White Social Studies Teachers Teaching Towards Racial Justice: A Critical Narrative Inquiry Into the Experiences of Social Studies Teachers

The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to explore the experiences of self-identifying racially just white secondary (grades 7-12) social studies teachers through personal narrative. Most published studies that focus on issues of racial justice with white secondary social studies teachers focus on pre-service teachers and their resistance against learning about racial justice rather than focusing on in-service teachers who are working towards racial justice through their classroom pedagogy. As white individuals make up most of the teaching profession, it is important to understand the experiences of white secondary social studies teachers who are teaching towards racial justice to gain a better understanding of the role they can play in advancing racial justice. This study had four participants who were interviewed twice each to generate personal narratives in the form of field texts. These field texts were framed within Clandinin’s (2013) commonplaces of time, place, and sociality. The field texts were also analyzed for examples of disrupting whiteness based on the most common types of examples present in the literature around whiteness in social studies classrooms. Participants’ narratives shed light on their motivations in teaching towards racial justice, their engagement with whiteness within their curriculum and the primary sources they use, the methods they use when teaching with primary sources, and their experiences teaching in an anti-CRT climate. The narrative journeys of my four participants could also have potential implications for teacher praxis as well as future research around white secondary social studies teachers.