“Well,What’s Wrong with the Whites?”: A Conversation Starter on Raising Expectations for Inservice Professional Development on Race with White Teachers

Abstract

In an era of increased demand for antiracist inservice professional development (PD) and pushback against it, antiracist PD needs evidence of strong outcomes and a high bar for success. To this end, in this conversation starter, we ask how often inservice PD addressing race and racism with White educators really expects participants to demonstrate next steps to grapple with race issues toward improving educational opportunities for their students—the field’s actual ideal. We describe self-critically how it can be quite easy to have low expectations for White teachers’ inservice development particularly, by failing to really expect sustained inquiry into supporting students better.

Demand for antiracist professional development (PD) increased after Summer 2020’s nationwide protests against anti-Black racism; so did vicious backlash against such exploration. Indeed, antiracist “PD” is now both increasingly requested and nationally under fire, with critics caricaturing any PD discussion of race and racism as “left-wing” “indoctrination” forcing White teachers particularly to agree with so-called “woke” stances that critics deem “anti-White” (Pollock et al., 2022). In an era of increased demand and vicious pushback seeking to cancel antiracist PD, antiracist PD needs strong evidence of a range of important outcomes and a high bar for success.

To this end, this conversation-starter suggests that it may be a moment to explicitly raise expectations for such inservice PD with White teachers toward the field’s ideal, versus retreat into even more limited offerings of it. Sharing self-critically a study and PD effort of our own, we ask: Might inservice PD addressing race and racism with White educators now just expect and support participants to demonstrate next steps to grapple with race issues toward improving schooling opportunity for their students?

PD in U.S. education has long been particularly challenged to educate the field’s disproportionately White ¹ K–12 teachers about issues of race and racism as a core part of supporting educator effectiveness. Most research explores the need for preservice PD on race and racism (e.g., Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Jupp et al., 2016, 2019; Matias & Mackey, 2016), with scholars increasingly calling for “far more accounts” (McManimon & Casey, 2018, p. 404) of practicing teachers engaged in inservice PD (Hambacher & Ginn, 2021). Today, inservice-focused colleagues also crucially prioritize producing and sustaining a more racially diverse teaching force, with engagement of race and racism issues core as well for such professionals (Jackson & Kohli, 2016; Waite et al., 2018). Yet with K–12 students now predominantly students of Color and the most common U.S. teacher still a White woman (NCES, 2021), the demographic predominance of White teachers amidst growing White awareness of racial inequality increasingly has prompted more inservice PD directly addressing race and racism with White teachers specifically, to improve student support (Casey & McManimon, 2020). This is precisely the work now under fire, largely from White critics. We support the antiracist PD quest and the quest to diversify the field, and we reflect self-critically here on our own expectations for inservice PD with White teachers specifically.

K–12 antiracist PD invites inquiry about race and racism in order to better support students in schools. Research notes that many White teachers’ prior education rarely asked them to learn about racism in U.S. history or society, or to question their own and others’ often-segregated upbringing, disproportionate structural advantages in society and schools, or programmed biases (King, 1991; Matias & Mackey, 2016; Tatum, 1992). Without such learning and awareness, research shows, White teachers are disproportionately likely to be under-equipped to support students of Color, to carry into work under-examined stereotypes and common beliefs about White “normality” or superiority that often undergird actions deeply harming students of Color, and to normalize systemic limitations to students’ schooling opportunities (King, 1991; Picower, 2009; Sleeter, 1992), while also failing to support White students’ own understanding of opportunity patterns (e.g., Tanner, 2018). Researchers thus urge antiracist learning where teachers learn facts about race in U.S. society and reflect critically on their own experiences and practices, to “see, understand, and address” race issues in better supporting students (Pollock, 2008, p. xiii). White teachers appropriately are positioned as needing such learning particularly urgently (Matias, 2016; Picower, 2009), with workplace PD one key way to invite it.

Much research focuses necessarily on White teachers developing new understandings about students, society, and self before efforts to support students better can fully be successful. Both developmental approaches (e.g., Lawrence & Tatum, 1997; Tatum, 1992) and research calling to confront “Whiteness” directly (e.g., Leonardo, 2009) support the cause of White learners necessarily “unlearning the common sense gained through many years of social conditioning” as “White people” (Leonardo & Manning, 2017, p. 27), through substantive PD helping educators to gain knowledge about racial inequality historically and today (Lensmire et al., 2013; Milner, 2010); increase awareness of their own experiences with common biases favoring White people or behaviors (Gershenson et al., 2016); build “racial literacy” to understand and respond to race/racism issues in schools (Sealey-Ruiz, 2013); and forge deeper commitment to such work (Matias, 2016). If educators learn about how U.S. society has for centuries funneled disproportionate opportunities, respect, and power to “White” people as if superior, then critically reflect on and grapple with how schooling actions repeat this pattern even unintentionally, they can also potentially begin to adjust their own patterned actions and school opportunity contexts to better serve students (Pollock, 2008, 2017).

Such educator learning thus seeks to support young people more effectively, like all PD. The question we have come to consider self-critically is this: How often are White teachers asked in PD to demonstrate next grappling toward learning to support their own students better, versus primarily verbalize their extent of racial consciousness and commitment to such work? And how can PD learning and research more habitually “go beyond celebrating the racial epiphanies of Whites who have become racially aware” (Matias, 2016, p. 69), and focus on engaging educators in trying to support students of Color and all students more effectively in concrete ways where they work?

With inservice teachers already shaping student outcomes (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017), antiracist PD perhaps has not had its desired impact until work to try to improve students’ school experience has begun (Desimone, 2009). In the inservice context particularly, researchers emphasize that “there must come a time when acknowledgment and recognition of racial inequity becomes engaged pedagogical responses” (Joyner & Casey, 2015, p. 9), with antiracist information, concepts, and thoughtful self-critique activated in efforts critically assessing and improving everyday student service as with any PD (Deckman, 2017; Kohli et al., 2015; Michael, 2015). Simultaneously, scholars caution crucially that a premature PD move to “action” can derail deeper antiracist unlearning processes, and risk superficial or even harmful changes as opposed to overarching shifts in “how we think” about student support (Ladson-Billings, 2006, p. 30). But since inservice teachers are already interacting with students, the field’s ideal inservice inquiry is an ongoing combination of forging new understandings about selves, systems, and existing practices while attempting and reflecting on new actions and learning efforts supporting actual students (Cochran-Smith, 1995; Grant & Grant, 1985; Irvine, 2003; Sleeter, 1992), with localized learning iteratively informing beliefs (Casey & McManimon, 2020; Michael, 2015; Pennington et al., 2012). Still, research detailing this “engaged” process of “how white practicing teachers enact antiracist commitments” remains relatively limited (Casey & McManimon, 2020, p. 202).

