A STUDY OF STUDENT TEACHERS’ PERCEIVED RESISTANCE TO TEACHING MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION: WILL THE PEDAGOGY BE “COLORED THAT I TEACH?”

ABSTRACT

Why teach? This inquiry into the underlying values for teaching through specific “praxis” writings and curricula preparation can engage pre-service teachers in the examination of their teaching philosophy, their negotiation of cultural positioning, and their roles as cultural pedagogues. This dissertation examined the need to create pedagogical spaces to combine the use of technology, literary practices, and theoretical frameworks of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) to solve the dilemmas of cultural pedagogues. Thus, this study explored the cognitive awareness of teaching as a cultural activity with emancipatory consequences.

This study that questions how and why the conceptualization of teaching multicultural education, including a review of the perspectives of scholars in the field of education, can indicate how literary practices are related to indicators of cognitive dissonance. Learning and teaching controversial subject content and a cultural context within multicultural education promotes “resistance” which needs to be examined further for the existence of the invisible undercurrents of cognitive, historical, and cultural dissonance(s). This perceived resistance and the ‘officialized’ conceptualization of theories of resistance have been indoctrinated into teacher preparation and practice through the ideology of the deficit model of education, resulting in the disempowerment of educators. Henry Giroux (2001) talks about “theories of resistance education,” in which dissonance can be framed as “oppositional resistance.” This ‘official’ view of education creates a suboptimal view of teaching framed with pedagogies of hopelessness, impossibility, and marginalization.

The purpose of this research project was to explore a praxis teaching/research inquiry done with pre-service teachers at Penn State University. The teachers reflected on their own unique cultural stories and the history of their education when writing their individual statements of their teaching philosophy. The application of their lesson planning and their development as

English pedagogues was enhanced through their participation in the National African American

Read-In Day (AARI). Their experiences of teaching an MCE lesson and the reflections on their

AARI teaching experiences became part of a methods course for pre-service teachers at Penn State during the Spring 2008 semester. The research project was a supplemental teaching project, with the goal of the students learning more about African American literature and teaching multicultural education. The purpose of this project was to demonstrate how a culturally appropriate planned teaching module, when combined with a web-based e-curriculum, could serve as a planned cultural activity designed to emancipatory consequences in teacher preparation and practice. The project involved pre-service teachers enrolled in a Language and Literacy methods course LLED 411 titled Teaching Language Arts in Secondary Schools, which analyzed how classroom literacy events connect theory, practice, and identity. Using the AARI day, their lessons involved engaging multicultural texts through the use of curriculum development as an inquiry into these socially constructed practices. They connected theory and practice, concluding with their teacher reflections about how “teaching as cultural workers” engages critical reflection on the ‘official’ representations of teachers’ racial and cultural identities, relationships, and values in traditional teacher education practices.

In the Spring 2008 semester, a class of 13 pre-service teachers (2 males and 11 females) participated in this praxis project. They developed and taught lessons on African American literature for the local high school’s AARI activities. This group of all White pre-service teachers taught these lessons to a predominately White high school population. In the next section I describe how to utilize theories of multicultural education and ‘cultural pedagogy’ to prompt preservice teachers’ analyses of how ‘official’ educational texts (e.g., standardized curricula and

“traditional” pedagogical styles) reflect the dominant racial and cultural identities of teachers. However, in this cultural exercise, the pre-service teachers were teaching African American literature, some context of which are deemed as “unofficial” educational texts (e.g., nonstandardized curricula and “cultural” pedagogical styles) to a majority classroom and then reflecting upon their experiences as English educators and cultural pedagogues.

This dissertation argues how student teachers’ rethinking of traditional practices and their uses of critical pedagogy theory (Giroux, 1998) and emancipatory education (Freire, 1993) helped to transform their knowledge of literacies, identities, relationships, and values. Because the pedagogical goal of the project was to have the teachers engage in an inquiry into their cultural identity as the basis for connecting theory and practice, the knowledge of their own “cultural” and “societal” identities were integral to this AARI cultural activity. Thus, what is important to note is that the 13 teachers and myself, the researcher, can be represented in several ways: 1) two males and nine females, 2) two students who did not attend the AARI activity with their groups, but still participated in the online activities and research activities, and 3) being instructed by an one African American graduate teaching assistant and researcher (myself). These aspects of identity were significant to this study and to their work as future educators who were almost exclusively

White, middle class, female students seeking secondary English teacher certification in a large Midwestern public university.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ……………………………………………………………………………………………… vii

 

LIST OF FIGURES …………………………………………………………………………………………….. ix

 

PREFACE …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… x

 

DEFINITION OF TERMS ………………………………………………………………………………… xxv

 

ACRONYMS …………………………………………………………………………………………………. xxvii

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………………………….. xxviii

 

CHAPTER ONE

Theme for English B …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2

 

CHAPTER TWO

The Process of Exploring the Versatility

of Culturally Inherent Voices in Pedagogies ………………………………………………………….. 19

 

CHAPTER THREE

The Suboptimal and Optimal Views of Pedagogical Styles

and Intentions of Educational Praxis …………………………………………………………………….. 36

 

CHAPTER FOUR

Methodology ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 59

 

