Pedagogical Elements

Gore (1993) argues that critical pedagogues tend to either articulate an abstract political vision or practice-based alternative pedagogical strategies (see also section 1.3). In this section, I build particularly on Gore’s (1993) notion of the “pedagogical practice”

tradition, revealing and highlighting specific pedagogical strategies employed during meetings that supported the inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) and transformative learning

practices (Freire, 1970/2004) of participants. I show that throughout the varied pedagogical elements, inquiry drove and infused all aspects of pedagogy in the group and centered the development and maintenance of a query-based worldview and orientation (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Inquiry-based pedagogy gave participants opportunity to explore their own and others’ assumptions and ideas about race and structural racism, and to make collective sense of concepts. It also gave participants opportunity to translate their inquiry into action in ways that extended beyond the inquiry group itself.

Facilitation

Reiter (2009) draws attention to differences in cultural and organizational factors within participatory social movement traditions, showing that there is an increased tendency to pay attention to how, when and where internal members participate within new social

movements. Activist participation—both the extent and the modes through which members participate—is bound up in the decision-making and relational processes of organizations (della Porta, 2009b; Reiter, 2009). Organizations that take up more consensual-oriented approaches to decision-making tend to value horizontalism with high-quality dialogue among varied actors and leaders (della Porta, 2009b). This consensus-oriented dialogue prioritizes membership participation in organizational decision-making through anti-hierarchical facilitation methods.

In my own role as facilitator, I built upon this tradition of horizontal consensus- oriented dialogue and decision-making. Meanwhile, I saw my roles as complex in relation to the group—on the one hand, I was a researcher and facilitator, while on the other I saw myself as a participating activist within the Caucus, and initially also within the inquiry group. Over

time, I came to see that my participation in the inquiry group was largely centered on

facilitation and research, rather than active knowledge-generation alongside other members of the group. This pattern emerged mainly because I found it difficult to juggle roles of researcher and facilitator with being an active participant, and so over time I came to prioritize my roles as researcher and facilitator.

As facilitator I drew upon prior personal activist experiences in grassroots groups, including the Caucus organization as well as anti-hierarchical consensus-oriented radical activist groups (see della Porta, 2009b for a definition and description of consensus in social movements). I had previously found that the Caucus took up both deliberative democracy processes (della Porta 2009a) and a soft consensus orientation (della Porta 2009b) within the social and cultural norms, and that these tended to drive facilitation styles within Caucus meetings. I chose to engage a loose facilitation style in order to fit into existing group norms as well as to allow space for group learning to take a form and function that emerged directly from group members. I did not want to be overly intrusive or directive within the sense- making stage of the group because I saw this as getting in the way of the group establishing its own norms of communication and collaboration. As researcher, I was interested in how the group would come together, and the different roles people would take up in the leadership and learning process. I was also interested to see who would step up to take on facilitation roles when they were necessary.

In the initial four inquiry group meetings, my loose facilitation of the group allowed ample space and time for conversation to follow the ideas and trails of members in the group. I strove to balance creating a space where all members felt included, heard, and part of the group, even as it was also a space where individual members could take strong leadership in raising significant points to the group and guiding conversation while making sense of structural racism. And, even as I took a light facilitation approach, I did structure some

significant pedagogical strategies into the group at various points. For example, I asked members to participate in establishing group norms, I engaged go-arounds and asked each person to bring their voice into the circle at the beginning and end of most group sessions, and I explicitly invited participants to discuss and develop definitions of race, racism and structural racism as a means of focusing conversation and discussion early in the process. Each of these pedagogical modes is discussed in following sections and functioned to shape communication in the group.

In the two action planning meetings, I took up a more assertive facilitation role. These meetings were focused on planning two professional development sessions for teachers to think about structural racism, and I strove to guide conversation to solve the question “what will we do to make our action achieve our goals and be successful?” Often this facilitation would involve re-focusing participants on the topic at hand, and sometimes redirecting conversation toward the intended goals of the meeting. I took this stronger role in these sessions because members were frequently distracted from the action planning by

philosophical concerns and there was an imminent deadline that was necessary to meet (i.e. the professional development workshop we were to facilitate was booked).

