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Understanding Self-Identifying White Anti-Racist Elementary Teacher Beliefs About Teaching Difficult U.S. History Topics

Broman-Fulks, Jennifer Chandler
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Abstract

Race and racism are woven into the founding and growth of the United States, which makes social studies class the ideal setting for discourse about race and racism. Conversely, current social studies education centers the perspectives of white colonial settlers and fails to attend to the racial structures and policies of the United States. Furthermore, recent legislation in many states aims to limit discourse about race and racism in classrooms. Literature suggests that teachers tend to acknowledge race and racism in their classroom instruction, but they do not consistently take action to identify, describe, and dismantle racial oppression. However, there are antiracist teachers who oppose and actively fight racism by making instructional decisions consistent with their antiracist beliefs. Historically racist and oppressive systems must be dismantled by people of color and white antiracist activists. Therefore, I employed narrative inquiry methodology involving semi-structured interviews and co-construction of research texts with white antiracist teachers in an upper elementary school in a metropolitan area of the Southeast. Using frameworks of antiracism education activism and sources of teacher beliefs, I illuminate the lived experiences that have influenced antiracist teachers’ praxis in U.S. history instruction. With a goal to provide a model for antiracist education activism, I inquired into the beliefs of white antiracist elementary social studies teachers, examined how antiracist teachers came to their antiracist beliefs and how their beliefs influence their instructional decision making, and explored how they are motivated to persist in antiracist praxis.

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Date
2025-05-16
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Keywords
antiracism, antiracist praxis, teacher beliefs, critical whiteness, narrative inquiry
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Broman-Fulks, Jennifer Chandler. “Understanding Self-Identifying White Anti-Racist Elementary Teacher Beliefs About Teaching Difficult U.S. History Topics.” Georgia State University, 2025. https://doi.org/10.57709/WPE7-RZ05.
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