CHAPTER FIVE

Resistance ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 103

 

CHAPTER SIX

Dissonance ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 148

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

The AARI Study ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 167

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

The AARI Teaching Experience

Becoming a Cultural Pedagogue …………………………………………………………………………. 215

 

CHAPTER NINE

Becoming a Cultural Pedagogue

Revisiting Models of Racial Identity for Teacher Education …………………………………… 283

 

CHAPTER TEN

Future Implications of the Study …………………………………………………………………………. 331  REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 347

 

APPENDIX A

Informed Consent …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 362

 

APPENDIX B

Literary Choices for AARI Day Lesson Plans ………………………………………………………. 364

 

APPENDIX C

Carter Woodson’s Questionnaire ………………………………………………………………………… 366

 

APPENDIX D

Vexations Musical Score …………………………………………………………………………………… 368

 

APPENDIX E

Field Notes for AARI Lesson Plans …………………………………………………………………….. 369

CHAPTER ONE “Theme for English B”

 

The instructor says: “Go home and write a page tonight, and let that page come out of you and then it will be true.”

 

The student then creates a work of cultural dissonance embodied within a cultural context and voice that impacts himself and his classroom — with a page that reflects his social and political environment. This cultural narrative distinguishes his voice and his writing from the rest of his social world in that majority (White) educational setting, “on the hill above Harlem,” which creates dissonance for the teacher and the student.

My Personal Note: 

I am making the literal assumption that Hughes is speaking about himself as a student at Columbia University, “to this college on the hill above Harlem,” as he writes this dissonant page and context in “Theme for English B.” 

But lastly, Langston Hughes says:

 

Will my page be colored that I write? Being me it will not be White; but it will be a part of you instructor; you are White, yet you are a part of me, as I am a part of you. That’s American (Hughes, 1951). Can a cultural narrative be framed as culturally dissonant with the clash of culture and race? Yes. What is Hughes saying about voice and cultural positioning as he states: “You are White, yet you are a part of me, as I am a part of you”? This poem is a prime example of how “the personal can be political and yet illuminating by choice” (Lorde, 1984). Hughes claims, “That’s American.” What about the politics of nationhood? In this case, “being American,” for evidently, the politics of identity relate to classroom practice.

 

Cultural dynamics are negotiated within social worlds and classroom environments that mirror this poem. The narrative of a cultural student will create dissonance. Why? I guess the answer depends on the culture of the writer. The narrative of an instructor promoting this cultural assignment will create dissonance, for even the culture of the teacher impacts the writing project.

What about the teacher’s pedagogical narrative as a cultural pedagogue? Will it be framed as “colored” or “White?” Again, I guess the answer depends on the culture of the pedagogue. However, there can be multiple assumptions related to this question about culture within this poem, especially written during 1951 in an era of pre-civil rights legislation.

Look at the cultural markers: a “segregated community” and a “segregated classroom” and how the influence of the politics of the time period subsequently embodies a “segregated ideology” of teaching and practice. Look at the language, for this is how I had my students frame their inquiries into this poem, from a socio-linguistically framework of language and from a socio-historical framework of ethno-history.  Most importantly, from a political framework, this was from a temporal space of having readers look at the poem through social and political lenses of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Dissonantly, as temporal framing, even Hughes asked: “Will my page be colored that I write? In 1951, this was the language of the time — “colored” or “White,” so this poem is an ideation that mirrors the societal ideology of that era. But, that was then, and this is now. So does this same ideology apply to today’s classroom practices and pedagogical framing in a post-civil rights era? If the answer were NO, I wouldn’t be using the allegorical reference to Hughes’ poetry to support my pedagogical inquiry and feel compelled to tell my “illuminative” narrative of origin as a cultural pedagogue.

 

Narrative of My Origin as a Cultural Pedagogue

This is my personal narrative of my origin as a cultural pedagogue. Part one of my dissertation uses the method of “auto-ethnography” to present my story and the literary inspiration from “Theme for English B.” Representations in auto-ethnography:

May take a traditional form such as text, often closely resembling a research report in which the author and his/her voice are central to the narrative. Representation in auto-ethnography is presenting one’s own story with the implied or explicit assertion that the personal narrative instructs, disrupts, incites to action, and calls into question politics, culture, and identity. (Marshall et al., 2006, p. 167)

 

My personal narrative “instructs and “disrupts,” “incites to action” and “calls into question politics, culture, and identity”– as they relate to the assumptions about the racial characteristics of being a multicultural educator (Marshall, 2006). So does Hughes’ poem, “Theme for English B,” which I used as an epigraph to begin Chapter One of this dissertation as the inspiration that started my journey as an educator. I continue to use Hughes’ poem as a teaching tool and as a literary tool, which connects “being the only colored student in the class” to English and Language Arts studies. I open all my classes with this poem, whether it is the professional development classes for in-service teachers and mentors in the PDS program (Professional

Development School) as part of the Holmes Partnership, or in the LLED (Language and Literacy Education) block of pre-service teachers when I teach a methods course titled “Language Arts in Secondary Schools” in the White majority environment of The Pennsylvania State University.

