Critical Classrooms

This article uses data from a 9-month ethnography in California to illustrate how elementary teacher’s decision to reenact Jane Elliott’s “A Class Divided” experiment, in conjunction with an artist-centered multicultural curriculum, shifted classroom conversations to a more critical dialogue of social groups, power, and privilege. Data illustrate how this approach to learning about diversity and difference can facilitate development of students’ critical consciousness at the elementary school level. Student interviews and an interview with the classroom teacher are also used to triangulate findings. The article concludes with suggestions as to how teachers can create critical spaces in their own classrooms.