develop a greater appreciation of the inherent structural racialized issues involved with these traditional understandings and approaches .
3
How has your research affected you professionally and personally ?
Photo Credit : Shuana Niessen
My research has fundamentally affected many aspects of my life , both professionally and personally . Professionally , I have become more critically aware of the role I play as both a hegemonic and counter hegemonic agent within my classroom and the school at large . I am more aware of the structuring forces at work ( many of which I am complicit in ) that protect and ( re ) inscribe Whiteness in order to ensure its hegemony ( and my privilege ). Thus , my pedagogy is morphing into understandings and practices that are more critically and thoughtfully committed to the disruption of dominant racialized systems , towards more socially just ideals .
Perhaps even more fundamentally , this research has deeply influenced my personal identity as it has shattered the very way I see and understand myself and the place I occupy within society . The ways in which I understand myself ( as a racialized White , middle class , English speaking , heterosexual , ablebodied , female teacher and mother in Saskatchewan ) and the many privileges I enjoy at the expense of numerous others have changed significantly . While I have begun this process of developing a more critical consciousness , I imagine the enormity of these new-to-me realizations will likely have ongoing repercussions for many years to come .
4
What do you hope your research might accomplish in the field of education ?
Beyond my own classroom and school space , I hope this research can inform the broader work of social studies education , development of educational policies and practices , and the professional growth of practicing and preservice teachers . Because social sciences courses often represent the primary places in which students engage with topics of power , privilege , the social construct of race , and processes of racialization , this research demonstrates the need to critically consider when and how these issues are included in the formal ( and enacted ) curricula , the impetus to thoughtfully and critically analyze pedagogical understandings and approaches for the ways in which they may ( re ) inscribe Whiteness and its corresponding privilege , and the call to authentically include and embed multiple and diverse
Tana Burrows with students from Balfour Collegiate High School
knowledges , perspectives , and ways of knowing within the curricula and within classroom practice .
Even though this research speaks to particular issues within my classroom , and more generally within social studies education , it may also inform broader educational policies and practices like multicultural education . Traditional approaches to multicultural education have often served to ( re ) produce perceived nationalist traits like equality , tolerance , and fairness , rather than to engage students in critical analysis and reflection of their own identities and corresponding connections to privilege or their interdependence with others who are diversely produced . It is my hope that this research adds to the growing volume of work , illustrating the need to take a more critical approach to educating of and for diversity and social justice within Canada .
This research also has the potential to inform the professional development of practicing teachers and the preparation of preservice teachers in ways that encourage ( even require ) them to ( re ) consider their own subjectivities and to examine the ways in which schools and education systems as a whole ensure the ongoing production of Whiteness . As I discovered intimately through this inquiry , the dysconscious perpetuation of Whiteness through mainstream educational practices only serves to maintain the status quo complete with its systems of privilege and oppression . Thus , this research helps to illustrate the impetus to adequately prepare practicing and preservice teachers to engage critically and thoughtfully with issues of power , privilege , the social construct of race and processes of racialization ( and their places within these relationships ), and to give them the necessary time and support to engage authentically with multiple aspects of critical
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Faculty of Education Education News Spring / Summer 2014 Page 13