This poem was also the inspiration to create a curriculum based on my son’s personal, social injustice experience in an English classroom, and within this poem, I found my teaching purpose and cultural pedagogical style of teaching and writing.

The context of Langston Hughes’ literary “cultural boldness” in this poem called out to me. That boldness and impact inspired me to start the exploration of my role as a cultural being, my role as a cultural pedagogue, and my creation of cognitive dissonance when I teach. However, the impact of cultural pedagogy is not just the experience of discomfort. Rather, one can experience transformation when you or I — and cultural difference — intentionally and unintentionally — create a space for the process of “learning through resistance” and the conflict of “one’s beliefs” and “one’s actions.”

 

Experiencing and Examining Cognitive Dissonance

What is cognitive dissonance? According to www.dictionary.com, cognitive dissonance is: “inconsistency between the beliefs one holds or between one’s actions and one’s beliefs.” What happens when your pedagogy is non-normative or non-traditional and inconsistent with dominant standards of instructional design or dominant ideologies? Dissonance is created. This is an important question. Leon Festinger, the theorist who first studied cognitive dissonance theory (1957), later published Conflict, Decision and Dissonance (1964) in which he talks about the impact of the decisions, behaviors, conflict, and dissonance created by this dilemma. This “cognitive dissonance,” as it relates to the field of teacher education, makes one question his or her pedagogical beliefs, values, and actions. The decision(s) that one makes about what to teach, how to teach, how to conform, or how to rebel is/are all part of experiencing the inconsistencies and the struggles of pedagogical conflict that can exist within oneself.

As a pedagogue, how do you handle this dissonance? What can be done? You can study it, reflect upon it, talk about your feelings with others and examine the relevance of this discomfort to the field of teacher education and practice. But first, only by acknowledging that you have a cultural framework can one can begin to identify the components of one’s cultural origin and begin a cultural narrative. Next, one can apply this critical consciousness to reflect upon how culture influences pedagogical styles and choices.  This is characteristic #1 of being a cultural pedagogue: knowledge of one’s own culture.

 

Identifying One’s Own Pedagogical Style and Cultural Origin  

 

I (Donna King) have identified my pedagogical style as non-normative and intentionally cultural and critical. Therefore, I have an intentional, dissonant, cultural style of pedagogy that I use to communicate ideas that are intended to create critical thinking. According to Marshall, the role of this dissertation and the method of auto-ethnography helped me to critique and analyze my pedagogical style and how “my personal narrative will instruct, disrupt, incite to action, and call into question politics, culture, and identity.” (Marshall et al., 2006, p. 167) 

 

So, speaking in an emancipatory discourse, in relation to the framework of social justice and emancipatory education, the results of my journey has been the culmination of a “freedom ride.” There is a distinct relationship between cognitive instructions, as it is related to cognitive theory and there is a conceptual relationship to the field of language, and literacy, culture, society, curriculum and instruction. Due to the dissonant nature of these processes, I now see the cognitive connection of teacher education to the field of psychology. The blending of disciplines can help to define and empower the intercultural assumptions of a multi-disciplinary framework of an educator. The theory of cognitive dissonance is a psychological theory, but it can also be applied to the cultural assumptions of the framework of educational practices.

 

Cognitive Dissonance Related to the Cultural Assumptions  of the Multi-Disciplinary Framework of an Educator 

The relevance of the literary significance of the conceptual context of the text Conflict,

Decision, and Dissonance (Festinger, 1964) supports this notion — affirming that I have

“experienced” and “created cognitive dissonance” in all aspects of being an academician. Or, to say this in a culturally authentic voice, “I make a cognitive decision to create dissonance wherever I go,” carving out spaces of conflict, discomfort and self-reflection, or as my advisor says: “You force others to look into the mirror at their cultural assumptions about race when you speak” (Myers, 2006). This is due to my strong voice of activism and cultural inferences of race, injustice, and social justice in the majority of my intellectual interpretations, which tend to morph into a “racialized” cultural discourse. Is this the same for all educators within their culture?

At this point in the research, I only answered these questions from my own personal experiences. These cultural assumptions (or socio-cultural realities) were the framework of my research and my statement of praxis and philosophy of teaching. This framework has created a mirror of constant reflection for me, sometimes compelling me to validate my position as an intellectual of color. Being an educator of color, a critical pedagogue, and an intellectual, I see social conditioning and social constructions of knowledge with cultural references in everything that I venture into. Even throughout multiple disciplines, since cultural studies can be interdisciplinary, I see the importance of including the study of culture in all elements of society, for cultural reproduction is perpetuated in all institutions and practices.

          

My Multi-disciplinary Influences

I can clearly see the influence of the dominant ideology reflected in our educational institutions and practices due to my academic degrees in organizational leadership, business management, and business administration. Within these multi-disciplinary influences, I became very engaged in critically viewing the work of classical management theorists and institutional structures as a student of business education. When viewing classical management from a cultural standpoint, few theorists were willing to take our defining societal frameworks to another dimension, until they began to look at traditional management theory critically through a societal lens and intercultural framework. By looking critically at the management of our corporations, governance, and educational institutions, the ideological framework of our society became vividly transparent. Even in business school I searched for that ‘dissonant’ ideology to further develop my critical thinking about our dominant White society. (Yes, I created dissonance there, too!)

