Title: Rac(e)ing to Talk: Design, Tools, and Teachers

Abstract: Although race remains a controversial, yet pervasive, issue in society and education, practicing teachers may still grapple with whether race should be a central feature of curriculum and related instructional practices and/or how race should be interrogated in the classroom. In this lecture, Milner discusses results from teacher survey data about their views of the relevance of race talk in their classroom, their feelings and beliefs about their preparedness to develop discursive raced opportunities, and the types (traditional or nontraditional) of teacher education programs in which these teachers were prepared.  He also considers challenges prospective preservice teachers reported in designing race talk with middle and high school students and draws from videotaped modeling he used to support teacher development in the context of building challenging skills and practices. Implications for teacher education and teacher development are discussed.