Educators of colour, teaching race, and orienting towards a humanising critical sociocultural knowledge for teaching

Over the past decade, policymakers and researchers have paid closer attention to the experiences, perspectives, knowledge, and working conditions of teachers of colour. These discussions exist amid growing teacher shortages, the changing demographics of growing students of colour in K-12 public schools, and efforts to bring more teachers of colour into teaching. In this paper, I share findings from 11 educators of colour working in diverse regions across the U.S. who express a strong commitment to addressing race in their teaching, despite growing nationwide resistance to do so in K-12 and higher educational spaces. I illuminate how the teachers’ orienting approach to teaching about race served to inform, guide, and steady how they understood, approached, and talked about their practice. I show how, during a challenging sociopolitical time, a group of educators of colour embody a critical humanising sociocultural knowledge (HCSK) teaching orientation that grounds sociocultural knowledge as integral to effective teaching.