The Significance of Race and Social Class for Self-Study and The Professional Knowledge Base of Teacher Education$*$

Abstract

Race and social class are pivotal in structuring inequity in the educational system, defining the content of official knowledge, establishing pedagogical policies and practices, and shaping relational dynamics in educational contexts. The question arises: Do race and social class have substantive relevance for teacher practice and the process of self-study in education? The purpose of this chapter is to explore the significance of race and social class meanings in educators' practical and intersubjective experiences, and to examine the contributions of self-study theory and research to understanding race and social class in educators' pedagogical, curricular, and programmatic endeavours. A critical social-constructivist perspective is presented to examine teachers' attitudes and expectations. It is grounded in the normalisation of inequity and derived from historical, racial and social class meanings that have become internal to the self-as-educator in local practice. This chapter traces the unique contributions that that self-study's research paradigms and foundational principles make to investigating and reframing beliefs, assumptions and practices, and analyses the knowledge produced from educators' disciplined self-study inquiries on race and social class. Recommendations from these inquiries are presented with implications for educators' personal and professional growth, for transformations in the foundational knowledge-base in teacher education, and for institutional change in education.