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Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 1813–1826

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‘‘Going the race way’’: Biographical influences on multiculturaland antiracist English curriculum practices

Allison Skerrett�

Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, The University of Texas at Austin, One University Avenue D5700,

SZB 406, Austin, TX 78731, USA

Received 29 August 2007; received in revised form 12 November 2007; accepted 15 November 2007

Abstract

As curriculum standardization escalates, teachers’ agency in relation to teaching to student diversity takes on increasing

importance. This article draws from an international study that investigated the multicultural and antiracist teaching

practices of 15 English teachers in two racially diverse schools, one in the United States, the other in Canada. Analysis of

in-depth interviews and curriculum-related documents found that teachers’ agency was related to biographical elements of

professional preparation, prior experiences with diversity, and generational status. The article reports on data from the

United States school and offers recommendations for professional development and teacher preparation.

Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: Agency; Multicultural education; Secondary curriculum; Student diversity; Teacher education; Teacher identity

1. Introduction

Multicultural and antiracist English teachingrepresent attempts of contest and revision to amonocultural and exclusionary body of officialknowledge. These more inclusive and politicalapproaches exist to a greater degree in teachers’curriculum-in-use (Apple, 1979) than in the officialcurriculum. Historically, when official knowledgehas included multicultural or antiracist content, ithas been due to ‘‘accords or compromises wheredominant groups, in order to maintain theirdominance, must take the concerns of the lesspowerful into account’’ (Apple, 1993, p. 11). Such

ee front matter Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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2 342 7844.

ess: ASkerrett@mail.utexas.edu

concessions that partially address the demands ofsubordinate groups are ‘‘always fragile, alwaystemporary, and constantly subject to threat’’(p. 11). Yet, when hegemonic, official knowledge is‘‘filtered through teachers’’ (Apple, 1979, p. 51) ascurriculum-in-use, they transform its characteraccording to the beliefs they hold about theirstudents and about knowledge. These beliefs aredeveloped through teachers’ educational, cultural,political, and socioeconomic experiences in thebroader social milieu (see also Achinstein, Ogawa,& Speiglman, 2004; Bullough, Knowles, & Crow,1991; Butt, Raymond, McCue, & Yamagishi, 1992).Thus, English teachers’ multicultural and antiracisttransformations of the official curriculum arematters of identity and agency that are related tosociocultural influences.

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1.1. Teacher identity and agency

Teacher agency in relation to identity is a generativetheoretical lens through which to examine howteachers experience the world of school (Achinsteinet al., 2004; Barwell, 2005; Lasky, 2005; Schweisfurth,2006; Sloan, 2006; Vulliamy, Kimonen, Nevalainen, &Webb, 1997). For example, using Wertsch, Tulviste,and Hagstrom’s (1993) sociocultural approach toagency, Lasky studied the interactions among second-ary teachers’ identity, agency, and professionalvulnerability in a reform climate. One of her keyfindings was that external mediation systems mayhave greater impact on identity formation for teachersof younger professional status than for those whoseidentities were securely formed before the onset ofreforms. Identity, in turn, affects teachers’ agency—their beliefs about, and actions in relation to—theirstudents and teaching.

Sloan (2006) also draws from a socioculturalapproach to agency—that of Holland, Lachicotte,Skinner, and Cain (1998) ‘‘figured worlds’’ to study‘‘the varied ways teachers experience and respond toaccountability-explicit curriculum policies’’ (p. 144).Sloan proposed that ‘‘teacher identity and identityformation are robust explanatory tools’’ (p. 144) tomake sense of teachers responses to accountabilityreforms. These responses, he argues, are neithermechanistic nor uni-dimensional but dependentupon various aspects of teacher identity such asnarratives of the self as teacher and subject matterknowledge.

In addition to subject matter knowledge, peda-gogical content knowledge is also important toteachers’ development and maintenance of agencyin relation to curriculum practices (Schweisfurth,2006). The teachers in Schweisfurth’s study prior-itized global citizenship education despite thepressures of curriculum standardization thatstressed traditional academic standards. Theseteachers had received significant training throughtheir teacher education program in analyzingcurriculum guidelines. This instruction helped them‘‘interpret the prescribed curriculum imaginativelyto justify their own aims in the area of globaleducation’’ (p. 49) while ensuring that they also metcurriculum standardization policy mandates. In thisway, the teachers’ professional preparation fostereda considerable sense of agency in teaching historyfrom a critical worldview.

The educators in Schweisfurth’s (2006) study alsocited the promotion of social justice and/or a global

citizenship agenda as their main reason for goinginto teaching. Thus, they came into teaching withpreviously formed identities in relation to teachingto diversity, dispositions which their teacher educa-tion program built directly upon. This alreadyestablished identity, as discussed in Lasky (2005) isessential to teachers’ maintenance of agency in theface of curriculum standardization or other educa-tional change. In the case of Schweisfurth’s teacher-participants, their agency in teaching from a criticalperspective was strongly related to their broadersociocultural and political dispositions in support ofdiversity. This stance in support of diversitytypically arises from teachers’ social locations alongracial, cultural, and socioeconomic lines in society(Skerrett, 2007; Berta-Avila, 2004; Gordon, 2000;Li, 2007). Identity and agency are, therefore,densely interwoven, sociological constructs thatshape teachers’ beliefs about, and experiences of,teaching. To further study the sociocultural influ-ences on teachers’ identity and agency in relation toteaching, this article examines the influence of keyelements of teacher identity—professional prepara-tion, prior experience with diversity, and genera-tional status—on teachers’ multicultural andantiracist English practices of curriculum-in-use.