In our own antiracist PD efforts with White teachers alongside teachers of Color, and as White people ourselves, we too have positioned inservice antiracist learning as an essential career-long process (Carter Andrews & Richmond, 2019) of continually exploring educators’ role “in the reproduction or resistance of inequality” (Kohli et al., 2015, p. 11), by grappling with “race on three levels: within ourselves, within our classrooms and our teaching, and within the larger structures of society and history” (McManimon & Casey, 2018, p. 396). To avoid “an overemphasis on the education of White teachers and a neglect of the education of teachers of Color” (Milner, 2007, p. 394), Author 1, a White professor, has attempted to produce tools that support antiracist inquiry/daily action by White educators and educators of Color; Author 2, a White graduate student, too seeks to advance research that supports all educators in antiracist learning and action. Such commitments resulted in the text Schooltalk (hereafter Book) by Author 1 studied below in use, intended for antiracist PD aligned with scholars’ calls throughout our field. We redact the title going forward in order to focus attention on PD itself, using any text.

Book’s content, discussion questions, and “action assignments” were designed to engage teachers in the ongoing analysis of self, school, society, and student-facing action called for by researchers, toward improved student support. Book purposefully combined foundational factual learning about racial inequality, “unlearning” of common racialized “scripts” harming students, and critical analysis of how “everyday” educator action offers or denies educational opportunity (as with Pollock, 2008)—specifically through inviting ongoing collective “rethinking” and “redesign” of real school-day communications affecting students’ lives (e.g., talk about students’ communities, opportunities, achievement, and lives). Additional texts in the PD studied drew teachers’ attention to curricular offerings and pedagogical engagement.

We reflect, here, on how easily our high hopes for teachers’ work became low expectations that White educators simply express agreement with PD’s basic ideas in several sessions—and move on.

We share initial self-critical findings on a dialogue-focused inservice PD effort (led by another facilitator) utilizing Book and other texts with White teachers in Pennsylvania, a study initiating a research agenda exploring race- and equity-related inservice PD with White teachers and teachers of Color across the country. By such PD, we mean recurring, facilitated, and “structured professional learning” intending to produce “changes in teacher practices and improvements in student learning outcomes” (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017, p. v), while focusing primarily on issues of race, racism, and racial inequality in schools, classrooms, and society. Jupp et al. (2019) argue that for decades, research on such PD has documented White teachers’ “evasion” of self-critique but proposed fewer ways of engaging White teachers successfully in sustained antiracism (see also Jupp et al., 2016; Lensmire et al., 2013). Here, we analyze moments when White teachers agreed with antiracist PD and said they welcomed participation in next antiracist inquiry and action, but were not asked nor expected to go further.

In analyzing self-critically our own prematurely satisfied initial reactions to PD along with facilitator’s and system leaders’ brief execution of it, we came to see how easily inservice PD (and research on it) can actually expect little or no such next-step inquiry or demonstration of local effort from White teachers, despite the known benefits of ongoing experiential learning generally (Civitillo et al., 2018) and the field’s known need for sustained grappling with racialized beliefs and practices toward improving student service (Picower, 2012). We thus turn our attention to designing PD to expect next steps in both inquiry and application from White teachers—the higher bar already hoped for in our field. We first review theory, additional research, and methods, then offer self-critical findings.

Building on Prior Research on Antiracist Inservice “PD”

Scholars have long cautioned against any few-day or even “one-semester shot of anti-racist professional development” (Lawrence & Tatum, 2002, p. 50), calling instead for inservice PD to pursue improved student support through ongoing critical reflection (e.g., Grant & Grant, 1985; Irvine, 2003; Sleeter, 1992). Researchers call for and often themselves facilitate ongoing learning experiences in practice settings where ideally, “anti-racist and multi-cultural concepts build upon one another” (Lawrence & Tatum, 2002, p. 50) to help educators critically consider schooling practices amidst broader inequalities. Sustained PD is often shaped as inquiry groups meeting over time to engage texts supporting ongoing grappling with personal experiences, societal history, and schooling (Deckman, 2017; Pennington et al., 2012; Picower, 2012), or to sustain ongoing learning (Sleeter, 2014) through community-based immersion (Irvine, 2003), pedagogical action research (Earick, 2009; Zion et al., 2015), classroom coaching (Blaisdell, 2018a), and tapping student voice on improving schools and teaching (Emdin, 2016; Zion et al., 2015). Scholars importantly urge that in such antiracist inquiry with White teachers specifically, “Whiteness” itself also should remain “the center of critique and transformation” (Leonardo, 2013, p. 7), as teachers critically consider experiences in a society long advantaging Whites (Lensmire et al., 2013; Matias & Mackey, 2016). Such work on antiracist PD activates the important theoretical stance that antiracist change requires both “ideological” antiracism (change in ideas and thinking) and “material” antiracism (change in actions toward new systems broadening opportunity access; Delgado & Stefancic, 2017), requiring awareness-raising toward new daily action. Such PD exploring race and racism with White teachers typically positions itself as one limited but crucial intervention in the daily repair of racialized educational inequities, and scholars know such work takes time. Indeed, many researchers indicate that the ideal is catalyzing learning that goes on permanently, as just part of educators’ work. Even as researchers too rarely study ongoing implementation outside the PD room (Matschiner, in press), a longstanding critique of preservice research as well (Hambacher & Ginn, 2021; Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Sleeter, 2014), all such work hopes for “sustaining ongoing work to combat structural racism” (McManimon & Casey, 2018, p. 395) through inquiry intertwining new ideas/information about race and schooling generally with efforts toward improving student service locally (Kohli et al., 2015; Michael, 2015; Picower, 2012).

Yet researchers continue to note that much actual inservice PD on race is “one-off, delivered by fly-in-fly-out outside experts, and/or repeats a kind of ‘Racism 101’ over and over” (McManimon & Casey, 2018, p. 395). Despite ideals of sustained inquiry, that is, researchers have noted that actual inservice PD experiences on race often prematurely “stop with Racism 101, or maybe 102” (Casey & McManimon, 2020, p. 48) as if brief exposure to foundational ideas—and implicitly, acceptance of them—equals improvement to student service: “Now that you know that racism is so embedded in our schooling institutions, we will fix the achievement gap” (p. 48).

