Practicing Professional Discomfort as Self-Location: White Teacher Experiences With Race Bias Mitigation

This study is among the first in Canada to research implicit race bias mitigation in secondary teacher practice. The findings emerge from data collected from a ten-month engagement period with 12 Ontario teachers who, alongside the research team, codesigned a race bias mitigation plan based on four to six varied mitigation strategies. These included technical and dialogical activities and a required reading of one anti-racist and/or anti-colonial book. Throughout the project, teachers engaged in ongoing reflection, journaling, email exchanges and an in-person interview. A thematic analysis of this data was completed (Ryan & Bernard, 2003). The design of this study was underpinned by a braiding of social psychology with critical race theory, second wave White teacher identity studies and other approaches. This multimodal approach brings a critical and dynamic reading of whiteness in education. Three broad preliminary findings have emerged from this study. First, teacher perceptions of efficacy of implicit race bias mitigation strategies relied on their noticing of conscious changes in their perceptions of and experiences with race, racism and Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) students. Second, the concurrent use of critical anti-racist strategies, alongside implicit race bias mitigation strategies, seemed to instigate participants’ deepest reflections on race. Finally, this synergy and the long duration of the project contributed to the participants’ evolving understandings of racism in education as a phenomenon that goes beyond the domain of the individual. The results may deepen our understandings of the challenges and opportunities surrounding implicit race bias mitigation work in terms of teacher practices and theoretical considerations

The Production of Racial Logic In Cuban Education: An Anti-colonial Approach

This work brings an anti-colonial reading to the production and maintenance of racial logic in Cuban schooling, through conversations with, and surveys of Cuban teachers, as well as through analysis of secondary and primary documents. The study undertaken seeks to contribute to the limited existent research on race relations in Cuba, with a research focus on the Cuban educational context. Teasing and staking out a middle ground between the blinding and often hollow pro-Cuba fanaticism and the deafening anti -Cuban rhetoric from the left and right respectively, this project seeks a more nuanced, complete and dialogical understanding of race and race relations in Cuba, with a specific focus on the educational context. With this in mind, the learning objectives of this study are to investigate the following: 1) What role does racism play in Cuba currently and historically? 2) What is the role of education in the life of race and racism on the island? 3) What new questions and insights emerge from the Cuban example that might be of use to integrated anti-racism, anti-colonialism and class-oriented scholarship and activism? On a more specific level, the guiding research objectives of the study are to investigate the following: 1) How do teachers support and/or challenge dominant ideas of race and racism, and to what degree to do they construct their own meanings on these topics? 2) How do teachers understand the relevance of race and racism for teaching and learning? 3) How and why do teachers address race and racism in the classroom? The data reveal a complex process of meaning making by teachers who are at once produced by and producers of dominant race discourse on the island. Teachers are the front line race workers of the racial project, doing much of the heavy lifting in the ongoing struggle against racism, but are at the same time custodians of an approach to race relations which has on the whole failed to eliminate racism. This work investigates and explicates this apparent contradiction inherent in teachers’ work and discourse on the island, revealing a flawed and complex form of Cuban anti-racism.Ph

Public attitudes toward education in Ontario 2015: The 19th OISE Survey of Educational Issues

The OISE/UT Survey has been conducted and published biennially since 1980. It is the only regular, publicly disseminated survey of public attitudes towards educational policy options in Canada. Its basic purpose is to enhance public self-awareness and informed participation in educational policy-making.Despite the political challenges regarding Ontario’s publicly funded education system, there remains general satisfaction among the public as a whole, and parents more specifically. This is according to the 19th OISE Survey of Educational Issues, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education’s bi-annual survey of public attitudes towards education, released today. “A majority actually favours increased spending on schools, and most of them are willing to pay higher taxes to support this,” according to report’s co-author Arlo Kempf. Findings also note support of provincial testing along with the important role that teachers play in assessing students. Also evident is strong support for full-day kindergarten and its emphasis on inquiry/play-based learning. Public opinion gridlock remains when it comes to funding both public and separate schools versus a single system, according to the survey. “We weren’t surprised by the strong interest in more technology in the schools, but we were surprised that most favoured greater opportunities for students to earn credit for learning outside of the school setting, given this issue has not received much media attention,” says co-author Doug Hart. “We are hopeful that parents, educational leaders, policy makers and the media will find this 32 page report of significant use for informed dialogue about issues facing Ontario’s fine publicly funded system,” observed OISE interim Dean Glen Jones.OISE/U

Provoking Dialogues: Worth Striking For

At the 36th Annual Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice, a Provoking Dialogues session was held on Worth Striking For: Why Education Policy is Every Teacher’s Concern (Lessons from Chicago), written by Isabel Nuñez, Gregory Michie, and Pamela Konkol. Curriculum scholars took up various sections of the book as part of a larger discussion on School Reform: What is the current paradigm of neoliberal school reform that educators are working under, and what possibilities are there for undermining this paradigm in support of public schooling? The following essay is comprised of the thoughts of those scholars. We encourage you to continue to engage with these authors and each other to keep the fight going