Blended Portraiture: Nurturing Pedagogies of Self-Recovery With Young Women of Color

• In Event: 34.033 - "A People's Scholarship": Portraiture and Possibilities for Liberatory Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives & Research Questions
“I must everlastingly seek to cleanse myself of the hatred and the contempt that surrounds and permeates my identity, as a woman, and as a Black human being,” admonishes poet and activist June Jordan (1978, p. 13), speaking to the burden of healing that women of color are forced to carry throughout their lives. This study explores and engages in pedagogy that centers the needs of young women of color and empowers them to shift from pain to what bell hooks (1989) calls “self-recovery.” I focus on two units of analysis: students’ prior experiences that led them to a course called Young Empowered Women (YEW) and pedagogy designed to support students toward a path of empowerment. I explore the following questions: 1) What kinds of life experiences shape students’ sense of self and participation in YEW? 2) What are pedagogical strategies that can help these young women in YEW understand these experiences? and 3) How, if at all, does YEW women’s participation in the class, impact their sense of empowerment – individually and collectively?

I utilize women of color feminist epistemology (Collins, 2000; Lorde, 1984; hooks, 1989; Calderón et.al., 2012) to challenge the over-rationalization of knowledge in classrooms and reintegrate bodymindspirit towards a praxis of wholeness. Rooted in political consciousness, hooks’ (1989; 2015) concept of “self-recovery” and Anzaldúa’s (2002) conceptualization of conocimiento - a process that links self-reflection towards outwards action - offers a comprehensive framework to analyze both my experience and YEW students’ experiences and reflections in the wake of transformation. Taken together these frames shape my research methods and guide my pedagogical strategies as a teacher/researcher.

Methods/Sources
Combining the auto-ethnographic stance of critical teacher research (Morrell, 2008) with the nuanced storytelling of portraiture ( Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis, 1997), I focus on students’ experiences with self-identity, both in and out of the classroom, and my own process developing curriculum for an elective class situated in a West Los Angeles charter middle school. The class comprised of twenty-five 12-14 year old female students. One Latina and one Black female student became the primary participants of this six-month study. Creating a blended portrait of healing, I synthesize participants’ stories and ideas from interviews, students’ work, and classroom interactions with my own narrative, pedagogical reflections, and theoretical frameworks.

Findings
Using a blended portraiture method that combined my pedagogical reflections with students’ complex narratives not only gave rise to a more nuanced analysis, but a more comprehensive pedagogy of healing, where students’ ideas and stories allowed me to anticipate student resistance and design curriculum that met participants’ present needs. Nurturing pedagogies of self-recovery requires teachers to see students as already whole and to facilitate internal and collective dialogue that embraces students’ multiple sensibilities on their path towards empowerment.

Significance
By privileging students’ experiences and desires as pedagogical resources and employing a women of color feminist framework, this study sheds light on dominant epistemologies that privilege cognitive knowledge and highlights bodymindspirit and self-recovery as both theory and practice that can guide young women towards individual and collective renewal.

Author

• Stephanie Cariaga, University of California, Los Angeles