Such “101” PD may at times function to “check a box” of expected educator “antiracism” out of reputational self-interest (Bell, 1980; see also French, 2019) rather than expect ongoing improvements to student service (Vaught & Castagno, 2008). Schools and districts also may simply lack any systemic commitment to antiracism, often shunting race-related PD purposefully into limited “separate activity” (Sleeter, 1992, p. 141). Yet in this conversation starter, we also analyze self-critically how easy it is even for those committed to sustained antiracism to have high hopes for ongoing engagement with both ideas and actions, but ultimately low expectations primarily seeking White teachers’ verbalized agreement with antiracist concepts.

As discussed below, we ourselves began a study of inservice antiracist PD with an expectation that White teachers would typically resist PD dialogue about race—and so, a hope that they would instead agree with self-critical dialogue while moving toward action. We came to see how easily we actually initially rested satisfied simply with educators’ stated agreement with PD ideas, without noticing that PD (and indeed, our own study methods) required little evidence of effort to take next steps to analyze or improve students’ actual schooling. We came to ask: How often does inservice PD really expect White teachers to inquire further individually or collectively into both ideas and local application, versus primarily verbalize new commitments or hoped-for ways of thinking?

A focus on the latter is understandable. After decades of White resistance, for one, research on race-related PD often focuses understandably on documenting White resistance to PD itself, including open hostility to PD (Blaisdell, 2018a; Patton & Jordan, 2017) and the ways White teachers “evade” (Jupp et al., 2019; 2016) substantive analysis of self, society, and school practice (Vaught & Castagno, 2008). Research has also shown such resistance is developmentally predictable (Tatum, 1992). Expecting resistance or evasion, much research (including our own) thus focuses on teachers’ verbal and written reflections in PD itself, hoping finally to find White teachers verbalizing sufficiently deep analysis of White people’s participation in racism (or, agreeing to keep inquiring; Pollock et al., 2010). A focus on verbalized realizations also reflects the real need for foundational inquiry “before” successfully improving student experience and also, perhaps, the difficulty of studying efforts outside the PD room over time (Matschiner, in press). PD work and research with White teachers thus often seems to position “local” efforts to improve student lives as a final or even post-PD project, after participants verbalize agreement with big PD ideas (Casey & McManimon, 2020, p. 25).

In our own study, however, we came to wonder self-critically how such factors might focus attention disproportionately on White people’s stated agreement with PD concepts and distract attention from the additional inservice layer of insisting that educators also keep learning to improve the treatment of their students (Jupp et al., 2019), including through collective grappling over how best to do so. Indeed, scholars have already documented how White teachers verbalizing agreement with PD’s concepts (e.g., “acknowledging” and “accepting” “White privilege”; Lensmire et al., 2013) or rating PD highly (Sleeter, 1992) might still eventually “evade” “responsibility to take on antiracist identities or actions” (Jupp et al., 2016, p. 1167, citing LaDuke, 2009, p. 42). Scholars have also framed grappling through disagreement and resistance as an essential stage in White learning (Gonsalves, 2008; Matias et al., 2017; Tatum, 1992). We came to wonder: Could inservice PD hold the notion of improving student service as an unarguable goal and always be designed to ask participants to demonstrate next grappling with ways to improve schooling so their own students can better thrive, even amidst expected disagreement over specific beliefs and commitments in progress, as a better measure of the success long hoped for in our field (Grant & Grant, 1985; Irvine, 2003; Sleeter, 1992)?

We wonder this because we initially expected less, in a study of our own.

A Study on Antiracist Inservice PD with White Educators

In the PD analyzed here, White educators used Book and various texts to discuss Valley versions of foundational race and racism issues during six dialogue sessions in the 2018-19 school year, as an “equity cohort” offered inservice PD in an “urban characteristic” district (Milner, 2012) in Pennsylvania. In the “Valley” District, which supported a majority (64%) of Black students, all PD participants—literally, all—were White. As a response to “achievement gaps” noted by the state, the PD was designed to engage Valley educators in exploring foundational aspects of improving Black student success in Valley, ranging from exploring history to improving curriculum and Black student/family experiences in schools with White teachers. We employed qualitative methods of participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and post-PD questionnaires to capture participants’ experiences, reactions, and reflections just after the PD dialogues and in the following summer. In a swing state where we expected heightened White resistance to post-election “race talk,” our research questions included:

How were educators currently experiencing purposeful race-oriented dialogue in their work?

What dialogue supports did they want and need in the current moment?

We realized only later that our questions focused us primarily on supporting session “dialogue” through expected White resistance, a focus actually common in much PD research. We thus came to ask a third research question during data analysis:

• What factors divert the attention of PD researchers, PD providers, district leaders, and PD participants away from expecting, from White teachers, sustained learning and effort to improve local opportunity, beyond agreement with initial antiracist concepts during antiracist PD?

Indeed, as shown below, we only gradually came to see our own complicity in initial self-satisfaction with White teachers’ unexpected lack of verbal resistance to antiracist work. Instead, we were initially thrilled by a finding in our data: participating White teachers verbally agreed with almost all content. As shown below, we embarrassingly had to remind ourselves eventually that such agreement was not actually evidence of ongoing effort to improve student support.

During the PD and in interviews/focus groups after it, participants willingly described their own and other “White” people’s gaps in understanding, experiences, and preparation; critiqued their own lack of success with Black students, framing these as societally patterned problems as researchers hope; and pledged to inquire and do more in the future. Struck by how little resistance to self-critique we were seeing among White teachers experiencing antiracist PD, at first we considered the PD a success. As noted below, we failed to notice that no one was reporting back on sustained next steps taken. Indeed, we realized that neither we researchers, the PD facilitator, nor district administrators funding the work truly expected White teachers to take follow-up steps to grapple with concepts, potential remedies, and application activities in Valley classrooms or schools—a design ironically built into the Book being read. Instead, teachers were expected simply to name their inadequacies and knowledge gaps more than actually demonstrate follow-up effort to keep grappling with or address them. While expecting higher-level “outcomes” from race- and racism-related PD might seem obvious, we argue that it actually expects more of White teachers than we ourselves did. We thus invite readers to wonder, along with us, how often inservice PD for White teachers and even some research on that work actually expects White teachers to keep inquiring or try doing anything differently in their work, and what the consequences are for student service.