1.2. Multicultural and antiracist teaching practices

Multicultural education seeks to ensure an equityeducation for disenfranchised racial and ethnicgroups by including their histories and experiencesin the school curriculum and attending to greatermaterial inclusion of their cultures in the structureand organization of schools (Banks, 1986). Otherinfluential multicultural education scholars havedescribed practices where teachers: hold high ex-pectations for all students; learn about and valuestudents’ diverse cultures and use this knowledge asthe foundation for curriculum; use culturally respon-sive teaching and assessment strategies; and developstrong relationships with students, their families, andtheir communities (Delpit, 1995; Gay, 2000; Nieto,1999). A major criticism of multicultural education,however, is that it dilutes the focus on racism byoveremphasizing culture and by collectively addres-sing the concerns of a variety of marginalized socialgroups including women and people with disabilities(Banks, 1986). Antiracist education thus arose tocounter what its advocates considered the apolitical,anti-confrontational approach of multicultural edu-cation (Bonnett & Carrington, 1996).

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Focusing more explicitly on the interconnectedwebs of injustice among schools and other socialinstitutions, antiracist education is ‘‘a wide range oforganizational, curricular, and pedagogical strate-gies which aim to promote racial equality and toeliminate attendant forms of discrimination andoppression, both individual and institutional’’(Troyna & Carrington, 1990, p. 1). While theUnited States has never fully adopted a distinctantiracist approach to education (as has Britain andparts of Canada), its themes are nonetheless evidentin some foundational descriptions of multiculturaleducation. For example, in her influential work onmulticultural education practice, Ladson-Billings’(1995) proposes a theoretical model of culturally

relevant pedagogy ‘‘that not only addresses studentachievement but also helps students to accept andaffirm their cultural identity while developingcritical perspectives that challenge inequities thatschools perpetuate’’ (p. 469). Thus, United Statesscholarship has moved beyond the varied concernsof multicultural education to reclaim a specificparadigm that specifically addresses the educationof racially and culturally diverse students whichincludes not only student learning and culturalcelebration, but that also recognizes and teachesagainst racism and discrimination in schools andsociety.1 Antiracist English teaching, therefore,emphasizes and interrogates the inherent Euro-centric bias of the school curriculum, revises it toinclude texts that explicitly teach against racism,and trains students to take social action againstinjustice in their world.

As concessions to marginalized groups, officialmulticultural and antiracist knowledge are ‘‘con-stantly subject to threat[s]’’ (Apple, 1993, p. 11) ofmarket pressures that have increased the mono-cultural content of increasingly standardized curri-culum and high stakes tests (Hargreaves, 2003;Slavin, 2004). This study sought to understand howEnglish teachers of diverse populations activatedtheir beliefs about knowledge and about students toimbue a predominantly Eurocentric official curri-culum with a more multicultural and antiracistcharacter. It further attempted to uncover thebiographical reasons underlying English teachers’

1Increasingly, anti-racist and multicultural education are now

viewed as complementary rather than antithetical (Kehoe &

Mansfield, 1993; May, 1994; Short, 1994, Carrington & Bonnett

1997) and espouse similar organizational, curricular and peda-

gogical strategies to counter the influence of racism, xenophobia,

and ethnocentrism.

agency in relation to teaching their subject todetermine how teacher preparation and ongoingprofessional development might best support edu-cators in effectively teaching diverse student popu-lations.

2. Methodology

Purposive sampling (Merriam, 1997) was used toidentify and select English departments in tworacially and culturally diverse high schools, bothon the edges of large urban metropolises. TheUnited States school that is the focus of this articleis located in Massachusetts, USA; the Canadiansecondary school is in Southern Ontario. Datawere collected through in-depth interviews of 15English teachers (six in the United States school)and documentary analysis of curriculum-relateddocuments (Charmaz, 2000; Lincoln & Guba,1985; Yin, 2003). Official curriculum documentsconsisted of state and provincial level curriculumpolicy, guidelines, and frameworks; the schooldistrict’s English standards, textbook selectioncriteria, and course offerings; and the Englishdepartment’s course outlines and major textbooksin use. Three years worth of each English depart-ment’s meeting minutes were also collected andanalyzed. Curriculum-in-use documents includedsamples of teachers’ syllabi, unit plans, and lessonplans; assessments such as essays, tests, and creativeart projects; and accompanying examples of studentwork.

Interview questions encompassed Spradley’s(1979) three types of ethnographic questions:descriptive, structural, and contrast. Teachers wereasked descriptive questions, for example, abouttheir personal upbringing and their professionalpreparation for teaching English. They were askedstructured questions such as to provide examples ofthe texts taught at each grade level and to thendescribe their adoptions of, as well as adaptationsand additions to, this official curriculum—theircurriculum-in-use. Teachers also compared andcontrasted the ways in which the official curriculum,and their curriculum-in-use, did or did not respondto, the academic, social, and cultural needs andinterests of their diverse student body.

2.1. Research setting

Charles Memorial High School (CMHS) is a mid-size, comprehensive high school that offers a

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Table 1

Participant demographics

Teachera Subject/role Age

range

Years

teaching/years

at CMHS

Gender Race Family SES background

Karen English teacher 22–30 1/1 Female White Working to lower middle

Harry English teacher 22–30 4/4 Male White Middle

Jennifer English teacher 22–30 5/5 Female White Middle

Sam Remedial/Study Skills teacher 31–40 12/11 Male White Middle

Deb Special Education English teacher 41–50 22/5 Female White Working to lower middle

Cindy English teacher and Department Head 51–60 35/8 Female White Middle

aAll names are pseudonyms.

