Exploring Teacher Development through Racial Discourse

Alice McIntyre courageously embarked on an exploration of white racial identity with white student teachers in her book, Making Meaning of Whiteness. McIntyre's interpretive study stimulates renewed thinking on the complexities of race discourse in education; imaginably bringing comfort to readers with a degree of anxiety about race conversations in educational spaces. The theme of "discourse" was highlighted prominently in the book, and interwoven in ways that exploit how the author's participants made meaning of their "whiteness." Rather than rely on conventional notions of discourse to illustrate participant meaning making, McIntyre (1997) informs us that discourse is language that should be multidimensional, and something that can be "created, shaped, reproduced, and contested" (p. 172). In her genius, I sense that the author's reframing of discourse essentially forces the reader to think critically about ways to construct information across the intersections of racial identity, race, racism, and the meaning of whiteness. What I learned from researching McIntyre's background is that she is an accomplished educator, and has developed a niche as a researcher specializing in Participatory Action Research (PAR). In her book, she describes how she employed a PAR methodology with thirteen white undergraduate female student teachers; all whom were members of a teacher preparation program at a private northeastern university. Similar to the custom in which interpretive researchers rationalize their research design choices, McIntyre contended that PAR was an appropriate methodology for exploring how the participants in her study made meaning of their whiteness. She made clear that her study on whiteness was grounded in research literature on education; stating emphatically that much of the literature offers "new and improved suggestions for training teachers about multicultural education" (McIntyre, 1997, p. 18). Interestingly, the plethora of reviewed literature did not preclude McIntyre from bemoaning. She expressed discontent about the lack of ground-breaking "research into the relationship between white racial attitudes, beliefs, and how white teachers make meaning of whiteness and its relationship to multicultural education" (McIntyre, 1997, p. 18). Given her expression, one can reasonably intuit that McIntyre (1997) brushed off her dismay, and saw this research gap as an opportunity to reframe racial identity in her study as a social activity "that is constantly being created and recreated in situations" (p. 18). McIntyre's comment, however, is contrasting to the usual constructs of racial identity. She highlights per the literature how this construct is often entrenched within developmental models "consisting of statuses and various transitions to the formation of a healthy racial identity" (p. 18). McIntyre's study was guided by a feminist framework, an approach that views gender as "a basic organizing principle that shapes the conditions of [female] their lives" (Creswell, 2007, p. 26). This approach readily aligns with the author's aim in examining how white female student teachers make meaning of whiteness across their teacher training experiences. McIntyre's understanding of feminist research as transformative allowed her to strive toward an understanding of how white racial identity and whiteness shape educational practices. Consistent with PAR, McIntyre freely "joined" with her participants in a collaborative examination of white racial identity and whiteness. Her actions evinced how feminist research seeks to "place the researcher within the study so as to avoid objectification" (Creswell, 2007, p. 26). Notwithstanding the significance of communal discourse, this transforming process allowed McIntyre and her participants to view themselves as white; a relatively new phenomenon to most of the participants. In light of McIntyre's bonding with the participants, I would be remiss for not discussing her data collection strategy, which essentially legitimized meaningful discourse on whiteness. …