Context, Methods, and Data Sources

The Valley District is an urban characteristic district (Milner, 2012) approximately 20 minutes from a major Pennsylvania city, “Metropolis.” Valley has features consistent with the “suburbanization of poverty” (Kneebone & Garr, 2010, p. 1) in suburban areas outside major U.S. cities over the last twenty years. Both Valley and Metropolis serve a majority of students of Color (62% in Metropolis, 70% in Valley) with many students living in poverty (62% in Metropolis, 68% in Valley). While Black Metropolis youth largely remain segregated in under-resourced neighborhoods, Black youth are concentrated in Valley as compared with nearby wealthier, Whiter districts. Both districts predominantly employ White teachers, with Valley’s teaching force astonishingly White (85% in Metropolis; 100% in Valley).

In the year before our study, the district brought in “Diane,” (all names are pseudonyms) an outside facilitator staff had encountered at a previous external PD in Metropolis. Diane, a White woman with years of national experience, was asked to lead a “diversity and equity cohort” and a separate department-based effort to diversify the district’s secondary English curriculum. This separate and simultaneous curricular effort, which we did not study, involved several teachers also in the cohort. The district paid for Diane’s separate PD sessions despite having budgetary problems, with the general goal of addressing “achievement gaps” noted by the state.

The study took place over six five-hour PD sessions in the 2018-19 school year, with a Diversity and Equity Cohort of 19 teachers and three principals from across the district’s three schools. In the first PD year, principals had each sent 8-10 teachers to seven monthly meetings; principals themselves did not attend. In Year 2 (2018-2019), our research year, 16 teachers, one data coach, one literacy lead, and one instructional coach participated in six monthly meetings with Diane (September-February). Eight of 19 teachers had continued from Year 1, with 11 new staff voluntarily joining Year 2. The three schools’ principals joined at Diane’s request and stepped out of the PD sessions to varying degrees. As we learned later from Diane, Valley administrators did not include in “the cohort” the few staff of Color in “Valley,” such as instructional aides, even while she had suggested including them.

In Diane’s PD meetings, “cohort” educators sat together by school, with time each meeting to talk in school groups. Like many PDs (Hambacher & Ginn, 2021), the pedagogical model was dialogue about concepts related to race, racism, diversity, and inequality catalyzed using texts, video, and PowerPoint slides. Teachers engaged in two “Learning Time” blocks throughout each day. For the morning, Diane brought in Teaching Tolerance’s (now Learning for Justice) Social Justice Standards to spark dialogue on curriculum, in addition to texts such as Curriculum as Window and Mirror (Style, 1996), interview clips with author James Foreman Jr. (debunking racist myths about Black criminality), the film American Promise (exploring schooling experiences of Black youth/families), and activities such as writing a letter from the perspective of a student. During each PD afternoon (2-3 hours), Diane focused on chapters from Author 1’s book. Conversations ensuing from book chapters critically examined the construction of falsely ranked “races” in U.S. history; the history and contemporary shape of race-class inequality; racist myths about group intelligence; and methods for challenging stereotypes about racialized communities. Final chapters extended these concepts to explore everyday data talk, pedagogies inviting student voice, and communications with families. Diane described choosing the book as a text that might spark critical self-reflection on everyday action. Other texts focused on deficit thinking, curricular choices, and Black students’ school experiences.

All cohort participants agreed to participate in the research and were assured anonymity. Author 2 introduced the study as a chance to learn from teachers about inservice PD on issues of equity. Data were collected almost exclusively by Author 2. Neither Author directly shaped or participated in the PD studied, other than through the classic sit-with-groups practices of participant observation and through ongoing questions in debriefs with Diane. Author 1 also offered Diane the starting suggestion to read the book’s chapters in order and to try the book’s “Action Assignments,” which encouraged readers to approach students and colleagues after every chapter to explore concepts and next steps.

Author 2 documented two-thirds of the PD sessions in full with ethnographic fieldnotes; our budget for this exploratory study allowed us to attend and document four of the six cohort meetings. All participants completed an anonymous seven-item questionnaire immediately after each session. The authors engaged Diane through an online post-PD journal each month and an unstructured 60-minute interview (Mishler, 1991) by phone before and shortly after each PD session. The combination allowed Diane to comment on plans and takeaways from each session as well as expand on specific comments from her journal. In addition, we conducted two focus groups (with three to four participants) and fourteen individual interviews (in person and via phone), each lasting 30–45 minutes, during lunch and after PD on PD days and then during summer inservice days. We also learned from ongoing informal email correspondence with participants. Finally, we discussed a midpoint version of this paper with “Diane” and then revised it. We saw this study as groundwork raising questions for our larger agenda. ²

We worked to identify trends in participants’ comments about the PD in fieldnotes, journals, and questionnaires (Boyatzis, 1998), using discourse analysis techniques piloted in earlier studies of antiracist preservice PD (Pollock et al., 2010). We first searched data for the words “White,” “Black,” and “equity” to begin open coding (Lofland & Lofland, 1995), and we coded for patterns in participants’ use of each term during PD dialogue and in interviews/focus groups, co-writing memos on participants’ stated takes on issues discussed and on the PD’s utility to their work. During follow-up interviews the summer after the PD sessions, participants were asked for their “take” on emerging themes on PD experiences identified in preliminary coding and analysis, including the concrete consequences of an all-White teaching force serving a primarily Black student body and participants’ hopes for bridging PD conversation to ongoing action. During the eleven months of this study (and again when this article was drafted), we discussed ongoing analytic insights with Diane as a form of member check, including our excitement that teachers were unexpectedly self-critiquing as the PD progressed and sharing desires to learn more and apply the PD’s concepts further (see Findings).

A midpoint discussion with Diane led to a full rewrite noting our own premature satisfaction with the PD’s outcomes. We noted, for the first time, that we ourselves had taken Valley teachers’ stated willingness to self-critique and learn more (and some initial glimmers of attempts at local application) as our key measure of efficacy despite Book’s design for ongoing inquiry and application. We realized in discussion that we as researchers and Diane as PD provider had initially been satisfied with a group of White teachers simply agreeing with PD dialogue—even as some teachers themselves asked to go further.

In Valley, Diane now made clear, district administrators had been satisfied by the mere presence of a diversity and equity cohort—and participating teachers made clear that both the district and Diane’s PD held no expectation of sustained learning or application of learning to improve student treatment. Collectively, we realized, we all left White educators agreeing to improve and keep thinking but not actually demonstrating attempts to do this to improve students’ educational experience in any focused or ongoing way.