A. Skerrett / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 1813–18261816

traditional secondary curriculum. This school iscaught up in the era of curriculum standardizationand performance accountability: like many othersecondary schools, its students must take and passEnglish and math standardized tests in order tograduate. The school has performed above averageon these state exams. For the last 4 years,2003–2006, the majority of tenth graders at CMHStaking the state standardized test have passed. In2003, 90 percent of tenth graders passed the Englishlanguage arts state standardized test. In 2004, 91percent were successful compared with an 89percent statewide success rate. Eighty-three percentpassed in 2005, below the 90 percent state pass rate,but scores shot back up to 92 percent in 2006.2

CMHS is racially, ethnically, and socioeconomi-cally diverse, serving middle and working class aswell as poor students. It resides in a suburbancommunity that was historically White and middleclass. However, increasing immigration of mino-rities into the nearby urban city, over time, resultedin racial and socioeconomic diversification of thecommunity, and its schools. The 991-count studentbody is 47 percent Black, 30 percent White, 15percent Asian, 7.5 percent Hispanic, and less thanone percent Native American. Forty-one percent ofstudents reported that English was a secondlanguage for them and four percent were describedas limited English proficient. Students from low-income backgrounds make up 20 percent of thestudent body.3

2.2. Participants

In contrast to the considerable student diversityin this school, the teaching staff in the school

2Statistics available at www.doe.mass.edu.3http://www.doe.mass.edu/nclb/.

generally, and in the English department, specifi-cally, is predominantly White—the English depart-ment reported having just one teacher of color whowas unavailable to participate in the study. Asdetailed in Table 1 below, sampled teachers rangedin experience from a 1st year teacher to a 35-yearveteran and teachers’ age ranges spanned the mid-20s to late 50s.

2.3. Data analysis

A coding process (Miles & Huberman, 1994) lentstructure, organization, and cohesion to dataanalysis. This process was supported by constantmemoing (Charmaz, 2000) and progressive focusing(Glaser & Strauss, 1967). In the latter stages ofanalysis, concept charting (Lofland & Lofland,1995) was used to further elicit supporting andcontradictory ideas within themes and emergingfindings, and between the data and the supportingtheoretical framework.

Curriculum documents, which supplemented tea-cher interviews, were examined to establish the waysin which their originators conceptualized the role ofstudents’ racial and ethnic diversity in selecting theEnglish curriculum and the extent to which cultu-rally diverse texts were included. Documents werefurther examined to determine the relative proper-ties of required and suggested texts at each gradelevel that were written by and/or about the racialand cultural groups represented in the school.Likewise, interview transcripts were analyzed todetermine the extent of teachers’ agency in relationto teaching to diversity—their beliefs about howracial and cultural diversity should influence thecurriculum and the degrees to which their curricu-lum choices and teaching practices reflected ordeparted from their espoused beliefs. Transcripts

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were further analyzed to ascertain the extent towhich teachers’ identities, in terms of their personaland professional backgrounds, involved exposure toand experience with racial, cultural, socioeconomic,or other forms of diversity.

In order to streamline the focus of this paper,data reporting focuses on one bounded schoolcontext and English department where all teachersworked with a particular population of students andfrom a common official curriculum, set of stan-dards, and accountability requirements. However,the United States findings reported here werereplicated, and indeed strengthened, in the Cana-dian data.

3. Biographical influences on multicultural and

antiracist practices of curriculum-in-use

Apart from the nature of the official curriculum,teachers’ agency in relation to multicultural andantiracist curriculum-in-use was the result of theinteraction between three biographical elements thataccounted for teachers’ beliefs about valid Englishlanguage arts knowledge and their abilities to selectand teach curriculum that activated these beliefs.The first was teachers’ professional training andearly career experiences. I describe elsewhere(Skerrett, in press), that all teachers were socializedwithin the elitist and exclusionary paradigm of amonocultural, Eurocentric curriculum in universityEnglish departments. Therefore, professional pre-paration as an influence on teachers’ curriculum-in-use focused primarily on their education programsand other early teaching experiences. The secondbiographical influence was teachers’ formativeexperiences or engagement with diversity, whichexposed them to racial and socioeconomic issuesthat impacted on education. The third was theirgenerational status, which at times determined theextent and nature of teacher education they receivedin relation to teaching diverse student populationsand the quality and character of their engagementwith racial and cultural diversity.

Each teacher’s biography comprised a complexand unique portrait that ran across, and drew tovarying degrees from, each of the three biographicalfactors of teacher preparation; influential experi-ences with diversity; and generational status, whichsometimes also interacted with each other. Thus, thedata in relation to curriculum-in-use revealedexemplary cases of multicultural and antiracistteaching approaches that frequently were, but at

other times were not, demonstrated by teachers whopossessed similar biographical traits. It is importantto stress that the qualitative nature of the studyemphasized the multifaceted and interrelated natureof teachers’ professional and personal identities.Therefore, although the findings are reported as anexamination of each biographical element in turn,the intent is not to treat each element of teacheridentity as a singular statistical variable. Instead, inkeeping with research that seeks to deeply under-stand the impact of specific aspects of teacheridentity on issues related to teaching by disentan-gling them from other, though often related,factors—for example, various routes into teaching,Darling-Hammond, Chung, and Freelow, (2002);the cultural and socioeconomic distinctionsamongst teachers of color that account for theirvaried perspectives on and experiences with teach-ing students of color, Gordon (2000); teachers’responses to educational change over time, Har-greaves & Goodson (2006)—data analysis for thisarticle dealt with each of the professional andpersonal influences on teaching to diversity in turn.

