“Well, What’s Wrong with the Whites?”: A Conversation Starter on Raising Expectations for Inservice Professional Development on Race with White Teachers

Abstract

In an era of increased demand for antiracist inservice professional development (PD) and pushback against it, antiracist PD needs evidence of strong outcomes and a high bar for success. To this end, in this conversation starter, we ask how often inservice PD addressing race and racism with White educators really expects participants to demonstrate next steps to grapple with race issues toward improving educational opportunities for their students—the field’s actual ideal. We describe self-critically how it can be quite easy to have low expectations for White teachers’ inservice development particularly, by failing to really expect sustained inquiry into supporting students better.