What are the expressions of uncertainty within educational spaces that cultivate equity and explicit investigations of race and racism? What are the limits and potential of uncertainty to further anti-racist aims and practices? In this paper, while all attend to these questions from under a broad umbrella of critical theory, each author frames their discussion through a particular slice of the critical lens and from within a particular context. Ohito provides a Black feminist analysis of the relationship between uncertainty, (dis)trust, and corporeality in the context of anti-racist teacher education (Chödrön, 2002; Deckman & Ohito, 2019); Reimer examines the role of uncertainty within a critical restorative justice framework as it plays out in K-12 settings (Dobson, 2014; Reilly, 2019); Glazier illuminates the provocational pivot points (Ellsworth, 2004) of uncertainty through the lens of critical literacy (Janks, 2013) within a children’s literature course; and Bausell examines how collaborative critical discourse analysis cultivates uncertainty in a justice-oriented teacher education course. The authors articulate the different instantiations of uncertainty as viewed through the various prisms of a critical lens and consider what uncertainty offers (and denies) to the practice of anti-racist and justice-oriented pedagogies. The authors conclude by collectively articulating implications for the pedagogical enactment of critical theory in diverse K-20 classroom contexts that are oriented towards racial equity.

Chödrön, P. (2002). Comfortable with uncertainty: 108 teachings. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications. Deckman, S. L., & Ohito, E. O. (2019). Stirring vulnerability, (un)Certainty, and (Dis)Trust in Humanizing Research: Duoethnographically Re-membering Unsettling Racialized Encounters in Social Justice Teacher Education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Dobson, A. (2014). Listening for democracy: recognition, representation, reconciliation. New York: Oxford University Press. Ellsworth, E. (2004). Places of learning: Media, architecture, pedagogy. New York: Routledge Falmer. Janks, H. (2013). Critical literacy in teaching and research. Education Inquiry, 4(2), 225–242. Reilly, N. (2019). Tell me the story: Marginalisation, transformation, and school-based restorative practice. International Journal of Educational Research.