To this point in the review, we have seen that the dominant cultural norms governing urban schools typically represents a “White gaze” (French, Reference French2023) on low-income and other minoritized cultural communities. The white gaze is a concept that has been used to describe the vantage point from which white communities have historically looked at non-white communities as inferior or culturally deficient when compared to their own cultures. It is situated within a “White racial frame,” which Amos (Reference Amos2020) described as a worldview that “is embedded in society’s structures as a structural advantage and a built-in bias, and is directly connected to institutionalized power and privileges that benefit Whites, thus [providing] a basis for structural racism” (p. 646; Watson et al., Reference Watson, Charner-Laird, Kirkpatrick, Szczesiul and Gordon2006). In this chapter I explore how this frame strongly influences the collective action strategies teachers use to manage intercultural differences between themselves and their students, and how those strategies can operate to increase, maintain, or decrease relational distance with consequences for teachers’ cultural learning processes at work.

Collective Actions That Increase Relational Distance

Absent the formal learning and professional development opportunities they need to begin questioning their own cultural assumptions, teachers engage in deficit discourses that perpetuate white positional superiority and cultural hegemony. In a 2007 paper on how discourse and ideology operate to reproduce cultural hegemony and perpetuate social power imbalances, sociologist Mark Stoddart defines in detail how what people talk about is more than just written or verbal communication:

Stoddart uses the term ideology to describe “dominant ideas within a given society [that] reflect the interest of a ruling economic class” (p. 192), while hegemony “appears as the ‘common sense’ that guides our everyday, mundane understanding of the world” (p. 201). On the interplay between discourse and ideology, Stoddart argued, “In essence, where discourse is mobilized to reinforce systems of social power it functions as ideology” (p. 193).

We have discussed how – often in lieu of any formal instruction on how to develop more culturally responsive teaching practices – teachers receive an informal education on LIMCCs through a societal curriculum largely characterized by deficit discourses that reinforce deficit cultural assumptions and low expectations for students from LIMCCs in urban schools (Conner, Reference Conner2010; Davis and BehmCross, Reference Davis and BehmCross2020; Gatti, Reference Gatti2019; Jacobs, Reference Jacobs2019; Paulick et al., Reference Paulick, Park and Cornett2022; Pollack, Reference Pollack2013). Urban teachers learn to talk about their work with mostly technical (e.g., curriculum, instructional design, pedagogical practices) and managerial (e.g., discipline and control, power, authority) discourses (Anderson and Olsen, Reference Anderson and Olsen2006; Anderson and Stillman, Reference Anderson and Stillman2011; Anderson et al., Reference Anderson, Aronson and Ellison2022; Kushman, Reference Kushman1992; Lawson, Reference Lawson2003; Lynn and Smith-Maddox, Reference Lynn and Smith-Maddox2007; Nelson and Guerra, Reference Nelson and Guerra2014; Stroot et al., Reference Stroot, Fowlkes, Langholz, Paxton, Stedman, Steffes and Valtman1999; Sutherland et al., Reference Sutherland, Ponnock, Jordan, Kuriloff and Hoffman2021; Yonezawa et al., Reference Yonezawa, Jones and Singer2011). Often the only option for discourse on developing interpersonal relationships across student–teacher cultural differences available, deficit discourses enable teachers to think and speak about students’ cultures as inferior compared to a suburban status quo – which effectively serves to reinforce white positional superiority and cultural dominance. These discourses can foster intrapsychic conflict in urban teachers, who may feel coerced to prioritize dominant cultural norms through their teaching practices under the guise of supporting student success, and thus come to resent their forced complicity with an educational system that consistently neglects students’ psychosocial well-being in the classroom (Achinstein et al., Reference Achinstein and Ogawa2012; Cholewa et al., Reference Cholewa, Goodman, West-Olatunji and Amatea2014; Valtierra and Whitaker, Reference Valtierra and Whitaker2021).