I had initially entered the planning meetings hoping that participants would take up strong facilitation roles within the meetings, and even explicitly asked who could facilitate the meetings, but found that participants tended to want me to facilitate the meetings and to take up a strong leadership role in the planning of the sessions rather than taking leadership themselves. This dynamic was reiterated within the professional development activities; for example, in the first session I was “appointed” by Kathy to lead the professional development session. In the second professional development session, Zak took up a strong leadership role in running the session, but the participants relied on me to spearhead and organize room set- up, the collection and organization of many of the materials, and indeed left me to organize

most aspects of the session. Initially, participants tended to see these actions as something that they were doing for me, rather than something that they were deeply invested in running themselves. Over time, this dynamic changed, as participants came to use the materials and curriculum they developed to run their own sessions beyond the inquiry group. For example, Zak, Miriam, Josh, Corey, Kathy and Ben came to use the curriculum to run professional development sessions at events such as the U.S. Social Forum, and Teachers Lead Philly’s Teacher Leadership Summer Institute. In these spaces, participants stepped up to facilitate and organize the groups themselves, and meanwhile the curriculum that was co-developed within our group space took on a life of its own (please refer to Chapter 7 for more on diffusion).

In the final debriefing meeting, I took an assertive role as facilitator. I had designed a thorough agenda for the meeting and asked participants to remain on topic throughout the meeting. After asking participants to debrief our actions, engage in data analysis of two data excerpts from group conversations, and construct a plan for how to continue addressing structural racism beyond the completion of our group, I asked members to provide me with requests and recommendations for how to support the work of the Caucus through my

research. At this time, a few participants questioned me on how I view my role as facilitator in the research. They made direct requests of me, both for how I might describe my role as facilitator to others who might hope to run a similar type of group in the future, as well as for me to articulate how I position myself as a researcher, facilitator and white person, in relation to the inquiry group space.

Josh: I don’t know if you’re doing this in your own writing, but documenting your process of facilitating this, is that–

Rhiannon: What do you mean?

Josh: I mean the program, you do the program notes… in the fall, so we want to do something similar right, keep this conversation going… here is Rhiannon’s notes… almost a one page, “how to run a structural racism discussion group.”

Zak: Did you have a hypothesis before you started? Rhiannon: Hypothesis?

Zak: Yeah. Like did you write something down beforehand?

Rhiannon: I mean, I had ideas that came out of reading the literature and from interviewing people in the fall, and from being part of the Caucus. I didn’t have a straight up hypothesis because [the style of research that I engage in]… doesn’t tend to emphasize hypotheses.

Corey: Will you be visible facilitator in this research? I was listening and I was struggling with this throughout this, and – because I don’t think we get to hear too much of you throughout this process. So I would love to see how you responded to all these different things as you took our responses.

Rhiannon: Yeah. How would you like to see that? Like would that be a conversation or that would–?

Penelope: I’d like an interpretive dance. [Some laughter]

Corey: I mean when I – I was thinking because if you get to write this up, you know I don’t want to double it. You know if you’ve got to write it up I would just want to see it when you write it up. So–

Rhiannon: Like for me just situate myself– Corey: In it, like you are a part of the circle too. Rhiannon: Okay.

Zak: [to Corey] I know, I’ve formally asked her, especially being Canadian, and her – you know and being categorized as white and how she – like, we’ve had that

conversation, yeah, and she definitely is a processor. Yeah, [to Rhiannon] not to talk to you as an object.

This dialogue segment from the final debriefing meeting starts out with Josh asking me to produce a short document that describes how to run a similar group in the future. Zak then interrupts with a new train of thinking, revealing his interest in understanding my process as researcher, and asks me if I started the study with a hypothesis. I respond that I engage in a style of research that does not emphasize hypotheses, and Zak may be about to ask me more about the research method that I engage when Corey interjects to ask me about how I situate myself within the research. He implies that I am a white person who is part of the group and that I have not always been vocal about my own positionality to the group. He inquires about whether this will be written into the dissertation. I listen and ask him for clarification about what he would like to hear. Then Zak addresses Corey directly with a tone of defending or vouching for me, saying that he has had direct conversations with me about how I see myself

as a raced person who is from another country, and reinforces that he believes that I have thought about and “processed” my identity in relation to the group. Following Zak’s comment, I go on to directly engage with Corey and to answer his question. However, Josh’s earliest comment goes unaddressed, as does Zak’s question about my process as a researcher.

This conversation is significant because it reveals the questions participants carried about my roles as facilitator and researcher while being a white person researching learning about race. Participants questioned me directly about how I approach writing the research, and wanted to know how I positioned myself in relation to the research. Participants of color went through a screening process of sorts with me, and reveal in this segment how the trust that they feel for me shapes their involvement in the group. Zak “vouches” for me to another African American man, and speaks directly to him about having trust in my approach to research. This was not the first time that Zak had vouched for me with other African American men (see Chapter 3). His trust and faith in me as researcher, facilitator and activist ally were wrapped up together. Whereas, it seemed that Corey felt ongoing uncertainty about the ways that I would represent my participants as researcher and how I would situate myself in relation to the group as facilitator and participant.

