#50: Whiteness by Omission: Constructing Science Learning in PD

Rosebery et al. (2016) conceptualized interpretive power as (a) teachers’ attunement to students’ sensemaking as generative for science learning and (b) teachers’ pedagogical practices that build on students’ ideas and experiences. In our professional development (PD) work, we have found that ideologies of whiteness constrain interpretive power. Here, we unpack the role of whiteness in PD discussions with in-service elementary science teachers. We use interaction analysis (IA) to trace the influence of whiteness on discourse, focusing on teachers’ construction of science and students. Following Gholson and Ma (under review), we question the IA premise that ideologies must be named by participants to be considered relevant. To make these ideologies visible, we consider not only the ways that participants carry substrate forward, but also the ways that they omit substrate in subsequent turns.