MOBILIZING WITHIN WHITENESS: MULTICULTURAL APPROACHES IN RURAL HEAD START
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Lyu, Sung Ryung
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 07, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Ashley Patterson, Major Field Member
Allison Henward, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, Minor Field Member
Samuel Tanner, Major Field Member
Andrea Vujan Mccloskey, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies
Kai Schafft, Outside Unit & Field Member - Keywords:
- Head Start
Multicultural Education
Early Childhood Education
Race
Whiteness
Culturally Responsive Teaching
Policy
Ethnography - Abstract:
- Although Head Start programs have actively incorporated culturally responsive teaching in its program throughout the curriculum, educational materials, and professional development, there are little few studies examining its practice in a classroom. My dissertation investigates Head Start educators’ pedagogical beliefs and practices in light of the increased national presence of multicultural curricula in early childhood education and care. Based on the concept of policy as a process proposed by education policy scholars, this 9-month ethnographic study aims to understand better how rural white teachers in Northern Appalachia understand multicultural education and negotiate local and national pressure in practicing multicultural education, particularly culturally responsive teaching. My analysis demonstrates that these educators, while cognizant of the expectation to implement culturally responsive teaching, occasionally remake curriculum to deliver lessons of morality. Educators share a central binary theme when understanding and practicing culturally responsive teaching: "requirements versus school readiness." The educators deal with the national pressure in practicing culturally responsive teaching and the local pressure in remaking culturally responsive teaching. The Bakhtinian interpretive framework enables us to see that the educators are talking about two different whiteness, both hegemonic and marginal, which are experienced through a sense of place. In this perspective, practicing culturally responsive teaching is to move between hegemonic whiteness and marginal whiteness in this specific community. Findings from my study provide insights into how race, class, and place matter when educators translate the policy into their classroom. The results also have the potential to inform national and state-level conversations about how educators and policymakers in white communities think about and talk about racial equity and justice. Finally, my study also has the potential to practically develop programs that would offer community members, including families and children, to engage with critical perspectives on young children’s learning and well-being.