Critical Pedagogy and Accountability: An Autoethnographic Analysis of Race and Embodiment in Tennessee's Teacher Evaluations

The current social climate within the United States has pushed antiracist pedagogies to the forefront of educational discourse in primary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions. Given the fact that the vast majority of public school teachers in primary and secondary schools are white females, the particular ways they approach the instruction of their minority students is of significant importance, as their cultural perspectives are disproportionately represented in classrooms across the country.

This study uses an autoethnographic approach combined with scholarship in critical pedagogy and critical race theory to examine 1) the particular ways that cultural conflict manifests between white female teachers and their Black students, 2) how the classroom evaluation portion of Tennessee’s accountability model accommodates the tenets of critical pedagogy, and 3) how the incorporation of students’ standardized test scores affects both teachers and Black students.

This study demonstrates the finding drawn from critical race scholarship that in most instances where white female teachers have the intention of furthering social progress for their Black students through educational means, cultural conflict inhibits meaningful progress. It also reveals that one reason for this can be a lack of critical reflection on the part of the teacher. Because this type of critical reflection and instruction must be implemented by the teacher, and the teacher is a representative of a large institutional power structure, this study also reveals that another factor in inhibiting social progress through education is that the incorporation of student TNReady test scores into the teacher’s evaluation score functionally undermines the allowances for critical pedagogy contained in the classroom observation TEAM rubrics.