Creating Communities of Practice for Racial Justice and School Equity: School Change as Social Movement

• In Event: Roundtable Session 66
  In Roundtable Session: Transforming Urban Spaces for Democratic Education

Abstract

This paper examines the shared language and mutual learning about race and equity among a group of white teachers and equity-minded white and African American community leaders and educators in a self-described progressive college town. Their participation in multiply constructed communities of practice involves learning from other equity-minded school leaders and teachers (some veteran and some new), and importantly, from social justice minded community leaders, grassroots organizers and youth workers of color. This paper, based on a three year ethnographic study, argues for the openings, possibilities and tensions for school change as social movement when teachers have access to powerful community perspectives, language, discourses, stories, resources and strategies for exposing and working against inequity and injustice.

Authors

• Sofia A. Villenas, Cornell University

• Alana C. Butler, Cornell University

• Alison Remillard, Cornell University