Abstract:
This narrative case study explores the practices, experiences, and perceptions of Charlie (pseud.), a White music teacher in upstate New York, who is striving to do anti racist work in a majority Indigenous teaching context. Through the philosophical lens of White music teachers as ‘becoming’ -- growing, striving, changing, learning -- the author suggests that White teachers can and should strive to do anti racist work. Given that the K-12 public school teaching population in the United States is overwhelmingly White and that the student population in U.S. public schools is becoming increasingly more diverse, the author argues for the necessity and responsibility of White educators to work toward anti racist teaching practices. Employing narrative inquiry, the author highlights ways in which Charlie grapples with his Whiteness while striving toward anti racist practices by seeking Indigenous knowledge from culture bearers, collaborating with an Indigenous musician, problematizing surface level multiculturalism within the school, and reaching for deeper curricular engagements with students’ lives in and outside of school.
Also embedded within the article is an in depth, reflexive discussion of the researcher’s own role throughout the study as well as the researcher’s own positionality as a White music education scholar. Given the Whiteness of the teaching profession in the United States (both in K-12 public schools as well as in university teacher education programs), the author suggests that White researchers must also interrogate and grapple with their Whiteness in publishing studies related to anti racism. The lens of ‘becoming’ is also applied to the researcher’s identity as they consider what it might mean to study Whiteness in the context of a majority Indigenous student population: the author argues that it is equally important for White teacher education researchers to engage in anti racist discourses and learn from scholarly voices of People of Color throughout the process of contributing to the field of education (specifically, music teacher education).
