Graduation Term

2022

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of Educational Administration and Foundations: Educational Administration

Committee Chair

Lenford Sutton

Abstract

This study focuses on the experiences and perceptions of White faculty in the community college classroom with implicit racial bias and racially responsive pedagogies. Through collaborative qualitative inquiry of interviews and subsequent focus groups, three questions are answered. First this study explores racial interactions in the classroom for White faculty and how these experiences have informed their teaching. Second, White faculty identify the ways they have made changes or would like to make changes to their teaching because of racial interactions in the classroom. And lastly, these faculty shared their perceptions of current faculty development programs offered by the college and how these offerings might need to change to help White faculty members become conscious of their implicit biases and develop more racially responsive classroom experiences for all students. Critical Whiteness will serve as the theoretical framework for this transformative research design and provide a lens for data analysis and interpretation through the study. Interview and focus group transcripts were analyzed using open coding as well as Bonilla-Silva’s four frameworks of colorblindness: abstract liberalism, cultural racism, minimization, and naturalization. The findings of this study point to well-intentioned White faculty struggling to provide racially responsive curriculum and pedagogies as they engage in Whiteness ideologies of colorblindness, meritocracy, and resulting deficit mindset employed through unchecked implicit bias. As these faculty participants had participated in college-supported diversity and equity training, further research could examine the effectiveness of such training in helping provide racially responsive teaching in the community college classroom. KEYWORDS: community college; implicit bias; colorblindness; racially responsive teaching; Critical Whiteness Theory

Access Type

Dissertation-Open Access

DOI

https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2022.20220606094400123260.999987

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