ERIC Number: EJ1158844
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017-Oct
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0038-0407
EISSN: N/A
Inequality Frames: How Teachers Inhabit Color-Blind Ideology
Cobb, Jessica S.
Sociology of Education, v90 n4 p315-332 Oct 2017
This paper examines how public school teachers take up, modify, or resist the dominant ideology of color-blind racism. This examination is based on in-depth interviews with 60 teachers at three segregated schools: one was race/class privileged and two were disadvantaged. Inductive coding revealed that teachers at each school articulated a shared frame to talk about race and class: "legitimated advantage" at Heritage High School, "trickle-down dysfunction" at Bunker High School, and "antiracist dignity" at Solidarity High School. Each represents an "inequality frame": a local meaning system that mediates the dominant race/class ideology, arising from teachers' shared experiences of inequality in the school-as-workplace. The frames I observed responded to three organizational conditions that affected teachers' experiences of inequality: school demographics, material resources, and professional culture. Variations in these conditions across schools provided opportunity spaces for teachers to either accept race/class domination as common sense or to critique it.
Descriptors: Public School Teachers, Teacher Attitudes, Racial Attitudes, Ideology, Racial Bias, Racial Segregation, School Segregation, Equal Education, Disadvantaged Schools, Discourse Analysis, High Schools, Secondary School Teachers, Social Class, Demography, Resources, School Culture, Socialization, Qualitative Research, Semi Structured Interviews, Case Studies, Human Dignity, Institutional Characteristics, Educational Environment, School Safety
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: High Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: California
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A