In their study of how teachers’ use of racialized discourse produces socioemotional and sociocultural implications in urban schools, Marcucci and Elmesky (Reference Marcucci and Elmesky2022) describe how deficit discourse can restore a sense of control for teachers:

Several other studies in this review corroborate the observation that teachers will seek to increase their feelings of self-efficacy at work by using deficit discourses to maintain a state of “dysconsciousness, [or] an uncritical habit of mind (including perceptions, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs) that justifies inequity and exploitation by accepting the existing order of things as a given” (King, Reference King1991, p. 135; also Ajayi, Reference Ajayi2011; Castagno, Reference Castagno2013; Lipman, Reference Lipman1997; Watson, Reference Watson2011; Reference Watson2012; Watson et al., Reference Watson, Charner-Laird, Kirkpatrick, Szczesiul and Gordon2006.; Yoon, Reference Yoon2012). Dysconsiousness enables white silence, which is a choice some white teachers make not to participate in conversations about race in or outside the classroom at work (Dickar, Reference Dickar2008). It also enables a general apathy about engaging with students’ cultural challenges outside the classroom that is rooted in the psychological distance they work to maintain between themselves and student experiences with social inequality in their everyday lives. Lynn and Jennings (Reference Lynn and Jennings2009) explain: “Teachers who affirm the culture of their students and fail to oppose unequal school policies or speak out against unfair social policies illustrate a kind of passiveness that is necessary for [whiteness as a cultural hegemon] to thrive” (p. 192). Dysconsciousness enables urban teachers to avoid responsibility for integrating critical habits of mind into their teaching and classroom management practices.

Deficit discourse also increases relational distance between teachers and students by serving as the vehicle through which deficit narratives about students (and LIMCCs more generally) are circulated throughout urban teacher communities. Deficit narratives prevent urban teachers from developing compassion and empathy for their students because compassion requires someone to notice another’s suffering and work to help alleviate that suffering, and empathy the ability to vicariously experience another’s emotions (Oplatka and Gamerman, Reference Oplatka and Gamerman2021). As we have discussed, urban teaching cultures often covertly support teachers maintaining a psychological distance in order to optimize their individual efficiency and positional superiority at work, but the tradeoff is that such distance makes it less likely for teachers to cultivate the emotional tools they need to implement culturally responsive teaching and classroom management practices (Conklin and Hughes, Reference Conklin and Hughes2016; Cooper, Reference Cooper2003; Demerath et al., Reference Demerath, Kemper, Yousuf and Banwo2022; Lynn and Jennings, Reference Lynn and Jennings2009; Lynn and Smith-Maddox, Reference Lynn and Smith-Maddox2007; Martinez et al., Reference Martinez, Enyioha, Marquez and Baker2022; Matias and Zembylas, Reference Matias and Zembylas2014; McAllister and Irvine, Reference McAllister and Irvine2002; Oplatka and Gamerman, Reference Oplatka and Gamerman2021; Warren, Reference Warren2014; Reference Warren2018; Warren and Hotchkins, Reference Warren and Hotchkins2015). The distance many urban teachers learn to keep from their students’ lives outside the classroom mirrors the estrangement they experience from their own negative emotions at work – particularly those related to their experiences of inter-sender and intra-role conflict.

Research on role conflict across the educational and organizational literatures has long established that it is generally negatively correlated with job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, and positively associated with burnout, intentions to quit, and work stress (Bedeian and Armenakis, Reference Bedeian and Armenakis1981; Coverman, Reference Coverman1989; Eckman, Reference Eckman2004; Fisher and Gitelson, Reference Fisher and Gitelson1983; Keller, Reference Keller1975; Miles and Perreault, Reference Miles and Perreault1976; Schuler et al., Reference Schuler, Aldag and Brief1977; Schwab and Iwanicki, Reference Schwab and Iwanicki1982). Considering what we know about how role conflict reduces cognitive capacity from the organizational literature, it seems plausible to reason that urban teachers typically do not have the time, training, or the energy to prioritize cultural learning at work – and so choose to minimize their emotionality when working toward meeting their curricular and teaching goals on the job. For example, Stark and Cummings (Reference Stark and Cummings2022) found evidence that urban charter school teachers ill-equipped to support their students’ pressing needs were negatively impacted by their shared perceptions that they were being gaslit or talked out of their feelings about the unique challenges of urban teaching. Their study also found that when a school “ignores the need for teachers’ own emotional development, teachers are more likely to engage in the emotional demands of their work in ways that are not conducive to themselves or their students” (p. 355).

