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Abstract

There is a dearth in research on how practicing teachers understand and grapple with whiteness during critical professional development (CPD). To address this, we explored P-12 educators’ sense-making around whiteness as they learned about the theories that underpin Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) during CPD. Utilizing a critical whiteness studies lens, we found that educators recognized the connection between systemic racism and student harm, and both named and avoided naming whiteness as they navigated its influence. Our findings highlight the complexities of how educators engage with whiteness during CPD, revealing both an awareness of systemic racism and its consequences and the challenge of explicitly naming whiteness. We underscore the need for CPD to help educators interrogate and name whiteness, without centering it, and to build teacher capacity to support students of Color. Future research should explore how CPD can sustain these efforts and support educators in developing actionable anti-racist practices.

Keywords

professional development critical theory equity social justice teacher education/development qualitative research critical whiteness studies critical professional development systemic racism educational equity youth participatory action research

Students around the world are seeking educational experiences that respond to pressing societal issues such as climate change and social injustice (Verlie & Flynn, 2022). To meet the needs of students, teachers play a pivotal role in supporting them to engage with the complex challenges of the present and future. More specifically, the training and continuing professional development of teachers represents a crucial intervention point in building the capacity of teachers to competently prepare students for the urgent and dynamic challenges they face (Fischer et al., 2022). If teachers are to fulfill the transformative role in reorienting educational systems—a role advanced by researchers and policymakers (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] Digital Library, 2022)—strategies are needed to strengthen the ways professional development programs engage with societal challenges and new pedagogical possibilities.

To achieve the breakthroughs that are needed for teachers, students, and the transformation of educational systems, teachers must reflect on social justice issues with their peers and communities in professional development opportunities (Stapleton, 2018). Referred to as critical professional development (CPD; Kohli et al., 2015), this approach centers the need for teachers to improve their awareness of the personal, educational, and sociopolitical implications of injustices, as well as to act to address these inequities (Kohli et al., 2015). Amidst the evolution of new approaches to professional development, considerations of dysconscious racism (Crabtree & Titu, 2022), racial literacy and “critical community” (Kohli, 2019, p. 40), and justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015) represent a growing area of scholarship on teacher training.

In addition to these topics, there are a considerable number of studies that explore white¹ identity development and anti-racism within teacher professional development opportunities (Fallon et al., 2024), yet there is scant research on how teachers engage in sense-making around whiteness during CPD. We use the phrase “sense-making around whiteness” to emphasize the active process of interrogating and understanding whiteness as a racial/social construct with material consequences (López, 1994; Mills, 2007). This framing draws from Ladson-Billings’ (2018) definition of race as a “sense-making concept” that must be explored and discussed “not to re-inscribe it and give it even more power, but rather to take control of it and expose it for the lie it is” (p. 14). Whiteness is inextricably linked to race and racism, and understanding its influence on students of Color is essential to mitigating its consequences and fostering educational equity (Ladson-Billings, 2018). Thus—as part of a larger study on Youth Participatory Action Research (YAPR) and CPD—in this study we sought to understand how teachers enrolled in a CPD course grappled with whiteness and the harm white supremacy inflicts on students of Color—conceivably the students they would guide through YPAR projects. This study was guided by the following question:

In what ways do teachers make sense of whiteness as they are presented with the theories that underpin YPAR during a CPD course?

First, we outline scholarship on CPD to highlight how learning spaces can foster equity-oriented teacher growth. Then, we engage literature that examines how educators grapple with whiteness as a pervasive and often unexamined force in education. Next, we conceptually ground our study in critical whiteness studies (CWS), and discuss our methodology, including our positionalities and positioning to this study and the participants. Last, we address our findings, discuss their implications, and identify key areas where CPD can be enhanced to better support teachers in sense-making around whiteness.

Literature Review

Critical Professional Development

There is a call by social justice education scholars and practitioners for professional development (PD) opportunities that are a direct response to oppressive educational policies, practices, and procedures. Racial literacy (Guinier, 2004) is one example of this type of PD (Oto et al., 2023). Critical Race Theory (CRT) legal scholar Guinier (2004) argues that racial literacy aims to challenge racial liberalism by working toward transformation through the dismantling of white supremacy. Oto and colleagues’ (2023) recent review of literature found that racial literacy offers possibilities to disrupt ideological and practical forms of racial liberalism by centering youth voices and experiences, taking up intersectional analyses of power, and exploring how systems can, or refuse to, transform. However, these authors’ analysis highlights two gaps in the racial literacy scholarship that can enhance racial literacy PDs: (1) collaborative networks of anti-racist educators, and (2) a multi-layered process of reflection.

Critical professional development (CPD; Kohli et al., 2015) addresses these two missing components of racial literacy by offering educators “agency in their own development and . . . space for complex reflections on their role in the reproduction or resistance of inequality” (Kohli, 2019 p. 41) in an education system that perpetuates and maintains white supremacy and inequality (Casanova & Cammarota, 2019; Casanova & Dominguez, 2024). For example, CPD is designed to nurture authentic dialogue, which can be understood as a dialectical process where facilitators and participants come together and engage in genuine acts of care and love (Freire, 2000; Kohli et al., 2015). Within CPD, there is a focus on solidarity through community building and the struggle for liberation with people facing oppressive forces and fighting for systemic change (Kohli et al., 2015; Picower, 2015). Additionally, CPD are spaces where facilitators and participants share power with each other, meet the critical needs of teachers, and offer participants opportunities to name and read their world, all of which promotes social transformation (Freire, 2000; Kohli et al., 2015; Picower, 2015). Collectively, this research suggests CPD can increase P-12 educators and university professors’ authenticity as social justice educators, and develop teachers’ liberatory knowledge and pedagogy (Dover et al., 2019; Kohil et al., 2015). In this study, we build from the limited research on CPD by examining how teachers grappled with whiteness during a week-long CPD that aimed to increase teachers’ theoretical and practical understandings of YPAR and their capacity to co-design a YPAR project with historically marginalized students and communities to challenge sociopolitical, environmental, and racial injustices.

Teachers Making Sense of Whiteness

We also build this study on literature that explores teachers’ sense-making around whiteness, which mainly focuses on pre-service teachers. For example, in their review of research that examined teachers’ understanding of race and racism, including whiteness and white identity development, Hambacher and Ginn (2020) found that “more than 70% of the articles focused on educating” pre-service teachers (p. 332). In one study, Hawkman (2020) observed that white pre-service teachers navigated whiteness in ways that were fluid, often shifting between reinforcing whiteness and striving toward anti-racism. Scholars have also explored ways to educate pre-service teachers about whiteness using critical whiteness pedagogy (Matias & Mackey, 2016), white identity development and anti-racist pedagogy (Huang et al., 2023), and digital storytelling to interrogate race, racism, and whiteness (Matias & Grosland, 2016). While some studies focused exclusively on how pre-service teachers understand and grapple with whiteness (e.g., Hawkman, 2020; Sleeter, 2001), others adopted a broader approach by examining efforts to teach pre-service teachers about race and (anti)racism, incorporating whiteness as a necessary part of this endeavor (e.g., Huang et al., 2023; Shim, 2017).

