2024 Theses Doctoral

(Re)positioning the Compass: White Anti-Racist Literacy and ELA Teachers

Harlan Eller, Katie Elizabeth

Research on social illiteracy (Rand, 2021) and the demographic imperative (Jupp et al., 2019)—as well as teachers’ stated responsibilities in teaching about race and racism in schools (Rand, 2021)—convey the urgency of attending to both barriers and possibilities for white literacy and English Language Arts (ELA) teachers. As literacy is inextricably linked with equity, literacy classrooms mark a site of sanctioning or resisting oppressions rooted in the white supremacist status quo.

Following recent articulations of critical race and whiteness frameworks—particularly white supremacy logic (Enumah, 2021)—this research aims to explore white anti-racist educators teaching in the post-2020 evolving and contested field of education. Rooted in a theoretical framework of “rehumanizing praxis,” or simultaneous inward and outward pedagogies, this inquiry prioritizes humanizing research with participants through interviews, observations, reflections, and artifacts. Situated in critical constructivist grounded theory methodology, I enacted a research design intended to explore the internal and external barriers, possibilities, and pedagogies six white anti-racist teachers experience in their endeavors to participate in liberatory education.