Participants belonged to two generational groups.The younger cohort comprised teachers in theirmid-20’s–late 30’s with between 1 and 12 yearsexperience. Karen, Harry, Sam, and Jenniferbelonged to this younger generation of teachers.Karen was a ninth grade teacher in her 1st year.Harry was in his 4th year and taught the ninth and11th grades. Jennifer, in her 5th year, taught upperlevel students in grades 11 and 12. Sam wascompleting his 12th year and taught remedialreading and study skills courses.

The second, older cohort included two faculty.Deb was a 22-year veteran special education teacherin her mid-40’s. Cindy, the Department Head, hadbeen teaching for 35 years and was in her mid-50’s.

3.1. Multicultural curriculum-in-use

The multicultural approach was the most com-monly practiced form of curriculum-in-use,although ironically, there were limited numbers ofrequired multicultural texts on the official curricu-lum. Consequently, teachers’ agency pertaining tomulticultural English practices was not greatlyfacilitated by the official curriculum. Multiculturalcurriculum-in-use stemmed more directly fromteachers’ appreciation of their students’ diversityand the recognition that a culturally responsivecurriculum would promote engagement and

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achievement. Multicultural curriculum practicesincluded encouraging connections between requiredEurocentric literature and students’ more culturallydiverse experiences, electing to use optional multi-cultural selections in grade-level anthologies, andperforming research to identify additional multi-cultural literature for classroom use. Finally, aspecific subset of teachers designed activities andprojects to celebrate cultural diversity.

Because of the predominately Eurocentric andclassical focus of the official curriculum, teachersidentified and emphasized themes in this literaturethat were familiar to students’ contemporaryexperiences. Jennifer reported that her studentsenjoyed Shakespeare because it is ‘‘all about sexand violence and drugs and love and hate andrevenge’’. Cindy also explained that her studentsloved Death of a Salesman (Miller, 1949) becauseshe was able to elicit the father–son connection forthem. ‘‘They loved Death of a Salesman and I loveto teach that because they can connect it to fathersand sons’’. She was baffled, though, about how todraw on her students’ limited exposure to wealthand luxury to discuss the privileged world depictedin the required text, The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald,1925). ‘‘It’s about the 1920s, the opulence, which Icould connect maybe to some of their reality showsthey watch’’. Karen, however, provided an extendedexample of how she connected the theme of revengein Poe’s (1846) classic Cask of Amontillado to herninth grade students’ contemporary experiences andconcerns.

I talk about how when you’re reading you learnthis idea of revenge and how deeply that runs,and how revenge is used today all the time—inpolitics, in literature, in the classrooms. Revengeis so important. So we look back and kind of seehow silly revenge was and how [the character]went to this great length to kill his friend. Wedon’t even know why. And how kind of thereason for the death was lost because it reallywasn’t so important. And what that teaches ustoday about, ‘is it really that important to getback at this kid who, you know, talked to yourgirlfriend? Is that really an important thing todo? Or should we think more about how we cantalk about that, how we can discuss that?’

When the knowledge within classical literaturewas filtered through teachers, they brought intorelief its embedded yet enduring themes about thehuman experience with which their students were

also intimately familiar. This approach constituteda frequent practice of multicultural curriculum-in-use.

Teachers likewise searched specifically for multi-cultural literature that also contained themeswhich resonated emotionally with students by,for instance, selecting from the limited andoptional multicultural selections in course an-thologies. Harry explained.There’re other pieces in the curriculum that arenot requiredy Amy Tan, [an Asian Americanauthor] so an excerpt from The Joy Luck Club

[1989] is not required, but it’s something you canuse. Isabelle Allende [a Hispanic author] that’salso an excerpt, so there are pieces that you caninclude.

Karen also acknowledged that ‘‘there are a few’’selections by authors of color such as ‘‘LeslieMarmon Silko [who] is a Native American author’’.She identified such elective multicultural pieces andused them in her classroom: ‘‘So we talk a lot aboutwhat [the term] Indian means. And we also read inhere Amy Tan’s Rules of the Game which is actuallyjust a chapter from The Joy Luck Club’’ (1989).

Because of the sparse amount of multiculturalliterature on the official curriculum, teachers re-sorted to conducting research and drawing on theirown knowledge of contemporary literature indesigning a more multicultural curriculum-in-use.Harry noted how

For the short stories, I incorporate a lot of otherpieces that I bring in y more of the kind ofmaterials that supplement the short stories. Sowe read Edwige Danticat, who’s a Haitianauthor, a piece by her; Jhumpa Lahiri, she’s[South Asian] Indian, so a short story by her;pieces by Kurt Vonnegut; Sherman Alexie, who’sNative AmericanyKaren acceded, ‘‘I need to do more personalresearch. I have so many students from all overAfricay and I just don’t have a lot of Africanauthors, African American, [yes,] but I want tolook more into African authors’’. Deb, hercolleague with 22 years experience, also locatedculturally representative selections that wouldengage her students in special education: ‘‘I dotry to gear my lessons around making sure thatthere is a lot of diversity and I’ll dig up stuff likean article about African American athletes,something that they can relate to, that they’re

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going to be more interested in’’. Likewise, in hisremedial courses that served primarily AfricanAmerican young men, Sam reported that textssuch as Mildred Taylor’s books about Blackchildren going to school in the segregated South,were engaging to his remedial students becausethey contained themes about alienation andisolation with which they identified.The books that always seem to work for me areMildred Taylor’syAlmost everybody who hasread those books has found something to connectto ity some of the struggles that the kids wentthrough, especially the struggles of school, howthey feel isolated, they feel alone, they feel likethey’re not getting all the benefits that otherstudents are getting.