Within the literature that explores how teachers learn about race and racism within a PD context, Matschiner (2023) found that “the most common race-specific change pursued by PD . . . was growing the awareness of groups of teachers who were predominantly White about the significance of race and racial identity” (p. 603). For example, McManimon and Casey (2018) worked with white teachers through a 2-year, anti-racist professional development seminar they called “Racework” (also see Casey and McManimon, 2020) The authors found that exploring whiteness and making race visible requires the “ongoing, always unfinished work of anti-oppressive, antiracist education” (McManimon & Casey, 2018, p. 404). However, there are very few studies that explore the relationship between CPD and teachers’ interrogation of whiteness (e.g., Wilson & Falla, 2023). For example, Wilson and Falla (2023) found that “whiteness was propertied” through the normalization and protection of whiteness, and “social justice banking methods” (p. 13) during a higher education-based CPD. Our study contributes to the limited research at the intersection of CPD and whiteness by exploring how teachers make sense of whiteness during a CPD focused on the liberatory theories that underpin YPAR.

Theoretical Framework: Critical Whiteness Studies

Theoretically, we were guided by CWS (Cabrera, 2022; Delgado & Stefancic, 1997; Leonardo, 2013; Matias, 2022; Matias & Boucher, 2021)—a framework for examining whiteness and the harm it inflicts on people of Color—which is rooted in African American intellectual traditions, particularly the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, to name a few (Matias, 2022). Grounded in this foundation for interrogating whiteness, CWS developed within the field of education, beginning the late 1980s, to analyze inequities in schooling (Leonardo, 2013) and the harmful effects of white supremacy on people of Color (Blaisdell & Bullock, 2022; Cabrera, 2022). For some scholars, CWS is used as a lens through which to explore white identity (Jupp et al., 2019; Leonardo, 2013). However, scholars warn that pursuits to understand whiteness outside of scholars of Color’s work or to singularly “engage in the racial emancipation of Whites” (Matias, 2022, p. 698), risk (re)centering whiteness—the very thing a CWS approach seeks to avoid (Leonardo, 2013; Matias & Boucher, 2021). For example, Matias and Boucher (2021) explained that when CWS research silences the voices of people of Color, it reproduces the very thing it sets out to dismantle. Instead, a CWS approach must draw from people of Color’s conceptualizations of and experiences with whiteness while prioritizing the harm whiteness inflicts on people of Color (Cabrera, 2022; Matias, 2022).

Matias et al. (2014) describe CWS as a framework for examining how whiteness “maintains a racist system, and [how] not acknowledging whiteness contributes to the permanence of race and racism” (p. 291). This description speaks to the influence of CRT on CWS. For example, two foundational tenets of CWS—that race and racism are both pervasive and permanent—are rooted in CRT (Blaisdell & Bullock, 2022). Both an academic framework and a liberatory praxis, CRT exposes, challenges, and aims to transform systemic racism (Bell, 1992; Crenshaw et al., 1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 1997). Hawkman (2020) explained that, like CRT, “foundational to critical whiteness studies (CWS) is the recognition that racism is historic, endemic, and permanent” (p. 406). Also similar to CRT, CWS aims to center historically marginalized voices and alleviate the harm white supremacy causes people of Color (Delgado & Stefancic, 1997; Matias, 2022).

Further, CWS focuses on how whiteness manifests through the beliefs and behaviors of white people (Matias et al., 2014). Matias et al. (2014) explained that CWS seeks to problematize whiteness from a sociocultural perspective by investigating the ways white people understand, deny, ignore, and protect the privileges and benefits they receive from whiteness. Additionally, aspects of whiteness and white production (e.g., school tracking, discipline practices, destructive personal and socio-cultural beliefs) can be exhibited by people of Color who have internalized white supremacy (Jackson et al., 2021; Kohli, 2014; Mujica, 2022; Weinstein et al., 2004). Leonardo (2002) explained that whiteness is not exclusively tied to white individuals but is a “racial perspective or worldview” (pp. 32–33) that is safeguarded by law, sustained through social and structural investments it advantages, and rendered invisible—or normalized—within society (Harris, 1993; Leonardo, 2002). Consequently, while white individuals may resist whiteness by rejecting white privileges and actively working to repair the harm it causes (Leonardo, 2002), people of Color may internalize the whiteness that permeates their lives, sometimes adopting dominant perspectives or engaging in actions that inadvertently reinforce whiteness (Jackson et al., 2021; Mujica, 2022).

We used a CWS lens to explore how both white teachers and teachers of Color make sense of whiteness when learning about the theories that underpin YPAR during CPD. Additionally, we engaged a CWS lens in our research to challenge the embedded, yet often invisible nature of whiteness and white supremacy in educational settings. We bring whiteness into the light by exploring how teachers discuss, struggle with, and understand whiteness, and how it negatively impacts students of Color.

Methodology

Researcher Positionality

The researchers’ positionalities, including our identities, worldviews, and our positioning—how we position ourselves in relation to this research, the participants, data analysis, the limitations, and the knowledge produced from our work—informed all aspects of this study (Boveda & Annamma, 2023). Boveda and Annamma (2023) illustrate that “researcher positioning is engaged and revisited throughout the process of knowledge production” (p. 307). Thus, we not only articulate our positionalities here, but interweave how we positioned ourselves to the research and participants throughout this paper. For example, to mitigate the inherent power imbalances between researcher and those researched, we centered participant voices and employed an asset-based lens (Yosso, 2005) to honor and learn from the knowledges and experiences of the teacher participants.

Jami comes to this research as a white woman raised in a predominantly white, middle-class suburb where her worldview was initially shaped by limited, Eurocentric perspectives. Today, as a critical scholar, she is deeply committed to lifelong efforts of improving upon her role as a co-conspirator (Love, 2019) and confronting the harm white supremacy inflicts on people of Color. Jami recognizes the inherent tensions involved when a white researcher interprets the experiences and perspectives of people of Color, many of whom navigate intersecting systems of oppression (Boveda & Annamma, 2023; Crenshaw et al., 1995). To address this, she intentionally worked to acknowledge and minimize the influence of her own white-washed assumptions and biases throughout the research process, approaching the experiences of educators of Color with an open mind and heart, and a deep commitment to learning from their insights.

