Co-creating Spaces of Rightful Presence: A Reflexive Account of a STEAM Teacher Professional Learning Program

This paper describes the adoption of a critical justice framework, rightful presence, within a K-12 professional learning program to support teachers during a time of increasing scrutiny over socially just teaching. A qualitative study was designed to examine teachers’ perspectives on rightful presence and, specifically, how teachers perceive the tenets of rightful presence in their roles implementing STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, math) lessons in their classrooms. Over the course of three years (2021–2023), 26 teachers from various disciplines and grade levels engaged in a rightful presence mini-course, embedded within a larger STEAM professional learning program. Utilizing a qualitative method to explore teachers’ perceptions of the framework, the authors embarked on a line of inquiry that required personal reflection to authentically engage the research topic. Analysis indicated that the rightful presence course provided a space where teachers could explore, not only their students’ sense of rightful presence, but their own rightful presence in education and their positionality in relation to teaching. The analysis indicated that teachers became more aware of their prior attitudes and behaviors that foster students’ sense of rightful presence in the classroom.