Care-Sickness: Teaching With a Pedagogy of Soul

• In Event: Embracing Soul Work: Black Educators Teaching for Justice

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes
This historical study utilizes comparative analysis to explore the narratives of Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Anna Julia Cooper – Black women educators who, in their embrace of the maternal, political clarity, and ethic of risk, practiced a womanist pedagogy. Embracing Beauboeuf-Lafontant’s (2002) exposition of Black womanist pedagogy, we contend that Black women teachers historically have operated with an embrace of the maternal, political clarity, and an ethic of risk. With such a pedagogy, they perceive teaching to be a political act, one grounded in “other mothering” (Collins, 2000), and contextualized by a race-based positionality which marks them as oppressed.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework/ Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
When Carol Gilligan (1982) put forth a systematic explanation of ethic of care she highlighted relational and moral concerns of women in contrast to then prevalent male-centered theories of justice. She concluded that, “an ethic of care rests on the premise of nonviolence—that no one should be hurt” (p. 174). Since then, other academics (Engster, 2005; Hurd & Brabeck, 1997; Noddings, 1992a & 2005b) have further theorized the applicability of an ethic of care to educational settings and they have examined the relationship between an ethic of care and education. We argue that Black women educators embody a qualitatively different ethic of care – one that is nuanced by our historicized disposition toward libratory education, a disposition derived from our lived experiences of multiple and competing forms of oppression.

To code the narratives, we used a grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and engaged in a three step coding process using open coding to identify key concepts and categories, and to identify a selective code that connected all of the narratives studied. The themes we identified were work and care, freedom and choice, authority and power. The selective code that we named was care-sickness: an inability to disengage from care-work.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
In our analysis, we use biographies and personal writings of Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Charlotte Hawkins Brown.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
The Black women educators examined in this paper Black operated with different definitions of the relationship between 1) work and care, 2) freedom and choice, and 3) authority and power. Yet, they were all bound to a pedagogy of contradiction, a life of teaching and learning for which employed an epistemology of soul—a way of knowing that would not allow them to disengage.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
Using O’Malley (2007) we extend DuBois’ (1903) conceptualization of the souls of Black folks by suggesting that meaningful, inspired, and socially responsive education depends upon an attunement to the human soul. Such an attunement was demonstrated by the educators examined in this study. It was one that moved them to educate in ways that allowed them to bear witness (Dillard, Abdur-Rashid, & Daa-Iyah, 2000), unravel oppressive structures, and shape transformative possibilities.

Authors

• Donyell Lakishka Roseboro, University of North Carolina - Wilmington

• Sabrina N. Ross, Georgia Southern University