Growing…But Constrained: An Exploration of Teachers' and Researchers' Interactions with Culture and Diversity through Personal Narratives

Authors

Kimetta R. Hairston, The Pennsylvania State UniversityFollow
Martha J. Strickland, The Pennsylvania State UniversityFollow

Abstract

Educators from all realms of education who engage in in-depth conversations and reflections about personal experiences and perspectives related to diversity are significantly important to the cultural understandings in Education. This paper is a narrative analysis of how teachers who were enrolled in a Master's Program from two university campuses of the same predominantly White university participated in an in-depth look at their diverse cultural experiences through reflection and dialogue. Two researchers, one African American female utilizing the Critical Race Theory perspective the other Caucasian female using Socio-constructivism, interacted with one another and the teachers' narratives through several personal experiences interchanges. The resulting teacher/research dialogue on culture and diversity revealed how when the constraints of different theoretical frameworks and past encounters with culture and diversity are exposed a space for dialogue on culture and diversity, characterized by growth, opens up.

Keywords

Diversity, Teachers, Culture, Narrative Analysis, Critical

Publication Date

3-1-2011

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Recommended APA Citation

Hairston, K. R., & Strickland, M. J. (2011). Growing…But Constrained: An Exploration of Teachers' and Researchers' Interactions with Culture and Diversity through Personal Narratives. The Qualitative Report, 16(2), 341-357. DOI: https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2011.1059