Carlos is a first-generation Latino college graduate. He participated in the larger study as a participant facilitator with a focus on fostering participants’ critical self-reflection and dialogue related to social injustice and critical action. His facilitation approach is grounded in the scholarship on humanizing pedagogy (Freire, 2000), LatCrit theory, and critical consciousness. These bodies of research argue that self-reflection and collective dialogue are key pedagogical practices that foster humanizing experiences, critical perspectives, and action towards transformative change.

As a Black mother, educator, and PhD student, Justine’s work is deeply informed by her lived experiences and professional journey as she navigates the intersecting identities of being a parent, teacher, and researcher within systems that have historically marginalized Black and Brown communities. Her work is rooted in a commitment to dismantling the school-to-prison nexus and addressing inequities that disproportionately affect youth of Color, particularly those with disabilities and histories of exclusion from classrooms.

Jordan recognizes the certain privileges, perspectives, and problematics of his existence as a white, straight, educated male. He believes in learning through education and research as a social right and force for change, and aims to apply this orientation in transparent yet critical and reflexive ways across phases of the research process.

Molly is a white queer Southern woman raised in a privileged environment. She has experienced complexities of both oppressed and oppressor and now identifies as a critical practitioner-scholar with expertise in sustainability and environmental education. Through critical self-reflection and research into critical and humanizing pedagogy, she understands the intersecting systems of exploitation and injustice that continue to impact our world. As an educator and facilitator, she embraces her responsibility to promote a “more fully human world through [her] pedagogical principles and practices” (del Carmen Salazar, 2013, p. 128).

Robert is an educator specializing in professional development for sustainable development, environmental, and outdoor education. He approached this research with a commitment to fostering equity and inclusion in educational practices. His identity as a Latino, male, and educated professional informs his understanding of the systemic barriers faced by marginalized communities. He views YPAR as a critical tool for centering youth voices and empowering young people, particularly those from historically marginalized backgrounds, to identify and dismantle systems of oppression.

Research Setting and Teacher Participants

The critical professional development course

This study was part of a larger research project that explored how CPD can facilitate teachers’ learning of YPAR. In this study, we focus specifically on teachers’ sense-making of whiteness as they learned about critical theories that underpin YPAR. YPAR is grounded in theoretical approaches that foster student-led collective inquiry, action, and change in schools and communities to challenge forms of oppression through students’ transformational resistance (Cammarota, 2017). In doing so, YPAR requires both an understanding of critical epistemology and theories, and actionable methods, so that teachers can collaborate with students to address the challenges they face (Buttimer, 2018). Consequently, a better understanding of how to prepare teachers to facilitate YPAR, as well as the personal and professional reflections they undergo in PD experiences, is needed to advance efforts in this space.

The CPD was developed in the summer of 2021, just 5 months after COVID-19 became a health epidemic. Thus, COVID-19 influenced the design and facilitation of the CPD. The CPD course was theoretically grounded in tenets and principles of humanizing pedagogy (Bartolomé, 1994; Casanova, 2023; Casanova & Cammarota, 2019; del Carmen Salazar, 2013; Freire, 2000) and LatCrit Theory (Espinoza, 1990; Martinez, 1994; Montoya, 1994). The two theories came together as a lens to cultivate critical reflection and support the co-creation of knowledge between facilitators and participants.

The online CPD was facilitated by four of the six authors of the study. These authors entered the larger study with experiences applying humanizing pedagogy practices and tenets. During CPD, educators and facilitators engaged in problem-posing interactions, collective self-reflection, and critical dialogue on topics covered in each module (see Table 1). Facilitators posed open-ended questions to foster educators’ deeper understanding of lived experiences of challenging and maintaining social injustice in schools. Humanizing pedagogy practices and tenets were used because facilitators aimed to advance teachers’ consciousness of challenging racial injustice in schools and prepare them to reimagine the ways YPAR can be a form of action to support marginalized youth in challenging social injustice in their schools and communities.

Table 1

CPD Modules and Major Components

	Module 1:Social Issues and Identity	Module 2:Theoretical Foundations of YPAR	Module 3:YPAR Challenges and Opportunities	Module 4:YPAR Research Methods	Module 5:Creating a YPAR Project
Objectives	Reflect on the ways social issues are connected to intersecting identities.	Cultivate an understanding of the theoretical foundation of YPAR.	Develop foundational understanding of data collection tools for social science research with youth.	Develop foundational understanding of data collection tools for social science research with youth.	Design a school/community project guided by fundamental YPAR principles.
Readings/ Videos/ Resources	Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. History of intersectionality: Interview with Kimberly Crenshaw YPAR HUB.	What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack? What Do We Mean by Transformative Resistance? Dismantling Systemic Racism in Schools: Eight Big Ideas.	Youth Participatory Action Research: In the Classroom. Youth Participatory Action Research: Conducting Participant Observations.	Weaving Social Justice into Science Instruction. How One Law Banning Ethnic Studies Led to Its Rise.	Four Steps of Humanizing Personalized Learning. Decolonization Is for Everyone.
Activities	Who Are You Identity Diagram.	Theoretical Foundations of YPAR.	YPAR Case Study.	Creating A Common Language.	YPAR Project Outline.
Critical Self-Reflection Exercise	What experiences or values have made you interested in YPAR? What types of issues do you hope that YPAR can address? How has your identity been related to your experience of privilege and oppression?	Do you feel empowered to make changes to systems of oppression? What are the actions you can take as an educator to resist oppression?	Thinking critically about your school and district, can you identify oppressive practices and policies? How do they affect your students? How do you feel about them? What kinds of actions can you take to resist or remove them?	What research methods will you introduce to your students as they engage in a YPAR project? Are there other methods that were not covered in this module that might also be helpful? What reservations do you have about using qualitative methods in the classroom?	What are your biggest concerns or reservations about engaging students in YPAR? What are you most worried about? What strategies can you identify to help make your YPAR project effective and impactful for your students?

The CPD course was a full-time, 1-week program conducted online. There were three 60-minute Zoom sessions held on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, where facilitators and educators were prompted to ask questions, engage in critical self and group reflection, and exchange experiences from their school environments so that participants and facilitators could learn from each other and build knowledge together. The CPD included five modules that required participants to spend a minimum of 8 hours per day completing the components of each module. Modules included the following five components: objective, online resources, readings, discussion prompts, and activities. In Table 1 we briefly outline each model that cultivated reflection to support transformational learning. Specifically, the material incorporated in the CPD addressed the theoretical underpinnings of YPAR, including: intersectionality, CRT, critical praxis and transformational resistance, community cultural wealth, and allyship/solidarity. Additionally, the CPD addressed how systemic racism manifests in schools harming students of Color, and how students can reflect on and resist racism and oppression through YPAR. Our desired outcomes for the teachers who participated in the CPD included: (1) reflect on social issues and how they interact with personal identity and lived experiences, (2) build a knowledge base needed to implement a YPAR project with students, (3) develop a plan for engaging students in research of a school/community issue, and (4) foster educator-participants’ understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of YPAR.