Why am I going here? This exploratory research study looked at ways of defining societal frameworks about pedagogy and practice within a multidisciplinary framework. Even the literature review is interdisciplinary in nature, so one of the methodological frameworks for my research design was critical ethnography (Thomas, 2003). The relevance of looking into the literature about the ideological framework of our societal structure, especially in the field of teacher education, intrigued me, especially the comparisons of the interpretation by the works of theorists Thomas and Weber. Interdisciplinary contexts can reveal parallel ideological frameworks that need to be critically viewed to see the relevance of cultural framing, no matter how abstract. This comparative viewing leads to uncovering interesting parallel framings about educators that exist within multiple interdisciplinary contexts that relate to the ideology of schooling.

 

Interdisciplinary Contexts and the Use  of Cultural Lenses and Critical Theory

For instance, when doing research in my business program I came upon Max Weber, a famous sociologist and management theorist who began to “separate normative judgments” from factual statements. I was intrigued by the notion in a journal article, described as “a problem of interpreting intellectual reflexes according to determinant social conditions” (Weber, 1982). I deemed these intellectual reflexes as “cognitive dissonant reflexes” or reactions to resistance and discomfort. This quote was taken from an article titled “Critical Ethnography in Comparative Education” (Masemann, 1982), which I felt confirmed this notion of ideology in the methods of critical ethnography. I needed a research method that looked deeper, beyond “normative judgments,” thereby exploring the “abstracting” of ideology.” This ideology is representative of the exploratory research design that I chose for my research, as it related to “unpacking the social and political processes” of cultural pedagogy and the beliefs, values, and cultural assumptions contained within pedagogical styles and the ideology of schooling.

This space of resistance that is created “when interpreting intellectual reflexes” becomes problematic for an individual, due to the inconsistencies and contradictions of his or her cultural beliefs and norms. These notions are consistent with the concepts in critical theory and with the framework of qualitative research as a form of an “emancipation of cultural members from ideologies” (Thomas, 2003).  According to Thomas,

Critical ethnography is not a theory but a perspective through which a qualitative researcher can frame questions and promote action. Its purpose is emancipation of cultural members from ideologies that are not to their benefit and not of their creation—an important concept in critical theory. Because critical ethnography is born out of the theoretical underpinnings of critical theory, it is premised upon the assumption that cultural institutions can produce a false consciousness in which power and oppression become taken-for-granted ‘realities’ or ideologies. (p. 2)

In this way, critical ethnography goes beyond a description of ideologies of culture that is “not of their creation,” thereby resulting in a need for inquiry, self-reflection, and inevitable paradigm shifting. In accordance with my research, there is a need for participatory action to enact change by challenging this ”false consciousness” and ideologies of schooling exposed through the framework of interdisciplinary research. Critical ethnographers suggest that “critical researchers begin from the premise that all cultural life is in constant tension between control and resistance” (Thomas, 1993, p. 9). Therefore, the cultural emergence of an educator can be a good subject for research to have teachers look at their perceptions about teaching and their “taken for granted realities.” This can begin their questioning of ideologies of power and oppression. Teachers as cultural workers should be made conscious of this notion of “taken for granted realities” and the notion “that cultural institutions can produce a false consciousness” so researchers should be “open to scrutiny about otherwise hidden agendas” (Thomas, p. 4). This challenge of the assumptions of this false consciousness can be problematic, yet liberatory to frame the questioning of this “relativizing” or “abstracting of ideologies” (Weber, 1982). In this case, we are abstracting the notions of race, culture, and pedagogical practices.

This ideology of looking at education through the false assumptions about learning through suboptimal views with the use of the deficit model of education is a good example of how a “false consciousness” is created about pedagogical abilities and liberatory practices. To scrutinize these traditional agendas, one would have to teach with resistance, or research the oppositional view. This critical epistemology isolates the dominant standard that is representative in traditional research as a way of knowing and making meaning of the culture embedded within our institutions. It is important to recognize a newer cultural epistemology as a more progressive standard to become part of teacher research in the twenty-first century. These ways of knowing are important for teachers to see themselves as cultural workers. They need to engage with their emergence as cultural educators. How will they teach?  With a pedagogy of the oppressed, or a pedagogy of possibility? These ways of thinking and knowing need to be an essential part of teacher education and are a very important part of their cultural emergence as educators. This way of knowing is representative of characteristic #2 – knowledge of othering. 

 

The Cultural Emergence of an Educator

Jerome Bruner (1990), in his text In Acts of Meaning, spoke of this emergence as “cultural” rather than strictly individual psychology, in which “self is defined both by the individual and by the culture in which he or she participates” (Bruner, 1990, p. 116). I feel that this definition of self, as “defined by the individual and by the culture in which one participates,” can become an emanicipatory space of intellectual possibility to look at these cultural assumptions “under determinate social conditions” (Weber, 1982). Can you now see how this concept of dissonance is connected throughout disciplines? This is important because teachers need to make sense of interpreting pedagogy through their beliefs and values in terms of their own cultural disposition. This inquiry of “counterattitudal behavior” (Festinger, 1957) creates a sense of dissonance by which one can choose to avoid these feelings of discomfort and selfreflexivity. However, this decision is less problematic when one can maintain the relative comfort of the status quo and justify his or her constraint. My argument with learning about “counterattitudal behavior” is that educators need to embrace the dissonance(s) they create when attempting to define and explore the underlying factors that are intricate parts of cultural assumptions about normative and non-normative pedagogical styles. In accord with this research, teacher educators have to combat and challenge this notion of false consciousness instead of avoiding the dissonance created with this new knowledge of attempting to understand “the culture in which one participates” (Bruner, p. 116).

