Faculty profile: Travis J. Bristol

February 4, 2023

Q&A with Associate Professor Travis J. Bristol

Professor Bristol studies the experiences of teachers of color in schools. By understanding their experiences, he explores what conditions are necessary at schools so that they choose to stay in the profession. He notes, "Teachers of color tend to leave their schools at a higher rate when compared to white teachers because—very much like Black people who live in communities where their needs are not met, communities that are harder to live in—Black and Latine teachers are more likely to work in schools where they don’t have all of their needs met in order to work with the students in their classrooms."

Below is a Q&A with Professor Bristol about his research, the importance of having his students grapple with uncomfortable situations, and the impact of his work.

Prof. Travis Bristol talking to students.

Faculty profile - Travis J. Bristol

Professor Bristol talks about his research and what inspires him. (Edited for length and clarity, 04:12.)

What inspires you to do what you do?

What inspires me as a researcher is the push to ensure that we’re asking the right questions. At the start of my “academic career” policymakers, like then-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, began creating policies focused solely on recruiting, for example Black teachers, into the profession. How do we get more Black people into the profession? I wasn’t sure that—while important— was the right question. Of course we want to recruit people, but understanding the experiences of Black teachers, Latine teachers, Asian American and Pacific Islander teachers, Indigenous teachers might give us some insight into how to shape recruitment efforts and help us understand that maybe focusing on recruitment should not be the sole priority and that actually we need to focus on retention.

Over time what I found and what other research has substantiated was that teachers of color have higher rates of turnover than their peers. Many of the recruitment efforts have indeed continued to pay off because we see an increased percentage of Black and Latinx teachers going into the profession and yet we’re seeing them turn over at higher rates than their white peers.

In terms of policy, I know that policy can create problems and policy can fix problems. No Child Left Behind and the mandate that schools close if schools don’t meet certain performance metrics meant that schools in which Black teachers taught were closed disproportionately than their other peers and subgroups. That’s a policy that can create a problem. Some of my work in working with policymakers, like the state superintendent, around understanding some of the experiences of teachers of color, can work to fix problems by creating opportunities for district leaders or county officials to understand how they can better recruit, support, or retain teachers of color.

As a researcher, a goal of research is to shape and inform policy and practice. As I am doing research, I am thinking about what I have found, based on the evidence, to inform what policymakers are doing—for example, like what the state superintendent is doing, in terms of trying to recruit, support, and retain teachers of color as well as what school principals are doing in terms of their own efforts to create working environments to ensure that educators of color want to stay in their buildings.

What drives you as a teacher?

As a teacher, I aim to not tell students what to think. I am very clear on day-one with my students that many people at Berkeley have an appreciation for the Freirean model of not banking but problem posing. Eventually you want your teacher to tell you what to think. For me, it’s about creating the conditions for you to understand how to think for yourself. In my class, knowing on average that many of our students are probably quite liberal—are Democrats—I spend a great deal of time holding up a student's idea and having the class grapple with what that student has said. I am helping the student understand that these issues are quite complex and that of course we want to have students of color or more URM—more underrepresented minority students—but are you willing to give up your seat? Let’s take these lofty liberal ideas that we all espouse in theory and put them in practice and see if you still believe in them.

I am also in my class trying to create experiences where students feel a great deal of discomfort, where they can unearth some of their own bias, regardless of how they identify. I also try to create a class environment that is very human and humanizing. In my big lecture class of 85, when a student is absent I send them an email and say, ‘I missed you.’ Some of that may be because I went to a small liberal arts college where my professors knew me and I went to their homes. Cal can feel very impersonal for our undergrads. But I also try to create humanizing experiences for our students.

What's an example of a situation that might make students uncomfortable?

For the PLI [Principal Leadership Institute] students, I replicate a study, I think it’s Walter S. Gilliam. He gives four scenarios of a student misbehaving. It’s the same scenario, but he gives very stereotypically white names and very stereotypically black names. It’s like Jake, Sarah, Deshawn, and Latoya. PLI students believe that they are the progressives and it’s everyone else. And every year as a class they are likely to give harsher ratings to Latoya or Dashawn. And then we have to spend time sitting with that. On the unit around discipline we’re doing, students say I am ready to go out, give me some ideas for how to fix this in my school. What I am helping them to understand first is that you can’t go out and fix this problem for others if you hold some of these biases yourself. That's hard for individuals who see themselves as progressives. It's a heavy lesson and it’s been heavy for the last two years. It’s helping them to understand that we all have these biases. Now that you recognize that you have it, we can release ourselves from the burden of being “California nice” and recognize that we have to first work on ourselves.

