School of Education faculty members Caryn Park, Julia Daniels, and Rachel Oppenheim participated in the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Toronto in early April.
The three presented a paper together entitled, “New words, old injustices: Discourses of equity in teacher education policy and praxis.” Their paper explored the relationship between two state Standards Board equity initiatives and their on-the-ground enactment through our own university’s teacher education programs. They employed discourse analysis to reveal the underlying ideological allegiances and complexities of the Standard Board’s discourse in relationship to these equity initiatives – and they considered the consequences of that discourse for their own work, discourse, and ideological commitments as teacher educators.
In addition, Julia Daniels received a prestigious dissertation award from AERA’s Division K, which
focuses on teacher education. Her dissertation, titled “White women teachers and the possibilities of harm reduction” argues for the importance of understanding racism as perpetuated through White teachers’ racialized self-understandings and conceptions of Whiteness itself. This participatory action research project upends commonly-held assumptions about White teachers teaching across racialized difference: for example, the potential of White teachers to fully disrupt their participation in racism or White supremacy within public school classrooms.
