Sunday, May 5, 2013
Trouble With Narrowing Down my Thesis Prospectus Question
The center of focus for my paper has remained relatively the same, although the overarching question that I want to focus on keeps shifting. I am focusing of the concept of "white privilege", the unearned and often unwanted advantages that white people have over people of color, and how this ideology affects Black students who resist white teachers who teach in urban, low-performing colleges where the majority of the students are Black. The question that keeps popping up in my mind is: How do we prepare White teachers, who choose to teach in this type of educational environment, to be sensitive to the reservations and prejudices that Black students have for White authority figures? Also, how do we assure our Black students that we are learned in the African American literature that we teach since we have not experienced the same hardships that they may have? These are very controversial issues and I have learned so much through the literature that I have been reading. However, I am having trouble narrowing my thesis, and I am also having difficulties in finding gaps in the research that I have read thus far. Any suggestions?
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Peggy, your blog brings up some ideas. In your research, have you found any studies where black students have been interviewed about their perceptions of their teachers--white and otherwise? If not, maybe that's a place to start. As you may have figured out, I'm really into ethnography right now. It seems well suited for small studies where you can't get really good quantitative data over a broad range of student subjects. It might be interesting to hear what some of these students have to say--as the experts on their own school lives. Or has that been done to death already?
ReplyDeleteActually Marge that sounds like a great idea. I have not found any research that is comprised of interviews from Black students regarding their feelings about their teacher, white or otherwise. The majority of the research focuses on Black students in low performing schools who have teachers who don't know how to teach at a multicultural level or who are the worst of the worst because only the "bad" teachers want to teach at these particular types of schools. Thanks for the idea.
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