Tell us about your work as the chair of the National Board of Education.

In the United States, as you know, every state has their own credential. Unlike the medical profession where there is one credential for the whole country, we have 50 different credentials and some credentials don’t even transfer to other states. There isn’t reciprocity. The National Board came out of the Carnegie Commission on Teaching. It was essentially a way to understand how to increase learning outcomes for students. The paper was called “A Nation Unprepared.” One recommendation was to create a body, which became the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards that set a set of national standards for what teachers should be able to know and to do. Teachers have to go through a series of performance-based exercises. They submit a portfolio. The portfolio gets assessed. And they become a nationally certified board teacher. I am the sixth board chair. Three of the former chairs have been governors. My immediate predecessor was the State Superintendent of Kentucky.

In many ways, I am quite junior to assume such a role. What has become apparent when they elected me is that in this moment in time, I am the right person to be leading. It’s not me being bragadocious. It’s that the percentage of nationally board certified teachers is even more white than the national teacher average. There is a robust body of evidence that nationally certified teachers can increase learning when compared to teachers who are not board certified. National board teachers are concentrated in suburban schools. Given all of my work around thinking about the urban center, students of color, and teachers of color, for me this is new policy leadership work.

I have had to spend time understanding the state policy landscape in Mississippi. Many of the Southern states have robust National Board teacher incentive programs. Lots of my work has been engaging the state leaders. My role is to really understand the power and the importance of labor. For me, it’s been a learning curve. In PhD programs, you are not taught to think about navigating these policy worlds. It’s been one of the things that I am most proud of professionally and excites me the most, really that this national perspective. How do we find common ways of preparing all teachers, regardless of where they sit.

Are we making progress in some of the areas where you are working?

Absolutely. I do feel like we’re making a great deal of progress. As far back as 2015, I gave a keynote at the Department of Education when then-Secretary of Education John King was writing guidance for the “Every Student Succeeds Act,” which was the Obama reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. One of the suggestions I made in thinking about school-based experiences was that the federal government should allow states, should encourage states, to create these professional learning communities for teachers of color. In 2015, you see language, non-binding guidance. But what has happened subsequently is that all across the country, you have states and districts creating these professional learning communities for teachers of color.

At the state level, I chair our State Superintendent’s University Advisory Group. [BSE Associate Dean for Leadership Development Programs] Rebecca Cheung is on that advisory group. We spent, during pandemic, several months listening to educators across the state and at the county offices. When we met with the county offices to talk about teacher diversity, they said this is what we’re doing and we want to do more of this. We want to get together and do more of it. The state convenes these offices in a professional learning community.

Locally with the research-practice partnership with Moonhawk Kim, Ashley Zhou and I studied uncredentialed teachers in Oakland Unified and we made a set of recommendations around their experiences. We found that particularly immigrant uncredentialed teachers and uncredentialed teachers of color were more likely to be discontinued. We found that these educators were coming from education adjacent organizations. We made some recommendations to the district. And now the district is seeking funding to create a robust program specifically around getting more people into the pipeline as uncredentialed and then credentialed teachers. On all three levels, I feel my work is making a difference in concrete tangible ways that I can see and put my hand on.

What role should a school of education like the BSE have to play in addressing systemic injustice and transforming our schools?

I believe that because we are a public institution, a land-grant institution, we have a responsibility to be responsive to the public and to the public needs. I think that it’s important as academics to have our own unique scholarly interests. It is extremely important that piece of our research is responsive to the public needs. What are the public needs in California? To ensure that each child in our state, particularly children who are in the most historically resilient communities, have high-quality teachers and leaders. That should be a moral responsibility. We're training teachers who feel equipped on day one that they can go in and teach in any community, particularly communities that have been historically resilient. We should also be working with policymakers at the state capitol to understand their needs and to ensure that the policies they are making are evidence based. We have to be in conversation with them to do that. Another piece is that in our teacher preparation and ino our leadership programs that we are recruiting students who represent the rich diversity in this county. I believe we’re making progress in some programs and not others, but that should be our north star.