Participants

Potential participants were recruited from a listserv of over 3,000 alumni and current members of Arizona State University’s program on sustainability education (STA), of which two of the authors are involved. We utilized the STA listserv to invite teachers from across the United States to apply to participate in the CPD course. We decided to limit the CPD to around 10 teachers to honor the in-depth discussions and complex reflections essential to a CPD environment. We received 110 applications from teachers interested in social justice issues and learning about YPAR through a CPD course. Jordan and Molly worked together to select participants based on a review of applicants’ applications, including short answer responses. The following criteria were used to guide participant selection: (1) teacher and school diversity metrics (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, Title I schools, rural, suburban, or urban locales, grade level), and (2) teachers’ interest in social justice and YPAR. Ultimately, 11 teachers were invited to participate in the CPD.

Participant information is included in Table 2. The teachers’ schools were public (including public charter), located in six different states, various geographic locations (e.g., suburban, city), and had diverse minority student enrollment rates. Additionally, all participants were P-12 educators with a range of teaching experiences, with most having at least 5 years of experience in P-12 classrooms. Participants included Black, white, mixed-race, and South Asian men and women, with nine out of 11 participants identifying as women. Although most of the teachers in this study did not identify as white, we chose to use a CWS framework to explore how both white teachers and teachers of Color make sense of whiteness as they learn about the theories that underpin YPAR. We made this choice while also recognizing the tension inherent in using CWS as a lens to explore the sense-making and experiences of teachers of Color—many of whom are women and therefore navigate multiple intersecting oppressions (Crenshaw et al., 1995). While CWS provides a valuable framework for interrogating whiteness and its pervasive influence on education (Leonardo, 2013), we are also mindful of its (and our own) limitations in capturing the unique and multifaceted experiences of teachers of Color. Thus, we—the authors—approached this study with a commitment to centering the voices and lived experiences of the teachers involved in this study, highlighting their agency, resilience, and expertise. One way we did this was by engaging in intentional discussions and loving critiques with one another, aimed at fostering growth and encouraging one another to reflect on our own racial identities and privileges in relation to those of the participants. Additionally, we strived to avoid reductionist or deficit-based interpretations of participants’ voices and experiences.

Table 2

Participant Demographic Information (N = 11)

Gender	Race/Ethnicity	Participant Experience	State	Geographic Location of School	School Type	Minority Student Enrollment (%)
F	Mixed race (African American/Black & white)	6	TX	Large City	Public (Pk-5)	73
F	African American/Black	15	FL	Large Suburban	Public Charter (6–8)	94
F	African American/Black	5	NJ	Mid-size Suburban	Public (6–8)	62
F	white	nr*	WA	Small City	Public (K-6)	68
F	African American/Black	nr	AZ	Large City	Public (PK-8)	67
F	South Asian	nr	AZ	Large City	Public (4–8)	99
M	South Asian	nr	AZ	Large City	Public (PK-8)	97
F	white	nr	AZ	Large City	Public (4–8)	99
F	South Asian	13	AZ	Large City	Public (4–8)	98
F	South Asian	nr	AZ	Large City	Public (PK-8)	95
M	white	4	CA	Large Suburb	Public (9–12)	97

nr = no response.

Data Collection and Analysis

The data collected for this study are embedded in humanizing pedagogy—meaning, the data centers participants’ voices and critical reflections. The data included: zoom meeting transcripts, written reflections, and a post-CPD open-ended questionnaire, allowing us to triangulate our findings through data corroboration (Creswell & Poth, 2018). Each of the three 60 minute Zoom sessions were video recorded and transcribed via Zoom technologies, and then verified by the authors to assure accuracy. Additionally, answers to both the participants’ daily written reflections, and the post-CPD open-ended questionnaire were copied verbatim and organized into a google sheet for analysis purposes.

Utilizing a qualitative data analysis approach (Miles et al., 2020), Jami and Carlos began the data analysis process by conducting an analysis of the three Zoom transcripts using an interpretivist coding approach (Miles et al., 2020). We read through the Zoom transcripts and wrote initial memos (Emerson et al., 2011) as we began to conceptualize the data. Next, we read through the Zoom transcripts again, this time creating First Cycle codes (Miles et al., 2020) based on teachers’ responses and experiences. Some codes were generated from the teachers’ exact language (inductive codes), while others were based on our interpretations of the teachers’ experiences (open codes). Throughout this first round of coding, Jami and Carlos met to discuss the coding process, the codes, and to clarify any discrepancies in how we interpreted the data. We followed this same process for each of the other two data sources, focusing on one at a time, creating both inductive and open codes. At the conclusion of this process across all three data sets, we had a total of 54 codes, some of which included: “understanding whiteness,” “naming whiteness,” “effects on students of Color,” and “disproportionate discipline.”

Next, we undertook Second Cycle coding—also referred to as pattern coding (Miles et al., 2020). This process consisted of grouping similar codes together across all three data sets. Miles et al. (2020) explained that pattern coding consists of grouping together codes that are “often interrelated, summarizers: categories or themes, causes or explanations, relationships among people, and concepts or theoretical constructs” (p. 82). For example, following this technique, we grouped together codes that described how the teachers were making sense around whiteness, including “naming whiteness,” “not naming whiteness,” “understanding whiteness,” “grappling with whiteness,” “understanding systemic racism,” and “not understanding systemic racism.” After considering, discussing, and further grouping the final pattern codes, we constructed two descriptive themes that addressed our research question.

Findings

Engaging a lens of CWS during our qualitative data analysis process, we constructed two themes that illustrate teachers’ sense-making of whiteness as they learned the theoretical foundations of YPAR: (1) connecting systemic racism to student harm and (2) naming and avoiding naming whiteness. The findings are discussed below.

Connecting Systemic Racism to Student Harm

While some teachers struggled to make the connection between systemic racism and student harm, five of the 11 teachers articulated the consequences of systemic racism in their own words by sharing stories from their schools. These shared experiences became transformative learning opportunities for the entire group. From a CWS perspective, explicitly identifying, interrogating, and deconstructing systems of oppression—white supremacy—and their material consequences is essential to effect change (Matias, 2022; Matias et al., 2014). Conversely, when oppressive systems are left unmanned, they can be avoided or rendered invisible, perpetuating the harm inflicted on people of Color (Kincheloe, 1999; Lynch, 2018; Sleeter, 2001). Thus, these moments of sharing how systemic racism impacts students of Color underscore the potential of CPD to foster critical consciousness among educators.