 

Emergence of This New Knowledge of Dissonance:

Taking Greene’s Education for Freedom a Step Further

Speaking of an emergence of a cultural psychology where “self is defined by both the individual and by the culture in which he or she participates” (Bruner, 1990) creates a new knowledge of dissonance as praxis. I felt that this was an invitation for me as an educator to find a way to transform intellectuals by creating new knowledge about this dilemma, expanding upon their knowledge of freedom and dissonance. Remember, the goal of my research was to take Greene’s idea of education for freedom a step further and have educators reflect on who they are as critical beings, cultural beings, and educators. Going through the process of taking a critical view of freedom and how to make meaning of this self-reflexivity creates a space for the exploration of our individual, historical, societal, and social conditioning. But how is this process dissonant? Does this critical process of making meaning of a new knowledge of freedom have to be dissonant? It should be a norm. This reflective inquiry can just be a cultural process of reflecting on what “education for freedom means” (Greene, 1988, p. 530). When one “unpacks” personal cultural assumptions and cultural values, dissonance is already promoted, so there is an invisible undercurrent of dissonance already present. This is optimal learning. Furthermore, this view of learning demonstrates the relevance of self-reflection and internalizing cultural assumptions that take place in teacher research.

 

Internalizing Dissonance

   “Don’t internalize the dissonance, intellectualize it” is the mantra of Carol Hopps, my Holmes Scholar Mentor.

Throughout the dissertation, you will become familiar with this mantra. This inquiry is relevant to understanding what cultural factors are underlying the construction of “self” as a cultural pedagogue.   Yes, I am a victim of the very song of freedom that I sing, and the dialectic of freedom that Greene inspires us to use teaches me to learn how to sing this song. At first, I internalized my struggle. You see, dissonance can be internalized and cause discomfort, resistance, and multiple reflex reactions that can lead to social and psychological trauma–a problematic reflex. Or, dissonance and be used as an emancipatory reflex, a pragmatic reflex that can promote liberation as a form of education enacted through learning from the discomfort. Throughout my recursive analysis of the multiple contexts of dissonance, I was constantly engaging the intellectualizing of this “perceived” resistance.

The emergence of a cultural educator speaks to the creation and re-creation of an inquiry into the nature of cultural dissonance and the inherent struggle with cultural assumptions about teaching and learning. The process is ongoing and perpetual. I learned not only to internalize the struggle, but also to intellectualize it, as this has become the central focus of my research. Being a cultural pedagogue with an ongoing and recurrent dilemma has created a need for me to create an “intentional dissonance curriculum” that uses “this struggle” as a teachable framework. The unpacking of cultural assumptions and cultural values promoted a shared learning environment for the teacher and the students, for we all can share life’s struggles. Thus, I learned from the students’ life stories as well. They learned about dissonance from me, because I used personal narratives and stories in my teaching to provide “cultural authentic teachable moments as an expression of critical ethnography as a form of “emancipation not repression” (Thomas, 1993, p.

2).

I think the origin of my journey is relevant to the purpose of my teaching, the premise of my research, and the background of my study. However, what about the significance of the role of doing historical research in this inquiry about cultural pedagogues and English education? The role of history and historical consciousness fits into this inquiry about liberatory praxis. Remember the temporal framing of the poem “Theme for English B”? There are ethnocentrisms contained within literature and history to uncover. History contains “told” and “untold” stories with teachable lessons, which can be analyzed from an ethno-historical research approach. What is ethno-historical research?

 

Ethno-Historical Research as a Form of Praxis

Historically, there have been ethnocentrisms about cultural pedagogues since the origins of our American education system. Ethnocentric analysis and the “decolonization of research methodologies” (Smith, 1999) must be factors in the interpretation of works of literature, data analysis, and reporting of the findings. Multiple lenses should be used to unpack the “social story” and “untold story” contained in the compilation of data and in the gathering of resources. Ethno-history demystifies the “social and political story” of history and literature when viewed through the cultural lens of an educator and/or historian. The interpretation must be subject to critical viewing, as the quantitative and qualitative analysis reflects the social and cultural processes of the history of educational frameworks. The internal and external validity of the temporal framing of the historical context relies on the interpretation of the researcher and the acknowledgement of the social, historical, and political contexts of dominant research standards. I devised a definition of ethno-historical research: Ethno-historical research can be a qualitative or quantitative analysis of data in any discipline, but the interpretation of data should be performed with a historical consciousness.

However, these research paradigms can be related to the field of teacher education and history; in this case, to the history of how one has been educated to do research. The use of historical evidence, or what passes as historical evidence, can be used and misused for political purposes. So, it is important to recognize the Eurocentric view of data interpretation and research methodologies. Therefore, there needs to be a cultural revision of historical research as it relates to the study of cultural pedagogues and MCE education. Ethnocentrisms exist within literature, history, and teacher education.

