White teachers at a discursive crossroad

This study explored the way white teachers speak about Indigenous students and communities. The accounts of teachers working in eight schools across Australia were analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. The research found that deficit and colour-blind discourses dominate the ways that white teachers "know" Indigenous students and families. The data indicates that colour-blind and compensatory pedagogies are employed heavily by teachers working with Indigenous students, and highlights the complexities and tensions that exist in schools. Although there is evidence of some disruption to dominant discourses, teachers' discursive resources are limited in terms of imagining and enacting more equitable pedagogies.

Comparison of telomere length in black and white teachers from South Africa: the sympathetic activity and ambulatory blood pressure in Africans study

OBJECTIVE Telomere length is a marker of biological aging that has been linked to cardiovascular disease risk. The black South African population is witnessing a tremendous increase in the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, part of which might be explained through urbanization. We compared telomere length between black South Africans and white South Africans and examined which biological and psychosocial variables played a role in ethnic difference in telomere length. METHODS We measured leukocyte telomere length in 161 black South African teachers and 180 white South African teachers aged 23 to 66 years without a history of atherothrombotic vascular disease. Age, sex, years having lived in the area, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, hypertension, body mass index, dyslipidemia, hemoglobin A1c, C-reactive protein, smoking, physical activity, alcohol abuse, depressive symptoms, psychological distress, and work stress were considered as covariates. RESULTS Black participants had shorter (median, interquartile range) relative telomere length (0.79, 0.70-0.95) than did white participants (1.06, 0.87-1.21; p < .001), and this difference changed very little after adjusting for covariates. In fully adjusted models, age (p < .001), male sex (p = .011), and HIV positive status (p = .023) were associated with shorter telomere length. Ethnicity did not significantly interact with any covariates in determining telomere length, including psychosocial characteristics. CONCLUSIONS Black South Africans showed markedly shorter telomeres than did white South African counterparts. Age, male sex, and HIV status were associated with shorter telomere length. No interactions between ethnicity and biomedical or psychosocial factors were found. Ethnic difference in telomere length might primarily be explained by genetic factors.

Diversity Discourse and the Ontario Educator: The Understandings of Race and Whiteness Among New White Ontario Teachers

As a recent teacher education graduate, I have been left with more questions than answers about how to create and maintain an equitable and antioppressive classroom. These complicated questions of equity laid the groundwork for this study, which explored how new teachers understood diversity, specifically whiteness, and how they connected these perceptions to their course-related experiences in their teacher education program. Using a qualitative approach, this study problematized the lack of critical discussions around diversity taking place in Ontario teacher education courses. Through purposive, homogenous sampling, 7 new Ontario educators participated in a semistructured interview that focused on their experiences as teacher candidates and new teachers and their understandings and ideas regarding diversity, race, and more specifically, whiteness. The findings suggest that the greater Canadian discourse surrounding multiculturalism impacts the everyday diversity talk of the participants, and that problematic ideas of acceptance and tolerance are common. The findings also show a strong discomfort and unfamiliarity among the participants with the terms whiteness and white privilege. Finally, the results also revealed that new teachers have limited experience in their teacher education to discuss and learn about diversity, particularly critical discussions about race and privilege. Through this investigation, I aimed to bring attention to the necessity of having these critical, albeit difficult, discussions around diversity and whiteness in order to support new, predominately white, teachers.

Contexts That Inform Racial Awareness and Affect Teaching Practice: A Study of White Bilingual Teachers

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

'More like the kids than the other teachers': One working-class pre-service teacher's experiences in a middle-class profession

While teaching is largely a White, middle-class profession, some teachers, including White teachers, come from low socio-economic backgrounds. This paper examines how one working-class pe-service teacher in Australia experiences studying in a predominantly middle-class teacher education program. Drawing on Bourdieu, this paper seeks to explore what we can learn from the pre-service teaching reflections of one woman who is a member of this smaller group of teachers and who brings to her teaching the habitus and life history that aligns with many of her students and the low socio-economic communities in which she teaches.

Progression of cardiovascular risk factors in black Africans: 3 year follow up of the SABPA cohort study

Recent work identified a high prevalence of modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) among urban black South Africans. The aim was to track the progression of CVD risk factors in a multi-ethnic sample of South Africans. Participants were 173 black (aged 47.5 ± 7.8 yrs) and 186 white teachers (aged 49.6 ± 9.9 yrs) that were examined at baseline and 3 years follow-up. Blacks demonstrated a substantially higher prevalence of composite CVD burden (defined as history of physician diagnosed heart disease, use of anti-hypertensives, anti-diabetic, or statin medications at either time point) compared to whites (49.1 vs. 32.0%, p = 0.012) respectively. After controlling for baseline, the black participants demonstrated greater increases in 24 h systolic and diastolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, fasting glucose, fibrinogen, D-dimer, and waist circumference in comparison with whites. In summary, an adverse progression of CVD risk factors was observed in the whole sample, although to a larger degree in black participants. Aggressive treatment strategies for controlling risk factors in black Africans are needed to reduce the increasing burden of CVD in South Africa.