For example, Alisha,² a Black woman, pointed out,

There are a ton of behavior issues at our school and it’s all of these white teachers constantly butting heads with students [of Color] and it’s not fair to the kids. So of course the behavioral referrals are disproportionate and it’s just sort of like a vicious cycle.

Alisha shared how systemic racism manifests in behavioral referrals, disproportionately harming students of Color at her school. She also connected this oppressive system to the actions of white teachers who perpetuate the disproportionate disciplining of students of Color. While Alisha did not use the term “systemic racism,” she demonstrated a clear understanding of its nature and its detrimental impact on students of Color in schools.

Another teacher, Sara, who shared with the group that her “mother is white and . . . biological father is black,” expressed her annoyance at a system that dehumanizes students:

I hate how a student is turned into a nonhuman . . . in third grade they just . . . turn into this percentile, they turn into a test result. . . . And it’s just one of those things where, like, unfortunately, it’s built into the system. It’s built into the system and it drives me insane.

Sara’s story about students being dehumanized through their reduction to test scores illustrates a key feature of whiteness: the prioritization of standards and metrics over lived experiences and humanizing practices. Whiteness in educational systems often manifests through an overemphasis on testing, tracking, and quantifiable results, which are rooted in white, Eurocentric expectations of success (Leonardo, 2002; Matias, 2016b). As Sara shared, the systems’ design reduces students to mere percentages and test results, stripping away their humanity and perpetuating systemic oppression. Similar to Alisha, Sara did not use the term systemic racism, yet she articulated how oppressive systems harm students in her own words, demonstrating her critical awareness of dehumanizing systems.

Similarly, three teachers shared how systemic racism harms students of Color in different ways. For instance, Nora, a white woman, shared that “Latinx boys had longer exclusion times than any other population” in her school. Another teacher, Hazel, a Black woman, voiced that there “disproportionately tend to be more minority students that tend to be getting the referrals.” Additionally, Alisha, who teaches at a “diverse” middle school with about a “35% African American” student population, explained that “there are no teachers that reflect the population of the school. . . . We just hired a . . . Black male . . . [and] we have an Indian computer science teacher and, I don’t know, that’s about it.” Alisha continued by describing the effects she thinks the lack of teachers of Color has on the Black students at her school: “So it’s sad, it’s sad to watch [these] students and how largely that can impact their educational experience and their social experiences.”

These teachers’ stories offer insight into the ways systemic racism operates through the disproportionate discipline of students of Color and the lack of diverse representation among educators. Nora’s observation about longer exclusion times for Latinx boys and Hazel’s acknowledgement of referral disparities reflect how whiteness shapes policies and practices that marginalize students of Color. Similarly, Alisha’s insight into the scarcity of teachers of Color underscores how whiteness perpetuates a system where students of Color lack role models who understand and reflect their lived experiences and identities, ultimately harming their educational and social development. Although the teachers did not explicitly identify whiteness as the cause of these disparities, their stories demonstrate an awareness of how racist systems specifically harm students of Color—an essential aspect of critically understanding whiteness (Matias, 2016b).

Finally, Eric, a white male, told the group that in his classroom, “I try to focus on . . . what we know [and] how we learn that information and a lot of the times . . . systematic racism . . . is part of it.” Eric’s recognition that “systematic racism” is often embedded in dominant ways of knowing reflects a foundational understanding of how systemic racism can shape knowledge. By explaining how he engages his students in discussions about how embedded racism often informs what is taught and how it is learned, Eric demonstrated an awareness of, and willingness to teach how racism impacts schooling. By sharing this story, Eric took an important step toward interrogating and challenging the structures that sustain racial inequities in education.

Naming and Avoiding Naming Whiteness

Drawing from Harris (1993) and Leonardo (2002), we understand whiteness as a belief system and set of practices that provide material advantages to white people and are protected through social norms, policies, and laws. Additionally, we draw from Cabrera (2022) and Matias (2022) to emphasize that understanding whiteness requires making connections between whiteness and the harm it inflicts on people of Color. With these conceptualizations in mind, we found that teachers’ sense-making around whiteness involved both naming and not naming whiteness. Four out of 11 teachers explicitly referenced “white” or “whiteness” during group discussions, written critical reflections, and post-CPD responses. Among these four, one teacher shared how she struggled to grasp the concept of whiteness, another provided examples of whiteness in the classroom, and the third and fourth commented on white culture and white teachers. While the other seven teachers at times alluded to the effects of whiteness by sharing stories about systemic racism, “bad systems,” or “vicious cycles,” they did not explicitly identify whiteness by name.

This pattern of both naming and avoiding whiteness did not happen in a vacuum. Educators’ experiences and insights were shared in the context of a CPD course that introduced whiteness as one of several substantial theoretical foundations of YPAR (as outlined above). Teachers were given 1 week to engage with this concept, along with others, which inevitably shaped the depth and comfort with which they could explore and articulate their understanding of whiteness. While we anticipated that these concepts would be challenging to fully process in 1 week, our goal was to provide a foundational understanding that teachers could continue to build upon beyond the CPD. Indeed, six teachers echoed Sara’s reflection in their post-CPD responses. Sara shared, “The materials were relevant, interesting, and informative and inspired me to continue to research after the course.” Similarly, many teachers expressed a commitment to further engagement with the resources made available during the training, highlighting the importance of deepening their understanding of YPAR’s theoretical underpinnings, including concepts such as whiteness. A key advantage of the online CPD format was the accessibility and longevity of these materials, allowing teachers to revisit and explore them at their own pace after the course concluded.

However, the limited timeframe also meant that some teachers may not have fully developed the language to clearly articulate a conceptual understanding of whiteness and how it harms students of Color. It could also be the case that some of the teachers of Color did not feel that it was a space where they could interrogate whiteness. As researchers—some of us white—interpreting the reflections of teachers of Color on whiteness, we prioritized centering their voices, adopting an asset-based perspective, and thoughtfully navigating the tensions introduced by our own biases and preconceived notions (Boveda & Annamma, 2023).

Naming whiteness

Sara, the teacher who shared that her mother was white and father was Black, also later shared with everyone that she was raised by her mother and white step-father. She continued, explaining that she struggled to understand the concept of whiteness after she read some of the materials provided. Risking vulnerability, yet demonstrating a willingness to grapple with whiteness openly with her fellow educators, Sara asked the group,

I read the article that was decolonizing in the classroom and how it starts with us. But the phrase that I, I could not get past is, um, aspects of whiteness, and I have to be super honest I don’t even know what that means, or what that looks like. What would be an aspect of whiteness and how do I even know that I’m, like, modeling it . . . or even if it’s one of my own biases . . . how do I even know what an aspect of whiteness is?

