Ideology, identity and practice: A study of white teachers as social and cultural agents in the classroom

Much research in education has focused on 'the Other.' This action-oriented study is about the ways in which "Whiteness" shapes the practice of white teachers. It is also an attempt to find a pedagogical practice that enables white teachers to question and interrupt the influence of Whiteness on their practice. Through an ongoing dialogue with myself, a white researcher, I consider the extent to which white teachers are able to see and rethink their Whiteness, and to practice culturally relevant and critical multicultural education. I examine Whiteness as an ideological construct; as a racial identity and social category; and as a form of symbolic and cultural capital and entitlement, used to access and avoid acknowledging power and privilege. The dissertation explores how these different manifestations of Whiteness influence teachers' interactions with students of color. It also addresses how my own ideologies, and my role as researcher and instructor, influence my ability to recognize, acknowledge, and evaluate fairly their words and practices.;Nine teachers who were enrolled in a teacher training course that I taught volunteered to be case studies for this analysis. The most intensive dialogue took place in "collaborative Interviews" in which we talked about the "Critical Events" that I identified through observing the teachers' classroom practice. These events were practices that contradicted or were in tension with the teachers' rhetoric and declared social and cultural intentions expressed in initial interviews. Assuming that social, cultural and political discourses are systematically and unsystematically expressed in our everyday language, I engaged in discourse analysis of the texts to uncover aspects of the teachers' culture that were invisible to them. I identified specific linguistic criteria---key words and pronouns, grammatical constructs, semantic locations and themes---to gain access to the power and identity formations that the teachers expressed.;This study is important in contributing to our understanding of the comprehensive power of Whiteness as a discourse to enable white teachers to rationalize practices that marginalize some students of color. In this way, many white teachers who intend to challenge the inequities in education, end up reproducing the status quo.