What about these ethnocentrisms? Can a researcher ignore the dynamics of studying ethno-history without the subjectivity of looking at one’s own cultural positioning and the impact on how one looks at the historical content? I noticed the inclusion of White his-stories and the exclusion of the untold stories of people of color (also, the exclusion of her-stories). Although this seemed to raise a red flag for me as a researcher, I just assumed that I was making that identification due to a natural instinct to look for “similar identifiers” of my own culture. In a social studies research course I took, I did explore this notion of identifying context within one’s own culture. I did analyze the reflection of a scholar/historian and the critical examination of his subjectivity as a researcher. Trigger (1982), as an ethno-historian stated, “The historian is tempted to identify himself with one party or another and seek to influence his reader to make a similar identification” (p. 6). As cultural pedagogues, which ideology or space of privilege, power, and difference does each of us identify with? One must look at one’s own cultural position and the impact on the pedagogue’s subjectivity. A cultural revision of historical research and literary research must become a critical part of being a teacher/researcher and cultural worker.        Earlier in this chapter, I talked about the importance of creating a space for historical exploration and self-reflexivity about what cultural factors are underlying the construction of teacher educators as cultural pedagogues. Let us use the tool of ethno-history to look back in history for examples of the work of cultural pedagogues, their impact on teacher education, and their roles in social justice and social literacy. This inquiry is representative of characteristic #3: knowing the history of cultural/lived experiences—exploring the content and context of MCE and CRP.

 

Cultural Pedagogues: The Story of Myrtilla Miner

In her book Woman, Race and Class, Angela Davis (1981) identified ethno-historical accounts of cultural pedagogues who wanted to teach for change and who were part of the struggle for education. In a chapter titled “Education and Liberation: Black Women’s Perspective,” Davis stated:

The most outstanding examples of White women’s sisterly solidarity with Black women are associated with people’s struggle for education. Like Prudence Crandall and Margaret Douglass, Myrtilla Miner literally risked her life as she sought to impart knowledge to young Black women. In 1851, when she initiated her project to establish a Black teachers’ college in Washington D.C., she had already instructed Black children in Mississippi, a state where education for Blacks was a criminal offense. (Davis, 1981, p. 102)

These were White women, acting as cultural pedagogues to provide an education for Black children. Ethno-historical research can be used as a tool in teacher education and other disciplines to teach about the impact of culture and the role of liberation with examples such as this one of “teachers as cultural workers.” However, when the voice of the pedagogue is not a person of color, what impact does this pedagogical voice have on the way that social action and social justice impacts the work of a teacher “bent on freedom” and liberatory praxis? Cultural repositioning and cultural re-visioning of historical research has an impact on the way teachers and researchers look at the role of culture, the ideologies of traditional education, and political roles of educators, official/traditional roles, and ethno-historical research paradigms.

 

Defining Ethno-History

What is ethno-history? Ethno-history emphasizes the joint use of documentary materials and ethnographic archaeological data, as well as the combination of historical and anthropological approaches, in the study of social and cultural processes. Historical research provides a venue for the development of historical data to be used for the study of culture (Trigger, 1982). This dissertation study combined issues and assumptions about the history of teaching, race, and the impact of the study of culture on critical and cultural pedagogy. What is the broader relevance and significance of this discovery for a critical educator?  In the context of the interdisciplinary relevance of the study of culture, pedagogy, praxis and research, I am now confident and affirmed to teach and write from a cultural position. In fact, I feel compelled to teach and write from this cultural space. Finally, I realize the importance of my learning the dominant discourse, a different discourse of teaching and writing for me, in order to legitimize and utilize my cultural voice in the dominant discourse. In this way, I am satisfied and fulfilled as a writer and teacher with a cultural voice. As Toni Cade Bambara (1970) said about cultural writing, she “changed her attitude and has come to appreciate that it is a perfectly legitimate way to participate in struggle” (p. 10). Therefore, for me, cultural teaching and cultural writing are legitimate ways “to participate in the struggle” located in culture.

There is a broader relevance and significance for me with this discovery. It is not just about my role as a cultural writer and as a cultural pedagogue, but also about the role of any educator who wants to partake in this interdisciplinary exploration of what it means to be a cultural teacher and writer. There is also the relevance of the further exploration of the versatility of historical voices contained within teaching and writing, but there is also the need for the exploration of the versatility of voices contained within my own pedagogy. Where do these voices come from? The process of exploring the versatility of culturally inherent voices present in pedagogies can be used to ask educators to identify their pedagogical styles and reflect upon their cultural frameworks about teaching.

 

An Ethno-Historian on the Cultural Re-visioning of Historical Research

The role of historical thinking can be used as liberatory praxis when looking at the purpose of education under the scrutiny of the time periods of the classrooms of yesterday. Teachers and researchers faced similar personal and political challenges of the dominant culture’s notions of social justice in the teaching of children of native, Black and mulatto students, as well as the acknowledgement of cultural biases when doing research on the culture of the “other” and on cultural relations in general. Trigger (1982), who is a White ethno-historian, explains a view of ethnocentrism that can be a flaw of traditional historical research when viewing the findings through the lens of the dominant culture. He stated, “Native spokesmen have suggested that EuroAmericans are incapable of understanding native history from the inside and are therefore unable to produce work that is not flawed and superficial, if not overtly biased and derogatory” (Trigger, p. 7).