Ruth, a Black woman, responded to Sara’s question with an example of an “aspect of whiteness” in the classroom. She explained,

Students [of Color] have cultures . . . that are not represented . . . [in the curriculum]. So that’s an aspect of whiteness. . . . When you present . . . [European culture] as the only one there is and it’s consistent in multiple areas in your classroom, you’re sending a message that this is the dominant one; the one that’s worth . . . teaching.

Ruth’s observation about the predominance of European culture in school curricula highlighted that when whiteness is centered in the curriculum, or in other areas of the classroom, it excludes the cultures of students of Color.

Ruth continued by providing another example of whiteness:

For example, in my family and culture, if I want to add emphasis to something, I say . . . the adjective twice. Like if a person is tall, I would say he’s tall, he’s very tall; I would say no, he’s tall tall. I would double [the adjective] . . . but if I . . . said that in a traditional classroom, I will be told that’s incorrect. Right. That’s an aspect of whiteness. . . . Now I do need to teach my students when you’re in a formal conversation or you’re writing, you may not want to say tall tall . . . but you don’t exclude one just to validate the other, you understand?

Both examples shared by Ruth provided the entire group with specific examples of whiteness and how whiteness can manifest in the classroom, invalidating the cultural expressions and identities of students of Color—important concepts to understand when learning about whiteness and its consequences.

Additionally, Nora, a white woman, spoke of the importance of identifying and addressing the historic and ongoing trauma that arises from the prioritization of white culture. She explained,

We have a white dominant culture in our country that has caused atrocious traumas that we will never make up for, right, and so . . . [the] only way forward is to name the problem and . . . how bad it has gotten. It is also to tag assets onto these other cultures and communities . . . to recognize that they are bringing something to the table.

While Nora highlighted the trauma caused by the dominance of white culture in society, her approach inadvertently reinforced whiteness by framing diverse cultures and communities as “other,” which can position them as fundamentally different, separate, and less than the dominant (white) group (Thomas-Olalde & Velho, 2011). This illustrates the complexities of understanding whiteness and the continuous learning and re-learning involved in anti-racist work, particularly for white teachers (Casey & McManimon, 2020; McManimon & Casey, 2018).

Finally, Alisha, a Black woman, commented on whiteness twice. The first comment came when she described the disparity between the experiences of Black students and white students transitioning from elementary school to junior high. Alisha explained that “her co-teacher and she’s white” had a daughter that had no problems transitioning to middle school, yet when she talked to the parents of a group of Black students, they shared “these horror stories of what a hard transition [it] was . . . [demonstrating] two separate truths.” Through this example Alisha contributed a meaningful illustration of the differences between the experiences of white students and their parents and students of Color and their parents, making whiteness and its negative effects on people of Color visible for the group’s further consideration.

Alisha’s second comment about whiteness (previously mentioned) described how “white teachers [are] constantly butting heads” with students of Color at her school, perpetuating “behavioral referrals” that are “disproportionate.” Alisha’s observation highlights the critical role of whiteness in shaping disciplinary practices in schools. This underscores the importance of making whiteness visible, as it allows educators to recognize and address its oppressive impact on students of Color. By naming whiteness as the cause of these disparities, Alisha challenged the group to confront how white supremacy operates in everyday school practices. Such recognition is essential for disrupting inequitable systems and fostering just educational environments.

Not naming whiteness

Seven teachers in the CPD did not use the words “white” or “whiteness” during group discussions, critical reflections, or post-CPD responses. We coded these omissions as not naming whiteness when the example or experience they shared could be attributed to whiteness, based on our definition of whiteness and its associated harms (as noted above). Coding the absence of whiteness was crucial to understanding how teachers either engaged with or avoided naming whiteness. While explicitly naming whiteness is just one way to expose its presence, it is also important to recognize that leaving whiteness unexamined or un-named can perpetuate the enduring nature of race and racism (Kincheloe, 1999; Matias et al., 2014; Sleeter, 2001).

For example, Hazel, a Black woman, shared, “we’ve been hiring some more minority teachers . . . now there’s five of us so it’s improving. . . . But there still disproportionately tend to be more minority students that tend to be getting the referrals .. . . [There is a] disconnect between some of the students and teachers.” We coded this experience as not naming whiteness because, when considering the context of Hazel’s story, we interpreted the “disconnect” she mentioned between “some of the students” and “teachers” to mean students of Color and white teachers.

While explicitly naming whiteness is a crucial aspect of addressing systemic inequalities, we recognize that there are several potential reasons why Hazel may not have felt comfortable doing so. For example, as a Black woman constantly navigating dominantly white educational spaces, Hazel might have been negotiating power dynamics, prioritizing her safety, or weighing the emotional labor required to directly name whiteness in such a context (see Evans-Winters & Hines, 2020). Additionally, the framing of her story may reflect broader societal pressures to discuss systemic issues in ways that are more palatable to white individuals and white educational spaces—even in spaces that are created to share and discuss these topics, such as the CPD.

Despite the absence of explicitly naming whiteness, Hazels’ story made a valuable contribution to the group’s discussion. By highlighting the harm caused by the disproportionate referral of students of Color and calling attention to the “disconnect” between teachers and students, Hazel underscored the systemic inequities present within her school. Her insights provided an important foundation for further dialogue around the racialized dynamics in education and the need for meaningful change to address these disparities.

Additionally, when Eric, a white male teacher, shared two examples from his teaching experiences with the group, he focused on his successful strategies with students, demonstrating how he challenges dominant knowledges in his classroom and employs positive behavior and restorative justice methods to foster, what he called, “rapport” with his students. For example, he shared, “Instead of sending them away, I’m making them interact with me—they have to talk to me . . . which I’ve had breakthroughs multiple times with students.” While Eric’s contributions reflected a strong commitment to building meaningful relationships and creating supportive environments for his students, he did not explicitly name whiteness or critically reflect on his role as a white male teacher engaging with students of Color. By not addressing how his race, gender, and positional advantages intersect with his teaching practices, Eric overlooked the ways these dynamics might influence his students’ experiences and the larger classroom power structures. This omission may stem from a variety of reasons, such as a lack of awareness about how to frame his positionality, discomfort with discussing race and power, or an assumption that focusing on successful strategies alone would suffice in demonstrating equity-oriented practices.