Additionally, Cindy described how she used shortarticles with a racial or cultural focus as lessonopeners in her advanced classes: ‘‘In my advancedcomp class, a lot of times I use those opinion pieces[in the newspaper] as a starting point’’. Jennifer alsoexplained that to augment the Eurocentric focus ofher humanities course, ‘‘what I try to do tosupplement that is I’ll bring in newspaper articlesthat are appealing to them’’.

In their multicultural curriculum-in-use practices,these educators exercised considerable agency,becoming teacher–researchers who searched withinthe official curriculum as well as outside it, fordiverse literature selections that would expand theboundaries of official knowledge.

Cindy and Deb also designed curriculum units toteach students about cultures different from theirown. Deb created one such unit on the Jewishholidays to educate her predominantly AfricanAmerican students about the cultural meaningsbehind these vacation days they received.

[It] was a good experience for all the kids toactually read up a little bit about what the Jewishholidays were and so now we kind of do it withall the different holidays that come up. I thinkyou have to be aware of all of the holidays thatcome up and expose everybody to all of them.

Deb’s multicultural curriculum practices alsotook the form of celebrating her and her students’cultural diversity.

I said you might have famous recipes from anaunt or a grandparent y and they started saying‘oh yeah, we make Jamaican patties’y so Ibrought Portuguese food in [and]y that’s why

we try to do the cultural food day and everybodybrings in something from their culture.

Cindy also used culturally based project learningwhere, for instance,

We did a project, an oral history. It was great.And we made a book out of it where theyinterviewed a family membery so many stor-iesyand that was a way of sharing. Everybodyshared their backgrounds.

Multicultural curriculum-in-use was evident in allteachers’ practices although the practice varied incontent, structure, and degree of use. Data analysisillustrated how teachers’ agency in relation to thevarious types of multicultural teaching practices wasinfluenced by their biographies.

3.2. Biographical influences

Teachers’ education concerning diversity as well astheir previous experiences with difference impactedtheir abilities to identify and teach multiculturaltexts. Generational differences were also evident inteachers’ multicultural curriculum practices.

Sam received some exposure to culturally respon-sive pedagogy where he learned that there ‘‘has tobe engagement by as many of the kids as possible’’.However, Karen and Harry, who demonstratedsubstantive practices of a multicultural nature,earned master’s degrees from culturally basedteacher education programs. Karen explained how

In the Education department they talked a lotabout all different types of students. And withthe Canon we coined it as the dead White guysbecause it’s so difficult for many people to grasponto that. So the education department’s philo-sophy was more about how to use the Canon andtake outside literature and outside sources thatare more accessible to students and how to getthem very interested in what we’re reading.

Harry also recalled that ‘‘curriculum was actuallygreat y we compiled a bunch of different strategiesand different materials on topics’’. As a result ofthese teacher education experiences focusing ondiversity, Harry and Karen demonstrated, indeedexemplified, multicultural practices of curriculum-in-use. They were proactive and effective at includ-ing substantial amounts of multicultural litera-ture in their curriculum-in-use. Their extensiveresearch into multicultural literature, for example,

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demonstrated purposeful activation of multiculturaleducation beliefs.

Although some teachers—typically, faculty in theolder generation—lacked educational opportunitiesspecifically related to diversity, they nonethelessdemonstrated agency in their adoption of multi-cultural practices. Deb exemplified how previousexperience with diversity could foster multiculturalteaching. This veteran teacher, who ‘‘happen[ed] tobe Portuguese’’, drew on her membership in thisdistinct cultural group and her year long immersionin a second minority culture to design a culturallyfocused curriculum. She described how she gainedfirst hand knowledge of African American cultureas a result of an opportunity to live and teach in aprimarily African American community.

When I went to [a southern state] I was the onlyWhite staff in a whole African American staff soI had the opportunity to kind of be in reverse andthat was a wonderful experience for me. Peoplewere really fantastic, but just the food, the music,the culture, the art, everything, it was just a reallywonderful cultural experience for me.

Deb illustrated how substantive prior interactionswith racial or cultural diversity could steer teacherstowards more multicultural curriculum practiceseven in the absence of culturally focused teachereducation. Yet the evidence also revealed an outliercase of a teacher who had minimal personalexperience with difference but whose curriculum-in-use was, nonetheless, still distinctly multicultural.

Sam expressed an understanding of, although notsolidarity with, his students’ socioeconomic disad-vantage that negatively impacted their schoolperformance. He was raised in a solidly middleclass home and recognized the stark differencesbetween his secure upbringing and the poverty thatmany of his students faced: ‘‘My upbringing andtheir upbringing is very different. In terms of theirneeds at home, their needs probably aren’t beingmet. Me, when we grew up, we had everything’’.And yet, Sam’s curriculum practice was almostexclusively multicultural in nature despite hisinexperience with diversity. Over time, he haddeveloped a classroom library that included numer-ous multicultural texts, which his past students hadenjoyed and he regularly recommended multicultur-al literature to reluctant readers. Sam’s multicultur-al approach derived partly from his education in ateacher preparation program that exposed him todifferentiated teaching and learning strategies.

Additionally, the weakly framed nature of theremedial courses he taught permitted and, in asense, even required him and his students to freelyselect literature in order to promote reading success.Because Sam’s primarily African American studentstended to enjoy multicultural texts, he frequentlyrecommended these to them. Therefore, the factorsthat overcame the apparent disjuncture betweenSam’s lack of personal experience with diversity anddisadvantage and his considerable exercise ofagency pertaining to multicultural curriculum prac-tices were his education in culturally responsivepedagogy as well as the flexible design of hisremedial classes that served primarily AfricanAmerican students with urgent academic needs.