Look at the reflection of this previously quoted scholar/historian and critically examine  his subjectivity as a researcher. Trigger admitted the Eurocentric limitations. (Again, I look to the academic voices to help me frame this notion of cross-cultural research by making comparisons and critical analysis beyond my cultural assumptions of what this means on the surface: when studying cultural relations between two or more ethnic groups.) For now, let’s remain with the voice of Trigger using an example of this dilemma of this cross-cultural research from the Journal of Ethno History: When writing a detailed ethno history of the Huron Indians from prehistoric times to 1660, I had to face a number of methodological issues. Trigger (1976, p. 50)  re-stated that the most important of these were:

 

• What should the basic units of my analysis be?
• What the relationship should be between me an ethno-historian and these units?

 

Trigger also questioned viewing history through his cultural lens as a White researcher using it as a disclaimer of the influence of his culture and writing about “Indian history,” as he admits to “facing a number of methodological issues as a White anthropologist writing about Indian history…” He really became authentic when he concluded that “indeed, in the absences of documents written by Indians, some historians come to the fatalistic conclusion that White documents make White history” (Trigger, 1986, p. 6).  My Personal Reflection:

Trigger inspired me to provide a disclaimer as a teacher/researcher of color writing about cultural studies. There is relevance in looking for the ethnocentrisms contained within traditional historical research and literature. There is a relevance of looking at the ethnocentrisms contained within traditional teacher education and the influence on my role as a cultural pedagogue. Most importantly, the humility to claim the cultural biases that we bring to the research and the acknowledgement of these biases; Even, the racial biases that have become part of our psyches. Yet, there are even dimensions beyond race that are part of being a cultural worker.  

 

The role of ethno-history had a similar influence on my research framework, my teacher narrative, and my journey of being a cultural pedagogue. As Trigger (1976) stated, “What should the relationship be between me [as a cultural pedagogue] and these units?” (p. 51). Even after looking at the story of Mytrilla Milner, which we will revisit in another chapter, I hope you are gaining a deeper view of why I asked these questions of myself and others: “Are you a cultural pedagogue? How and why? But mainly, do you have to be a person of color to be a cultural pedagogue?” These questions were posed to the pre-service teachers in this study after their African American Read-In Day AARI activity. What role does social justice play within the role of a White teacher as a cultural pedagogue? There are dimensions beyond race that are part of being a cultural worker.

As a cultural pedagogue, the inquiry into what kind of teacher/researcher/activist I have become needs to be explored further. I need to reveal the next steps of my role as a researcher of color, a cultural pedagogue, and a self-trained historian, and as a public history lecturer. Look at Mytrilla Milner, for she was a teacher/activist. I am sure that Mytrilla Miner, Prudence Crandall, and Margaret Douglass had to think deeply about what kind of teacher/activist/public lecturers they had become. I also need to think about how to look at the ethno historical framings of past and present pedagogues bent on freedom, equality and their relations to interdisciplinary contexts of race, cultural identity, and becoming teacher/researchers, all at the same time.

 

My Findings as a Researcher of Color:

The Cultural Lens of Ethno-Historical Research

I previously posed the interdisciplinary question: Is this English or history? I have a passion for local history. There is relevance to my inquiry about performing this interdisciplinary research by combining the fields of English Education and History. As a self-trained historian and a public pedagogue I do research on the Underground Railroad. This is a large part of my role as a cultural pedagogue and a public history lecturer in my community. I perform ethno-historical research by looking at the census records of Centre County, Pennsylvania, as well as other literary documents in the archives of local libraries. I use the critical analysis of ethnocentrism, cultural studies, and the knowledge of the literacy of the past to search for the dominant stories and voices of the past, as well as the “untold stories” and the voices of the “other.” When I do research on a local history project, I try to locate and analyze historical records with the tools of cross-cultural research. I rely on publications such as The Journal of Ethno-History to aid in my academic search of writings about ethno-historical researchers who have viewed research through cultural lenses and used historical consciousness, defined as a view of the world through the location of culture (Bhabha, 1994). Doesn’t everyone view research through his or her cultural lens? Yes, but this research is done in accordance with the researcher’s location of culture and role defined by society. Fortunately, within my historical research, I did come across works of other ethno historians who presented me with conflicting paradigms about historical pedagogues. The findings resulted in racial conundrums, which raised red flags for me. I used these examples such as this one throughout the dissertation as cultural analogies where the ideological notions can be flipped – to shift the cultural framing.  I am drawing on this notion framed by Giyard (1996) known as “let’s flip the script: an African American discourse on language, literature, and learning. “

            Cultural Analogy #1:

According to Asante (1990), Woodson states: The chief difficulty with the education of the Negro is that it has been largely imitation resulting in the enslavement of his mind….  In fact, the keynote in the education of the Negro has been to do what he is told to do.  Any Negro who has learned to do this is well prepared to function in the American social order as other would have him. (Asante, 1990, p. 162)  [Flipping the script].

