assumptions
 engage in questions related to the efficacy of the researcher/teacher

Action researcher will be able to:
 continue to cultivate a brave space
 engage the intern participants to reflect on a recent experience, also known as reflection-
on-action
 model critical thinking

Time: 90 minutes

Setting: Recorded Zoom Session

Data Sources
 Summary of Rodger’s Reflective Cycle (2018)
 Field Notes
 Zoom recording transcriptions
 Jottings, analytical memo constructed from informal observations and conversations
taken from Zoom recording – discussion notes from Rodgers’ Levels of Reflection and
experience review

Actions with Guided Questions/Scaffolds
 Session will begin introduction to Larivee’s Critical Reflection.
o What do you notice about the different levels?
 Have intern participants access one of the CIQ that they used in their own classroom
experience.
o After reading the CIQ, take 10 minutes to critique, in writing, the effectiveness, if
any, of the lesson based on the anonymous students’ comments?
o Looking at this critical reflection, where does is fall in Larivee’s levels?
o Discuss
 Strategic questioning: Introduce Rodgers’ Reflective Cycle using screen share
o What do you think Rodgers means by teachers being present in the classroom?
o How does the teacher develop capacity for presence?
o How does Typology compare with Rodgers’ levels? Comparative reflection from
the Jay & Johnson Typology is similar to which level of Rodgers? Can you
expand on that?
o What stands out in Rodgers’ Reflective Cycle?

144
o Remember that Rodgers’ Reflective Cycle are not critical reflection. They just
align very nicely with the Jay & Johnson typology of critical reflection.
o Why do you think the levels in Rodgers’ Reflective Cycle are used to teach
critical reflection?

Intern participant critical reflection #5
 Think about an experience or interaction with a student recently. Critically reflect on that
now.

Once session is finished, ask participants to complete the anonymous questionnaire.
 Action research questionnaire-Google Form
o To what extent, if any, have I routinely been accountable to our co-constructed
norms/guidelines?
o How, if at all, did I support your understanding of your biases of your students?
o What suggestions do you have, if any, for how I could better support your critical
reflection of your practice?
o What suggestions do you have, if any, for how I could better support your
identification of ideologies?
o How do you understand and teach students differently, if at all, because of this
study?
o What is one idea or strategy that you are going to develop into your practice?

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This study examines my leadership enactment as the coordinator of a teacher preparation program. To provide a comprehensive examination of my leadership through instruction, I will deconstruct the process of moving from a teacher-centered educational environment into a positive learner-centered climate which allowed the intern participants to begin to investigate the ways they were holding certain biases and assumptions personally and with their students. My action research question was: How do I teach and support my intern participants to reflect on how their unconscious biases shaped by deficit ideologies of their students guide their practice so as to develop their critical consciousness? I collected jottings, fieldnotes, participant reflections, and documents developed for the study sessions. Through data review in the first part of the study, it was evident that I needed to step back and facilitate andragogical moves to ensure a learner-centered climate. Once established, the intern participants engaged in dialogue where they began to make new meaning of their beliefs and understandings by sharing experiences from their teaching contexts.

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Asset Metadata

Creator O'Neal, Amy Noel (author)

Core Title Cultivating critical reflection: an action research study on teaching and supporting district intern participants through critical reflection

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Educational Leadership

Degree Conferral Date 2022-12

Publication Date 12/09/2022

Defense Date 09/02/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag adaptive leadership,andragogy,bias,critical consciousness,critical reflection,deficit ideologies,Dialogue,historically and systemically marginalized students,learner-centered,marginalized,OAI-PMH Harvest,teacher-centered

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Samkian, Artineh (committee chair), Green, Alan (committee member), Slayton, Julie (committee member)

Creator Email oneal_amy@lacoe.edu,oneala@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC112619790

Unique identifier UC112619790

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Legacy Identifier etd-ONealAmyNo-11353

Document Type Dissertation

Format theses (aat)

Rights O'Neal, Amy Noel

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