In a study of how teachers prepare for and perform in high-needs urban schools, Kuriloff et al. (Reference Kuriloff, Jordan, Sutherland and Ponnock2019) explained how teacher actions taken to maintain psychological distance can be seen as a form of camouflage for a gap in the standardized teacher education curriculum:

Deficit narratives and low expectations serve as self-fulfilling prophecies that enable teachers to develop pity rather than compassion or empathy for their students. Park and Paulick (Reference Park and Paulick2021) detailed how urban teachers’ affective experiences of inequity in American society are rooted in deficit thinking about their students:

Good intentions can be stated as teacher expressions of goodwill toward their students, but what moves goodwill to impactful action beyond false empathy is the teacher’s ability to develop compassion and empathy for their students and their cultural communities (Rojas and Liou, Reference Rojas and Liou2017). Urban teacher abilities to learn from their students’ cultural worldviews are compromised by the deficit discourses they share, and the impact of those discourses on their affective experiences in meaning-making processes about their students’ culturally specific experiences outside the classroom. With few opportunities to process or even acknowledge their own feelings about their work, deficit discourse circulated amongst urban teachers also offers them the socioemotional benefits of preserving the tacit understanding that it is useful to minimize their emotionality and avoid doing what they can to upset or offend those in power – even when it means talking negatively about students to avoid talking about their own negative workplace experiences.

Collective Actions That Maintain Relational Distance

Most of urban teachers’ work is done siloed away from social supports in their individual classrooms (Hikida and Taylor, Reference Hikida and Taylor2020; Kokka, Reference Kokka2016; Lee, Reference Lee2018; Weinstein et al., Reference Weinstein, Madison and Kuklinski1995). Consequently, even with access to the same institutional resources, urban teachers within the same school often lack shared frames of reference or common language for identifying and interpreting problems of practice (Cuddapah and Clayton, Reference Cuddapah and Clayton2011; Ford and Sassi, Reference Ford and Sassi2014; Horn and Little, Reference Horn and Little2010). Amos (Reference Amos2020) explains:

Instead of a professional community many urban teachers perceive that they work in competitive peer cultures in which “no one [admits] to making mistakes and ‘everyone is trying to outdo everyone else’ to appear aligned with the school’s philosophy of teaching and learning” (Olsen and Anderson, Reference Olsen and Anderson2007, p. 24; Anderson et al., Reference Anderson, Aronson and Ellison2022; Whitaker, Reference Whitaker2020). Research on teacher perceptions of workplace climate in urban schools indicates that as a result, many feel alienated from both their colleagues and their administrators where they perceive there is little to no care or support for introducing and implementing culturally responsive curricula and pedagogical strategies (Achinstein et al., Reference Achinstein and Ogawa2012; Bettini and Park, Reference Bettini and Park2021; Bristol and Goings, Reference Bristol and Goings2019; Carter and Keiler, Reference Carter and Keiler2009; Cucchiara et al., Reference Cucchiara, Rooney and Robertson-Kraft2015; Kohli, Reference Kohli2012; Kraft et al., Reference Kraft, Papay, Johnson, Charner-Laird, Ng and Reinhorn2015; Kuriloff et al., Reference Kuriloff, Jordan, Sutherland and Ponnock2019; Lee and Thomas, Reference Lee and Thomas2022; Marri et al., Reference Marri, Michael-Luna, Cormier and Keegan2014; R. Richards et al., Reference R. Richards, Hemphill, Shiver, Gaudreault and Ramsey2020). Urban teacher colleagues are compelled to focus the majority of their time on meeting external accountability standards, which leaves little time to establish professional learning communities for critical reflection on their work even though they spend substantially more time than their peers in suburban neighborhoods discussing community problems impacting their schools (Abbate-Vaughn, Reference Abbate-Vaughn2004; Mirra and Rogers, Reference Mirra and Rogers2020).