However, even without directly naming whiteness, Eric’s contributions were valuable to the group’s dialogue. His examples of fostering rapport through restorative practices and challenging dominant narratives provided practical insights that other participants could build upon in their own classrooms. These strategies modeled a commitment to supporting students and disrupting punitive approaches to discipline—important steps in working toward educational equity.

Discussion

Our findings highlight the nuanced ways educators made sense of whiteness and the harm it inflicts on students of Color during CPD. We found that educators recognized the connection between systemic racism and student harm, and their sense-making around whiteness involved both naming and avoiding the term itself. These findings shed light on the complexity of engaging educators in critical discussions about whiteness, particularly within the structure of a CPD context. This study contributes to and extends existing scholarship on how teachers engage with concepts such as race, racism, and whiteness during PD. Specifically, our findings support prior research demonstrating that educators can deepen their understanding of systemic racism while simultaneously struggling to interrogate their own positionalities, impacts of internalized racism, and the role of whiteness in sustaining school-based inequalities (e.g., Kohli, 2014; Philip, 2011; Picower, 2009). We also extend this literature by showing how educators grapple with both conceptual and linguistic engagement with whiteness—some naming it directly, others describing its effects without explicitly labeling it—within CPD grounded in the theoretical underpinnings of YPAR. In doing so, our study highlights both the promise and limitations of CPD experiences to initiate critical consciousness, while underscoring the importance of sustained, reflective learning spaces for educators to fully confront and disrupt whiteness in education.

In the current study, while some teachers demonstrated critical awareness of systemic racism and its consequences for students of Color, and others named whiteness and white teachers as the cause of racial disparities in schooling, for others the explicit naming of whiteness was absent from their narratives. This absence highlights the pervasive challenge of addressing whiteness directly, even in spaces designed for critical reflection. From a CWS perspective, the avoidance of explicitly naming whiteness is not merely an oversight but a reflection of how whiteness functions as an invisible norm, shielded by existing power structures and social conditioning (Harris, 1993; Matias, 2016b).

Despite these challenges, the findings also reveal the potential for CPD to catalyze transformative conversations about race, whiteness, and systemic inequities. Even when whiteness was left unnamed, teachers shared stories that illuminated the material consequences of whiteness, such as disproportionate disciplinary practices, the dehumanizing of students through standardized testing, and the lack of diverse representation among educators. These narratives contribute to a broader effort to challenge oppressive systems and imagine more equitable educational practices. For example, Eric’s restorative approaches with students and Alisha’s advocacy for representation and equity illustrate how educators can begin to disrupt dominant systems and positively influence the experiences of students of Color. By centering educator agency and authentic dialogue within CPD, facilitators can leverage educators’ lived experiences to deepen critical reflection, encourage the explicit naming of whiteness, and build the collective capacity to challenge systemic racism (Kohli, 2014, 2019).

Implications of Findings

Our findings highlight the nuanced ways that engaging educators in dialogue and critical reflection within a loving, community-building environment can deepen their understanding of whiteness and its consequences, while also creating space for growth in their sense-making processes. Utilizing a CWS-informed analysis, we also identified key areas for enhancing CPD to support teachers’ sense-making around whiteness, including the importance of naming, but not centering, whiteness, and building teacher capacity to support students of Color. These areas are discussed below.

The importance of naming, but not centering, whiteness

While our findings revealed that educators often recognize systemic racism, whiteness itself was not always explicitly named as the source of these inequalities. This tendency—what CWS scholars describe as the invisibility or normalization of whiteness (Harris, 1993; Matias, 2016b)—surfaced across multiple teacher narratives. These silences highlight a critical challenge and opportunity of CPD: supporting educators in developing the language and critical consciousness necessary to name whiteness while also interrogating its function in schools. These moments of partial recognition point to a key opportunity for CPD: to serve as a starting point for deeper inquiry, where educators begin connecting their lived experiences and observations to broader systems of power. Recognizing that developing critical consciousness is a gradual process, CPD should be intentionally designed to build educators’ capacity to name and interrogate whiteness, rather than expecting immediate fluency. One way to support this on-going development is by providing materials educators can access beyond the shared CPD space, allowing them to continue reading, reflecting, and deepening their understanding of critical concepts, such as whiteness. This is a form of support that several of the educators in this study indicated they would be interested in.

Naming whiteness is a necessary act in anti-racist education, as it helps educators uncover how power operates in and through everyday school practices (Matias et al., 2014; Sleeter, 2001). However, we argue that CPD must also honor the different starting points educators bring to this work, particularly for those who are just beginning to examine race and power in education. At the same time, it is crucial that CPD courses avoid inadvertently (re)centering whiteness in its attempts to address it. As Cabrera (2022) and Matias (2022) cautioned, examining whiteness without connecting it to the harm it causes people of Color risks (re)centering whiteness. Thus, discussions about whiteness within CPD must be framed with the goal of dismantling white supremacy and addressing its impact on historically marginalized students, rather than fixating on whiteness itself. In a sense, the goal is not to center whiteness (or the concept of race) as a subject of fascination—thus giving it more power (Ladson-Billings, 2018)—but to critically interrogate whiteness as a mechanism of racial harm that must be dismantled. This approach helps maintain the broader purpose of anti-racist work in CPD: fostering equity and justice for students and teachers of Color, rather than reifying whiteness as the central topic of discussion.

Effective CPD, then, should aim to balance spaces where educators are encouraged to name and challenge whiteness, while also ensuring that the voices, needs, and experiences of students and teachers of Color remain center to anti-racist work. Rather than asking what whiteness is in the abstract, the more urgent question becomes: How is whiteness operating here, and how do we interrupt it? In doing so, CPD can move beyond awareness to action—equipping educators to recognize whiteness not simply as a concept, but as a system with real consequences that must be collectively resisted.

Building teacher capacity to support students of color

Our findings also underscore the importance of CPD in cultivating educators’ capacity to support students of Color by recognizing, responding to, and disrupting the systemic barriers these students face. Teachers who lack a critical understanding of the systemic barriers students of Color face, risk perpetuating harm through deficit-based beliefs and practices, such as “othering” (Thomas-Olalde & Velho, 2011). For instance, well-intentioned efforts to highlight the value of “other cultures” (such as Nora’s comment) can inadvertently reinforce whiteness as the norm, framing diverse students’ cultures as peripheral rather than integral to classroom life. This underscores the need for CPD that helps educators to critically examine their assumptions and reflect on how whiteness functions as a default in educational spaces.

The potential harm caused by a lack of critical awareness is well-documented. For example, Casanova and Domínguez (2024) share first-hand accounts of students involved in justice-oriented youth programs who recalled specific racist remarks made by white educators. These experiences highlight that when educators—and CPD facilitators—fail to interrogate whiteness and systemic racism, they risk reproducing the very harm they seek to dismantle. CPD, then, must do more than raise awareness; it must intentionally develop educators’ capacity to recognize and understand how whiteness operates in schools while promoting asset-based approaches that affirm and center students of Color.