We now explore how we as researchers rested satisfied with several sessions of PD dialogue getting educators to agree with basic “discussions about race and racism” (Hambacher & Ginn, 2021, p. 8). Throughout, we failed to notice that we sought almost no evidence that participants were actually taking ongoing next steps to think about or apply these ideas to serve students better, themselves or with others in their schools.

Premature Excitement About White Educator Agreement

Steeled for typical resistance and silence about White educators’ role in student success (Diamond, 2008; Pollock, 2004), we first noticed with surprise that to us and in cohort meetings, teachers openly described their need to improve as White teachers when discussing the warrant for the small district’s “equity” PD, explaining, “98% of our staff is White”; “we have a predominantly White staff”; and “we are a White staff.” Participants directly agreed with comments by facilitator Diane (“the student body has changed but the teacher body hasn’t changed at all”), acknowledging their racially skewed demographic as a systemic problem several decades in the making (a trend in many “urban characteristic” suburban districts; Milner, 2012). A teacher bluntly called it problematic that, “in 1995, we were 70-30 White to Black and now it has literally flipped. We are now 70-30 Black to White.” Unexpectedly, teachers also self-critically noted the knowledge/trust gaps, likely bias, and potential harm this demographic divide produced, another point Diane mentioned in her sessions. In an interview, one teacher critiqued “White, middle-class” teachers’ problematic position “in charge of” learning in “a very different community”:

Teachers still come from very White, middle-class to upper-middle-class neighborhoods, communities and they’re in charge of instructing and guiding and facilitating knowledge…in a very different community. So I think that a lot of the teachers who were brought up in the colorblind era and say ‘color shouldn’t matter’ and ‘I don’t see color’ …don’t understand why it matters.

We highlighted such admissions excitedly in memos and noted with surprise that some educators also explicitly noted the absence of faculty of Color as a problem. At the building level, a teacher shared, “We have, you know, maybe 70% minority population and we have maybe two Black teachers here, right?” Such self-critical comments echoing the facilitator’s logic seemed a definite PD “win.” It was only later in our analytic process that we noticed that we had no evidence of effort to further consider or address the imbalance—such that such initial statements of agreement could seem like a PD success but actually left the hiring imbalance intact and approved.

Some participants also self-critically agreed with their own role in student underachievement as the warrant for the PD, an unexpected self-critique hoped for by education researchers (Diamond, 2008). In interviews, a principal commented that an “achievement gap” harming Black students and students receiving Special Education supports led “the state…to look at the data closer” and require a PD action plan. Participants also unexpectedly agreed that White adults’ actions factored into achievement “gaps.” A principal summarized that “A lot of conversations throughout the years have been about being White, we are a White staff and we know that our Black subgroup is not doing as well,” while a teacher noted educators’ responsibility regarding student achievement “gaps”: “So now that you know that, what are you going to do with it? And if you don’t do anything with it, then the gap is still there.”

We were excited by this teacher’s comments on going beyond “knowing” something to “doing something”—an excitement that actually pinpointed a problem with our own researcher stance, as we ourselves first treated the comment as actual evidence of “doing.” Mentioning White culpability in “gaps” ostensibly was step one of “an urgent language of communal responsibility” (Pollock, 2004, p. 223), countering expected avoidance. But as we came to notice, PD sessions actually never then insisted on any next steps for analyzing, investigating or improving on Valley student achievement or opportunity—again allowing participants to name and agree with a “gap” initially without necessarily addressing it.

That participants often repeated key talking points from Diane also initially excited us. Diane purposefully spent several sessions discussing the need to learn from Black families and community members while knowing Black students as unique individuals, explaining that teachers “have certain responsibilities to be responsive” and “you [teachers] are servants in this community.” Such self-critical perspectives were then echoed among some participants. Multiple educators said publicly and privately that the PD got them thinking about the need to better “understand students” they did not “know” and to improve their relationships with students’ families. Participants also argued explicitly that Diane’s PD had helped them “understand why” their “White” experiences “mattered” to their teaching and contrasted themselves to other “White” educators not in the room who would be likely to resist the PD’s analysis. (As one teacher said, “White communities aren’t really aware.”) Yet we noticed later in our more skeptical read of such data that educators repeatedly naming their pedagogies or relationships with families self-critically as problematic were asked in PD to share no plans for sustained next steps to learn to improve either: verbalized self-critique actually could stand as a placeholder for next steps (Lensmire et al., 2013). While our initial analysis celebrated how often participants made statements of “wanting to learn” and synonyms (“reflect,” “a-ha,” “think about”) and discussed the importance of “information,” “realizing,” and “prior knowledge,” we realized belatedly that the PD itself rarely asked participants to also report if and how they kept pushing toward the learning and improvement they said they wanted.

Indeed, a more skeptical approach might see these same statements as a type of “ritual confession” (Lensmire et al., 2013, p. 420) calling for learning or action not then actually pursued (Ahmed, 2004), or as PD “semantic moves” designed to “protect themselves against the charge of racism” (Bonilla-Silva, 2014, p. 102, 118) now or later—or indeed, even to end PD expectations for additional work. Yet as shown below, the PD actually had not asked teachers to grapple further with any idea, effort, concept, or strategy praised. Even in our summer interviews about the PD, educators talked more about the potential of getting more “educated,” trying “strategies,” and engaging colleagues, students, or families than about ever actually doing those things. In hindsight, we came to see our own expectations (and Diane’s) for White teachers’ local follow-up as actually so low that we all rested satisfied at first with any “positive” comments about initial “realizations” and abstracted reports like “I’m trying to use what I’ve been learning with [Diane] and implementing those strategies into the curriculum as best I can.”

Participants did hint at how PD could be structured to expect ongoing learning and follow-through effort. A principal said the sustained cohort model offered the “chance” to “develop a goal…share that goal” and “do something about it” as opposed to classic “one day speakers” where participants “didn’t develop anything.” Others said that versus the inservice format of “400 adults in a room and one speaker,” or what a principal called a “day-long PowerPoint presentation and discussion” that “adults don’t want,” Diane usefully gave necessary time to “digest the topic and be ready with questions or real-life classroom situations that could be shared and discussed as a group.” Participants particularly welcomed some curriculum reflection activities using the Social Justice Standards and mentioned Book’s “equity line,” “think and discuss” questions, and “action assignments” as tools that usefully “requir[ed] me to think about” whether current school situations and personal actions “were really supporting equity.” Teachers also pointed out specific texts or passages that inspired them to learn more about structures (“Being a White person reading this [I] was not disinterested, I actually thought about my history”); called for more dialogue on key concepts (“White privilege”); and reflected on how specific activities of Diane’s made teachers willing “to be educated” about race and schooling. The book was actually filled with “action assignments” inviting such next-step “education” with colleagues, families, and students, to diagnose and then pursue necessary improvements. Yet the six-session PD itself moved quickly to next topics, having simply secured verbalized agreement to “be educated”—without actually expecting teachers to demonstrate or sustain next efforts to try.