Furthermore, even when teachers share resources with one another they typically experience implementation challenges working to integrate culturally responsive strategies into their classroom practices on their own (Charner-Laird et al., Reference Charner-Laird, Ng, Johnson, Kraft, Papay and Reinhorn2017; Esposito et al., Reference Esposito, Davis and Swain2012; Henkin and Holliman, Reference Henkin and Holliman2009; Li and Qin, Reference Li and Qin2022; Liou et al., Reference Liou, Canrinus and Daly2019; Mintrop and Charles, Reference Mintrop and Charles2017; Park and Paulick, Reference Park and Paulick2021). Teachers may seek out coaching and mentoring supports for managing this balance only to find that much of what they learn from school leaders and their colleagues is to focus on technical strategies for meeting accountability standards, or for adhering to standardized organizational practices and procedures (Bettini and Park, Reference Bettini and Park2021; Crocco and Costigan, Reference Crocco and Costigan2007; Kuriloff et al., Reference Kuriloff, Jordan, Sutherland and Ponnock2019; Sutherland et al., Reference Sutherland, Ponnock, Jordan, Kuriloff and Hoffman2021). With few opportunities to check their cultural assumptions and biases prior to entering the classroom and little oversight over their discretionary actions within it (Cobb, Reference Cobb2017; Fry and Mckinney, Reference Fry and Mckinney1997; Kokka, Reference Kokka2016), teachers may adopt “new practices and resources in ways that reinforc[e] rather than contes[t] their existing beliefs about what [is] appropriate for their low-income students” (Stosich, Reference Stosich2016, p. 1725). Thus, a work climate in which teachers are unable to share mistakes made when working through institutional and organizational constraints on their teaching ultimately seals them off from information that might challenge their prior thinking in ways that reduce relational distance between themselves, their students, and their colleagues.

A second type of collective action that maintains relational distance amongst urban teachers is their complicity with the normalization of hostile racial climates in their workplace environments. In Chapter 2 I discussed how teachers of color experience a double bind at least partially attributable to “racial battle fatigue,” which they develop in response to administrative and collegial expectations that they work as cultural liaisons to fill in the gaps where staff and administrators are missing critical cultural competencies. More research on how racial tensions amongst teachers manifests in urban school organizational climates suggests that teachers of color experience this kind of aggression beginning as early as their teacher education programs in such a way that they come to expect it as a normal part of their jobs (Souto-Manning and Emdin, Reference Souto-Manning and Emdin2020; Teacher of Color Collective, T. and Souto-Manning, Reference Souto-Manning2022). Many urban teachers of color share collective impressions that their white colleagues apply very different cultural lenses than their own when working to support students’ lived experiences with the social and structural inequalities that impact their behavior and performance from outside the classroom (Magaldi et al., Reference Magaldi, Conway and Trub2018; Matias and Zembylas, Reference Matias and Zembylas2014). They themselves may feel marginalized in school cultures that are rooted in deficit-oriented cultural assumptions about people of color in urban communities (Achistein et al., Reference Achinstein, Ogawa, Sexton and Freitas2010; Amos, Reference Amos2020; French, Reference French2023; Kuriloff et al., Reference Kuriloff, Jordan, Sutherland and Ponnock2019; Lee and Thomas, Reference Lee and Thomas2022; Li and Qin, Reference Li and Qin2022; Lipman, Reference Lipman1997; Pizarro and Kohli, Reference Pizarro and Kohli2020). Kohli (Reference Kohli2018) explains: “Silenced within color-blind contexts and as objects of racial microaggressions that leave them feeling invisible, stereotyped and disrespected, teachers of color feel incredibly isolated and undervalued within urban schools” (p. 325).

