“Locus of Control” Teachers Experiences and Motivations to Engaging In School Racial Equity Work

Background and Purpose: Racism pervades schools in the United States (US). Increasingly, national efforts have aimed to capture students’ personal experiences of racism and discrimination in the classroom as evidenced by reports of racial discrimination, victims of hate crimes and hate speech, and poor school racial climate (White et al., 2022). Yet, little is known about teacher engagement with interventions to mitigate racism in schools. Therefore, this research study aimed to explore 1) What are the factors which motivate or enhance teacher participation in teacher racial bias interventions? and 2) How are teachers encouraged or discouraged from engagement in investigation of their racial biases?

Methods: An exploratory qualitative design was employed conducting semi-structured interviews with 31 US PK-12 public school teachers from April to December 2024. Participants ranged in age from 20 to 62 years old (M = 39.39; SD = 10.25). The majority of the participants self-identified as female (87%, n = 27), followed by male (10%, n = 3) and non-binary (3%, n = 1). Participants self-identified their race/ethnicity as White or Caucasian (71%, n = 22), African American or Black (16%, n = 5), Hispanic (6%, n = 2), and Asian Indian (3%, n = 1). Three participants identified as Hispanic or Latinx. Participants interviewed were located in six different states.

Interviews were audio/video recorded and imported into Otter.ai for transcription. Transcripts and analytic memos were imported into MaxQDA. Then, a grounded theory approach was used to analyze the qualitative data (Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2015). Open-coding was used in the first-cycle approach allowing codes and themes to emerge organically from the interviews. Codes were organized and categorized based on conceptual similarities, using focused and axial coding in the second-cycle coding stage (Charmaz, 2014). The final codebook was applied to all interviews. To conduct inter-rater reliability, a second coder was trained on how to use the codebook, including review of inclusion/exclusion criteria along with each code definition (Syed & Nelson, 2015). Lastly, member checks were conducted with interviewees to confirm accuracy of the results.

Results: We found that teachers fell into three categories – 1) Limited Interest, 2) High Interest and Limited Opportunity, or 3) High Interest and Ample Opportunity - regarding their interest toward equity trainings, professional development, and programs in their schools. Facilitators to teachers’ engagement in racial equity work were primarily self-reflection, inclusive of personal learning and early exposure (e.g., student teaching, higher education teacher preparation programs), followed by a psychologically safe work environment with supportive colleagues and administrators. Teachers also reported barriers to engagement, such as a palpable fear for job loss and public retribution causing hesitation.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings from this modest qualitative study suggest additional evidence is needed on effective interventions for reducing teacher bias in the classroom and increasing equitable outcomes for youth. This presentation will share findings that emerged and directions for future research to maximize facilitators and minimize roadbloacks to adoption of racial equity work practices in schools.