Navigating whiteness and white supremacy is inherently complex and often uncomfortable, yet it is essential for educators committed to equity and justice to engage with these concepts (Hambacher & Ginn, 2021). CPD can play a pivotal role in helping educators to identify the multiple ways whiteness harms students of Color, while also cautioning against (re)centering whiteness in these discussions. As Cabrera (2022) explained, “the goal of examining whiteness is to dismantle white supremacy, yet there is a very fine line between dismantling white supremacy—a laudable goal—and centering whiteness, which is counterproductive” (p. 714). Thus, understanding whiteness is essential not to spotlight it as an object of fascination, but to expose how it sustains racial inequities and marginalizes students of Color (Cabrera, 2018; Matias, 2022). As Matias and Boucher (2021) explained, “the study of whiteness intrinsically enables society to better understand how people of Colour are racially oppressed” (p. 11).

One way to incorporate these ideas into CPD is through the use of CWS or critical whiteness pedagogy (Matias & Mackey, 2016), which emphasizes emotional investment and critical self-reflection. Matias and Mackey (2016) stated that because whiteness is deeply embedded in educational structures, teachers—particularly white teachers and those who have internalized whiteness—must confront the “emotional discomfort” that accompanies unlearning whiteness (p. 35). Without intentional opportunities for reflection, some educators may default to surface-level understandings of race that leave white supremacy intact. CPD must therefore provide educators with tools and support to work through resistance, defensiveness, and guilt—emotions that often arise when confronting whiteness (Matias, 2016a; Matias & Mackey, 2016). By fostering spaces for critical self-reflection and authentic, collective dialogue, CPD can become a site of transformative learning where educators not only develop a critical awareness of race and power but also build the emotional and pedagogical capacities to challenge white supremacy in their classrooms and schools.

Limitations of the Study

While we analyzed the experience of 11 teachers from across the United States, future research might incorporate more educators enrolled in different CPD courses and conduct a cross analysis of the affordances and constraints of various social justice-focused CPD courses. Additionally, conducting one-on-one or focus group interviews with participants after the CPD course concludes would provide additional layers of understanding around teachers’ sense-making of whiteness. This would likely yield rich, qualitative data that could drive further improvements in the development and implementation of CPD courses.

Conclusion

With this study, we address the dearth of research on CPD and, specifically, on how teachers make sense of whiteness during CPD. Our exploration of how educators grapple with concepts of systemic racism and whiteness when learning about the theories that ground YPAR highlights the ongoing challenges and opportunities for future CPD courses. By fostering environments that encourage critical self-reflection, authentic dialogue, story-telling, and relationship building—along with the explicit naming of systemic injustices, and, in particular, whiteness—CPD courses can significantly enhance educators’ ability to identify and understand whiteness and, ultimately, support students of Color.

Further, we underscore the need for continued research and development of CPD courses that deepen teachers’ understandings of systemic racism and whiteness. As educators become more adept at recognizing and addressing the nuanced dynamics of oppression, they can better support their students in challenging these structures, thereby contributing to the transformative potential of education. Moving forward, CPD programs must integrate strategies that prepare educators to critically address systemic racism and empower the next generation to tackle the complex challenges of our time. Educators must develop a critical understanding of how systemic racism and whiteness manifest in schools and harm students of Color. Only then can educators begin to challenge and dismantle these oppressive structures, and meaningfully support students of Color as they work toward liberation, social change, and self-transformation.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Open Practices

The documentation files for this article can be found at:

ORCID iDs

Jami Carmichael

Carlos R. Casanova

Justine Parnell

Jordan King

Molly Cashion

Robert McGehee

Note: This manuscript was accepted under the editorship of Dr. Kara Finnigan.

Notes

Authors

JAMI CARMICHAEL is a doctoral candidate at Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Innovation, Arizona State University, Mail code: 3151, Tempe, AZ, 85287-8009; email: jlcarmic@asu.edu. Her research focuses on how educators prioritize and nurture their well-being in order to continue to teach for equity and justice, and how educational leaders and policymakers can support educator well-being.

CARLOS R. CASANOVA is an assistant professor of education in the Education Studies program in the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Innovation, Arizona State University, 3151, Tempe, AZ, 85287-8009; email: carlos.casanova.1@asu.edu. His research explores the socio-political context of community-based organizations or afterschool education programs and the learning and critical development that takes place as Latinx youth participate in conscious rising and culturally relevant program activities.

JUSTINE PARNELL is a doctoral student at Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Innovation, Arizona State University, Mail code: 3151, Tempe, AZ, 85287-8009; email: jdfair1@asu.edu. Her research focuses on youth voice in education, disability, and juvenile justice. She provides liberatory opportunities for marginalized youth to develop and strengthen their identities through education.

JORDAN KING is the Director of Innovations in Honors and Professor of Practice at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 615 McCallie Avenue, Chattanooga, TN 37403; email: jordan-king@utc.edu. He is passionate about the future of higher education, society, and the planet, and sees himself as a transdisciplinary, sustainability education scholar and design practitioner.

MOLLY CASHION is the Director of Alternative Pathways at Montana State University, 250 Reid Hall P.O. Box 172880, Bozeman, MT 59717-2880; email: molly.cashion@montana.edu. Molly contributed to this article while serving as program manager for the Sustainability Teachers’ Academies at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on program design and evaluation, where she has experience advising adult learners and working collaboratively with universities, school districts, and community organizations to develop impactful education programs.

ROBERT MCGEHEE is an environmental educator specializing in professional development for sustainable development, community empowerment and outdoor education at Pierce County Public Works, 9850 64th St W., University Place, WA 98467; email: Robert.McGehee@asu.edu. He approaches this research with a commitment to fostering equity and inclusion in educational practices.

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An Exploration of Teacher Sense-Making Around Whiteness During a Critical Professional Development Course

Abstract

Keywords

Literature Review

Critical Professional Development

Teachers Making Sense of Whiteness

Theoretical Framework: Critical Whiteness Studies

Methodology

Researcher Positionality

Research Setting and Teacher Participants

The critical professional development course

Participants

Data Collection and Analysis

Findings

Connecting Systemic Racism to Student Harm

Naming and Avoiding Naming Whiteness

Naming whiteness

Not naming whiteness

Discussion

Implications of Findings

The importance of naming, but not centering, whiteness

Building teacher capacity to support students of color

Limitations of the Study

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Open Practices

ORCID iDs

Notes

Authors

References