Urban teachers of color often perceive that the very cultural competencies that should make them effective urban teachers – their cultural knowledge, language skills, and use of culturally responsive classroom management strategies – make them the target of white colleagues’ hostility amidst their frustrations at being unable to cultivate these skills themselves (Bettini et al., Reference Bettini, Cormier, Ragunathan and Stark2022; Bristol and Goings, Reference Bristol and Goings2019; Goddard and Skrla, Reference Goddard and Skrla2006). Thus, many urban teachers of color perceive that the white gaze has been turned on them by their own colleagues. Madsen and Mabokela (Reference Madsen and Mabokela2000) explain:

Hostile racial climates cause job stress and job dissatisfaction for teachers of color (Kohli, Reference Kohli2018). They exacerbate the intra-role conflict that teachers of color often experience being unable to fulfill their commitments to urban teaching without the additional challenge of enduring white colleagues’ cultural biases against them and their students (Achinstein and Ogawa, Reference Achinstein and Ogawa2012; Achinstein et al., Reference Achinstein, Ogawa, Sexton and Freitas2010; Blackwell and Young, Reference Blackwell and Young2021; Gordon, Reference Gordon1997). Similarly, white teachers may also experience their workplace environments as hostile where they are expected to participate in conversations about race and class at work, or when they are from low-income backgrounds themselves and presumed to share the same beliefs and experiences as their white colleagues from more affluent backgrounds (Schauer, Reference Schauer2018). Hostile racial climates and a lack of social supports designed to support teachers working through them maintain a relational distance among teachers that stagnates their cultural learning processes at work. These features of the urban workplace environment reflect collective (though arguably coerced) complicity with a status quo that enables teachers to maintain psychological distance not only from their students’ cultural worldviews, but also to work without clear knowledge or deep understanding of their own. In the next section I review research on what options teachers have available to them for working around the contextual and psychosocial constraints on collective teacher action discussed to this point in the chapter.

Collective Actions That Decrease Relational Distance

By now we have seen that teachers are always informally coordinating their work in order to maintain their positions, by adhering to tacitly shared agreements with their colleagues to fulfill their role responsibilities within an acceptable range of performance set by the organizational norms and values. However, there is evidence that collaborative urban teacher actions can bolster their propensities for risk-taking at work with regards to developing culturally responsive teaching and classroom management practices despite the environmental constraints on their agency and autonomy. Constructive collaboration in the context of urban teachers’ cultural learning entails the development of social networks that enable them to define shared purposes for their work, create spaces in which they can express divergent views and brainstorm, test, or adjust their strategies, efficiently share instructional resources and professional knowledge, and develop strategies for learning through direct engagement with students, their parents, and their cultural communities more broadly (Berebitsky and Salloum, Reference Berebitsky and Salloum2017; Charner-Laird et al., Reference Charner-Laird, Ng, Johnson, Kraft, Papay and Reinhorn2017; Chester and Beaudin, Reference Chester and Beaudin1996; Cochran-Smith, Reference Cochran-Smith1995; Kirby and DiPaola, Reference Kirby and DiPaola2011; Liou et al., Reference Liou, Canrinus and Daly2019; Nieto, Reference Nieto2001; Stosich, Reference Stosich2016). These collective actions can produce a sense of sense of stability through collegial support in urban schools, anchoring teachers in what otherwise can be a confusing, intense, and overwhelming workplace environment for new and returning urban teachers alike (Cucchiara et al., Reference Cucchiara, Rooney and Robertson-Kraft2015; R. Richards et al., Reference R. Richards, Hemphill, Shiver, Gaudreault and Ramsey2020).

Beyond challenging curricular and pedagogical norms, open communication with their colleagues can help urban teachers feel more responsible for their work and strengthen their commitments to teaching in urban schools (Carter and Keiler, Reference Carter and Keiler2009; Dee et al., Reference Dee, Henkin and Singleton2006; Kokka, Reference Kokka2016; Whitaker, Reference Whitaker2020). When teachers participate in school cultures that feature a strong community orientation and ample opportunities for collaboration, they share collective impressions and feelings that they can trust one another – and shared trust facilitates peer learning opportunities for building upon their existing knowledge and skills (Ford et al., Reference Ford, Olsen, Khojasteh, Ware and Urick2019; Moye et al., Reference Moye, Henkin and Egley2005). Communication and collaboration contribute to collective teacher efficacy, a shared state wherein “teachers tend to think highly of the collective capability of the faculty [and so] may sense an expectation for successful teaching and hence work to be successful themselves” (Goddard and Goddard, Reference Goddard and Goddard2001, p. 815). Collective efficacy has been linked to a number of positive outcomes for teachers, including: improved organizational communication, increased teacher empowerment, more opportunity for professional autonomy, social support for making meaning of and responding to student distress, and greater team problem-solving capabilities over time (Charner-Laird et al., Reference Charner-Laird, Ng, Johnson, Kraft, Papay and Reinhorn2017; Kwok and Svajda-Hardy, Reference Kwok and Svajda-Hardy2021; Mintrop and Charles, Reference Mintrop and Charles2017). It is also mutually beneficial for students and teachers, in that higher levels of collective efficacy have been linked to both individual teacher efficacy and higher levels of student achievement (Goddard and Skrla, Reference Goddard and Skrla2006; Goddard et al., Reference Goddard, Hoy and Hoy2000; Moller et al., Reference Moller, Mickelson, Stearns, Banerjee and Bottia2013).

