An Exploratory Study of US PK-12 Teachers' Strategies for Developing and Maintaining Relationships with Students from Racially or Ethnically Marginalized Backgrounds

Background and Purpose: Social workers have been called to address educational injustices and to support the Grand Challenge to eliminate racism, particularly through changing educational systems (Ball & Skrzypek, 2020; Teasley et al., 2021). Preschool through twelfth grade United States (PK-12 US) public school teachers serve a central role in students’ racialized experiences in schools. Yet, more research is needed to understand how they engage with students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds than themselves to identify possible intervention points in the classroom. This exploratory qualitative study aimed to specifically answer: 1) What are PK-12 US teachers’ perceptions of how students’ racial or ethnic identity influences the development and maintenance of student-teacher relationships?

Methods: This study focused on teachers’ responses to three open-ended questions from an online survey, including “Does a student’s racial or ethnic identity influence the types of actions you take to develop or maintain relationships with your students?” Responses were imported and analyzed in MaxQDA using a qualitative content analysis approach. An initial codebook was developed that included definitions and exclusion/inclusion criteria. Sub-samples of responses were coded by a second coder. Then, the codebook was revised until reliable coding was reached (Kappa = 0.88). One teacher who identified as White also provided a member check. One hundred teachers (n = 100) responded to at least one question. Most teachers identified as Female (65%) and were on average 38 years old (SD = 12.5). A majority of teachers taught in an elementary school (50%). Most teachers self-identified as White (74%), as Black or African American (17%), or as Latinx or Hispanic (14%).

Results: Teachers primarily discussed specific techniques for developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships with students who are racially and ethnically diverse from themselves (n = 93, 93%). Teachers also mentioned other strategies, though less frequently, such as altering teaching practices (n = 33, 33%) and engaging in personal preparation (n = 25, 25%). For example, teachers shared statements such as, “I try to be aware of my own biases.” Yet, 67% of teachers also reported they “treated every student the same” when working with students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Conclusions and Implications: Despite the study limitations of gathering data from a single stakeholder, PK-12 teachers, findings show some culturally responsive teaching practices are incorporated into the classroom. However, these findings also demonstrate how racial biases, such as colorblind racial attitudes may manifest in the classroom. Yet, continued attacks on public school settings have led to these effective teaching practices being conflated as the “other CRT.” Implications will be shared for school social work practice, policy, and future research to advance educational justice.

References:

Ball, A., & Skrzypek, C. (2020). School social work and the educational justice movement: A snapshot of practice. Children & Schools, 42(3), 179-186.

Teasley, M. L., McCarter, S., Woo, B., Conner, L. R., Spencer, M. S., & Green, T. (2021). Eliminate Racism (Grand Challenges for Social Work initiative Working Paper No. 26). Cleveland, OH: American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare.