Author: Stefan Battle, Rhode Island College, USA
Email: sbattle@ric.edu
Published: September 1, 2017
https://doi.org/10.22492/ije.5.2.10
Citation: Battle, S. (2017). White Teachers’ Reactions to the Racial Treatment
of Middle-School Black Boys. IAFOR Journal of Education, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.22492/ije.5.2.10
Abstract
This qualitative exploratory study, informed by grounded theory, used questionnaires and unstructured interviews based on fictionalized vignettes to examine urban, public, middle-school White teachers’ attitudes about middle-school Black boys, questioning whether and how such attitudes might influence classroom interactions. Twenty-four participants responded to three vignettes that were fictionalized from the author’s professional experiences and described White-teachers’ interactions with middle-school Black boys. In these vignettes, the teachers used race either to chastise or give unfair privileges and inequitable opportunities to the Black students. The findings revealed that participants exhibited negative attitudes toward the teachers in the vignettes, indicating that the multicultural training courses participants had received may have sensitized them to classroom-based racial inequities.
Keywords
Black boys, White teachers, middle-school, urban education, multiculturalism