Week 3- January 22nd

For assignment one the critical summary, I have chosen Charles Jupp as my author and am going to work somewhere between the topics of urban education, and race in the curriculum. Thus far, I am planning on using “Becoming Teachers of Inner-City Students: Identification Creativity and Curriculum Wisdom of Committed White Male Teachers” http://tiny.cc/kcx1iz as my foundational document. In summary, this journal article promotes a second-wave of white teacher identification studies which wants to move beyond critical interventionist projects. Within this second-wave there is a focus on becoming, identification creativity, race consciousness, and constitutive representations.

This document by Charles Jupp is based in a constructivist approach in which the teacher is always in a state of becoming. Which is to say that we are always in the midst of negotiating and renegotiating our positions and relationships within the world. This work provides not only with alternative masculinities to pursue within the classroom, but also offers insight into the critique of contemporary interventionist approaches to teaching and identity within “de-facto segregated” schools. Teachers need to apply the curriculum and their knowledge to the specific school context in order to facilitate learning. Teachers also need to celebrate culture and identity in creative ways within the classroom, in order to provide an equitable environment where everyone is valued.

As for the next steps of my critical assessment, I am currently looking at two different contexts in which the second wave of white teacher identification is applicable. The first is in a specific and narrow context: “Co-existence of race-evasiveness and race-visibilitiy identifications: Complexifying one white male teachers’ racial knowledge” http://tiny.cc/o8w1iz . I think that in using this article I will be able to apply the second wave theory and see if it is being used in the way promoted by the foundational document. Can we be effective approaching this situation from other directions? My third article is kind of weak at the moment, I would live to find something in the Canadian context, but so far I have “White Western male teachers constructing academic identities in Japanese higher education” http://tiny.cc/m9w1iz. Within this article, I think it will be possible to look at the issues surrounding academic identities and those who are pale and male on a more broad level.

In my opinion, this topic is important for my professional development as a white male teacher. I think that offering a critical summary of this approach it is most effectively started by investigating the theory of second wave teacher identification, then complemented by examining a narrow and a broad approach respectively.