This racial conundrum raised a flag of “false consciousness’ in historical thinking, as I viewed this interpretation of education critically as an inculcated imitation of enslavement of the mind. However, within a parallel context, looking beyond race to issues of power and authority, traditional education creates a similar ideology for teachers and citizens to follow: “That’s American” (Hughes, 1951).

 

Cultural Pedagogues As Scholars and Ethno-Historians

I learned about the work of scholars of color and other cultural pedagogues such as Asante (1990), Woodson (1933), and W. E. B DuBois (1903). DuBois was one of the first sociologists to study culture with his social study of his ethno-historical work compiled in The Philadelphia Negro (1996). This was a cultural epiphany for me as a novice researcher, for I had been mis-educated and denied this parallel view. These discoveries may be “old knowledge” to some, but it was “new knowledge” for me, due to the Eurocentric canon of White scholars and traditional research. Traditional research should contain the comparative component of cultural scholars and traditional scholars. As I learned more about becoming an academician, a cultural intellectual, a cultural pedagogue, and now an ethno-historical researcher, I could envision this comparative and cross-cultural research paradigm of double-consciousness as suggested by DuBois’ work. He made reference to all of these cultural voices of the past and their important work.

I use the conceptual framing of ethno-historical research to aid in reviving the use of historical perspectives and literary narratives from historical archives to help educate others about the cultural voices from the past. Ethno-historical research allows me to teach and write about history from the voice of the “other” and the process of ethno-historical research gives me the right to narrate with a cultural voice.  Ethno-history also helps to point out the dissonance context of societal ideations that can be interpreted beyond “color” and race – as in the cultural analogy of “imitation resulting in the enslavement of the mind” (Asante, 1990, p. 162). This is still a historical education problem, even in today’s world of education. Teaching teachers to use ethnohistory to teach English and Language Arts can help to uncover these cultural analogies as a tool to demonstrate that there are dimensions beyond race that are part of being a “cultural worker.”

 

Is This English or History? The Relation of Ethno-History to the Teaching of Language Arts as a Cultural Pedagogue

Ethno-history is directly connected to the field of language and literacy, curriculum and instruction, and critical and cultural pedagogy. The process of critically viewing history, curricula, and the writing of history creates cognitive and cultural dissonance for the learner and the teacher. The” old” and “new” knowledge constructed through cultural and historical narratives can be used to aid in the teaching of multicultural education and in the teaching of “difference” in the field of English and Language Arts. One might then ask the question of an educator: “Is this English or history?” This is the interdisciplinary focus that I began to include in my pedagogical praxis as a language arts practice of social literacy.

Chapter Two thus speaks to the process of exploring the versatility of culturally inherent voices that are present and embedded within teachers’ pedagogical styles that should be included in pedagogical praxis.

 

Will the Page That I Write Be “Colored or White?”  A Student’s Story of Being Denied a Cultural Voice in an English Classroom

 

In his poem, “Theme for English B,” Hughes as the student asks, “Will the page that I write be colored or White?” Ironically, this written page can be seen as healing work — as a liberating process created within Hughes poem (possibly for himself).

 

A Personal Victim-to-Victor Story of Dissonance: Becoming An English Pedagogue: 

Give the poem to a student who was denied a voice… 

As I mentioned previously, Hughes’ title “Theme for English B” inspired me, especially his line “Will the page that I write be colored or White?” to become a cultural pedagogue. I now view pedagogy as a form of healing, teaching purpose, and praxis. Hughes also inspired me in several other literary works. Ironically, my first epigraph and liberatory scholarship were created from this literary inspiration, which denote an actual teacher story related to an actual line from the poem by Hughes. Even before I began to look at the relationship of my culture to my pedagogy, I used this poem as a liberatory praxis that saved my son. You see, he was the only colored student in the class, in a White majority English college-prep twelfth grade course. He wrote his senior speech about what it was like to be the only African American male in a college prep English course. His instructor told him to change his speech because it would offend the other students in the class. He refused. She didn’t allow him to read his senior speech and she opted to fail him. I gave him the poem “Theme for English B” as a healing strategy to show him that he was not the only “colored in his class” who wrote a Theme for English B. My son suffered a long time from that teacher’s damaging pedagogical act, but now he is a writer (King, PDS Journal, 2005).

In fact, Langston Hughes’ poem inspired me to switch disciplines and become an English educator, to teach future teachers, so that no student would be denied a voice. So, will the pedagogy that I teach be colored or White? For certain it will be a liberatory praxis. I use my son’s story as a teaching tool, after I have the students read the poem; sometimes I reveal the personal side of it, and sometimes I don’t—but in my heart, I know why I teach this poem. Now you know, too!!

But what about the pedagogical style and culturally inherent voice(s) of the teacher? Let’s explore further the inquiry into the voices of a cultural pedagogue and the fundamental question: Will the pedagogy be colored that I teach?

A STUDY OF STUDENT TEACHERS’ PERCEIVED RESISTANCE TO TEACHING MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION: WILL THE PEDAGOGY BE “COLORED THAT I TEACH?”

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