Adams (Reference Adams2013) summarizes the importance of collective efforts to develop rapport and trust as the glue that facilitates organizational effectiveness:

Efforts to build collective efficacy and mutual trust amongst urban teachers promotes a positive effect such that they come to see their colleagues and students as sources of professional support, and their workplace environment as facilitative of equal engagement for stakeholders at every level of the school system (Jiménez and Gersten, Reference Jiménez and Gersten1999; Rinke, Reference Rinke2011). The challenge remains in that teacher efforts to develop collective trust are often sidetracked by the defensive intergroup norms and group dynamics that accompany institutional initiatives to prioritize meeting accountability standards over the more relational dimensions of urban teaching.

Implications from Collective Action Strategies of K-12 Teachers to Manage Intercultural Differences at Work

This chapter reviewed some key intrapsychic and interpersonal constraints on urban teachers’ cultural learning processes at work associated with their collective actions regarding the maintenance of intergroup and group dynamics in urban schools. I began by highlighting how a white racial frame enables urban teachers to build upon the idea that students and the people in their cultural communities are “others” who require academic and social interventions to acquire social capital they need to align themselves with a white and middle-class status quo. Like the ladder of inference framework itself, I built upon previous discussions of how urban teachers use deficit-oriented beliefs and values to justify their psychological distance from students’ challenges with social inequality. I argued that deficit discourse circulates those deficit ideologies in such a way that they are inculcated and shared as forms of dominant cultural competence as culturally accepted meanings considered essential for effective teaching in urban schools. Furthermore, though deficit discourse can induce intrapsychic conflict in teachers who find their personal values conflict with their role responsibilities, there is evidence to suggest that urban teachers use deficit discourses to maintain a state of dysconsciousness that enables them to minimize their negative emotionality about contextual factors impacting student behavior and performance beyond their control.

I also explored evidence that teachers avoid interrogating students’ worldviews and perspectives because they are struggling to manage their own conflicting emotions about their work, particularly the sense that their feelings are largely unrecognized and unsupported by their colleagues and school administrators. Thus, urban teachers may display what appears to be a collective apathy for engaging with their students’ cultures or for mitigating racial microaggressions experienced by teacher colleagues of color that are actually rooted in their experiential knowledge of how few organizational and environmental supports exist for managing their own emotions at work. This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that urban teachers typically share multiple technical and managerial discourses about how to improve their practice, but they are limited to deficit-oriented relational discourses about how to establish and develop trusting and mutually respectful relationships across student–teacher cultural differences. Even teachers concerned enough to be intentional about integrating the principle of cultural responsivity into their own work find that urban school cultures often passively endorse the cultural hegemony of white and middle-class cultural norms in such a way that their colleagues can simply opt-out of any expectation that they integrate critical habits of mind into their work. As a result, there is no shared frame of reference more readily available for assessing and responding to student behavior and performance in urban schools than a deficit perspective on students’ cultural differences.

In Chapter 6 I conclude the review by exploring evidence that the information along the ladder of inference we have discussed to this point informs the quality of urban teachers’ single- and double-loop learning processes about their students’ cultural perspectives at work. Specifically, these chapters review how social, psychological, and organizational factors in the urban school workplace environment operate to facilitate or inhibit urban teachers’ abilities to challenge their own cultural assumptions amidst contextual, intrapsychic, and interpersonal constraints on their thinking at work.