Many teachers instead repeatedly stated this willingness to “be educated,” often (importantly) attributing their excitement about such “learning” to how Diane herself made improvement seem possible. (One principal summarized PD from “prior people” as “You suck. You’re White.”) One teacher reflected that cohort work with Diane helped to “get you thinking and looking at yourself like, ‘am I doing all I can?’ Or am I just saying that ‘Oh yeah, everyone’s equal, we all get along in here?’” Ironically, her comment indicated the difference between “just saying” an antiracist concept in a PD and “doing” something with it at work. Referencing the first time hearing Diane speak at a conference, a teacher recalled deciding to “pursue learning” that might “impact our students”:

She left an impact on all of us who attended the day. After debriefing as a group, we realized that as a district we needed to pursue learning more about equity and diversity and how it could positively impact our students and their learning.

Diane herself actually first urged us to question whether such stated willingness to learn constituted sufficient effort to “impact students.” She also mused skeptically whether educators’ statements of agreement (including to the book’s White author, in a PD facilitated by a White woman) were strategically demonstrating minimal forward motion on “learning” to signal engagement. Yet we came to realize that because we were pleased by participants’ stated willingness to learn about race and “work on strategies” for Valley, we initially failed to notice that participants spoke far more of how the PD built such a desire than of how it asked them to keep learning to improve any aspect of their work as a “majority White staff” serving a “majority Black clientele.” In a sense, our own hopes for White agreement amidst expected hostility actually “forefront[ed] the consciousness-raising of resistant White teachers” (Blaisdell, 2018b, p. 330), unintentionally lowering expectations that White teachers take next steps toward their own or colleagues’ learning to improve student treatment, even amongst disagreement, like they should in PD on any subject.

We also noticed that Diane herself issued few invitations to learn further or apply PD learning with others. Diane twice started a PD session by asking if anyone had “tried anything” in the intervening weeks. One teacher described attempting one “action assignment” in the book (on deepening typical shorthand explanations of inequality) in a Thanksgiving conversation “about White privilege” with her brother. In interviews, several participants described interacting more successfully with individual students or parents during/after the PD, or of shifting images visible on walls as “a physical way” for students to “actually see themselves.” One teacher did describe a potentially crucial “big aha impact moment” of “realizing” and then applying PD regarding curriculum, after Diane had asked participants to discuss how specific texts offered a “window” onto others’ lives or a “mirror” to explore their own:

After [Diane] had taught us about windows and mirrors, I looked at the books that I chose to use to teach lessons and had a big aha impact moment. The books did not allow for students to connect and identify with them. I realized that most teachers were choosing books and texts (like me) that did not relate to our students’ lives and cultural background.

In another potential hint at next steps, two school leaders indicated importantly that they had invited additional teachers into a discussion using activities from the PD and book, including examining Teaching Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards. One teacher added that “By discussing activities in the [Book] chapters, we were able to create a plan for a school-wide professional development session in spring.” Yet discussion in the PD did not then probe for follow-through on any of these briefly stated realizations and intentions. We realized that Diane herself seldom required individual or collective reports of such “plans” to attempt application in practice, nor efforts to think further about concepts in between sessions. PD typically moved to discussions of new topics. One teacher called the sessions “isolated incidents.”

And as we noted next in our data analysis, district leadership paying for the PD never seemingly directed or expected next steps with PD’s ideas or actions either. Indeed, we realized that participants talking of classroom and school “strategies” Diane “offered” for potential “use” often indicated that follow-up “use” was not expected in Valley—and that prior district PDs related to race hadn’t discussed the potential for exploring PD ideas further in local work. As one teacher noted in an interview about prior district PDs, “There weren’t any strategies…identified”.

As we came to see, educators who offered verbalized agreement with PD—self-critique, stated desires for more learning, and initial proposed individual or small-group “strategies” they “could use to promote equity” in classrooms and schools—actually were conscious that no one really expected them to pursue such next steps in any ongoing or collective manner. One teacher emailed after the PD ended that as in most PDs, “For the most part, we are all there as individuals” encountering a range of ideas without further “focus.” We began to hear in our data an absence of evidence of sustained attention to next steps in individual or collective antiracist learning, including assessing current Valley schooling practices with students and colleagues or even trying the Book’s assignments asking readers to discuss foundational topics and local instantiations with others. Since Book was specifically designed for ongoing inquiry into both big concepts and local application, we focused next on what else stymied this attention to sustained grappling.

One teacher noted in a focus group that Diane’s PD and Book raised the hope of “depth” of inquiry on race, versus past PD in the district that was often “the flavor of the month”: “Rather than just allowing things to stay at that cursory level, which again, in our district, seems to be the flavor of the month we get a lot. I liked the depth that you [Pollock, in Book] went into.” Yet others noted wistfully that the PD studied had at times rushed through concepts without sufficient time for “discussion” toward deeper inquiry or sustained local application (“what did you get out of it?”) and “building” with others, connected to “our goals”:

I just thought there was a lot of good information in there, but I would have loved to have had more discussions. Maybe even just with our school cohort to make sure that, “Hey, what did you get out of it?” Are we all seeing this, and is this something that we should put into our goals?

Pedagogically, we realized, the PD studied had offered a large variety of concepts and tools for “discussion” but little time for setting “goals” for further exploring or using any concepts in participants’ schools. One day covered not only a book chapter, but also an activity exploring identity; a “culture iceberg”; a “pyramid of hate”; discussion of asset-based versus deficit-based views of students; and tools to speak up against “bias and bullying,” plus portions of a documentary about belonging and opportunity for Black students. Tools offered on other days included the Social Justice Standards, the “window and mirror” curriculum lens, and an analysis of White privilege. The book’s last three chapters were jigsawed on one final day, inviting rapid-fire discussion of race issues in data, pedagogical connection to students’ lives, and equal-status relationships with diverse families.