All teachers demonstrated multicultural curricu-lum-in-use practices irrespective of their age orveteran status. For instance, teachers of bothgenerations connected the themes within classicalliterature to their students’ contemporary, culturalexperiences. However, the data suggested differ-ences between the two cohorts in relation toparticular types of multicultural practice.

In general, the younger generation conductedresearch to locate substantive contemporary textsthat were also multicultural in nature for classroomuse. Harry, for example, discovered and adoptedliterature by Haitian author, Edwige Danticat, ontohis curriculum. In contrast, older teachers (and in anoutlying case, one young teacher, Jennifer) reliedmore on brief articles that contained a cultural theme,such as the article on African American athletes thatDeb used with her students. Deb and Cindy, the twoolder faculty, who, due to their generational status,had received no multicultural teacher education,designed projects that emphasized the sharing ofculture such as the cultural food day that Debdescribed. Younger faculty did not teach lessons ordesign projects that focused solely on sharing orbuilding appreciation of culture. The data thereforesuggested that younger teachers were more knowl-edgeable of, and skillful at finding, current multi-cultural texts than their older colleagues.Additionally, younger faculty typically avoided cul-turally based projects or activities and insteadconducted in-depth sociocultural analyses of compre-hensive, multicultural texts that they had discovered.

3.3. Antiracist curriculum-in-use

Several teachers exercised agency in relationto antiracist curriculum-in-use. These practices

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originated from their knowledge about the roots ofracism and its interrelationships with poverty andeducational opportunity. Karen understood thesesociological interconnections.

Sometimes I have difficulty with what effectscome from socioeconomic status versus ethnicityand race and how that kind of plays out and a lotof times they’re very much linked in my class-room. A lot of my students don’t have a lot ofhome support; a lot of parents have to work a lotso they’re not able to have a lot of interaction. Soa lot of the education needs to be very full androunded.

Harry also recognized ‘‘there were issues aroundrace in [my high] school so I think I had anunderstanding of the kind of ignorance behind itfrom my own experience’’. Likewise, Cindy wasaware that ‘‘race and class are the two definingelements in America’’.

Antiracist curriculum-in-use took several forms.Firstly, teachers highlighted the themes of racismand other forms of discrimination contained withinclassical texts on the official curriculum. Secondly,teachers deliberately selected optional literaturefrom the school curriculum that directly addressedracism, classism, and other types of inequity.Thirdly, they performed research to identify addi-tional contemporary antiracist literature. Fourthly,teachers facilitated conversations about race-basedmatters discussed in the media or that studentsthemselves had experienced. Finally, in one case, ateacher took decisive political action within theschool on behalf of poor students, and anotherprovided students with a training opportunity inpolitical protest.

Antiracist curriculum-in-use involved analyzingofficial texts through the lens of race. Some textseasily facilitated this practice. Harry stressed to hisstudents, when they read Wiesel’s (1960) memoir,Night, that racism was a pervasive, global problem.‘‘We just read Night’’ a novel about the Jewishholocaust, ‘‘and I had them do a genocide project tohave an understanding that this isn’t the only placegenocide occurred; this happened before the holo-caust and it happened even more recently’’. He alsotaught students that in their censure of othernations’ racist acts, they should also consider theUnited States’ racist treatment of minority groups.‘‘We want to [be] appalled by what these people cando to each other, [but] what have we done as a

country that has been awful? So we talk aboutHiroshima and Nagasakiy’’

Antiracist curriculum-in-use also included mak-ing connections between race, racism, and socialclass disadvantage. Cindy ‘‘weave[d] through theliterature’’ issues of race and class, and similarly,Karen’s recognition of the relationship betweensocial class and race manifested in her teaching.Guy de Maupassant (1885):

The Necklace is ya very class filled story. So westarted by talking about what class wasy and wetalked about race in that tooy and we ask wellhow did White people in the United States reallymake their money? And we talked about howthey had slaves and how slaves weren’t paid andhow that comes into class.

Karen also discussed how, at the beginning of theschool year, ‘‘a lot of my students were nervousabout going the race way’’ when discussing litera-ture. Yet she insisted on teaching her students about

how each of our experiences affects how we readthings because we’re going to read charactersdifferently based on where we come from. So inevery single one of my classes I specifically pickeda male student of color and I saidy ‘He’s Blackand I’m White. How does that affect the way thatwe’ve lived our lives, how does that affect theway that we are treated and then the way thatwe’re treated affects how we read?

As a result, she witnessed students’ own develop-ment of an antiracist approach and recalled how shedecisively responded to their requests for a moreracially inclusive and politicized curriculum.

We just read Martin Luther King Jr.’s [1963] I

Have a Dream [speech] and I have a student whosaid ‘Ms K, we always read Martin Luther Kingand we never read Malcolm X. What’s thatabout?’ And I said, ‘what do you think it’sabout?’ And he very openly said, ‘I think Whiteteachers are afraid to teach him because he’s alittle more scary’. I said, ‘that’s a very goodpoint’. And I said ‘you could absolutely be right.’We talked about the difference between MalcolmX and Martin Luther King and how MartinLuther King was a little more peaceful and a littleless aggressive and how a lot of White teachersmight feel safer with that and then I promisedhim we’d learn about Malcolm X this year. And

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we’re going to. And I’m going to create some-thing so that I can bring him in.

Harry also incorporated antiracist curriculumthat he discovered outside the official curriculum.He described how he fostered understanding andrespect of cultures different from students’ own andhow he taught them to critique American culturefrom non-native eyes. To accomplish this, he usedBody rituals among the Nacirema (Miner, 1956),which presented an alien view of American culture.

