Dilemmatic conversations: Some challenges of culturally responsive discourse in a high school English classroom

This paper reports findings derived from a qualitative research study focused on seven English teachers at a hyperdiverse high school as they learned to analyze their classroom talk for moments of conflict. Using methods derived from interactional ethnography and systemic functional linguistics, the author analyzes the ways that one teacher uses a “heroic White teacher” text, LouAnne Johnson’s autobiographical novel Dangerous Minds, to talk about the societal significance of “the n-word” with her students, attempting to navigating ideological dilemmas of race and difference in her discourse. The study ends by calling for further description, analysis, and careful consideration of the culturally responsive discourse and interaction of teachers from all backgrounds, which can be useful for helping researchers, teacher educators, and policymakers understand how identities and social subjectivities are negotiated in and through talk and action. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. “It’s like when I say something, and I mean it in a certain way, and the reaction that I get is just out there to me. And these bells are going off about okay, something just happened there. . . I’m not sure what it was, but it was not what I meant to happen, and the understanding was different. . . than what I meant it to be.” Ella Daniel, 9th and 10th Grade English teacher2 Rainfield High School