Debriefing after the PD day with many tools and the three-chapter jigsaw, Diane mused on the field’s own ongoing production of concepts, calling this “framework overload.” In a January debrief call, she reflected that to teachers offered many “resources” in PD, “it feels like a firehose.” A teacher admitted that “There’s just so much that we get, in one day, once a month. It’s just a lot of information to digest.” Another teacher suggested in a post-PD survey that “many ideas spiral,” such that PD learning would help more by at times “honing in on one key point.”

Yet while cohort educators drew attention to the “firehose” of concepts offered in Valley PDs, they also indicated a deeper problem lowering expectations: Valley PD lacked urgency about serving students of Color better with any PD idea. Participants referenced prior “equity”-related PD quickly introducing concepts of “trauma-informed care,” “Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS),” “bully prevention,” “Culturally Responsive Pedagogy,” and “differentiation and things like that”; each PD had expected brief discussion of some race-related concepts without sustaining any efforts to consider or apply them. One teacher describing potential actions after Diane’s PD hoped colleagues would “accept” the experience, “go through” it, “talk to each other about it,” “take it back to school,” “actually present it to each other,” and “use it.” But PD supports for such efforts stopped with initially verbalized “acceptance.”

Participants themselves also indicated that no district leaders in Valley seemingly expected sustained attention to any idea or potential action presented in PD, neither discussing any complex concept more than once nor exploring any potential school or classroom improvement named as promising (alone or particularly with colleagues). One teacher noted that most PD efforts across the district didn’t lead sufficiently to “doing”: “There’s so much jumping from one fix to another that nothing really gets a chance to do what it’s supposed to do.” Teachers noted the district offered “cursory,” “sprinkled in” efforts that lacked “follow through”:

There’s been so many. Just like, a new initiative every…they just sprinkle things, but there’s never follow through.

A lot of the things that get sprinkled in, if you will, a lot of teachers just kind of say, “Okay, sure,” then they just go about their business, ‘cause they know nobody’s coming back around to make sure that it’s occurring.

I think some teachers ascribe to the notion that this is just a passing fad, because it’s not something that administration is really putting a focus on.

As we explored data for examples of sustained inquiry or PD application to support students better, we also noted participants’ commentary that district and school leaders had not specified any PD outcomes of interest. A teacher explained in the summer following PD that no administrators were saying, “I want evidence of these things happening and here’s some ways you can show me.” Diane noted in disbelief that when she asked a principal about aspects of student experience requiring remedy, the principal just “wrote down some numbers on a Post It and brought it to me.” Some teachers noted more pointedly that district staff neither introduced nor attended race-related PD sessions at all, making the collective sustaining of any inquiry or pursuit of school or classroom remedies less likely. One teacher wished that the “principal” would “bring the initiative to all in the building so we can move forward.”

Participants themselves thus actually indicated awareness that the district’s overarching warrant for paying for PD—improving White teachers’ work to serve Black students—remained a generic frame for brief exposure to concepts, initial self-critique, and mention of potential necessary efforts, rather than any higher-up urgently expecting ongoing inquiry to benefit students during or after the PD. Teachers saying Diane’s PD had the potential for “focus” and “follow through” thus indicated that nobody in Valley actually had expected much such follow-through. One teacher suggested, “I think that it would be nice to be able to say, ‘Here’s something that we need to focus on. Here’s something we need to work on, but how are we going to do it?’”

In a call before the November cohort meeting, Diane pointed to an additional factor in the overall challenge of PD on race and equity, reflecting, “The problem is so big and I’m trying to figure out what I can do to help without just saying we need to change the system.” Her comment indicated that K–12 antiracist effort does require improving giant “systems” (Leonardo & Manning, 2017; Matias & Mackey, 2016) via ongoing reflection on both society and local practice; as Diane mused in one email to the cohort, remembering her own beginnings, “As a White teacher of Black students, I had so much to learn.” Yet without any expectation to “learn” about any issue further, even a PD series became six “single consciousness-raising events” (Jupp et al., 2019, p. 37) without expected ongoing classroom, school, or community-based next steps, individual or collective. Participants themselves indicated at times that getting White educators more successfully serving Black students might require not only getting educators to verbally restate their culpability, inadequacies and potential actions, but also to consider key ideas further with others in Valley and try local improvements with sustained “focus” (Sleeter, 1992).

At moments in the PD’s discussions, participants almost focused collectively on several priority antiracist efforts in Valley. Curriculum review sparked reflection and interest; as another example, Diane noted bluntly in a final session’s Book discussion that Valley educators’ take on Black families was uncomfortably negative, noting, “This thing with families and communities is something that has to be discussed. It feels like the elephant in the room.” Another discussion in this session briefly raised the need to “organize” to address the district’s failure to sufficiently fund schooling in Valley, an issue participants also linked to racial disparities analyzed in Book. Yet as participants briefly mentioned potential areas of “focus” for action or “organizing” related to key PD concepts—and even as Book contained “Action Assignments” that could scaffold next inquiry and action on such topics—PD itself did not structure time to invite or report on any such next-step learning. One teacher looking back on the cohort noted, “My question from the beginning was ‘What is our end product?’ I still have the same question. We all get together to have meaningful conversations but what is our end product or our next step?” Another teacher wishing for “time and concrete materials” on a post-PD survey commented, “It’s hard to have time to just present…ideas without something concrete we can do.” Another teacher summed up a wish for “dedicating” more time to “implementing” ideas with others.

We thus return to the concept of planning for next inquiry to support students in race-related PD, including next steps to discuss foundational ideas with others (Matias et al., 2017), and to assess and improve current local opportunity provision (Vaught & Castagno, 2008). PD neither scaffolded nor expected sustained individual or collective effort to grapple with any issue further in between or after sessions. Everyone instead rested satisfied with White teachers agreeing initially with PD’s basic ideas and talking at all. In a debrief call after one cohort meeting, Diane mentioned giving participants 15 minutes to plan an Action Assignment; she noted, “I chose not to push too hard on what they chose to talk about. I thought them talking to someone at all was a win” [emphasis added]. No Action Assignment results were later reported. We all rested satisfied with brief stated plans to learn and improve—statements of agreement that potentially let an all-White educator force just stay largely the same. We finished data analysis noting how easily the classic PD goal to win over White teachers in brief race-focused PD dialogues actually aims too low.

Discussion and Conclusion: Raising Expectations for Inservice PD with White Teachers?

