Negotiating a Teaching Identity: An African American Teacher's Struggle to Teach in Test-Driven Contexts

By J. Agee. Teachers College Record, 2004

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This case study examines the experiences of a young African American English teacher over 3 years as she tried to teach multicultural literature. The study began in her senior year of college when she was enrolled in a progressive undergraduate preservice program in English education and continued through her first 2 years as a high school English teacher. In the university program, she expressed a desire to teach multicultural literature, to use constructivist approaches to teaching that built on students’ personal experiences, and to broaden students’ understanding of racial and cultural differences. Yet in her preservice teaching as well as in her first 2 years as a teacher, she found her goals difficult to implement. Her envisioned identity as a teacher who would help students to understand and celebrate racial diversity began to unravel as she struggled with the demands of school policies, mandated assessments, and racial bias. Teacher identity, as described here, is a discursive space where an imagined role is negotiated among possible roles. In this case, a young African American teacher found her imagined teacher identity thwarted by state mandates, mainstream constructions of a teacher role, and ideologies of curriculum and assessment. Her story speaks to the gap between progressive teacher education programs and the demands of mandated, high-stakes tests on schools and teachers. One result of mandated tests is their tendency to silence diverse points of view, a factor that may further contribute to the lack of teachers of color in American schools.

Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science

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Citations in the corpus

Whiteness as Property in Science Teacher Education (2018, background): “In a study by Jane Agee (2004), the researcher explained that “the teacher education texts used in the course made recommendations for using diverse texts or teaching diverse students based on the assumption that preservice teachers are White” (p. 749).”
Research on the Impact of Teacher Preparation to Teach Diverse Students: The Research We Have and the Research We Need (2011, background): “Agee (2004) examined experiences of an African American high school English teacher as she introduced multicultural literature while using a constructivist approach.”
The Promise of Black Teachers' Success with Black Students. (2006, background): “Agee (2004) explained that a Black teacher “brings a desire to construct a unique identity as a teacher...she [or he] negotiates and renegotiates that identity” (p. 749) to meet their objectives and to meet the needs and expectations of their students. hooks (1994) makes it explicit that Black…”
High-Stakes Testing and Curricular Control: A Qualitative Metasynthesis (2007, unknown): “Based on my previous understandings and JUNE/JULY 2007 1259 This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Tue, 11 Nov 2014 20:34:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Table 1 Qualitative Metasynthesis Studies and Codes Article Codesa Agee, 2004 SAC, PCT, KCF Anagnostopolous, 2003a SAC”
Improving Working Conditions to Support Special Educators’ Effectiveness: A Call for Leadership (2020, background): “In contrast, researchers have followed new general educators from preparation into teaching, documenting how preservice preparation and in-service conditions interacted to shape new teachers’ beliefs about their roles and perspectives on effective instruction over time (e.g., Agee, 2004).”