Singing and dancing for diversity: Neoliberal multiculturalism and white epistemological ignorance in teacher professional development

Instagramming for Justice: The Potentials and Pitfalls of Culturally Relevant Professional Learning on Instagram

“…Additionally, the issue of self or corporate promotion on Instagram is a concern, as combining anti-racism and culturally relevant pedagogy with capitalist promotional content may cause some followers to conflate justice-oriented pedagogy with something that can simply be bought or consumed. While traditional justice-oriented PL is not free of promotion or conflicts of interest (Grinage, 2020 ), Instagram presents a distinct form of promotion. Influencer cultures are associated with promotion, profit, and sometimes unclear commercial relationships, in ways that can make it difficult to assess influencers’ intentions, credibility, and ethics (Carpenter et al, 2022 ; Danesh & Duthler, 2019 ).…”

“…Research into justice-oriented teacher professional learning (PL) has suggested that such learning is particularly nuanced and has become increasingly challenging in recent years, because, as Dover et al ( 2018 ) put it, “we are teaching in times that are not easily fixed” (p. 230). For example, in his critical observations of a social justice workshop for high school teachers, Grinage ( 2020 ) exposed superficial multiculturalism within the PL curriculum. That is, White teacher participants “sang and danced for diversity” (p. 7) as opposed to critically engaging with authentic social justice classroom issues.…”

“…Additionally, influencers who bring for-profit motives to the platform may pose conflicts of interest when presenting justice-oriented work. As Grinage ( 2020 ) illustrated in the context of in-person PL, facilitators with for-profit motives may offer justice-oriented PL that centers paths of least resistance, an illusion of criticality, and “happy talk” (Grinage, 2020 , p. 18).…”