It’s this twisted way of looking at our ownculture and students, when they’re reading it, arenot really understanding [that] it’s really describ-ing how we act. So it’s kind of the idea of havingan open mind to different people and culturesbecause the way that we perceive [their culture]might not be exactly how they do.

Teachers also held regular discussions aboutcurrent racist practices disseminated through mediasources. Cindy recalled how, ‘‘We had a greatdiscussion the other day about the curfew in themalls that they’re trying to do. There’s a race issueright there. So they were all bothered about that’’.Similarly, Jennifer described using a newspaperarticle

about what they called exotic names and howthat influenced students and how there’s a hugegap in achievement just based on the name, noteven based on race... And we had a discussionabout that and they loved it and they said, ‘canwe have more articles like those two’?

Discussion topics sometimes concerned racialstereotyping that occurred within students’ andteachers’ own cultural communities. Deb, who wasof Portuguese descent, described how her culturalminority status sharpened her ability to analyzewith students inter- as well as intra- culturalstereotyping.

I brought up that my family could tell Portuguesejokes and it’s fine. But when somebody else doesit, sometimes people are offended by it. So we’vetalked about that, about how it’s more accep-table within your own culture.

Finally, teachers took political action on behalf oftheir students or trained them to take such action ontheir own. Cindy remarked that

We’re doing The Declaration of Independence inAmerican LityI’ve expanded it and they’re

writing their own Declaration of Independen-cey so they can think about themselves, some-thing they want to protest.

Deb illustrated advocacy on behalf of poorstudents who, she recognized, felt the public stigmaof receiving free lunch. ‘‘When I first came here thekids used to have tickets that used to be for freelunch and it was these big neon cards so I said to theschool, ‘is there a little more discreet way that y wecan do it’’’?

Teachers’ antiracist practices addressed andredressed, with students, the inherently racist andclassist nature of the official curriculum and schoolpractices. Teachers helped students develop skills torecognize and confront the racism and discrimina-tion they encountered in school and society thatcolored their views of society, shaped their under-standing of its literary expressions, and called intoquestion their place in a racially defined world. Assuch, antiracist education was a formidable under-taking with great potential for revolutionizing theschool curriculum and the preparation of diversestudent populations for active, moral citizenship.

3.4. Biographical influences

There was a striking absence of an antiracistcomponent in education programs, including thosewith a culturally focused approach. Harry andKaren, who received the most extensive preparationfor diversity, did not describe the existence ofinstruction in antiracist education. Nonetheless,Harry and Karen drew on their training inculturally responsive teaching to specifically addressracism through the curriculum. In the same waythat they searched for multicultural literature, theyperformed research to identify explicitly antiracistliterature. However, these educators’ agency interms of antiracist education was not fostered intheir teacher education programs. Instead, theantiracist stances and practices of these youngteachers, and that of their colleagues’, Cindy andDeb, developed within social contexts of racialdiversity and socioeconomic disadvantage.

Deb’s experiences of childhood poverty led her todemand equitable and dignified treatment forstudents who received free lunch.I used to get free lunch in school... and I was soembarrassed I wouldn’t ever go get lunch. I meanunless you can experience that feeling of havingto use food stamps or having been on welfare you

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really don’t feel how somebody would feelembarrassed about that.

Likewise, Karen grew up working class in awealthy community. Social class disadvantagefostered her antiracist stance. ‘‘I grew up in a veryaffluent community and I was always kind of thepoor kid in the community and so I felt a littleseparated’’. She understood the complex interac-tions between race and class, and realized thatbecause she had lived in a privileged, Whitecommunity, she had received a more superioreducation than students in urban contexts typicallyreceived.

I had such an amazing education and I had suchgreat teachers and I felt like, especially the moreinner city community that I was able to getinvolved with, I felt like the really great teacherswent to the suburban towns where there wasmore money and more resourcesyand I felt likeso many urban kids got totally overlooked.

Her commitment to equity and social justice ledher to tutor urban students in preparation for acareer as an urban teacher.

I knew that I wanted to work in an urban setting[so] I did tutoring for students who were fromurban areas who camey to this Job Corps to gettheir GED’s and get a vocation. So I tried toreally base my work on learning about studentsin urban populations and how their needs aredifferent from other needs.Likewise, Harry worked as a counselor todisadvantaged teens prior to teaching.I worked at a residential home for teenage boysthat were placed by the Department of SocialServices [and] taken out of their homes. I wouldfeel that in a sense they were robbed of aneducation because [their teachers] weren’t takinginto account, well you can’t approach theseindividuals a certain way.

Teachers’ experiences with diversity were not,however, limited to social class. They also interactedwith racially diverse populations. Harry ‘‘went to ahigh school that was pretty diverse. [The City] was arelocation center for refugees from Cambodia andSomalis also’’. He developed friendships withstudents from racial minority groups and em-pathized with the difficulties they faced in assimilat-ing into United States society: ‘‘I was friends with,or interested in, what the refugees had to go

through. I was open to that’’. Moreover, hisimmediate family was also changed as a result ofthe diversity in his community: ‘‘My brother inlaw’s Cambodian so I think I was more open thanperhaps other people’’. As a result of attending thisdiverse high school, he developed awareness thatinter-ethnic conflict impeded new immigrants’ abil-ities to work jointly toward succeeding in their newnation: ‘‘The Cambodians didn’t mix with theVietnamese because of what happened in theircountry and I could comprehend that butyto bringthat to their new situation was just hurting them’’.

