Discussion and Summary

This chapter has explored critical aspects of learning in this multiracial group of politically active teachers. I have shown that raced and gendered ideologies and structures shape the learning of participants as they work together to create common goals and to make sense of race and racism as systemic structures. This conclusion draws attention to three main findings. First, that collaborative work allowed participants to begin to concentrate their thinking in ways that helped them to formulate important questions about structural racism— i.e., this process of inquiry supported their learning as a group. Second, that learning about racial justice requires participants to take substantial personal risk, both in sharing personal knowledge and experiences, and in their openness to new ideas and influence. And third, that learning required participants to integrate their identity and personal experiences into the learning process in order to support personal and group learning.

An inquiry approach to thinking and learning centralizes a “continual process of questioning and using the data of practice to investigate those questions critically and

collaboratively” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, p. 121). Over time, participants in the study came to concentrate their thinking in ways that helped them hone their orientation toward and skill at asking questions. Rather than simply drawing conclusions about the form and function of structural racism, participants came to greatly value developing questions and exploring these questions through their collaborative work in the group. They saw their sense-making as wrapped up in developing and inquiring into key lines of thinking, and saw this questioning as fundamental to their personal learning work and to their work together in the group.

When groups of diverse people come together to learn about racial justice, substantial risk is involved. Deep learning requires that participants be willing to consider viewpoints that diverge from their own. The encounter with new and divergent viewpoints can at times be discomforting (Boler & Zembylas, 2003), but in order to learn, participants must be willing to reassess their personal assumptions and understandings while considering the emotions, experiences, and theories of others. In this study, participants expressed that they had moved forward in their thinking and articulation about racial justice. The nature and form of this learning was often bound up in the identity of the participants—for participants of color, learning frequently involved movement in the ability to articulate an already existing feeling and experience with racism; while white participants tended to experience learning as developing deeper understanding of the power and dynamics of race in system structures and their effects on the lives of friends and colleagues, along with a deepened view on how white identities and lives are bound up in maintaining racial injustice through racial privilege. For all participants, learning relied on their taking risks in challenging themselves to consider the viewpoints of others, to think through what and how they articulate the effects of racism, and to test new ways for thinking and talking about racial oppression.

Participants came to see the inquiry group as an intellectual center for the broader Caucus organization, and they took risks in both re-imagining what the Caucus could be and in

sharing these visions with one another. Participants felt a sense of responsibility to bring their personal and group learning to the broader organization, and struggled to identify the best way to share their collective learning. There was some initial disagreement about whether it was more important to engage in inquiry or action through their intellectual efforts, but over time participants worked through their differences and established consensus. They chose to develop an inquiry-centered approach to action, through designing and running professional development workshops for colleagues. Participants took risks in trusting and learning from one another as they strove for the development of a common understanding about structural racism, goal convergence, and consensus in their development and implementation of the professional development action.

The teachers integrated their identity and experiences into the learning process in significant ways that shaped their work together. Racial and gender identity were significant for how participants engaged in the group, and informed the shape and form of their learning. Positionality and intersecting identities were found to be significant for the learning in the group. While whites tended to primarily strive for a deeper understanding of racism, people of color in the group tended to see their personal learning as bound up in developing enhanced skills at articulation of their already-existing knowledge of racism. Learning took varied forms and functions across the participants’ varied racial identities, and this indicates that learning is dependent upon participants’ prior knowledge and personal experience. Across racial

identities, both whites and people of color saw great value in coming together to talk about racism across racial identity difference, in part due to its support for growth in their own and others’ learning.

Gender was considered significant for shaping patterns of talk time and emotional expression in the group. Gender and race intersected in complex ways to shape how participants felt the effects of racism on their lives and that of their families. Expressions of

emotion were defined in part by the intersections of race and gender, and at times participants struggled to tease apart the intersections of gender and race in communication and learning dynamics within the group.

In this chapter, I have shown that learning seeps through every aspect of participant engagement in the group. This includes components such as coming to articulate common goals within the group, and developing a common sense of meaning for structural racism itself. Learning is shaped through the personal experiences, emotions, and effects of racism on the individuals in the group, and participants took substantial risk in sharing their experiences, knowledge, values, and their learning with one another—including across identity