About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 7. Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Abstract

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In recent years, there has been considerable discussion across the US about whether and how schools should address issues of race, racism, and privilege. National reports suggest that approaches vary greatly across schools and teachers. The goal of this study was to examine White US K-12 teachers’ views on teaching children about race and racial privilege and whether teachers’ understanding of White privilege and attributions for racial inequalities related to these views.

Previous studies suggest that teachers’ willingness to discuss race relates to both individual and systemic factors (e.g., William et al., 2023). Recent research also highlights the role that views of White privilege play in White parents’ racial socialization approaches (Pahlke et al., 2024). We are not, however, aware of any studies that have explored whether teachers’ views of White privilege are related to their perspectives on these topics.

Participants were 210 White US adults who taught in a K-12 school in the past year, recruited in summer of 2024 through the data collection website Prolific (Mage=38.87; 20.5% men, 77.6% women, 1.9% nonbinary). On average, participants had taught for 11.4 years (range from 1 - 36 years).

Participants completed measures of political ideology, attributions for racial inequalities, belief in the existence of White privilege, and White privilege worldview (i.e., ability and inclination to recognize instances of White privilege in everyday situations). Participants also answered a series of questions regarding their views of discussions of race and White privilege in classrooms, including views of what students should learn, comfort with leading such discussions, and potential concerns.

When asked about classroom conversations about race, more teachers reported having had a conversation about race than about White privilege (90% versus 65%) in the past year. Similarly, teachers reported being more comfortable discussing race than discussing White privilege (74% versus 50% were generally comfortable). Teachers’ greatest source of concern related to discussing race stemmed from lack of community support, whereas their greatest concern related to discussing White privilege stemmed from a belief that teaching students about White privilege is not a school’s job. Open-ended responses further highlight teachers’ individual and systemic concerns.

Overall, teachers endorsed external attributions for current racial disparities more strongly than internal attributions (Ms=3.88,1.87), indicating that on average teachers viewed racial disparities as driven primarily by individual and systemic racism. They also, on average, indicated a general agreement that White privilege exists (M=4.65).

As expected, teachers’ comfort discussing both race and White privilege were related to their own views of race (i.e., beliefs in the existence of White privilege, White privilege worldview, and attributions for racial inequalities). Comfort levels were also negatively related to the percentage of White students at the school.

Our findings suggest that, similar to parents (Pahlke et al., 2024), teachers’ views about race and racial inequality influenced their approaches to talking about race with young people, and that the capacity to recognize everyday examples of White privilege may promote such conversations.

Author information

Author	Role
Erin Pahlke, Whitman College	Presenting author
Meagan M. Patterson, University of Kansas	Non-presenting author
Emma Nock, Whitman College	Non-presenting author

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