Teaching Disruptive Students: An Indictment of Colorblind Teacher Education Programs

Teacher education programs do not sufficiently prepare White teachers to work with Black and Latino students in disciplinary alternative schools. From a critical race theory in education perspective, prepared White teachers are aware of their own ethnocentrism and, subsequently, develop anti-racist pedagogy and curricula.

Destabilising Privilege: Disrupting Deficit Thinking in White Pre-service Teachers on Field Experience in Culturally Diverse, High Poverty Schools

This chapter examines the personal reflections and experiences of several pre-service and newly graduated teachers, including Kristie, who were involved in the NETDS program. Their documented professional journeys, which include descriptions of struggling when their privileged, taken-for-granted ways of being were destabilized, and grappling with tensions related to their own predispositions and values, are investigated in the context of Whiteness and privilege theory.

‘Purpose’ as a way of helping white trainee history teachers engage with diversity issues

Based on a three year action research project, this study examines one strand of that research, namely the impact that ‘purpose’, i.e. exploring the range of rationales for studying a subject, has in helping white trainee teachers embrace cultural and ethnic diversity within their teaching. Through ‘purpose’ trainees explored different reasons why history should be taught (and by implication what content should be taught and how it should be taught) and the relationship of these reasons to diversity. Focusing on ‘purpose’ appears to have a positive impact on many trainees from white, mono-ethnic backgrounds, enabling them to bring diversity into the school curriculum, in this case history teaching. It offers one way to counter concerns about issues of ‘whiteness’ in the teaching profession and by teaching a more relevant curriculum has a potential positive impact on the achievement of students from minority ethnic backgrounds.

The family today; recommendations from the White House Conference on Children and Youth, for home economics teachers.

Mode of access: Internet.

Happiness online : supporting the emotions of emergent teachers in a virtual community

Extending Lash and Urry's (1994) notion of new "imagined communities" through information and communication structures, I ask the question: Are emergent teachers happy when they interact in online learning environments? This question is timely in the context of the ubiquity of online media and its pervasiveness in teachers' everyday work and lives. The research is important nationally and internationally, because the current research is contradictory. On the one hand, feelings of isolation and frustration have been cited as common emotions experienced in many online environments (Su, Bonk, Magjuka, Liu, & Lee, 2005). Yet others report that online communities encourage a sense of belonging and support (Mills, 2011). Emotions are inherently social, are central to learning and online interaction (Shen, Wang, & Shen, 2009). The presentations reports the use of e-motion blogs to explore emotional states of emergent primary teachers in an online learning context as they transition into their first field experience in schools. The original research was conducted with a graduate class of 64 secondary science pre-service teachers in Science Education Curriculum Studies in a large Australian university, including males and females from a variety of cultural backgrounds, aged 17-55 years. Online activities involved the participants watching a series of streamed live lectures within a course of 8 weeks duration, providing a varied set of learning experiences, such as viewing live teaching demonstrations. Each week, participants provided feedback on learning by writing and posting an e-motion diary or web log about their emotional response. The blogs answered the question: What emotions you experience during this learning experience? The descriptive data set included 284 online posts, with students contributing multiple entries. The Language of Appraisal framework, following Martin and White (2005), was used to cluster the discrete emotions within six affect groups. The findings demonstrated that the pre-service teachers' emotional responses tended towards happiness and satisfaction within the typology of affect groups - un/happiness, in/security, and dis/satisfaction. Fewer participants reported that online learning mode triggered negative feelings of frustration, and when this occurred, it often pertained expectations of themselves in the forthcoming field experience in schools or as future teachers. The findings primarily contribute new understanding about emotional states in online communities, and recommendations are provided for supporting the happiness and satisfaction of emergent teachers as they interact in online communities. It demonstrates that online environments can play an important role in fulfilling teachers' need for social interaction and inclusion.

An introduction to education research methods: Exploring the learning journey of pre-service teachers in a transnational programme

Internationally there is interest in developing the research skills of pre-service teachers as a means of ongoing professional renewal with a distinct need for systematic and longitudinal investigation of student learning. The current study takes a unique perspective by exploring the research learning journey of pre-service teachers participating in a transnational degree programme. Using a case-study design that includes both a self-reported and direct measure of research knowledge, the results indicate a progression in learning, as well as evidence that this research knowledge is continued or maintained when the pre-service teachers return to their home university. The findings of this study have implications for both pre-service teacher research training and transnational programmes.