As Corey implies, my relationship to the group was complex. I was concurrently a researcher, facilitator and participant in the group. Corey had hoped to hear more about the ways in which I understood my identity as a white person in relation to these complex and sometimes conflicting roles (see Chapter 3 for more on this topic). Participants in the group were also curious about the research process. They wanted to know how the research was designed and what I sought to understand through running the study. Participants saw my facilitation of the group as wrapped up in my role as researcher. And, they saw my identity as a white person as significant to how I would write up my results, how this would shape the

potential for future similar groups, and how I would understand and communicate the data from the group and study.

Group Norms

Goffman (1971) defines a social norm as a “guide for action which is supported by social sanctions, [including] negative ones providing penalties for infraction, [and] positive ones providing rewards for exemplary compliance” (p. 95). Goffman’s conception is

predicated on the idea that social norms are sometimes explicitly identified and communicated, but are most often implicit within social interactions.

At the outset of our inquiry group meetings, I knew there were many implicit social norms that were already in place that would govern participants’ participation in and expectations for the inquiry group. These social norms emerged from broader cultures and contexts, including implicit group norms within the Caucus governing interpersonal behavior and norms around decision-making processes. I also knew that there were social sanctions within society and the organization that would subtly support and discourage specific types of behavior, and that this would shape dynamics within the group. However, I felt that it would benefit the group to have an explicit conversation about group norms. I believed that explicit conversation would help newer or more peripheral Caucus members understand some of the norms already governing the group, and also feel part of creating explicit norms to guide interactions. I hoped explicit conversations about norms could help create a “safe space” for participants.

In our explicit conversation about group norms, which took place at the outset of the first meeting, I asked participants to express their desires and needs for safety in the group. This is how the conversation took shape:

Rhiannon: So my question to everyone is, what do you need from your fellow participants in order to feel trust and to share deeply and honestly in this space?

Mary: I think being able to express an opinion without being attacked. I can understand someone disagreeing, but not turning it into a personal attack.

Josh: Mine is sort of a reminder for myself and for anyone else, which is to embrace the discomfort of this conversation of these kinds of conversations. Unfortunately, I’m sitting here thinking it’s been too long since having a space for having this

conversation. And as a group effort, just reminding myself to be okay with that, because unfortunately it’s not a common enough conversation.

Kathy: I was going to say, to suspend judgment and presume best intentions. Corey: We all take part in a system which holds up racism. So, in the conversation when we talk about… these things that exist, that is race in the air, and we just take it in. I kinda expect to get some bad, some wrong, some guilt, some, all sorts of things to come up. And if it doesn’t, then I feel like I don’t know what’s going on in the

conversation…

Josh: Are you recognizing that we’re all part of the system? Corey: Ya. Unified in the struggle to break free from it.

Miriam: I think challenging our own sense of what it means to be safe. And to be open to questions, like to be open to follow up questions to be open to… be

challenged. I can be like, this is how I saw this thing, always reminding myself that in conversations about race, that I as someone who is white am seeing things through my white lens. That I feel actually safe in these conversations when people are challenging me, are asking me for follow up, like “what did you mean?” [and] being pushed. I think this should be a space where people are pushed.

Penelope: I need self-awareness and equity in conversation. So, self-awareness of you know, am I speaking too much, am I not speaking enough, and equity in that

everybody participates, not saying that everybody has to talk every time, but that we do get to hear everybody, for people not to be too shy or too overbearing (Inquiry group 1)

This explicit discussion about safety needs in the group allowed members to express their personal needs and desires for communication patterns. Each participant had the opportunity to express her own needs, and each theme was written on a large sheet of paper for safekeeping. The opportunity to openly discuss specific needs, such as Penelope’s desire for “self-

awareness and equity in conversation” allowed group members to hear the needs of others and to think about how to alter their own communication tendencies in order to create space for others to feel comfortable and welcome.

As group facilitator, I also wanted to be sure that participants had the opportunity to predict and address possible future strains on the group. Thus, I asked them to think about how to proceed if conflict arises in the group. Here is how group members responded:

Corey: Roll it! Roll the dice [laughter].

Penelope: We solve conflict in my classroom with rock-paper-scissors [laughter]. Miriam: I expect that conflict of opinions come up, and like [Corey] was saying, that if we weren’t having it then we might not be doing it right. But that embracing of it, being willing to be uncomfortable in the conflict, and being willing to move through it