Cindy lacked intimate contact with diversecommunities, but as a longtime political activistwho had also protested the Vietnam War, had‘‘always been aware of issues of race and class’’.This manifested in her teaching of literature fromthe perspectives of race and class. The evidencerevealed, therefore, that the agency in relation toantiracist teaching articulated by both younger andolder faculty developed as a result of influentialexperiences with socioeconomic and racial diversityand social or political action in support of equity.

Teachers of both generations illustrated powerfuland effective antiracist practices. Harry and Karen,of the younger generation, purposefully searchedfor antiracist texts to include in their curriculum.Deb, their more senior colleague, took politicalaction on behalf of disadvantaged students whoreceived free lunch. Therefore, both generationsdemonstrated key features of antiracist education—teaching explicitly antiracist literature and engagingin social justice activism. In Cindy’s case, thegeneration to which she belonged promoted herantiracist stance by providing her with the oppor-tunity for social and political activism in the 1960sand 1970s. For Cindy, belonging to this generationwas critical to the development of agency in relationto antiracist teaching, because, being raised Whiteand middle class in a homogeneous community, shehad had few personal experiences with differencefrom which to draw.

4. Concluding discussion with recommendations for

teacher preparation and professional development

Critics of multicultural and antiracist educationhave accused these approaches of contributing tothe lack of achievement of minority students; theoverall ‘‘dumbing down’’ of the curriculum; and theperceived erosion of a common national culture,value system, and citizenship (Hirsch, 1987;

ARTICLE IN PRESS

4See www.teachersforanewera.org for more information.

A. Skerrett / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 1813–18261824

Ravitch, 2000; Schlesinger, 1991; Stotsky, 1999).Yet other scholars, who also identify potentialdangers stemming from multicultural education,sensitively articulate the imperative for ‘‘a multi-culturalism that accepts America’s diversity whileteaching us the ways and the worth of others’’(Appiah, 1998, p. 18), and an education that‘‘advance[s] from the cultural narrowness intowhich we all are born toward true world citizen-ship’’ (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 294). Such an educationteaches students ‘‘that in tradition lies much thathas stood the test of time’’ and that this traditionis necessary ‘‘to invigorate their own thought’’(Nussbaum, 1997, p. 294). Yet students are alsoencouraged to criticize tradition when necessary andto discover other ways of knowing and other peopleto enable productive communication across multi-ple worlds and to enhance their critical thinkingabilities. Nussbaum advocates for developing instudents a critical ‘‘narrative imagination’’ thatenables them to consider ‘‘what it might be like tobe in the shoes of a person different from oneself’’,and to interpret others’ actions and speech ‘‘in thecontext of that person’s history and social world’’(p. 11). Certainly, the exemplary practices of multi-cultural and antiracist English teaching demon-strated by the teachers in this study show thepossibilities for such an English education thatstresses pluralism and not ethnocentrism; thatrespects and values tradition yet also critiques itwhen justified; and that applies critical literaryanalysis skills to the pressing, persistent, andpervasive problems of race and class discrimination.Inarguably, teacher education and ongoing profes-sional development should foster teacher agency inthis regard.

The study found that teacher preparation was akey influence in teachers’ development of agencypertaining to multicultural curriculum practices butthat teacher education was not directly implicated inantiracist teaching. While teacher education pro-grams should persist with a multicultural focus, theymust also be decidedly antiracist in preparing theirteachers for effectively educating diverse popula-tions. The philosophies and instructional ap-proaches of teacher education programs mustexpand to courageously address the challenges ofeducating in a multicultural world that is fraughtwith inequities that stem from racial differences.

Teachers now work with increasingly standar-dized curriculum. Therefore, it is vital that teachereducators examine with teachers how their biogra-

phies impact their agency in relation to culturallyresponsive teaching and provide them with oppor-tunities to develop strong identities as culturallyresponsive educators. Coursework, for instance,should address the academic and socioculturalbenefits of multicultural and antiracist teachingand provide teachers with useful strategies in thisregard. These courses should be accompanied bypracticums in diverse schools and their surroundingcommunities (Darling-Hammond, French, & Gar-cia-Lopez, 2002).

With the proliferation of alternate routes intoteaching (Darling-Hammond, Chung, & Freelow,2002), more and more teachers will circumventschools of education as part of their teachingcertification. However, no English teacher willescape the university English department. It iscritical, therefore, that schools of education andEnglish departments jointly prepare teachers forculturally responsive and antiracist education. (TheCarnegie Foundation’s Teachers for a New EraInitiative engages with this principle of joint teacherpreparation).4 Collaboration between the differentuniversity units where teachers receive their pre-paration will greatly improve the degree to whichteachers are prepared, as well as the numbers ofteachers who are prepared, to effectively respond tostudent diversity.

The need for ongoing, professional developmentin relation to multicultural and antiracist educationwas evident from the study. Less than half of theteachers in the wider sample reported that theirteacher education programs had a multiculturalfocus and none of the programs were antiracist innature. School-based opportunities regarding cultu-rally responsive and antiracist education is espe-cially critical for teachers who have not beenprepared in schools of education with these foci.Veteran teachers who lacked educational opportu-nities in relation to diversity, and younger teacherswhose education programs or routes into teachingdid not include such a focus, will then receive thenecessary ongoing training and support to success-fully educate diverse learners. These learningopportunities must provide spaces for dialogueacross academic departments and entire schoolspertaining to the sociocultural and educationalissues impacting the learning of diverse studentbodies. Such dialogue is the first step in developing aformidable, collective sense of agency that ‘‘extends

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beyond the skin’’ (Wertsch et al., 1993, p. 343) ofindividual educators, that, in turn, will more fullysupport teachers in ‘‘going the race way’’ in theircurriculum practices.

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