The field already knows that in any subject area, PD engaging educators in active and sustained learning over time is better than “one-off” PD sessions (Carter Andrews & Richmond, 2019; Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Desimone, 2009; Picower, 2012; Tatum, 1992). Regarding antiracism, the field already calls for combining ongoing inquiry into deep, often contentious questions of self and society (Matias & Mackey, 2016) with learning from local effort to critically reflect on and improve schooling (Jupp et al., 2019; Picower, 2012). Other researchers of race-focused PD have pointed out that individual “confessions” aligning with specific PD ideas are not necessarily sufficient evidence of growth or understanding (Lensmire et al., 2013); that pacing PD learning based on securing agreement from some White teachers undermines collective efforts to better serve students (Blaisdell, 2018b; Gorski, 2019), and that not taking “next steps” in PD may position some White teachers as irreparably flawed, blunting ongoing work (Tatum, 1992). Thus, we find ourselves wondering whether in a nation battling over whether antiracist PD is “indoctrination,” a focus on next grappling with both big ideas and attempted improvements to concrete aspects of student service (as opposed to verbalized agreement) might be better evidence of success. While outright refusal of PD is obviously problematic for student service, prioritizing verbalized White agreement may be as well: Indeed, continued effort to analyze and improve schools amidst disagreement over specific ways to support student thriving might signal far more meaningful educator engagement and be more helpful to students than securing basic or generic approval of future effort potentially not pursued.

Humbly, this article, based on our own study of PD in action, has reflected on how PD researchers as well as facilitators and administrators can overlook the need for sustained grappling with antiracist ideas and local application efforts, by considering PD a “success” when White teachers agree with self-critique, verbalize some desired racial consciousness, or state a willingness to learn and act. While we remain cautious about inviting self-assured student-facing effort prematurely and harming students, what if we in Valley had prioritized next grappling with assessing and improving local educational opportunity over a preoccupation with verbalized White agreement or disagreement, and moved forward by inviting all (or even just the willing; Blaisdell, 2018b; Gorski, 2019) to actively inquire now with colleagues, students, and families into both big ideas and improving key aspects of Valley student experience? Was inaction not more dangerous to Valley students, since Valley teachers were already shaping student lives?

Notably, the most sustained application of PD concepts in Valley was actually an antiracist effort outside the PD—the work by Diane and some cohort teachers to figure out how to diversify the secondary English curriculum. Diane described the work as involving ongoing, deep discussion and debate over supporting students better by trying to expand readings beyond only “White American history” and the experiences of “dead White men.” Cohort participants involved called it complex and rewarding work grappling with antiracist ideas to actually benefit students—a productive, applied, and focused version of PD addressing needs in Valley, despite the district organizing the curriculum revision as a separate activity outside of Diane’s PD. All described cohort work as focused more on exposing White teachers rapidly to initial ideas, rather than expecting any ongoing inquiry into doing anything different to improve opportunity in school. In effect, PD sessions ultimately allowed participants to simply agree initially with their inherently problematic position as underinformed “White teachers” of “Black students” and potentially, just stay in that position.

Could PD always combine efforts exploring essential antiracist concepts with efforts to assess and address specific local classroom and school practices? The ideal PD hoped for in our field envisions constant critical reflection to improve education opportunity— ongoing book groups, classroom action research, coaching, community immersion and reflection, youth feedback on pedagogy, content-specific instructional support, ongoing curriculum revision, and other efforts at fostering an ongoing inquiry practice while diagnosing and then tackling specific improvements to classrooms and schools (Blaisdell, 2018a; Casey & McManimon, 2020; Desimone, 2009; Earick, 2009; Joyner & Casey, 2015; Kohli et al., 2015; Michael, 2015; Picower, 2012; Sleeter, 1992, 2014). Toward that end, we wonder whether inservice PD providers, educators, and researchers ourselves might now normalize expecting participants to report back on next grappling with improving education opportunity for their own students (Kohli et al., 2015; Lawrence & Tatum, 1997; Picower, 2012). PD providers need not invite “disagreement” over basic antiracist facts or ethics; scaffolded next grappling in PD can mean exploring additional resources (Matias & Mackey, 2016); sustaining ongoing questioning with colleagues and students about the pros and cons of current schooling/instructional practices in light of PD learning (Lawrence & Tatum, 1997; McManimon & Casey, 2018; Pollock, 2008, 2017); coming back to a next session with reflections after discussing an issue with someone else; and crucially, prioritizing a concrete improvement for collective focus (Bryk et al., 2015; C. Sleeter, personal communication, May 25, 2022). As sessions conclude, participants can name individual or collective inquiries to undertake next with colleagues and students, then report anonymized results so others can learn, question, and pursue prioritized improvements (Pollock, 2022). Facilitators can habitually ask for reports at next gatherings on subsequent learning and application; administrators can attend sessions to envision and support next steps on the learning undertaken (C. Sleeter, personal communication, May 25, 2022); researchers can plan studies of such next steps, contributing “far more accounts” (McManimon & Casey, 2018, p. 404) of how antiracist inservice sustains inquiry as expected PD practice (Matschiner, in press). Such normalization of next steps activates features of PD long deemed impactful in other PD contexts (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Desimone, 2009) and long called for by scholars of race-related PD: sustained inquiry and focused local application efforts documented and reported back as part of PD.

How often does PD instead echo Diane’s “talking at all was a win” standard?

As a teacher put it, Diane’s PD usefully started to go beyond prior efforts that seemed only to require admitting that something was “wrong with the Whites,” to also naming some initial ideas for improving student service: “[In the past], It’s been a very cursory…kind of just mystical…Like, ‘Well, what’s wrong with the Whites?’” Yet a PD experience not explicitly scaffolding next efforts at learning and application also risked leaving seemingly compliant “Whites” simply named as problematic while actually off the hook for repairs. Having verbally recognized their poor relationships with Black families and non-representative curriculum, for example, cohort educators obviously could have tried to explore, think deeply about, and start improving those relationships and curricular offerings over six PD sessions, even if this involved the ongoing discomfort of productive disagreement. Instead, participants could simply agree verbally that these situations were problematic—and move on.

Race-related PD ideally prompts sustained grappling over efforts to improve opportunity for actual students—a task our field might position now as unarguably part of educators’ work every day. Otherwise, PD might name problems but never start to address them. As one teacher put it,

I wish we could just get people to understand that saying that this situation has been wrong up to this point doesn’t mean that you are a problem. You’re only a problem now that you know and you don’t change it, you know?